A Christmas Posting

We feel that we should let you know what progress has been made in time for us, perhaps, to be able to enjoy the festive season. Firstly we have now cleared all the furniture, clothes, books, pictures, etc., etc. that were in the house in GB and we wanted in France. A mammoth effort in that we had thought that we could have the moving carried out by a local South West British company. They had given me an ‘indicative’ quote over the ‘phone which was, on reflection, ridiculously cheap. On the basis of it we drove back to GB expecting to have to make only the one journey back. In the event when the company made a full assessment of the task they provided a quote which was 6 times higher than the indicative one!! We therefore hired a van and did the move ourselves. Much harder work involving all the packing and unpacking plus lots more driving, but worth a huge saving.

In terms of the house we have the finished bedroom and en suite bathroom and the kitchen/diner. In the big salon the ceiling and one wall have been plaster-boarded and I have started painting the ceiling where there is some staging left from putting up the ceiling. Jean Claude has installed the wood-burning stove and we can now use it to help warm up the house. That is fortunate as the weather has been brutally cold on occasions. The electrician has also worked on this room so all the cabling, switches and sockets are in place. And therefore we are now having the remaining three walls plastered with crepie – a special chalk-based product which is particularly effective on earth walls. If this is finished in time for Christmas we shall be able to make use of the room for the festive period. I shall still have lay all the floor tiles and we have much to do to complete the mezzanine; but we can make use of the room in the meantime.

I have also completed the insulation and plaster-boarding of the spare bedroom which has significantly improved the overall warmth of the house. Now I need to fill all the joints in and paint the room, but it is a useable space and we have indeed slept in it when we had visitors recently. There is also work for the electrician to complete in putting in the switches and sockets.

If I then put in a plaster-board wall in the large cupboard in the hallway, so that we can hang the main electricity switch board, – the ‘tableau principal’ – we should be able to persuade EDF to let us have a full electrical supply. At the moment if we have too many electrical appliances in action at the same time we suffer the main fuse tripping out, usually plunging us into darkness.

So we are getting close to being able to live relatively comfortably in the house. When this phase ends we shall have to turn our attention to the outside and rescue to courtyard, the garden at the back and the field from the encroachments of the weeds, plenty therefore to keep us occupied.