Finally, a series of up-dates to show what has happened over the past year.

My apologies to all those who have waited from last year to see what progress has been made on the renovation project. The lack of posts doesn't mean that it has stopped, rather the reverse and we are now close to actually completing it. Over this past year I have been so busy, often putting in 12 hour days at the building work, that I simply haven't had either the time, or the energy, to sit at the computer and compose postings for the blog.

So now the pressure is off, and I can spend a little time showing you what has been achieved. I shall deal with each of the areas separately and try to give you a flavour of work done to create the finished product.

For this first of the linked postings you will see the huge improvement made by putting a coating of crépi onto the outside of the house. Crépi is a chalk/lime based product that keeps the rain out but allows the walls to 'breathe' and therefore helps to prevent problems with rising damp. The first picture above was taken right at the start of the project and indicates quite clearly the damaged nature of the walls, the second one shows how smart the house now looks.

The actual process was not at all easy or pleasant. I hired a compressor, like those used for the pneumatic drills which dig up the roads, together with a special attachment which would blast the crépi onto the walls. The crépi came in sacks and simply needed water to be added and mixed in a concrete mixer. So we had one person doing the mixing, one person taking the mixture to a wheelbarrow up on scaffolding and a third person actually blasting the mixture onto the walls. I was the person doing the moving and a fairly ghastly task it was climbing up and down ladders with buckets of wet crépi and getting hit by bits of crépi bouncing off the walls.

In all we took three days to complete the task and not only the front but also the side wall and the part of the back wall not made from pebbles were coated. So now the outside is protected against the weather and the house looks a great deal more presentable.