New year round up
I’d like to perceive us as a glider, which after having used the currents, swoops majestically down to a soft landing as we plan and start our next renovations and carry on with the maintenance tasks.
In reality we’re more like a cormorant landing on a lake; looking good until our feet hit the water, at which point everything splashes about rather awkwardly as we decide what exactly we need to do next, before things quickly settle down to what will be our usual steady progress.
This was the order of the day over December and in the run up to Christmas and now into January.
The main focus for the next couple months is the renovation of gîte 2. It has one room downstairs with what was a small bathroom off to the side, and one bedroom upstairs.
Last year I demolished the old bathroom, such as it was, and subsequently our builder friend Patrice built new parpaing (blockwork) walls. Incidentally parpaing is very satisfying to say in a southern french accent; channel your inner paysan and you too can let out an exclamatory parPENG! next time you’re in the builder’s yard in Leroy Merlin.
The new bathroom is on a larger footprint, with a much higher ceiling. Patrice also created an opening at the rear of the building where we will build a decked terrace, and whilst he was here, removed some very old satellite dishes from the chimney stack of our house.
In the gîte’s downstairs room we had a decision to make straightaway: to either leave the old concrete wall render on and paint and repair, or to remove it and then repoint. Due to the presence of a (thankfully now long defunct) Lafarge cement works in nearby Lexos in the 60s and 70s a lot of rural houses have beautiful stone walls rendered this way.
We decided to roll back the design decisions of our forbears and so spent much of December chipping off render and creating yet more gravats to reveal the lovely stone walls beneath. We also took a significant amount of dust into our own house through the medium of my hair and clothes; concrete dust gets everywhere, even under a hat. At the same time we demolished a frankly hideous concrete fireplace to reveal an old bread oven behind.
The first tendrils of pipework followed in early January. Conduits for the electricity and a new water feed for the bathroom were laid on the floor by the spark and the ever-reliable Mr D_ before H and I spent a tiring day mixing concrete and laying a new floor to bury the newly-laid pipes.
We bought the raw materials for the floor from a local farming supply/builders merchant called Bosc; they’re based in a hamlet with nothing much else there, about 20 mins or so away. The first time we went I couldn’t quite believe a functioning business could survive in such a place but survive they do; they are great. It turns out that everyone round here buys from there; likely because of their great prices and top attitude, and they deliver for free too.
In a break from the gîte, we spent a day repairing the side of the newly re-clad hangar. This is probably the first experience we’ve had of shoddy workmanship. A certain Mr Z_ was able to do the job at short notice over the summer when we had a short lull in guests, but it turned out that his work left a lot to be desired.
One of the short end sides of cladding just wasn’t connected properly to rest of the of the structure, and in the first strong winds we had came loose and swayed, threatening to bring the whole lot down. Cue temporary repairs with some ratchet straps before I got up the ladder and, drilled, screwed and bolted things properly into place.
More recently we, with help from H’s sister who joined us for a weekend, laid some ragréage on the new concrete floor in a slightly vain attempt to make it more even. As much as I love floor-levelling compound it is not a universal solution, but tiling compound will absolutely hide any remaining minor peaks and troughs, so we’re not too concerned.
Over the last few days we’ve been constructing the stud walls in the bathroom and corridor space, as well as for one wall in the living room on which the kitchen will run. Once we have pipework running through the studs we can then put the boards on and things will really start to come alive.
In our very near future is a lot of lime pointing, as we make good the now un-rendered and bare walls. I’m looking forward to it as it’s very much not a demolition/removal task, which always predominate at at the start of proceedings.
In non-renovation news the chickens appear to have settled in well. The house that I built over the summer appears to have passed what I assume is a relatively low bar in terms of their scrutiny of living quarters and they happily take themselves off to bed each night. A couple of touches of the electric fence later and the dogs are not that bothered with them anymore, either. I also have a personal favourite in the form of Cherry (short for Charity Pecksniff) - the smallest of reds.
Lastly we’ve had the first stage of pool renovations completed, with some new internal steps installed, skimmer baskets replaced and subterranean leaking pipework repaired. This all precedes the new liner, which will be installed in spring, which will bring with it a lovely pool space when complete, as well as another opportunity to hear terrible eurodance, the preferred aural pleasure of the pool techs.
More reno and random updates next time. See you then.
I’m just amazed at what you two are able to do. Well done and here’s to gite 2 👏🥂👏
You two are doing great! Just the list of what you achieved is really impressive!
!
well done Heather and Sam!