Renovation of a Derelict House in Brittany, France: Renovation project - uncovering the stone fire place - attempting eBay in France!

Renovation project - uncovering the stone fire place - attempting eBay in France! - Monday 3rd September

We have been here a month, the time has gone so quickly, it feels like 5 minutes since we were sat at the Notaires office signing up for the house, but today is a big mile stone, Andy was with us for 4 weeks and his time is up!

The day is spent finding a ferry for Andy and as we are planning to go back to England for my granddaughters upcoming birth we decided to book ours as well, we are going to go back on the overnight ferry in October, I’m still not sure about this, but I have been convinced it is the most practical route, the fact that I get sea sick on the one and a half hour crossing from Dover to Calais, means the idea of spending 10 hours in a little cabin is not something I am looking forward to!

We have also managed to join France eBay and ordered a new mattress over the weekend (and in case you were wondering what happened at the weekend, that was about it! We had the full weekend off, woo hoo!)

Tried to pay for it and open a PayPal account, this is really difficult with a French bank account as the security is much tighter. So after many attempts to buy on line with internet banking, I gave up and went to the back for help, French banks are similar to French medical care, as in completely helpful and the total opposite to everything you find in England.

At the counter the assistant changed all of our limits and attempted to complete it for me, but unfortunately I had to use the one off code that gets e-mailed, so back to the house and it still didn’t work, so I photographed the message that came up on screen and took it to the bank, apparently the problem was with the system and not me, so the teller paid for me (and revoked any charges for doing this!!!!!)

We are going to have a memory foam mattress in under 10 days, again my easily pleased genes kicked in and I got really excited, a good night’s sleep is on its way.

The rest of the day was spent taking down more of the plaster on the wall near the fire, we have decided to have exposed walls around the fire and the staircase as this now looks fabulous, it will be heart breaking replastering the original stone wall, but it will look better.

Here is a snap shot of before already quite a difference hey?

We worked so hard today that we lost track of time and it was about 8pm when we finished, as Andy was leaving we decided to go to le Crepuscule for a steak and glass of wine or 2. So at 9.30 we headed off to the restaurant to find that it was shut! (we forgot that it was Monday) bugger, where were we going to eat, the Crepuscule is usually a safe bet as it is also a bar that stays open late, so we thought we would try Hotel du Lac for a change, it was also shut, so off to Hotel de Bretagne and guess what? Yes it was shut. There is a restaurant next door but one to the house, which closes at 9.30pm, the lights were still on, so we sent Andy in to test the water, and luckily they agreed to feed us, and even more luckily for us the food was amazing, we highly recommend the duck, and a pudding that we can’t remember the name of, but WOW it was nice.