The day a thermal vest becomes pretty and practical!!!!!!!! 24.01.13

The day a thermal vest becomes pretty and practical!!!!!!!! 24.01.13

The sun is shining, the sun is shining Oh My God the sun is actually shining!!!!!!

We’ve been busy over the last few days, but not actually interesting enough to write about on a daily basis. We have made a start on some cosmetics all the wood in the walk in wardrobe has been stained and varnished.

John continues with the bathroom and I start to get everything ready for a tip run, I end up with two car loads, where does it all come from? 

I am still recognised at the tip, which is nice and the guy is so helpful, I have taken a photo of the tip as it is so different to the UK, H&S has not reached French tips yet. There are no barriers and the rubbish is just thrown over the edge into a large metal container, yet the recycling is always correct as the workers are there making sure that everything goes in the right container and do not sit and hide in their little hut as in the UK!

I also had a massive cleanup downstairs, we have both been a bit under the weather and we are beginning to wonder if it is due to the house, so we are going to try to keep it cleaner, not easy considering we are working constantly in dust and dirt but we’ll try.

John removes the old roof beam from the wall in the bathroom as this is rotten; we can see outside clearly, this does explain where some of the cold has been coming from.

This john waving from inside the bathroom!

I sent a photo of this to my daughter and all she noticed was that we had filled a hole with a pound land carrier bag!!!!

John fills in all of the holes into the bathroom; we saved a lot of the stones that came away from our initial demolitions. You cannot see where the hole had been.

John has also been making the house warmer in other ways, he has replaced the doors that we had removed from the bedrooms and has put a large plastic sheet covering the entrance to the back of the house upstairs. The house is starting to feel warmer, still not warm enough but warmer.

We knew what we were getting into when we started this project and John has been doing this for over 30 years, and we thought we were fully prepared, but nothing prepares you fully for the dirt, the cold and the discomfort, so if you going to do this, be aware and make sure you have lots of thermal clothes. I now possess 2 thermal vests, if you had asked me about thermal vests a year ago I would’ve said they are a Christmas present for old grannies, I now look at them and think wow pretty and practical. Bugger I need to get a grip and get some proper sun!

Top Tips

1.       Pound land bags make excellent draft excluders for holes in walls

2.       Buy thermal clothes

3.       Be prepared to lose all dress sense in order to keep warm

4.       Keep cleaning, even though it does not look any different