Renovation project - coffee mornings, dog walking and damp walls

Renovation project - coffee mornings, dog walking and damp walls

I have a lovely day planned today, I am going to a coffee morning in aid of Libertairre chien (very probably spelt wrong) this is to raise money for dogs welfare. We have noticed that there seems to be a lot of homeless dogs, not that you see them on the street but many people we have got friendly with have picked up an unwanted dog from a kennels.

Whilst there I met a lot of other Brits, I knew there was a lot living in Huelgoat, but I didn’t realise that there were this many. There is a large pin board with collie cross puppy photo’s on them, I have to really struggle not to adopt one, there is one in particular that really reminds me of Rex (Rex was my collie cross dog in the UK, he was supposed to be retiring to France with us, but 6 months before the move his legs gave up). I would so love to have another dog, but with the holidays we have planned this year, it just wouldn’t be fair, I have to keep reminding myself of this, as I want another dog so much.

So I am now doing the next best thing, I am dog sitting next week so I am taking the dog for a walk today, so that she can get used to me. Bonnie is a black Labrador, very well behaved, until a dog starts to bark at her and I have to use all my strength to keep her at my side. We have a lovely walk with Sheila and little Lola. I even get to see the canal properly, this is the canal that Sheila tried to convince me to cycle along, it is much nicer when you are not panicking about the bike wobbling into the water.

I take Bonnie to the house so that she can get used to where she will be staying and John has really got stuck into the plastering on the first floor, the room is starting to look so different, John has also replaced some more floorboards so the floor is almost ready.  There is a lot of bounce in certain areas though so we are going to have to add some more joists underneath.

When I take Bonnie home I have a big chat with her owner, we laugh about some of her renovations as she explained that she had some French builders around to price up the work and their idea of dealing with damp walls was to just dry line in front of the walls so that the damp is not seen, but not dealt with. If you are going to buy a renovation project be very wary of this, as it does seem to be common practice, we have found it in our house, which is why so many walls have had to come down, to ensure that we can treat the problems behind the new walls.

We have also realised that there is another false wall in our hall way, we found this when replacing the first floor, floor boards, so now we have to decide whether to take this wall down, the decision is made when we find out the wall was only added to make it straight, rather than to hide anything.