Renovation Project - Holidays are over and its time to start work again!

Renovation Project - Holidays are over and its time to start work again!

Yesterday was spent getting the house ready for our next bout of work, move all of the wood from the first floor into the living room and John replaces some of the old floor boards, John has managed to salvage some floor boards and has used these in the bedroom, this means that the new floor boards stop where the new bedroom wall will be as we really didn’t want to see old and new floor boards mixed together. Luckily we have enough and also enough left over to make another dining room table.

I start to clean the floorboards in the bedroom, this means scrubbing them with wire wool, they do look good but this is a horrible job, I begin to wonder whether laminate maybe better as there are so many sites available to buy this from such as  Best 4 Floors, this would make the job easier and quicker, but we do want the house to be original, I may change my mind as time goes on though!!! so I continue with the scrubbing but when John asks if I want to go and visit Theresa and Craig, I don’t need asking twice!

We head over to visit Theresa and Craig, who give us a full tour of their small holding, it looks fantastic, they have been here longer than us and are doing a great job, I really enjoy speaking to Theresa as she knows just what we are going through, as she is twelve months further on.

We also have a look at all the animals, although I still couldn’t imagine having rabbit for lunch, but I am quite keen on the idea of having chickens and a vegetable plot, I can already see myself as Felicity Kendal from The Good Life!!!!

We go shopping today to buy all the wood for the new ceiling, this is so exciting as when the ceilings are in place we can start to build the walls and put the new bathroom in, and another floor will be finished.

we call in on Jane and Dave on the way home, it is lovely that we now have so many friends that we can just pop in and see, this was something that had really worried me when we first came, that we would feel quite isolated, but we are getting a big network of friends in France.

We get back to the house for half past 2 (which I can now say in French thanks to my school revision book!!!!) as we are expecting the scrap men to arrive this afternoon.

I forgot to mention my trip to the scrap yard last week; this was great fun, NOT!!!!!!  We had weighed in all of our scrap last year and somehow managed to lose the cheque they gave us, so I thought I would ask if they could re issue it. I spent about 20 minutes at the scrap yard trying to explain that we had more scrap and had lost the cheque, this again involved a game of charades, as the woman on the desk spoke no English at all, but I did it, and got the cheque re issued and managed to book a visit for today.

I was really impressed with myself; this was only ruined slightly by the fact that we then found the old cheque!!!! John had folded it up with his paper driving license (which we needed for the hire car). At this point I could quite happily have fed the cheque to John, all my struggles had been unnecessary, including making me look like an idiot by demonstrating different ways to show that we no longer had the original cheque.

The scrap guys arrive look at the pile of scrap and arrange to come back at 5 pm, we have finally cleared the pile of scrap from our living room, unfortunately we now have a pile of wood in there, at some point we will have a living room with just furniture! The little back yard is also cleared and this looks fantastic.

The house is finally coming together, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, we are getting there and we haven’t killed each other on the way, yet............