Renovation project - Bippity Boppity Boo - Wave the magic wand!

Renovation project - Bippity Boppity Boo - Wave the magic wand

The walls on the kitchen terrace are covered and John is still unhappy with them but we have decided to live with them for a short while and see how they go, this is always a good idea, especially if you have made a big change as it may take some time to get used to it, so it’s not good to change back rapidly.

When you look at the before and after, you realise just how much it has changed

 John bought more wood than he needed for the garden fence as we needed to do something with the top of the old wall of the barn (or what is now the edge of our patio). We had considered building a wall for additional seating but it would take some time to get the right stones, next was to finish it off with a cover of cement, but this might not have been in keeping, then the final idea, which is just an all round winner was to build a herb garden.

John made wooden boxes and attached them to the top of the wall with cement, these were then filled with soil and fertiliser and the plants added.

BIPPITY, BOPPITY, BOO!!!!!! Wave the Magic Wand!

We have a herb garden, I can’t wait till I can just come outside and grab whatever I need for dinner rather than cursing at the shop because they do not have what I want. We have found it very surprising that fresh herbs and spices are often difficult to find in our part of France, we had expected to be able to buy any sort of food with France being so renowned for its culinary expertise, but herbs and spices are not that easy, until now that is!

We have also made a start on the new workshop, this was the old barn, and we had been making do with just a piece of tarpaulin hanging over the side. John measured up and we bought some scant (3x2 batons), we already had some spare sterling board, and bought a packet of roofing shingles.

John fixed the batons in place and then secured the sterling board; we had an old window which we saved to for this exact moment which was also secured into place.

The end result was like something that you would expect to see on ‘The Clampets’ or any ‘Neighbours from Hell’ type TV program.

Luckily it didn’t look like this for long, the roofing shingle comes in strips and these are nailed to the sterling board, the transformation is instant, you really would not believe it is the same shed and the cost for this transformation was minimal, the scant cost approx 20 euro’s, the sterling board and window were recovered from the house and the roofing shingle was 30 Euro’s a pack (we needed just over one pack, which was a bit of a bugger, but at least now we will have enough left to make a wood store, everything can be used at some point!)

So the cost of the side of this shed was approx 80 Euro’s and was really not difficult to construct. (this is not finished yet)

It’s back into the house tomorrow to hopefully finish off (well almost)