Tree felling and Furniture buying

Our neighbour had complained that one of our trees was overhanging his workshop roof and, in the recent gales, bits of the tree had started to fall down. Steven and Ken decided to become lumberjacks for the day and fell the tree. At it was overhanging the neighbours property, all hands were requried on deck as the tree was roped up and bits of it were cut off with a chainsaw.
Ever the opportunist, Ken seized the chance to pose for a few pictures in preparation for his forthcoming phone call to a "no-win-no-fee" claims company.

Unfortunately, he missed the point that one actually needs to be injured in the accident; and that crawling under the tree whilst posing for a photo doesn't actually count! No doubt we'll be hearing from his lawyers in due course.

"Bah. Humbug!"

Meanwhile, Simon completed the work on the tiling of the bathroom and some minor adjustments to the electrical system. Much more sensible inside tasks whilst the weather was approaching zero degrees outside.

On a recent "expedition" to a local brocante shop, we spied a rather nice dark wood dresser to go with our dining table and chairs. This was purchased at a very reasonable price and delivered straight away. It goes really well in the dining room with the other furniture. We also managed to bag two single beds for the second bedroom into the bargain!

Before and After

The working "holiday" now over, we made out way back to the UK. Simon, Mark, Danni and Liz returned on 11th August and Steven and Michael returned in the van on 14th - making it back to the UK on a wing and a prayer with the clutch on the van about to give out.

Here are some before and after pictures of the house. We have lots more yet to do, but at least we have a sound roof, a functioning bathroom and an almost finished kitchen.

Getting on with the renovations

We have made some progress with the internal renovations.




Getting to grips with the French wiring systems was challenging as the wire is much tougher and connecting to and fitting the sockets is quite different to any UK wiring we had undertaken before. However, the existing wiring supported only 5 working sockets and initially 5 (later on 3) working light fittings - something HAD to be done. We rewired the house completely, ripped out the old wiring and connected it all to a nice new fuseboard according to french wiring regulations, with 30mA RCD (Residual Current Devices) protecting the two phases to supply the house (the third phase will feed the old forge, when we convert it to living area).







Reassuringly, all the circuits worked perfectly first time. This enabled us to connect the water boiler, which Steven had fitted in the utility room, when he created the bathroom.




Work continued in the kitchen ...

Clearing out, plastering and general renovations with the Motley Crew

Internal renovations started, which involved patching up some of the old plaster, which had departed company from the walls; in other places we left the stonework exposed.

In the hallway, the small rusty firegrate was removed and some of the plasterwork fell away to reveal a large stone fireplace which added great character to the hallway.



Danni sanded down the wooden "shopfront" windows from what was formerly a bike bits-and-pieces shop. A lot of the nails were removed from the beams in the "shop", although some required the use of the angle-grinder.



Meanwhile, Simon H discovered the joys of making a hole through a 30" thick stone wall to allow us to fit the waste pipe in the bathroom to the sewer outside!

More Pictures

We got round to downloading all the pictures from our camera today. These help to give a clearer idea of just what condition the building is in.