Well November sort of passed me by in a flash, I’m not sure where it went but appears to be December already. As you will have seen room 2 (Nature) is finished and this week our new builder begins work on room 3. Franca though a change of builder was in order after the debacle of the last room, so hopefully room 3 will get finished by the middle to end of January, and since we have purchased a few of the big items already we will be able to keep the cost of this room below 10,000€. We have also had a slight re-design of our planned layout which has resulted in Fleur loosing her room for the time being, not that she used it very much, so to have such valuable real estate sitting around doing nothing did not really make much sense. So Fleur’s room and the adjoining room are going to be knocked into one to create a large double room with an en-suite shower room. We decided that our previous plan would result in two quite small (and therefore not so saleable) double rooms, whereas this layout should give us a flexible enough space that it can be a double room, twin room or even a small triple, lets see what the finished item looks like in January.
So what have I been up to in November, well the project I am employed to work on in London is reaching a very busy stage, so I have been over to Ireland to checkout how the developers have been getting on with building the new system that I am supposed to implement. I have now switched to using Bordeaux airport for the winter period so I am getting used to fighting my way through the Bordeaux morning rush hour to catch my flight. It is still worth doing as I gets me to the office 2 hours earlier than using any other airport. The recent train strike in France just goes to show the grass is not always greener on the other side, as I lost a Sunday driving to Paris Charles de Gaulle to get a flight to Ireland, then the following Friday I had to take the Eurostar back to France to collect my car from Paris and then drive back down to Sigogne. It cost me a fortune which I am trying to get back via insurance, wish me luck!
So in summary I have been earning corn during November, and since we had basically run out of money that was not bad thing. We now have enough cash to pay for room 3, then we will have to save up for the next huge step, which will include completing the roof refurbishment started last year and replacing floor joists over three rooms including the kitchen. We really need to get this completed by around May 2008 if we are to get much of the 2008 summer trade, it is going to begin early in 2008 as Easter is so early. We will also have to take a bit of a flyer as they say, in starting to put out advertising for 2008, otherwise we will definitely miss the boat. This will include getting our new website off the ground in January, so it is going to be another cash intensive start to the new year. That means of course that I will continue to work in London to earn the cash to pay for all of this, and the reality is dawning on me that I will be working right through 2008 to pay for the rest of the building work, and maybe into 2009 to be able to pay for the swimming pool complex which is right on the back burner at the moment.
Well enough waffling from me for the moment, hopefully I will be back with another instalment before the end of the year, time to jump on the plane….
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