Back to work again...

With my cold now out of the way it was back to work this weekend, the first task was to make some sign boards to go on the wall outside, for our final bit of compliance with the local tourist board regulations, and to make it easier for our guests to find us. It took more effort to drill the holes in the gate post than to make the signs themselves. Getting electricity 60m up the garden from the house entailed joining three extension leads together ands then making sure the joints did not pull apart. But in the end we got the signs in place, so another step forward.

I have started again with building work and I have started to create the new laundry/scullery room by demolishing a wall to create one room from two existing old rooms at the back of the house joining onto the garage. We now have a nice large space to work with, and having fixed in place one of the two beams allegedly put in place by our builders to strengthen the floor of Nature we can continue with putting up the walls and the ceiling over the coming weeks. This has ended up as my project whilst the builders get on with the rest of the house. So far I have built a supporting wall, or rather finished off a supporting wall, put some dividing doors between the garage and the laundry room and made a small start on the walling. Over the coming weeks I have to insulate the ceiling and then plasterboard it over, put up the framework for the walls, insulate them and then install the plasterboard walls. I am considering if I will lay the tiled floor or if I should get the builders to do it for me. I will also have to sort out the water and electrics, which could also prove a challenge. In the end it will come down to seeing how far I get before the room is required, time being the oldest enemy here.

Our builder Bogdan (fine French name) came over this weekend to look again at the work we require doing in the next phase, and I still think he is only just starting to understand what we want in the next phase. The replacement of the roof is just the start, since we are going to create one room with an en-suite bathroom and annexe room from the existing from the existing 4 rooms. This entails the demolition of several internal walls, the replacement of the floor/ceiling joists over the kitchen and then the construction of new walls, a high ceiling following lines of the roof inside the house, a new bathroom and a new landing area on the first floor. This is just for starters, because have to make sure we can keep the money flowing to pay for it all. All this will start in May and hopefully be more or less complete by the end of July.

We have more guests this weekend, and we had a couple of problems with the menu as our butcher had run out of tournedos streaks, almost unheard of in France I would have thought, and the supermarket had also run out of lemons, another strange one but I guess it happens. Otherwise things went well and the guests seemed to like everything we served them and everything was convivial around the table. As soon as the Laundry room is working we will have to get the second dishwasher in, as one dishwasher cannot cope with the output from a 4 course meal!