Busy change over weekend....

Another busy weekend has past, and this weekend was our first changeover weekend, one set of happy guests headed for northern France and another lot arrived from Holland. We successfully got everything thing ready for the two rooms they booked, plus an extra room for a one night stop over during the week, so we are properly full for the first time, or will be on Tuesday, at least the three rooms we have finished are full. So on the B&B front things are going well and we are allegedly fully booked next week as well.

The trouble with paying guests is that it plays havoc with the building work, so although it is vitally important that we get as many guests as possible it does slow down our potential to get more guests in. We have also discovered it is a bit of a juggling act to try to get the building work done and provide good quality food, at least in form of a 4 course meal. A few mishaps means if folks are paying for meals I will have to pay more attention to the food and even less to the building.

Cleaning and preparing the rooms took priority, and we also had to move ourselves downstairs to the ground floor bedroom since we are letting all three finished bedrooms. We are starting to get a bit quicker at sorting out the rooms, though Franca appears to have a much faster routine then me. She has got breakfast down to a tee, and I certainly have not at the moment.

The weather was glorious over the weekend and for the first time we were able to eat outside, it was shorts & tee shirts all weekend barring a little bit of rain on Sunday morning.

So the building work took a bit of a back seat though I did do some more work but I need to order some more bits before I can make much more progress. I also need to switch off the water, which is a bit difficult with guests in the house. So hopefully Franca will be able to order me the bits I need to carry on time permitting.

As the coming weekend is a UK bank holiday weekend I will be driving down with loads of stuff bought from B&Q, because the exchange rate is poor at the moment it is much cheaper to buy things in the UK, so the car will be full of floor tiles glue, tools, Franca’s birthday present and various other bits & pieces, to make the most of the trip. Hopefully my ‘new’ (13 year old) car will make it without a problem.

Busy birthday time

I’m playing catch up again, it has been a couple of weeks since I wrote anything, and quite a few things have happened along the way.

I am having to work for my living in both the UK and France, my UK job, which pays the bills for the French dream, is starting to get very busy as several projects I am working on are contriving to go live around the same time later this year. I am also racing against time to finished the new scullery at least enough so that we can move everything out of the old scullery so it can have its ceiling replaced, which is the floor of the bathroom for the final room up stairs. I was going to get the builders to finish the floor for me but the exchange rate between the £ and € is so bad at the moment we need to do all we can to save money on the build. Hence I am going to bring the tiles from the UK and then lay them myself, which is going to be a challenge because the room is quiet large and not very even. I am also going to have to turn my hand to French plumbing, I never realised there were so many different sized pipes in France, starting at 8mm or 10mm for sink taps and toilets, going incrementally up to 22mm for supply lines, each size has a specific job! I am starting to get to grips with French electric now so rewiring is not too much of a problem any more.

Whilst I’ve been busy doing all this Fleur has learnt to ride her bike on two wheels so now she is whizzing round the garden like the next Victoria Pendleton. Franca’s mother arrived about 10 days ago to celebrate Franca’s birthday, which we did at the Chateau restaurant in Cognac. The meal was lovely, and the dinning formal, which made it a bit difficult for Fleur who cannot sit still for 5 minutes let alone 3 hours. We enjoyed the meal, but it is definitely a special occasions restaurant, and next time we will leave Fleur with a baby sitter, I think Fleur will enjoy playing with a friend much more than us telling her to stop doing this & that every five mins. Franca got lots of presents from Fleur (well three) which she had chosen all by her self, that is the first time she has done that, thanks to a bit help from Franca’s mum, the presents were ‘just what she wanted’. It is a bit strange celebrating birthdays at the moment, it seems a bit unreal in the race to get the B&B finished.

In amongst all of this guests and bookings are appearing thick and fast at the moment, and we have our first wedding couple spending their wedding night in our B&B! since they are French it could prove an interesting weekend as they have a few traditions such as waking the happy couple in the middle of the night! We are busy now all the way until May, then we will have a small break whilst the rest of our roof is repaired, then its back to bookings again, so considering we have not done anything in the way of promotion things are going well. We are even getting in to the swing of cooking a 4 course meal without starting at 9:00 am, as long as all the prep work is done in advance, but hopefully that can be done sitting outside in the sun from now on.

The weather has not been that great over the last couple of weeks with loads of rain and not much in the way of sunny intervals, though when the sun does come out it gets warm very quickly now. The weather at least helps us get on with the indoor activities without looking out of the window longingly every five minutes.