A day out in the cottage

This is no where near as grand as it sounds, our cottage is a leaky breeze block building we use to store all the stuff we do not currently have a place for in the house. The cottage mainly has a lot of Fleur’s toys and things in it, on one side and building bits from me on the other. It was in a mess after a summer of getting things out and just throwing them back so we were on a mission to clear it all up, and get rid of as much rubbish as possible. We need to do this as the cottage has sprung a couple of leaks in the roof, and it has to last as a store room for a few more months before the new storage area is ready. Then we can demolish cottage to make way for the swimming pool and associated out buildings. It took most of Saturday to get the non building side sorted out as Franca and fleur were going through every photo album which somewhat slowed the progress of tidying but did mean we got rid of lots more rubbish, so worth it in the end and quite a few memories along the way.

Sunday morning I returned to building work with a vengeance, as I found some insulation and a couple of plaster boards I had forgotten about on the building side of the cottage which meant I was able to get and start insulating and boarding the ceiling in the new first floor bathroom we are building. That was the start of tidying up the building side of the cottage, well I got rid of two bales of insulation and 2 of the three plaster boards lurking against a wall.

Progress is pretty slow at the moment as our cash is flowing out faster than is good for us, but it is our expensive time of year, hopefully by November we will be back to positive cash flow again and able to push forward with the refurbishment of the next two rooms for the B&B.

On Sunday afternoon we went to a 60th birthday barbeque, at some friends of ours that Franca first met through her blog. They only live 45 minutes away and it was a nice drive from Sigogne to somewhere near Ruffec. The barbeque was great fun, with good food and drink, great company, and very friendly Belgian hosts Jan and Simonne, a better afternoon you could not wish for, and the weather was fantastic too. I think it may have been made better by the fact that on this occasion I did not have to concentrate hard to understand all the French being spoken, as there was hardly any, for once it was my two languages Dutch and English, probably never to be repeated, so I’d better get on and learn French. See tne blog below for the pictures....

Whilst flying to and from the UK I use the time to study classic car magazines and the market prices of classic cars in preparation for trying to set up a classic car hire business as an add on to the B&B, I am quite pleased with my self so far that I have not gone out and bought a car yet, I’ve seen some absolute gems which would be perfect for the business, and good fun for me if I am honest, however it will probably be yet another year before I can seriously start investing any of our meagre funds in what looks on the face it a somewhat frivolous enterprise. So perhaps I should be reading Practical Builder, or even Swimming Pools monthly as a better use of my ‘air’ time.

Next week I will be driving back to the UK as the Jaguar needs a new MOT and a service, so the BMW estate will be switching places with the Jag for a while, so another opportunity to bring some materials from the UK, I’ve almost run out of emulsion paint again.