Moving the blog into the background

I have been making a few changes to our blog in the last week or so. The aim is to have the site revamped and ready to go for the new holiday season.

With this in mind, and collating feedback from guests who stayed with us over the summer, we are going to make the site more of an information site for potential guests who are looking for a holiday.

Don't worry, for all of you who like to take a peek at all of the cock ups I make, the blog will still be running in the background with all of the historical information about our build and the trials and tribulations about living in France.

You will either have to bookmark the site so that you land directly on the blog or use the sidebar navigation which will be labelled 'Blog' (funny enough).

With near on 55,000 visits thus far, out little story has been fairly popular and I am pleased that this site has been pretty much successful for it's intended purpose.

I know that I have missed a bit of an opportunity to highlight some of the information a potential French house buyer might find useful. I will try to put some of this right over the coming year or so.

Now that the kitchen is all but complete we will be turning our attentions to making some money this year. After three years and considerably renovations, it takes it's toll on your savings account so hopefully, with our respective jobs and the gite income we can have some time away from building for a bit.

One of the things I would like to do is woodwork. I see quite a bit of poorly made items such as cheese cages or garden benches that are shoddy but still expensive.

All though I am very much a learner (heavens only knows why I jumped in at the deep end with doors and windows?) I feel I can make shutters, doors, meat and cheese cabinets, garden tables and benches etc at a higher quality and maybe a slightly lower price and maybe make a bit of money in the process.

One of the things that I need to weigh up is the cost of the French social charges. There are varying opinions or what it might cost me but I could be looking at 100.00 euros per week just for the national insurance.

As you can imagine, with the cost of sales plus this overhead, I would need to make quite a bit of furniture every week to stand still. It is something I will have think hard about.