Under normal (with heavy emphasis on normal) circumstances, we should all be snug as bugs and moving onto other projects outside of the main house.
Trouble is, we do not seem to be normal and effectively built the house twice. Once in the original format but using plan 'C' and now in the new much more practical and comfortable format using plan 'A' (which we should have done originally)
I didn't sell any island units but it was a good exercise never the less, although, this week I did get an enquiry from an Ebay'er who asked me if I would take an offer on it.I probably didn't go about the marketing properly (mainly because I could not fully understand how to navigate the site in French) Not to worry, at least I do not have to worry about spending a lot of time making another one at the moment.
Has it really been over one month since I last tapped the key board and updated Perigord Vacance?
It is certainly not down to laziness because I have been doing plenty of other things and maybe it reflects the stage we are now at here in our farm house.
When things were moving at a pace and we were captivated by the excitement of the deadlines, I felt there was something of interest to keep readers popping back.
However, I am sure that no one wanted to hear what toothpaste we used and how many times a day we passed wind so the posts died down again.
Despite not having a fitted sink in the island unit, we have decided to move into the new kitchen and wow! What a feeling.
The whole family, spent all of yesterday, moving furniture and ornaments and setting up the telephone wire and satellite so that we have all the facilities in the new room.
It is strange how 70 square metres shrinks when you add two sofas and an armchair as well as my desk, the dining room table
I have now completed the island unit and I must say, out of all of the things we have created here at Jean Blanc, it is one of the major achievements.
When I say that it is complete, I am not quite correct because I have to put a softwood trim around the top and make a modification for a Belfast sink and electrical sockets.
Not everyone would want these mods if they had the same unit in their kitchen.
Continue reading "Hand made rustic kitchen island unit for sale" »
I underestimated my family somewhat!
Having said yesterday that I needed the help of three burly helpers, my family proved me wrong by manhandling our new kitchen island unit into place yesterday afternoon.
I had spent a leisurely Saturday morning painting the unit and Sunday morning rubbing it back to try and achieve an antique type look.
Apart from a final sanding, putting on the cupboard door knobs and catches, the kitchen unit is now complete (Oh and not to mention the surface which I cannot fix and cut to size until we have moved the carcass).
There is no way that we would shift the unit with the solid oak surface on it but I would love to get this installed this weekend so I can start the painting - although, I may give it a coat of undercoat using the spray attachment to the compressor when it is in the open of the yard.
I know, from the private emails, that a few of you are wondering how I am getting on with the kitchen island unit. Well, I am getting on rather well as the pictures hopefully demonstrate.
I have taken the next few days off of work to concentrate on getting it finished and hopefully, with the wind blowing the right way, I will have it installed in the kitchen by the weekend.
Mind you, we still do not have the sink; Donna went to Agen yesterday and found one in Castorama but it will take two weeks to arrive which is frustrating. How hard is it to get hold of a Belfast sink?
Another good afternoon goes by on the island unit for the kitchen and the adrenaline is really flowing again.
I must sound like a real saddo but this kind of thing does excite me.
I have to admit to spending some money on plywood though which has spoilt my intentions of trying to build of the unit with reclaimed wood or something which I already had kicking around.
It seemed sensible to invest in the plywood because it is quick and extremely easy to work with. It also means that I can retain the old wood, plus the unused floorboards for all the visible stuff.
I am looking forward to Friday when I will start on the drawers and cupboard doors.
As promised, here is a picture of the new kitchen island unit as it develops.
I had a brilliant day today, in fact, I had a brilliant weekend - helped by the balmy weather.
Just as a point of interest, and I will not name the company in case they take umbridge, Donna got an estimate - for the design - from a company for the same size unit and the cost? between £11-16k!!!!
We have had a fantastic week of weather here with temperatures reaching a dizzy 16 degrees. Not only that, with the birds singing and evenings drawing out till at least six thirty before the evening cloaks out the last of the light.
It has not come too soon though. We have, although nowhere near as bad as the UK, had our fair share of rain so it has certainly lifted the spirits. Mind you, to put it into perspective, it is still only January, so we could get a blast of Siberia at any time. The only consolation is we know that it is nearer now to spring.
The kitchen is 99.9% finished now (why is it, it seems just as long to finish off all of the little snags as completing a major task?).
My word I have gotten a bit lazy with the this blog for one reason or another. And it is not as though I have no progress to report.I think it is just a case of getting a little out of touch with the key tapping on Perigord Vacance, and, as it is with any task that lags behind, once you miss a day or so, but the source of the writing, i.e., our French Life, carries on. Anyway, enough of the self pity!
We are so close to moving into the farmhouse kitchen now. Half of the floor has been waxed and polished - although it will need a second application - and Donna has started to cut in the paint around the edges.
At the end of last week I plastered the concrete returns on either side of the new doors and also plastered the old lintel above the door.
Before I could do this I had to screw some plasterboard to the front so that the plaster had a key (don't ever try to plaster directly onto wood, it will fall off in weeks because it cannot grip the surface).
I delibereately used old off cuts and was especially careful not to make it look formal. This way, it leaves a wany edge to the plater where it meets the crepie - much more romantic in these old properties.
It is time to wind down now and have a bit of a break.I suspect we are not alone and the rest of you are thinking, if not doing the same?
Our time here in France continues to be adventurous and we are on the cusp of another milestone by completing the 'farmhouse' kitchen.
I do not know where the year has gone - it was over a year ago that we started to renovate the barn and initially the target was to be in by June. However, the radical changes to the plan meant that this objective changed somewhat (as regulars will no doubt remember).
Anyway, the second target became, unofficially, Christmas, and we will miss this by a whisker.
A women's work is never done they say. Last week, Donna had a week long business trip to the UK so it was left to me to keep the team on track. Well, I failed miserably! We missed the bus three times out of the five days.My only excuse was the amount of work I had to put into jointing the floor. It took three and a half solid days to joint and clean the floor and one evening, and I do not jest, I was out in the barn/kitchen at 11.45pm washing tiles off.
All that is now history and the last of the really major jobs is complete. Today, I plastered the steps which will eventually lead into the living room and dining room proper.
For now they just lead into the barn which will still be useful because the freezer is just outside that door.
I am really really sorry for the lack of updates - and I do not mean that to sound self important - I know from my daily stats that we have at least 50 hits from new and returning visitors on the blog.
The floor is finally finally finished! In fact it took just one hour on Tuesday morning to cut the last few in. I didn't do any last week because of a visit from my Brother Dan and my sister-in-law Donna although Dan did help me with gluing the doors which was quite a tricky job.
Continue reading "A huge milestone passed and crossed off the list" »
been sitting on my bum so here it is, just for Hillary.I underestimated the time is would take to cut and lay the tiles in the barn and although I took all last week off to concentrate on it I didn't really get moving until Wednesday.
I think that the kitchen will have such character when it is finished. The tiles are clay with a hand finished egde which softens the look.
If the wind is in the right direction I should finish by the end of Sunday of maybe Monday afternoon.
Continue reading "Closing in on the doors and a night on the tiles" »
Yes, today we laid the first of the floor tiles in the new kitchen. We had planned to start yesterday but after pulling through the four water pipes for the radiators I noticed that they needed to pas through the walls at the same junction as the electric conduits.
There was not enough space to get the tubes through so I had to take out a stone adjacent to accommodate
the water pipes. To complicate things the oil pip[e that feeds the boiler passes just below where I had to break the wall out so it was a little delicate. The stone was bigger than a football and it took two hours to drill around it to loosen the mud mortar.
After this I chased the tubes under the electric cables by cutting out a channel into the concrete. So today we were all systems go to start laying.
We have opted for a new terra cuit (terracotta) with a hand finished edge which softens the look.
Unfortunately, we could not find any second hand tiles which would have been our first choice. However, it still does not feel as though we have 'dumbed down' and they do look nice.
Marking out was fun because the room is not square so I have decided to make a focal point in the centre which is dead square and then work back to the walls. This is designed to attract the eye to the points which are easy to relate to the surroundings.
Back in May we had the most amazing downpour which infiltrated the barn I am renovating, pouring water through the plasterboard that had only just been skimmed with plaster.
It has taken since then to about three weeks ago to get a quote from the roofer for some work so that we could put in a claim to the insurance.
But, this week we had an almighty downpour, like a tornado, and again we had water came through which I recorded for the insurance.
Fingers crossed, this week, we will here what compensation we will receive so that we can repair the damage and insure it does not happen again.
In the meantime, with some pointers from my mate Mark, I have complete the electrics in the barn. Up until now we have used the services of a very good electrician who wired the gite and the main house. I was a bit frustrated that I have never done any electrics so with Mark's help and a very good book called l'installation électrique I have worked out how it is all done and installed it all myself.
Continue reading "Another thunderstorm, a brilliant autumn and another milestone reached." »
ou may think that this is going slowly but the last thing I want to do is have the whole thing falling down on me. I did a barrow load of muck yesterday morning and another in the evening and the same today. This gives the early mix time to go off enough to remain stable.
All being well I will finish off the left hand pier tomorrow but then I have the quandary of removing the acrow props to get the new lintel underneath without it all falling down.
You will have to excuse the quality of this second photo. I didn't adjust the camera settings for the low light levels and just used the point and shoot facility. The result is a rather blurred and dark photo. I will remedy this tomorrow though I promise.
The first photo was after yesterdays work. I only managed an hour or so because the weather was so nice and we decided to go and have a look at a house that is for sale with a friend. In fact a perfect late summers day so there was no real urgency in the morning.
Because we didn't have anyone coming in this week our guests decided to extend their holiday by one day but it felt rather empty today and it is never the same when the Pigeonnaire is not lived in.
It would be nice to let it out through the winter so that the lights come on at night. It does look so homely at night with a warm orange glow, peering out of the windows.
