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| June 22nd 2009 | We were in the last of our 3 weeks in France searching for a house. We arrived, stood in the entrance and decided it was far too big | ||
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| June 24th 2009 | We expressed our interest and borrowed the keys and spent about five hours looking around the house again, making notes of all the work that was needed in each room. We decided it was affordable except for the roof that needed complete overhaul | ||
| 25 - 28 | Price agreed | ||
| June 29th 2009 | Return to UK | ||
| December 15th | Return to France | ||
| December 18th | Signing papers for house, it had snowed over night so vendors Notaries not present | ||
| December 19th | Took trailer to house, unloaded and started clearing out rubbish | ||
| 2010 | |||
| Rest of December and January | Clearing out house, cleaning and clearing garden of brambles and trees, installing two hot water systems, connecting to shower | ||
| December 28th | EDF came, we have electricity | ||
| December 31st | Buy small heater, first of three | ||
| January 4th 2011 | Phone connected and Theory arrives, the roof man | ||
| January 13th | Ripped out all the old parts of kitchen, loose plaster etc | ||
| February 5th | Furniture has arrived so we move in - no heating | ||
| February 6th | Installed earth for house electric supply connected to a temporary consumer unit. Installed Satellite dish, very easy to line up !Slipped on rear entrance steps, hurt arm which made it difficult to raise above head, lasted about 5 weeks. Set up office, no internet yet | ||
| Unpacking 60 boxes into cellar, tools etc | |||
| Cut 60cm x 25 cm hole through 80 cm stone wall to enable new wiring into main part of house | |||
| February 10th | First supplies for roof arrive | ||
| February 23rd | Thierry, the roofer, insist I go onto the roof to look at the chimneys to decide which are unsafe, don't like heights and there is no scaffolding but I go anyway | ||
| Plants for local lady start appearing | |||
| Install new wiring in kitchen | |||
| Change kitchen ceiling from black tar to white, took hours and £200 of paint | |||
| March | Dig new drains for kitchen, decide to install 100mm so that they can be used for a future bathroom. need three man hole, Brico Depot Price 68 euro each so I make a mould and cast concrete ones, 7 euro total each! | ||
| Cut 115mm hole through 80cm stone wall for drains | |||
| Finish stud work frame in kitchen and fix plaster board | |||
| Make new wooden parts for kitchen windows and window sills, prepare and paint | |||
| More garden clearance | |||
| April | Clean kitchen floor tiles, on hands and knees, one by one, about 40 hours spread over a week | ||
| April | Remove and re lay about 30 % of kitchen floor, replacing some tiles with tiles taken from one of the bathrooms | ||
| May | Fit Ikea kitchen, Tile walls and install plumbing | ||
| May | Rotovated lawn area, dugout paths, fitted wooden boarders and filled with three tonnes of gravel collected from nearby suppler, seeded lawn area. Fitted electric pump to well - free water for garden. Spread out last five tonnes of gravel on drive and parking area |
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| Planted shrubs around lawn area | |||
| June | The house cold water supply was one inch water barrel, so needed replacing, so installed new 25mm plastic, re plumbed into bathrooms and loo, added hot water to loo and connected kitchen taps and dishwasher. | ||
| Chased out wall in all of house for new wiring, a horrible, messy job, also remove loose plaster from walls | |||
| Cleared dining room ready to strip paper | |||
| 22nd | Team arrive 8.00 AM to connect North end of house to village drains, will only take half a day | ||
| 27th | Drain team complete work, I have made connection to existing drains from house but will replace all, means 110mm hole through 80cm stone wall, yippee | ||
| 29th | Three Log Burners and a plasterboard hoist arrive from England, log burners much cheaper in UK. One Pallet, three steps into house, log burners weigh 150kg, 116kg and 60kg. Thierry, our neighbor arrives, disappears and comes back with sack truck. With the help of some planks the burners now rest in the lobby | ||
| July | Mandy busy stripping paper in dining room, seems to be super glued in place and is very thick. | ||
| Surface plaster on ceiling is damaged due to water so decided to take it all off and re do it, another messy job. About 15m2 of plaster needs to be taken off walls and replaced, French plaster sets in less than ten minutes, about five when the weather is hot. This sometimes means that by the time it is mixed and I carry it into the room it is too hard to use, lemon juice slows it down a little, the French method is to pee into it, tried it, doesn't work! | |||
| Steps from terrace to garden are in a very poor state so have repaired the worst and will finish later in the year when it is not so hot | |||
| August | Dining ceiling and walls all painted plus the five sets of double doors and frames, biggest are nearly nine feet tall, a lot of paint, ran out of UK bought primer and had to buy French, 38 pounds for two liters !! Some of the doors are 17th century and had hundreds of wood worm holes, each door took over a day to fill and sand | ||
| Room Two is finished and the log burner is moved in for a trial fit closely followed by the contents of the lounge !! | |||
| Mandy now busy stripping the lounge paper which is easier than the dining room | |||
| I have been busy snipping old wires and have to replace circuits as some parts of the house now have no lights | |||
| Adding wiring to Lounge required drilling 8 x 25mm holes through 80cm stone and down into cellar plus another 8 holes through the walls at 45 degrees into the cellar | |||
| Adding wiring to Lounge required drilling 8 x 25mm holes through 80cm stone and down into cellar plus another 8 holes through the walls at 45 degrees into the cellar | |||
| Added lots more wiring, now have 41 circuits connected, about another 25 to go plus the cellar and barn. Made a new housing for all the phone Satellite and computer connections, these have to be on the same distribution board as the electric supply. Dug trench to take power to the barn and summer house and installed cable | |||
Only three sets of double doors to prepare here and are in better condition than the dining room
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| September | Steps from terrace are now safe but not yet finished, a job for later when it is a bit cooler, The muddy area from the back steps is now paved with the terracota bricks that came from our old chimneys Dining room and Lounge painted, log burners are fitted and working and boxes being opened after nearly four years |
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| Had to buy undercoat from Brico Depot, price is double UK price! | |||
| Light circuits to cellar failed so have rewired and put some permanent circuits in cellar. Installed power to barn, simple, just a power point and light, will run lights for drive from here. Adding wiring circuits to first floor, running cables in attic | |||
| October | More wiring, added study power and lights plus corridor power point and heating circuits | ||
There are now five lights in the first floor landing / corridor, not just one, lobby has seven switches
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| Trip to UK, car loaded with more paint ( 55 ltrs gloss and undercoat), week killer to treat our Japanese knot weed and a few items hard to find in France ( Indian chutneys etc) | |||
| November | Removed the old damaged ceiling from what will be our en suite and replaced. The floor was tiled but this was not it good condition so was removed, the good tiles will be used to repair the down stairs bathroom and tiles in the corridors. The tiles and the mortar are heavy so I constructed a simple electric crane to lower these to the drive. The temporary hot water tank in this room was relocated in the attic. To connect to the new sewer a 115 mm hole had to be cut through the 850mm outer wall, good fun, about 5 hours as the wall is solid stone. This should be the last big hole needed!. | ||
| December | The necessary wiring for the en suite has been added and the new wooden floor laid, toilet installed and tested, at last the 27 meter trip to the loo is reduced to about 5!. In France the bathrooms and kitchen are all vented by a single extractor unit so pipes were added for these in the en suite and the downstairs bathroom. We had some warm days, 20 c so the window was prepared and undercoated, top coat to follow. | ||
| As the cold weather is due the attic windows were sealed with plastic sheet to try and keep some cold out. Permeate lights were installed in the attic and stairway | |||
| I have added so outside lights controlled by PIR sensors, one near the back door and two by the cellar door with an extra light on the summer house, still need to add another one. | |||
| We are using two of our log burners so we are cutting up large quantities of the wood we inherited with the house. The burners certainly provide plenty of heat | |||
| Fitted festive lights at attic level alone the front of the house. The French seem to like a lot of lights and some houses have loads of lights in the garden, on the house and around trees. Found some more lights so these are wrapped around the staircase and connected to a newly installed socket | |||
| We decided on two Christmas trees, a 2 meter and a 3 meter, a bit cheaper than in the UK. These are in the dining room and lounge. | |||
| Finally the awning on the back of the house has been removed, it took all day as the mechanisms are heavy an quite complicated. Some of this is due to be converted to a swimming pool cover holder for Nick's gite | |||
| Visitors over the Christmas period slowed work down a bit | |||
| 2011 | |||
January 2011 |
The en suite is now 99% finished, a trip to Ikea in Toulouse was required to buy a couple of mirrors, and other items for the en suite | ||
| As usual yet more wiring installed to complete the lighting on the first floor. Work also continuing in the study | |||
| February | Slight delay as I hurt my back so had a couple of days in bed, during this time strangely my Rheumatoid arthritis flared up in my shoulder so a visit to the local GP resulted in a trip to the Toulouse Lautrec clinic in Albi for a CT scan, x ray and ultrasound scan | ||
| February | En suite finished, has one electric radiator and one heated towel rail so should be nice and warm. Mandy decided that the two lights should be independently switched, both via two way switches, so a few changes made. Connected the remaining ground floor lighting up, the wires have been in place for a while, just needed a final effort to fit switches and light fittings | ||
| March 7th | Worst of the mess over in the study, ceiling filled, walls re plastered and woodwork sanded, plus of course, power points connected | ||
| March 25th | Study finished, floor cleaned with acid and oiled and both of our desks set up, a dust free study at last. It is a nice bright room as there are two large windows | ||
| March 28th | Modified my crane to increase the lifting capacity in readiness for the upper corridor, there will be lots of old plaster and mortar to remove and lower into the trailer | ||
| 30th March | Fir sr section of upper corridor ceiling removed along with lost's of loose plaster from the walls, this is the worst section of corridor, very messy. Also took down ceiling from bathroom number three, it looked messy with bits of old cobweb and other stuff hanging through it. Decided to un block the bricked up door in the corridor so this now gives direct access to the maids bedroom and stairs, also meant adding one more light switch in the corridor | ||
| 18th April | First section has new plasterboard fitted filed and plastered, walls re rendered and re plastered | ||
| 19th April | Five doors removed and work started on filling / repairing the old door frames | ||
| 22nd April | Frames ready for paint! | ||
| 27th April | All the door frames are now finished in gloss, the end window ( 28 pains ) is ready to undercoat and the first five doors have been filled / repaired and sanded, each door takes about two hours to fill / sand, lots of old wood worm holes | ||
| April | Finally got around to fitting the new railing around the terrace, there is eighteen meters in total and this was made from the old water barrel taken out of the house, it is about 30mm diameter so was ideal for the job, the terrace only had a flimsy wire around it which was also much too low and a couple of trees also fell on it | ||
| May 9th | The southern end of the upper corridor is now finished, all the doors have been re hung and painted, the floor tiles cleaned with acid and ceiling and walls painted white | ||
| May 12th | The remaining ceiling in the northern end of the corridor and the upper landing not over the stair well has been taken down, not a pleasant task | ||
| May 13th | Old plaster taken to the tip | ||
| May 14th | New plaster board fitted to the northern end of corridor, looking much better now | ||
| May 15th | New plasterboard fitted to landing area, just the old wall plaster to remove and than the whole lot can be plastered and painted, about 6 weeks!! | ||
| June 6 | Corridor looking much better now with new plasterboard to ceiling and the loose plaster replaced on the walls. The ceilings are the worst to plaster as gravity is always working the wrong way - looks like I had been hit by a lot of seagulls. After the plastering is the sanding to make everything smooth, must rate as one of the worst jobs as everything is covered in white dust. | ||
| June | There are two large windows to overhaul and paint plus five doors to sand and paint then the walls can have a coat of white before the area above the stairs is scaffolded and the ceiling replaced, should be interesting............. | ||
| June 19th | The corridor is looking good with the walls / ceiling plastered and sanded and the windows and doors nearly completed. The doors were generally in good condition except for one which had been chewed by a rat os similar so needed a couple of inches replaced. | ||
| June 20th | Day off at the hospital for a check up | ||
| June 21st | Last of the sanding of doors and paining, will start on the emulsion tomorrow, there are a lot of music festivals today! | ||
| June 22 | We now have French TV using the same cable as the satellite with signal combiner and splitters, ariel is in attic so was easy to install | ||
| June,. last week of | Temperatures have gone to 40 so a bit hot for work, which has now slowed down. Doors all painted but not the wall yet, should be finished by end of month | ||
| July 16th | The platform over the stairs is in place and the old plaster removed and new plaster board fitted. The platform worked out better than I hoped and is very stable. The top corridor and landing area is now almost finished, it is surprising how many small jobs keep appearing. I have made new door frames for the corridor for the bathroom and the dressing room and my automatic watering system now has three electric valves fitted and the timer circuits in place | ||
| July | All the new plasterboard is up and painted, the loose plaster has all been removed and replaced and painted | ||
| July 25th | The platform over the stairwell is removed and stacked in the barn, work now to be started on the lobby | ||
| August | More loose plaster than expected but all down and in the trailer in a day | ||
| August | Fifty two metes of new skirting boards for the upper corridor prepared and painted ready to fit | ||
| August mid | Walls repaired, rendered, re plastered, stone blocks around the doors exposed. Large coving ( we bought this in Bristol ) fitted to coved exposed new wiring. The French dregs state that wires can not be run for more than 500 mm horizontally in solid walls, so they are behind the coving which is allowed ! | ||
| Stripping the old varnish off the stairs, filling wood worm holes and damaged areas, cleaning the 95 iron stair spinals. Stairs will be French polished and spindles treated to a black graphite cream | |||
| August Mid | Severe weather warnings - so we are off to the beach, low 40's too hot to work | ||
| August 24th | Painting the final bits of walls by the stairs, have to make templates for the new skirting for the stairs, there were none here so will make them to match the stair case | ||
| August Late | Lots of sanding on the stairs - 21 of them plus two landings all hard wood, walnut, I,am sure it will look good when its all done | ||
| September | Stairs painted, French polished, stair spindles all re blacked and skirting's made and fitted to the wall side of the stairs - I think the first time there have been any there. made to match the stairs case, quite a big job | ||
| October | Upper corridor skirting's fitted, floor oiled, lobby floor cleaned and sealed, picture hung and a few bits unpacked and arranged, looking good now finished, took about two months longer than I expected but there was more work. | ||
| November | Coving fitted in Lobby to cover electrical cables, the coving was bought from Ebay from a Polish guy in Bristol, it is made in Belgium. We bought this before we bought the house as I had already planned the electrical installation and realised this would be required |
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| November | When we were clearing the ground floor bathroom we found some old architectural prints on a high shelf, these where dated 1893. We framed five of these and these now hang in the upper corridor along with two large framed prints. The landing has a three seater sofa and a round table, it is a large landing |
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| November | The lobby floor was cleaned and sealed and now looks amazing, there were a few broken cellar steps, these were replaced with old tiles found buried in the garden and the wall down to the cellar was lime washed in white |
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| November | To enable us to decant some boxes we have decided to sort out the store room, plastering, painting, two lights and power sockets. The walls have been lined with shelves and it looks bright and clean |
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| The Library has also been stripped and loose plaster removed | |||
| December | The log burner in the office was finally connected up with ten meters of steel tube to an exit in the roof | ||
| December | The two small dividing walls in the downstairs bathroom were taken down, the last of the old plumbing and lead drains removed, the new items where already installed a year or so ago. The floor in here was not great and the plan was to re lay with tiled taken from the upper bathroom. After lifting the bad areas it was clear that all the floor would need to be re done. The mortar was about 50 - 70 mm thick, about 800 kg so I decided it would be far easier to fit a new wooded floor, the cost would be a little more but much easier, | ||
| December | Time to finish a few small jobs, generally tidying things up before Christmas,A chest infection, a result of my drugs left me with a cough so December and the start of January we a holiday | ||
| 2012 | |||
January 2012 |
Bathroom, walls re plastered and two dry lined, electrics installed. We decided to clear the side garden of brambles and trees so a few days spent doing this, but plenty more still left | ||
| February | Cold weather slowed things down, added more lagging to some exposed pipes that feed the up stairs loo and pipes in the utility. These will be lagged when the suspended ceiling is fitted, the temperatures were below freezing for over a week, night and day, the house in un heated areas was 1.5 daytime. | ||
Interest in our second plot. The Geometre was called to mark out the plot, the planning officer stopped and suggested that we should remove some trees before Batiment de France noticed they were there, so armed with Mandy's Christmas present (2011) a chainsaw, we dropped a couple of trees and proceeded to cut it into fire sized chunks, move it to the road, load into trailer then into summer house. Quite a job!. |
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| More clearing of side garden | |||
Fitted batons for new floor and painted floor boards. Fitted new floor and re aligned sew pipes. Reminded Mandy no to use the en suit loo. ten minuets later after cutting and removing a piece of pipe there was a sudden flow of water....... Dried floor and completed |
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| March | More clearing in side garden, end of March is limit for bonfires here | ||
| Fitted shower, loo and hand basin, painted and fitted skirting's, just the last few bits to finish | |||
| April | After more clearing of brambles and trees, a trip to Ikea, the side garden is clear and the downstairs bathroom is finally finished | ||
| Finishing off more small jobs, the paving outside the back door area, the steps from the terrace to the garden, they are safe, just need tidying up, a few more electrical, computer and satellite circuits to finish | |||
| May | The ground floor corridor has had dozens of wires threaded through the suspended ceiling supports for the past two years, now finally the plasterboard can be fitted. Loose plaster was removed and walls rendered and plastered, boards fitted. | ||
| June | Corridor painted ceiling roses made and fitted. New hand basin and tiles in first floor loo. New door frames made for the bathroom and the store room | ||
| July | Visit by David so ground floor bathroom has all the last finishing touches, the corridor looks finished but still has half the skirting to fit | ||
| July | Visitors gone so corridor skirting finished, pictures hung and work in the bibliotheque continues | ||
| August | Bibliotheque striped of loose plaster ceiling cracks repaired, new render and plaster plus light switches sunk and power points fitted. Work started in the utility, frame fitted for the new ceiling that will conceal the dozens of cables that pass into the house from the consumers units | ||
| September / October | The Library has been finished, a new bookcase made and finally all our books are un packed, my keyboard has a new home. The utility has a new ceiling covering all the electrical circuits, the temporary sink unit is cut down and moved across the room and new work tops fitted. The new taps are supported on brass tube retrieved from the well. | ||
| November | We decided to site a new rotary washing line in the newly cleared side garden so the gravel path was extended to the new site and the old iron gate re hung so that it no opens and closes, this area gets the sun for most of the day, better for clothes drying | ||
| November | Finally we are starting work on the bedrooms. The first on the list is bedroom 2, the maids lounge. The ceiling in here looked as though it would fall down at any time but surprisingly didn't. It did not take a lot of force to get it down and new plaster board fitted | ||
| December | Ceiling jointed and plastered, this room had fabric covering the walls, all tacked in place with hundreds of tacks, great fun removing them then two layers of wall paper before patching up the walls where required with render / plaster. get this room completed by Christmas | ||
| 2013 | |||
| 2013 Beginning of our forth year in the house | |||
| January - March | Because I have damaged two tendons in my left arm, I am down to using mainly just my left hand / arm for any work. This has slowed down progress! Luckily I am left handed but I realise just how much I did use my right. The first two bedrooms are just about finished, the tiled floor in the maids bedroom just needs oiling, the walls have been lime washed and ceiling repaired and painted. The maids lounge just needs the wooden floor sanding and sealing, we have found a hire shop!. The maids stairs have had a ceiling fitted (under the stairs that go to the attic) and a general tidy up before painting. Pictures will follow soon! | ||
| May - July | A niggling pain in my lower back has slowed progress in the last bathroom, the new water heater is fitted together with a new ventilation system and the walls are being dry lined. This will be the only bathroom with a bath so we decided to search for a nice one but ended up at Brico Depot, with a nice bath, taps from B&Q !! Wall tiles also BD, good price except the boarded tiles that cost as much as all the other wall tiles!. The original tiled floor was cleaned. I was hoping to complete by end of May, then June.... | ||
| The Summer is ending, has not been a good summer for me. The last bathroom was finished in time for my brothers visit in late August / September and another bedroom has been striped of it's paper revealing a few cracks but nothing serious. Added to my tendon problems is the need for surgery on my back which has reduced me to sitting at my computer. | |||
| 2014 | |||
| January - March | The year has started much as 2013 finished. My back is good but my muscles are hurting due to stretching in the operation. This is preventing me from doing anything meaningful but I hope to start some minor jobs soon | ||
| return to top | |||
| May | Started working on smallest bedroom, bedroom 4 on plan. Mandy stripped wall paper. |
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| June - July | 21 June, work started on painting the twenty six shutters on the front of the house. They are taking longer than expected to prepare due to some bits being a bit rotten but basically very sound. Made a new crane to lower these to the ground In bedroom 4, repaired the ceiling, not too bad in this room. Decided that we would paper this room with French textured glass fire paper, one meter wide, easy to hang and easy to trim, then a couple of coats of white, floor was very dirty but cleaned up nicely!. |
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| August | Start work on larges and oldest bedroom. Bedroom 3 on plan. This room has not been touched for a couple of hundred years. It has an old large wooden fire surround and two exposed beams that will be cleaned. The walls are a mixture of rough and wonky, not really flat anywhere. Large amounts of old plaster / render removed, re rendered with lime render ( tends to burn when you get it on your skin ) re plastered and sanded to get rid of the roughness. |
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| August | Painting on shutters going well | ||
| Pain in back and side | |||
| Back in hospital for a week for,tests. MRSA infection found | |||
| September | Becoming an annual event, back in Toulouse hospital to have rods and infection removed from back, oh joy! | ||
| 2015 | |||
| May | Back to bedroom 3 and continuing with shutters - slowly as not fully recovered. Made two new pairs of shutters as the for bibliotheque shutters were dropping apart, much quicker than repairing old but more expensive!! | ||
| June | Bedroom 3 beams cleaned, ceiling painted and walls lime washed. House now on the market for sale !! | ||
| July | Down to last two shutters, the largest but newest and in fairly good order | ||
| August | Bedroom three, walls painted with lime wash due to the lime plaster in the room, electrics mounted, curtains hung and furniture moved from our bedroom for the past five years, we are finally in a decorated bedroom. | ||
| August | Work started in our old bedroom ( Bedroom 2). Wall paper striped by Mandy, loose plaster removed and some of the ceiling removed and replaced with plaster board. | ||
| September | Walls all plastered and sanded, mixed two colours for the walls, electrics already in the room now fitted properly, floor sealed | ||
| October | Back in our old bedroom!! | ||
| November | Work started in Bedroom 1, the last bedroom, Mandy stripping walls and removing loose plaster. Some of the ceiling plaster has come down. The old outside wall ( opposite the fireplace) had old cracks so these have been hacked out, rendered and plastered. | ||
| 2016 | Last room done, was going to be a dressing room, but just made it another small (ish) bedroom, a lot of broken floor tiles to replace, textured wall paper, done |
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| 2017 | July 10, finally sold, agreement signed...look for new project | ||
