Today was always going to be a quieter day on the big achievement front as being the weekend we had the football to listen to and the F1 qualifying to watch but we did make a MASSIVE leap forward on the heating of the house and this is by far the biggest step forward to the living conditions in the house since we fitted the best shower in the world :)

New wood burning stove
heat in this house has always been somewhat of an issue. With the old stone walls and rather large gaps in them and lack of a “proper” heat source we’ve always struggled to heat the house. We’ve used paraffin heaters to heat the rooms etc etc but these cost a lot to run and the only other source of heat possible is from an old cooker stove that is very inefficient and doesn’t throw out a lot of heat at all and all that changed today.. Welcome the Poele Godin to the house.

Now Poele Godin isn’t a name i’ve come across while searching for a wood burning stove and that’ll be because it’s a very French brand. This particular one is 40 years old and belonged to the parents of a friend of ours. A quick search on ebay.fr brings up a few available for sale in our area ranging from ¢300 to €500 and given the amazing change in heat this house has i’ll be bidding on one asap (eBay search : http://bit.ly/Poele )…

With the amount of heat kicking off this thing we thought we’d try out cooking bacon on it and since that was a success we even threw in some potatoes! Genius! For the first time in Autumn/Winter since we’ve owned the house i’m sitting here in a t-shirt and not a t-shirt, jumper and a body warmer If i can get one for €300/€500 then it’s really priceless.

Clearing the barn & more hedgehogs
Enough said about this, needless to say another 5 found, i’ve got a bloody hedgehog farm going on here!

Sorting the lawn
Today was full of goodies from Jacque and this time it was the ride on mower. Given the amount of sun and rain we get here the garden grows wild, and since Jacque has bought himself a ride on mower over the summer it was time to put it to good use. I’ll post a picture shortly of me smiling like a big kid riding it (it could be below by the time you read this) and trust me the smiles were involuntary but there is something that makes you feel great riding around on a mower feeling like a cross between a racing driver and a master gardner.. Anyway job done and i’ll be volunteering to do it a lot more i think :)

PS : The smoke isn’t from me crashing the mower in a hail of flames but still some of the hay from yesterday STILL bloody burning.

That’s it for today, as i said we took a short one and listened to Tottenham hotspurs beat Portsmouth 2-1 (great result) and watched the longest F1 qualifying in history and Jenson Button somehow blow a great opportunity to take the title.. Tomorrow we’ve got a day of lifting, lagging and roof removing if all goes well.