FANTASTIC! It’s been a long hard road and we’ve made many mistakes but today we had some fantastic news and now we can really start to get together full quotes, project plans and time scales to turn our current 1 bedroom flat into a rather large open plan 3 bedroom family home.

Don’t worry all the work we’ve done on the inside of the house isn’t going to go to waste, we’ll be doing this for a few years yet so we’ll be renovating from right to left so we can still live (or rent) the flat out for some time.

You’ll now start to see more and more detailed plans on the site but below are the ones we sent for approval and we got everything we asked for, not a single change was requested and not a single question about the plans. The architect really did a fantastic job considering the CAUE told us the we MUST leave the concrete stairs, we would never be allowed to change the outbuilding design and the house had too many windows.

Thankfully they weren’t speaking for the planners in our area.

So here comes the open plan house with a suspended mezzanine first floor and with a new useful side building and lots and lots of light.

It’s been a very big week for us, with the 1st baby kicks, completing on the new family home and now this. We couldn’t be happier at present. More plans when we get our breath back.

In order to start this we need to empty and ultimalty dismantle the cow shed and our current bedroom, but with people staying in the bedroom the cow shed was a good place to start.

The “cow shed” is covered in hay at the moment, lots and lots of old hay. While this is providing insulation on top of our bedroom it is and was never going tobe a nice job removing all this, do to the sheer amount there is and the dead animals in there (so far we found two) .

Here is a reminder of what the top of the shed looked like. Covered in hay and other items like the Pony Trap orginally (however this went when we purchased the house). In the shed itself were old paints, tins, machinery and even a solid set bag of concrete as well as the old cow feeding rack.

That's a lot of hay to shift!

I'm sure there is both life & death in here.

Most of this is going to the tip.

The feed tray for the farmer.

While everything else went to the local tip, the cow feeding rack is going to be used by our farmer friend so it was good to see some items go to some use.

Hay starts to cover the car.

One of may trips to the garden with lots of hay.

So with that sorted it was time to start shifting the hay, and you can start to see how much there was as it covered the car that’s in the barn.

The floor looks mildly decent!

Finally clear, now to remove it.

Finally after lots of trips to the bottom of the garden to where this was bring burnt, Eric was greeted with a somewhat decent floor, however this was made up of old briquette tiles some just laid down and others full of cement.

Starting to see some light.

Getting them stacked.

They all need taking down but....

These can be removed another day. Wine anyone?

Now starts the prying, prodding, bashing and stacking! Soon there started the be light and in keeping with trying to keep everything we remove and not just stash it to pieces Eric started stacking the useable briquettes and soon large chunks of upper roof could be seen.

The next visit it’ll be time to get all these down and then start to remove the roof joists to open this space right up. This hopefully will be done on a time-lapse camera so you can see it getting removed, but once this has gone we’ll start to get a real feel of the space that is available to us which is going to be come a nice sized living area.

Below is a quick reminder of what we originally bought. All the walls were clad in a wood that 18months down the line we’ve only just finished burning & behind this cladding was a distater of unfinished, rough, holy, wet and mouldy brick work.

Original wall covered in wood cladding!

Old kitchen all covered in stipple plaster!

All this has to be removed & redone

The above pictures shows the foam insulated walls in place, these were removed and the chimney breast taken back to its original state (see saving the chimney post HERE). With the walls prepared it was time to start the battening and to fit in the new electrics and CAT5 data cable.

Old electrics on show. All to be replaced.

Battening in place, ready for plaster boarding.

Plaster board in place.

The 2nd door to the old 2nd room will be boarded up. If you remember we removed the two walls to make them into one room, this left us with a 2ft deep whole in the wall, not sure what to do with it Dad suggested we use it as a built in wardbrode and that’s exactly what we did.

The “door way” actually needed finishing first so the inside again was battened and this time a render was used (as opposed to plaster) & left to dry. This is now ready for a pole to be put in a clothes to go on. The wife is VERY happy.

Unfinished doorway.

Repairs underway.

Rendered, Plastered and now useable!

Now it’s time to start actually plastering the main room. With the temperature in the 70′s the problem was going to be how much plaster to make and how to apply it before it went off. Two days later it was done :

Main wall, plastered with electrics & data installed.

Front wall, holes filled with data & electrics replaced.

This area is now powered & data enabled for the hifi

With all the walls now plastered, and the old window surrounds 100% rescued this part of the house is ready for a coat of paint that will transform it from a cold, tired and unloved room into a fresh feeling area ready once again to be lived in. We aren’t finished with this room by a long way but having a Dad that can plaster & has found the time to help out has saved us so much time and ¢1000′s.

We really couldn’t have done it without him.

With the efford that has already gone into this room this will be the last room we “re-renovate” when we come round to starting the main rebuilding.

Thanks so much to my Dad, we are really looking forward to getting this painted and some furniture in.

Here’s the full gallery of images for the kitchen removal and fitting of the new units. You’ll have to forgive some of the quality as that’s the iPhone for you but that said I’ve never had such a powerful renovation tool in my pocket

You can read the full post HERE

As promised we are posting up our house plans in an “as is” state at present.

These small images below click through to the main Flickr gallery where the full size images are housed.

These particular images we have issued online as Creative Commons so you can download and alter them but not for commercial use. You will not be able to do a great deal but it may help you follow along as we discuss moving walls etc etc.

Beamed Structure

End Elevation

It now seems after Dawn looked at the bathroom furniture that I have purchased she thinks my measurements are out and the items aren’t going to fit.

No problem we have plans right, after all the architect did finally delivery them. OH that’s right we don’t have any with internal measurements on them and the bathroom isn’t on there at all!

I still need to write a report on the architect disaster we had and it’ll come soon, but until then it looks like I’ll be driving to France next weekend just to measure the 6ft x 6ft box that we are using as our temporary bathroom.

To be honest i was in the mood to go tonight, you know an impulsive adventure, that was until we see the price of the P&O / Sea France ferry crossings. The good news is that to leave the UK is only £22 however it is £210 to come back in!

I guess that with the kids starting back at school on Monday the Ferry companies have decided to rape these people for crossing fees (best festive wishes to those people).

Incidentally next week the full return journey far is £60 (way to go P&O Ferries) so it’ll be a real splash and dash to get to the house, get measured up and then leave the next day.

There is only one problem if my measurements are right then it’ll be REALLY hard not to start knocking the old bathroom down and that WILL NOT please the wife.

Lets see shall we… I’m not promising anything

If you’ve not seen the first post it’s HERE

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If anyone knows a Citroen dealer or club in England or France that could help me out with as much information as we can get please feel free to contact us.

When we got on site after spending hours signing papers as you can image in rushed on in all excited. We’d already taken somewhat of a chance and got the utilities put on before we officially bought the property so we were ready for a cup of tea.

Now I know I’m dragging this out but it’s only to give you a sense that we had no idea what we had gained in the barn. That said I don’t know if “gained” is the right word or a bloody big headache would be a better description.

A CAR! A 1973 Citroen in dusty condition, open with 23,000km on the clock and somehow we’d taken ownership of it with the house.

This is going to be an issue! The previous (now deceased) owners of our house had been looking after it for years for a friend who went traveling and as yet has not come back.

So is it ours?
This is of course France and things may not be that easy. Yes it came with the property (unannounced) but it wasn’t the vendors right to sell it to us. We don’t know if the owner is still alive and we can’t (aren’t supposed to) dispose of it without ownership papers either and to make it worse my dad want to restore it

So that’s it for now, we have 1 house 1 barn 1 feed shed 1 grange and a bloody Citroen that’s older than me!

Right now that’s all the information I have on the situation, and while I try and work out what to do and while my dad keeps buying restoration manuals you can enjoy these photos and marvel at our unexpected addition to our French purchase. I bet you wished you had one

Now there will be more photos of the car when I get time to post them, and you’ll have to forgive the “moody” HDR photos of the car, after my shock had subsided somewhat I decided to get creative

Any Citroen owners clubs out there want a project for fancy giving me some advice?