A quick recap :
While we are finalising the plans for the house we are working on a “Petit Renovation” first. The house in it’s current layout had somewhat of a  “livable” area consisting of Kitchen / Lounge, Shower room and 2 bedrooms both approx 11ft x 10ft each, however given the actual state of disrepair to all of them we really needed to fix up these area’s so we can comfortably stay in the house for holidays etc etc, and that by itself is no small task. Welcome to our “Petite Renovation”

The plan for the week is quite ambitious and we have a LOT to get through. This is actually Renovation Week 1 of 2 with the next week we are out here being Easter however this is the week where we must try and get things done to the bathroom as the wife can’t be without a toilet or at the very least a toilet door. Me and my father can just resort to being Neanderthals when needed

Plan for the week:

Bathroom
Remove and replace the bathroom. Everything in it from the WC to the 1/2 Bath / Shower need to be replaced. There is the option to level the floor and retile as well as remove and replace the awful foam square polystyrene ceiling and insulate.

Kitchen
Fit a kitchen of use! The “kitchen” as it is right now is a sink and a mobile gas cooker. A small kitchen has been purchased along with a new sink, natural gas hob and work top. This will enable us to have a functioning kitchen so we actually stop eating items cooked in one small saucepan and one small frying pan.

Plaster
The walls in the house are either covered in yellow stipple pain / artex or wood cladding. You by now have already seen the images of the walls we bought back to their original stone, and the plan is to finish this off where we can and then plasterboard, seal and paint the rest to create a clean space.

Fireplace
Rescuing the fireplace is one of the items that is on the top of my list that really shouldn’t be. This house has stood for over 300 years and the fireplace is very big, functional and the large stones used to create it have been painted over in yellow stipple paint and it angers me every time. While this is not urgent (as the fireplace works) this is on my hit list.

Rewire
I could write about the electrics in the house all day. Needless to say that they are badly done and very unreliable. While we re-plaster we’ll be relaying cables & adding data cabling as well. Given the ease of the French system of “Spurring” and the small size of the “Petite Mason” this actually sounds harder than it should be.

Plumbing
See above -  but just replace electricity with water! Everything is either bursting, pained or ready to rot. I’m looking forward to this as it gives us the chance to replace it when we fit the new bathroom and sink. Also some isolation values would in the past have been great as at present the water is either on or off to everywhere.

So you can see there is a LOT planned for 1 week, however we do have another week here in 3 weeks time but this is the week of long days, dirty work and no doubt a bit of swearing. Oh and of course I’d better let you know my budget: €2000 sounds fair

Drop in all week for running updates and photo’s ( there will  be LOTS )

Account issues sorted so please if you see adverts that interest you give them a click and enjoy where they take you.

If you’re wondering how much of a help to us a click is it’s easy to explain:

In the few months the adverts were up you’re clicks earned us $71.10 (£47.50), this would be enough to by all the wood for the new bathroom wall frame and some of the plaster board. And for that we thank you, thank you for helping us start to renovate the bathroom.

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

On doing so i selected their Barcelona range and dropped items in and then got a nice surprise when i hit the price list button to find all the items were either half price or less!

So what could i do? I hit the buy button and all is on it’s way. Now i know i have to get it to the house but since we need to take a lot of materials over soon we’ll just load this in with us. The plan never was to buy items here and ship but the strong € against the £ now makes it far cheaper to by items here and then take them with me especially at the time of the sales.

Prime example is this sink :

Was £75 now £37.49 . One that i have seen in France €130 and at todays rate thats a saving of £86.25 or €90. That’s the diesel paid for in one item alone ( and the WC the saving was much greater ).

There are of course things that people need to check before buying and shipping these items abroad. Make sure the pipe sizes are the same and that you buy the waste gates with the items so you know everything fits.

Now i normally wouldn’t suggest this but i must admit the way things are right now with the exchange it’s much better to buy all the plasterboard, tiles, grout and wood for the new wall frame it’s going to be about 50% less to create this bathroom.

UPDATE ALL CHANGE: Unfortunately for me however while I’m raring to go and get this started with the Honeymoon coming up I’m not able to get to the house until end of Feb / March. That said with it being sub zero at the moment maybe that isn’t a bad thing.

As usual it’s all change. I’m booked on a very early ferry Jan 10th to go check all is going to fit. Report as usual.

Lee

Now it’s no secret that our plans for the major renovation will have to wait due to the awful €/£ rate so we’ve decided to rip out the terrible bathroom that is there and replace it with something we’ll be happy using in the mean time while keeping in mind that it is a short term fix.

While trying to work out if we have enough space for a good sized shower, toilet and sink we came across the UK site for B&Q ( a UK based DIY store ) over at www.DIY.com , once registered you can use a ton of online tools from kitchen designing, to bathroom designing all for free.

All you need to do is set the size of your room, chose a furniture style and wait while it loads all the info and then it’s just drag and drop till you’re happy. If you want to buy the items them you can simply hit BUY NOW or you can change the style to try different sized items.

I’ll have to admit to not ever seeing myself buying these items from B&Q as these 3 items came to £900, but it certainly does give me an idea of the size of the items to buy.

Get yourself over to www.DIY.com and register and use all the FREE tools, very worth while.

UPDATE: I’ll link to the full post shortly, but the tool actually works as i designed a bathroom to see if it would fit and then i purchased the suite. I so got sold to by the “free” app

On November 5th 2006 we signed our Comprime De Vant and all told including fees we paid €101,000 and we got our mortgage from Credit Agricole at £1 = €1.43. At this rate in GBP the price was £68,707.

Fast forward a year and the world is a very different place :

The £1 is now buying just €1.04 or in some places €0.96c this means we are having to replan EVERYTHING.

The mortgage on the property is around €700 and this time last year this meant a monthly payment of £489 (+ £21 bank transfer fee). When we done the budgeting my plan was worked on out the £ loosing 10% to around €1.31 to £1 but never did i think it would be this bad.

Payments
I’ll publish a more detailed list when i check with the bank but a quick comparison says

2007 – €700 @ 1.43 = £476 (£+21 bank transfer fee) = £496
2009 – €700 @ 1.03 = £679 (+£25 bank transfer fee) = £704

Extra payment per month £208

This extra while we can afford it is impacting on the renovation as this year alone we will lose the best part of £2500 from the budget which we had planned to use.

Going forward
As with everything in life we need to just face the challenge and move on. To this end we are going to have to scale back the speed of the renovation. This being the case it’s opened up an interesting opportunity for us, that we are going to embrace and that’s convert the livable area we have now into somewhat of a holiday cottage while we get the money together and the £ recovers.

The plans we have for the longer term aren’t going to change we are just going to come to point where we are happy to stay in the house for weeks at a time comfortably but knowing that we’ll be ripping down the plaster boarding and ripping out the cheap bathroom we’ve put in sooner to later to start on the “grand plan”.

On the flip side they’ll be more to blog about..

Talking of up sides
When we purchased the house we literally beat another couple to signing the Comprime De Vant by a matter of minutes. This wasn’t a conscious decision on our part we just didn’t know another agent was on there way to see the owner with an offer. But as we were there cheque in hand and able to sign there and then so we got it..

So the up side, i can always contact the couple who lost out and offer to sell the house to them at the same price of €101,000 at todays rate that would equate to £98,058 a sneaky profit of £29,351.

That said I must admit the thought of selling has never crossed our minds, we’ll just keep on working here and adjust out plans to suit. We are in no rush to move to France and I’m looking to bank as many £’s as i can and then we’ll move it over when the £ starts to recover.

After all when you have this why would you sell up ?

What about you guys ? What are you doing ? Let us know by mailing us please..

Our first month with Google AdWords running and you’ve been kind enough to continue clicking the ads you’re interested in and this has earned us $48.10 towards the renovation.

I know it’s not a massive amount of money, but with the small amount of content we have here and the repeat visitors it’s a FANTASTIC start and it does mean that this blog hasn’t cost us any money to run.

What this means
Well for instance $48.10 at the todays rate is €32.85 or £26.63 and in the real world that would have been enough for a pack and a half of wood so that’s 1.5 shutters and that goes some way to paying for this little job – making the shutters post

With the Googles T&C’s we are not allowed to dupe you into clicking the adverts or ask you to click the adverts but you know it makes sense

Now Tours is 3 1/2 hours away from from our house in-fact it’s basically Le Mans and we live near the other race track (Magny Cours) but that’s not the problem as we actually don’t mind the long drive through some of the stunning countryside it’s just the unfortunate fact that the only “airline” that flies there is Ryan Air.

Charges & Piss Taking
When does a £9.99 flight turn into a £159.70 total charge ? Well let me explain :

• London to Tours – £9.99 x 2 = £19.98
• Taxes & “fees” = £53.70
• Total = £73.68

• Tours to London – £0.00 x 2 = £00.00
• Taxes & “fees” = £38.02
• Total = £38.02

• Total £111.70

Taxes/Fees are broken down and outside the taxes both ways there is a £8.74 charge for Insurance/Wheelchair Levy/Aviation Insurance and that’s each way so they’ve added £17.48 onto your £9.99 and “free” flight.

However there is more
We need to take a bag as we are both adults and going for a week we need some clothes. We can fit all the needed items in 1 bag but as this is then over the 15kg limit we MUST check in two bags. That’s a charge of £24 per bag. But hold on I have an idea, let Dawn check in two bags and I’ll internet check in to avoid the charge right? WRONG as I’ve booked my flight with someone who is checking in bags I CANNOT check in online and must check in at the desk forcing me to pay another £8. So it now makes no sense me getting Dawn to check in two bags so I might as well do my own.

It’s now with some relief to see that “priority boarding” at £8 each isn’t added automatically  but hold on what’s this??? £10 for travel insurance, I didn’t chose this did I?? So I’ll remove that as well so finally my £19.98 flights to Tours total £159.70 however if I’d not been paying attention they would have cost £179.70. Surely that’s enough of the charges now, hold on NO there’s more.. £4 fee to authorise my credit or debit card and if i was stupid enough to have a Ryan Air Credit card ( at a 16.9% variable rate ) then my fee would be £20!

So there we have it , our £9.99 flights cost us £159.70

I do blame myself, I should have bought some open returns on the Eurostar just for emergency’s but boy have a I learned a lesson. But there IS hope.

Eurostar
The lesson out of all this is that is you’re willing to be a little flexible or willing to grab some food or a coffee while you wait two hours for a connection then the Eurostar is really the best deal and here’s why.

Looking 1 month ahead (today is the 30th August ) I’m searching for 2 adults, normal class to Paris from London. Leaving at 16:25 on Saturday 4th October it’s £59 for the pair of us ALL FEES INCLUDED and there is within reason NO LUGGAGE charges. We then get the train from Paris to Never at a cost of €63 each (return) . Coming back on Saturday 11th October at 17:34 it’s £59 for the pair of us ALL FEES INCLUDE.

Why Eurostar wins.
Eurostar v Ryan Air on Cost: Winner – Eurostar. Total cost to France is £118 ALL FEES INCLUDED and no hidden fees to sucker you in.
Convenience:  Winner – Eurostar. No luggage restrictions, no cabin restrictions, no waiting to taxi and of course it drops you in Paris not some military airport way out of town.
Travel Experience: Winner – Eurostar. big seats, enough room to move around, power sockets in seats and no restrictions on when you can and cant use your electronics.

Plan ahead and get those deals it’s well worth it.. Trust me from experience

Website : Eurostar
Website : Eurostar cheapest fair finder

Update : Michael O’Leary the Ryan Air chief executive finds it hard to sympathise with this own customers who own holiday homes. Nice one Mike

Michael O’Leary, the carrier’s outspoken chief executive, said that they bought abroad at their own risk.“I have always found it hard to feel sympathy with owners of holiday home owners,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
“We are working hard to make travel affordable for everyone, not just those with homes in Tuscany and Chiantishire. It’s a case of caveat emptor.

Read the Telegraph story here

The small amount of adverts are now live on the site and we’ll be monitoring their content over the next few weeks. To keep the adverts down to a minimum you’ll notice that we have only one set of adverts on the right hand side of the front page and another at the bottom of every post, this is so you get to your browsing experience / information as quick as you can without any distractions. 

While we are not allowed to trick you into clicking any links we would ask you to look at the content and if there is anything you are even mildly interested in please give it a click as we are using all AdSense revenue to run this site and of course if there is a little left over you’re going to be helping us build our house (that of course means more information for you) .

Many thanks for your continued support & understanding

Lee & Dawn

Just a very small update to keep things open and honest as promised.

Our Google AdSence account has gone live and you’ll start to see what Google promises are “targeted” ads at the bottom of each post.

DON’T PANIC we aren’t going to swamp the site with adverts but this is part of our goal to make the site self sufficient in hosting costs and maybe even help us buy a few tiles for the house.

Given this is all new to us we expect to have to do some optimisation of the search to keep pulling up relevant renovation and building links so do bare with us.. In the mean time of our feel free to click the link when you see something knowing that it’ll help us generate revenue.

Thanks

Lee
PS : Any revenue generated via Google AdSence will appear on the budget statements so you can see how we are doing.

PPS : Looks like the “targeted adverts” are showing up “diet pills” so it’s time to sort that out.