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 )

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

Of the two main building the Grange (pictured right) was causing us somewhat of a concern for the coming winter.

You see the issue here the while the wind mainly comes from the west it does also come from the east mainly during storms. With the way the grange has been left it has 3 large gaps in the structure where the windows used to be. What happens here s the wind rushes in and the only way out if up and that means lifting the roof.

The roof was replaced some years back after a bit of a monster storm but not one for wanting that to happen again it was time to seal the holes.

As we reported HERE we did have someone quote for the shutters but the cost was prohibitive so we tackled it ourselves.

Materials
8m of Tongue & Groove wood ( cost €81 )
8m of rope ( cost €2 )
Large tin of weather sealant pant ( €66 )
Wood Glue & Nails ( €13 )

Tools
Hammer
Power Saw

Unfortunately there isn’t a step by step guide for these as honestly we just forgot however it’s easy to assume that we cut the wood into strips of 90cm (window width) and using the left over wood from each plank (each plank was 2.40m so we only got 2 full size shutter widths from each) we used these for the battening to sure up the shutters.

Sure enough the first windows at 70cm x 90cm we easy enough, by the time they were painted, glued and nailed the were lashed to the metal says that were inside where the old windows went. This was a quick and easy win.

Then came the large 150cmx90cm shutter. We (I) originally built it as one large shutter, given I had LOTS of left over i created the battening after gluing the 90cm wide strips only to then lift it up and the whole thing fall apart.

Lesson 1 learned : DO NOT put battening up vertically the shutters as the whole thing will just move and fall apart. There is a reason that there is a traditional Z shape to battening.

Lesson 2 learned : 150cmx90cm is just to big and wide for one shutter. We then halved it and made one shutter 70cmx90 and then the other 80cmx90cm and learning the previous lessons these were finished up and painted and secure.

Job well done approximately €600 saved against someone doing it and a sence of real achievement making the first new part of the property.

As you can see from the photo on the right the “Grange” is missing some shutters and this is causing loss of tiles on the roof during storms and in the past has lead to complete loss of the roof (this is something we are keen to avoid again as you can imagine) so the task was simple, find a shutter builder to quote on replacing the shutters on the grange and on the house to for good measure.

Number of shutters needed : 9
Number of shutters actually quoted for : 6

Number of doors needed : 2
Number of doors quoted for : 1

Number of windows needed : 0
Number of windows quoted : 3 (he actually missed a whole window)

Now that’s not all. Before I give you the price I need to explain that this quote took 3 MONTHS to arrive. It actually arrived the night BEFORE we were due to arrive for a weeks renovation, it did however come with a nice note to say that he could complete the work in September for €6,000… Needless to say I went bonkers, this wasn’t just ineptitude and laziness (getting the quote wrong) it was down right insulting. If he didn’t want to do the work then he should have just said so and we would have started down our DIY route earlier.

So we went from a quote for 9 shutters, no windows, 2 doors to 6 shutters, 1 door and 3 windows.. Time to get down to Weldom and buy some wood I think and that is exactly what we decided to do.

See the post HERE on how we ended up building the shutters for the grange and the house. They may not be professional but they will see us through this winter and cost a whole lot less. Sometimes you really are better off doing things yourself. I fear this is going to be our renovation moto.