If at the start of the year you would have said i would be in a new job (yep i changed jobs), we’d be moving to a new area (yep we have bought another house) and that we’d have a baby (didn’t we tell you about that?) on the way, i would have said you were smoking something herbal but that’s exactly what has happened.

The new job keeps me away from home 3 or 4 days a week and while we’ve been looking for a house to resolve this Dawns bump has been getting bigger and bigger and when i’m at home i just haven’t felt like writing but now we’ve past the 20wk pregnancy mark and we know we are having a girl we also have a date to move into the new house and with those two things sorted there is once again some space to be able to share everything with you.

So while i get my writing head straight here’s what has also been going on and what to expect from me this week :

The new English family home :

Final plans are in and have been for a good few weeks now: Rear bedroom is 99% renovated, just paint to go : New floor laid in the rear room : 2nd part of the kitchen built : Appliances arrived and installed in the kitchen : Final plastering on bathroom finished :

All these are going to take me a few days as there of course has been a lot of work around the quick pictures posted here so i look forward to sharing them with you. If you can’t wait then click on the Flickr gallery link on the right as that’s were most are. Once again thank you to Dad who spent another couple of weeks in the house and made massive progress, the last visit in France really felt like home.

WOW

• Bathroom now finished & painted, there’s even a toilet roll holder to add some luxury to the experience
• 2nd kitchen sideboard & cupboards installed ready for new appliances
• The rear bedrooms new ceiling is up & plastered
• New lights & power sockets run into the new bedroom
• 1st wall totally pointed ( this is VERY time intensive )
• Old electric, phone & data points replaced & secured
• 4 new windows ordered to replace the current rotting ones
• 1 new stable type door ordered. Delivery & fitting the windows & doors should be 4/6 weeks
• Roofs on the grange & the house repaired (again)

I’m sure i’ve forgot something but i’ll be speaking to dad in length tonight when he returns from his mammoth renovation trip (it’s Good Friday today), the write ups, photos & podcast will be hot on the heals of this post.

There’s at present no further work planned for the next 4/6 weeks until Dawn goes to the house to supervise the windows being fitted but we are on the cusp of achieving what we wanted to for this year and IT’S ONLY APRIL

This week top of the hit list was the bathroom, while the shower has been in for a while we’ve lived with a few bare wires hanging out of the wall for light, no loo roll holder, no mirror and the toilet seemed to buck like a bronco if you sat down without thinking and then there was a gaping whole in the top of the wall so privacy was always a premium.

It’s a real shame we never got any good photos of the old bathroom as it’s hard to explain how horrible it was, how (or why) anyone used it before we purchased the house still a mystery. Sure the new shower made a massive difference but you needed to be a member on MENSA to work out how to fit it in such a small space and the somewhat fitted new toilet made life liveable but it was never quite like it should have been. Now with the new accessories fitted a proper light finally fitted and the wiring channeled into the wall and not forgetting that the toilet is now anchored down it’s fantastic but to top that all off the opening in the wall had now been sealed so that is very much job done on the temporary bathroom.

The next job that is coming along nicely is the 2nd part of the kitchen. You’ll remember THIS POST i wrote about fitting the kitchen and while we were in the house every few months it was fine,  I even cooked Christmas dinner (link) on the current stove so there is no complaints, but there isn’t is a washing machine or an electric oven (we’ll use the gas one as a backup) and that’s now whats being worked on.. A €100 new work surface from Brico Depot, some leftover cabinets from MFI (UK) and now it’s time to buy a washing machine and small fridge. This will be luxury like we’ve not experienced before.

So 1 week in and that’s the bathroom finished except a bit of painting and the kitchen is ready for appliance fitting…

FANTASTIC for just 5 days from my Dad working on his own.. Kudos Papa

So after the enforced winter’s break we finally have a break in the weather from high winds (more roof damage), very low temperatures (no frozen pipes this year is a WIN!) and a generally very tough European winter.

Hopefully the weather station has survived and we’ll download the data when we get there to share with you, but for now the outlook for the next few weeks is looking bright and it’s time to make the dash over to the house and roll up ”our” sleeves. I say ”our” rather lightly because really it’s my Dad! Yep it’s once again time to throw the big guns at it and he’s come up trumps again and will be doing most of the work we’ll be talking about (we need to keep him topped up with good food the odd beer & lots of English tea - then we stand a fighting chance of achieving some great things).

Here’s the plan!

• Put the finishing touches to the bathroom
• Repoint the interior walls in the kitchen area
• Remove the rear ”bedroom” ceiling
• Insulate & plasterboard a new ceiling
• Run electrics to the new bedroom
• Create a new floor for the the rear bedroom (lots of levelling to do here)
• Order new windows (more about this soon)
• Order new custom front stable style door (more about this soon)
• Fit new kitchen appliances

Now of course some of this is going to take more than the 3 weeks my Dad is on site but you’ll be pleased to know we aren’t flogging him to death; there’ll be builders in and then after that we have some tenants for 2 months, in Dawn’s parents, so works will continue with and around them, and both Dawn and I will be going to the house as well so it really is a full-on affair.

What does this all mean?
Simply put, by the summer the house will be in a totally liveable state. There’ll be no more rustic ”slumming it” in a house with holes in the walls, ill fitting door & windows and a rear ”bedroom” that’s currently really just a room in the barn we’ve thrown some beds in. From this point on it means we can concentrate on getting all the plans through and the major renovation started on the rest of the house knowing that we’ve always got a water-tight, warm, accommodating  and really rather nice cottage for us and everyone else to go out to without worrying how cold it’ll be or if a window has fallen out. So keep your eyes peeled as there is going to be a flurry of posts, pictures and we’ll even grace you with Episode 7 (or is it 8?) of our podcast..

Thanks for hanging in there, it feels so good to be back..

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

With the water off, the wall trimmed by 8 inches and the sink gone it was time to start to putting up some carcasses and see how it all starts sitting together. One thing to note is that due to plumbing issues on the opposite wall the kitchen is now in this location as opposed to it’s original place of against the main wall. I say this because this was a last minute find and this explains why the kitchen DOESN’T BLOODY FIT!

Originally we purchased the kitchen units to fill up 2500mm made up of 1 x 1000mm carcass for the sink, 1x600mm carcass for the gas hob and 3x300mm small cupboards to allow for storage and by having to flip the kitchen it was 500mm over which meant I had to lose 2x300mm cabinets. Not the start i wanted.

Luckily the solid wood (untreated) work top was 2000mm long as was always going to be cut down, so with a small layout change we had something looking like this now.

1x1000mm, 1x600mm, 1x300mm and a 250mm gap between the last cupboard and the uncovered stone wall. This wasn’t the end of the world as I now have room for my 200mm wine cooler so it was time to assemble the parts and cut the worktop.

The work top appears to be the best priece of wood in France. Seriously it was solid, so solid it took 2hours to cut the holes into the work top for the sink & hob. It really was a case of measure once, measure again, and again and then once more then cut. Things were slowed down by the fact the hob didn’t have any sort of cutting template so a lot of patience, swearing and team work between my father and I and we had the wholes in and cut to size. Finally a bit of a breakthrough.

After sleeping on it for the night and feeling positive it was now time to tackle getting cabinets built, leveled and joined together. While I built the cabinets, Dad sorted out the waste and the pluming to the sink while making sure the final cabinets were lined up and then we finally dropped the top in and got our first look at what we could expect the kitchen to start to look like and we liked what we saw.

As we put the doors on to complete the kitchen there are a few small jobs outstanding that needed to be done. Firstly the work top needed to be sealed to protect it against water, oil and usual cooking wear and tear. This was done later but due to the cold there was a 12 hour wait between coats as the sealant wouldn’t go off. This typifies everything that is happening with the house at the moment, one step forward two steps back.

Talking of two steps back – the gas hob is missing a fitting (am I’m still trying to find it on sale) and the wall needs to have a tiled splash-back fitted and then the sink sealed.  However with the doors on, the water on and the waste working there was a huge sense of pleasure and relief that the main part was now finished and what we almost had was a fixed position and working kitchen, but I can’t underplay how nice it is to have hot and cold running water on tap again…

And without further ado ladies and gentlemen here is our temporary kitchen, almost ready to go but the fruits of some solid work in zero degrees. Personally I’m extremely happy considering the kitchen location had to be flipped at the last moment and of course a chunk of the wall fell down.

There is a full set on flickr HERE with all the images from the kitchen build in it’s various stages that you might enjoy seeing and of course not forgetting PART 1 of this eventful bit of DIY.

Small Update: I found a picture that shows the amount of wall we had to trip off to compensate for the bits that fell down. The bit that actually fell off was on the right hand side of the picture but to the left of the sander as you see it you can see a bit of wall we’d not yet trimmed off. Personally while the wall top may not be super smooth, when you have to trim 6 to 8 inches off a plaster brick wall this isn’t too shabby at all. Dad & Me 1 – House 0

The current “kitchen” is no more than a breeze block wall that is holding up a cheap sink and the portable gas cooker. Given that we know we are going to totally refurb this area as part of the major renovation it did not make any sense to start putting in a final kitchen so the decision was made to buy some B&Q cabinets & doors, a natural gas hob from eBay and a solid work top from Brico Depot to try and give us somewhat of an inexpensive but functioning kitchen.

Items Purchased & Suppliers
Kitchen carcases & doors (B&Q) – £345
Natural Gas Hob (EBay) – £90
Sink (Brico Depot) – €88 (£85)
Taps & Waste (Brico Depot) – €40 (£39)
Solid wood work top (Brico Depot)- €99 ( £95 )
Wood Sealant (Wickes) – £10
Total Spend – £664
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Preparation & Sanding

So this is what we started with ( click for larger image ), I have no idea how long it’s been here but it’s time for a refresh and there were a few things we needed to tackle first and this was going to be somewhat of a messy job.

You see every service that is available has been plastered and then stippled to give somewhat of the same effect as Artex ( without the asbestos ) but it’s a right nightmare so the first job was to remove this and the quickest way to so this was with a belt sander but that was only going to result in one thing and that was massive amounts of dust, and that’s just what we got.

Wearing eye protection and a respirator the place soon filled up with dust.  At the start it was comical how much there was but it soon dawned on Dad and I this this was a small wall no higher than 4ft x 6ft and we had far far bigger walls to come. This was going to be messy but it had to be done.

Once the sanding was done it was finally times to start removing what was there,

Removal not as easy as it appears.

It’s now time to start removing that is there starting with the awful tiles that are used as a splash back.  A claw hammer and a chisel makes easy work of this. Next it’s time to remove the sink so with the water off, the waste secure we removed the link and that’s when the corner of the wall fell out. I couldn’t believe it you should have heard the language. It appears that the sinks final position in the wall was level with the join in the wall and removing the sink dislodged this and away it came.  I don’t have any pictures of this due to the sense of humour failure I was suffering at the time, but my quick thinking father realised that the breeze wall could be trimmed with the rip saw and that’s what we proceeded to do. More dust, cursing and breath holing while the whole structure wobbled we levelled the wall and proceeded to remove the sink, ready for fitting.

As you can imagine to get to this stage there were a lot more pictures as this was an eventful job that should have been so simple. I’ve uploaded a few images to the gallery below while I write part 2 of the build and fitting where we try to get something like a useful kitchen.

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 )