Saturday, November 19, 2005
This one's for Naomi
Friday, November 18, 2005
Onward and ...um...downward?
The wrecking goes at a pace. All the wood is down and sorted - one (small) pile of quite good, re-usable stuff (boards and beams) one (huge ) pile of rubbish. Oh well, no need to order any firewood this winter. Our next move is to completely clear the inside floor space, dig down and level for the subfloor and excavate footings for new internal load-bearing walls. '2-3 days work for a bloke with a JCB...guv'. We were here this a.m. (18th), with a young english guy who farms nearby (he's only lived in France for just over a year and speaks french like a native - makes ya sick dun't'it) but also installs fosse-septiques. His quote for two tanks - one 5000 liters and one 3000 liters with all the pipe work and a 7m x 8m x 1.5m sand filter bed (you can drink the water after it's been through that lot...yeah, right!)etc 8000 euro...not bad! We,re also having a young couple (with baby)round for Sunday lunch this W/E - he and I will draw up a 'Schedule of Works' (so important that I've used capital letters!), some of which we hope to get done before christmas!
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
30% of the first-floor boards and beams are now down. Each beam is 6.5m long and weighs a ton (probably not literally, but ****ing heavy all the same)!
Thursday, October 20, 2005
two beams out, single-handedly by muscleman Roy. The car belongs to our neighbour Didi, she'll have to find a new spot soon.
this is the next stage in our war against next- doors poultry. Not me acting like a chicken, but the netting we've put up.
Monday, October 10, 2005
It's gonna get worse before it gets better!
Well it's a start. I've begun to demolish the first floor of the larger barn. I'm taking up the chestnut floorboards, some of which are over 60 cms (24'') wide. The plan is to reuse some of them for internal doors - à la mode Provencale (horizontal boarding). The supporting beams, also of chestnut will be reused as ceiling joist in the first floor bedrooms.
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Renaissance
Second attempt to get this blog site up and running
For those of you who are interested; our intention is to post blogs from time to time showing the progress (or lack of it) on the conversion of our barns from agricultural storehouses to 'gracious abode'.
We're in an 'or lack of it' period at the mo. Waiting for the achitectural technician, Monsieur Petit, to get his doigt out and supply the fully spec-ed up plans for planning consent. In the meantime we may be able to clear the barns of many years of sheep shit (fumier de brebis) and dismantle the steadings for reuse. Then we'll be able to begin to lay the sub floors.
