Big work meeting today for me. Matt managed to set me up with his headset and a big monitor as this is a marathon, not a sprint – hour prep session followed by a two hour meeting, a wrap up with the branding team, half hour break and another follow up to prep for tomorrow.

Apart from the half hour lunch break it was back to back work. Matt takes a brief opportunity to go and make further investigations into the kitchen situation. Of course this means making a hole behind the newly opened door and down into the basement.

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Once work is done, we have to walk through the snow down to Intermarche supermarket as the car is still in the shop. Back home and before we crack on with dinner we start making a dent (or another big hole) in the kitchen. Unfortunately, having taken out a large piece of the wall Matt reconsiders as the replacement framing actually needs to go all the way to the floor. Not the existing floor but where it will be once the current floor is removed (some 5cm lower than it is now). Oops! It looks as though this hole might be here a while.

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We had an initial go at taking out some of the ancient flue left over from when there was probably a wood fired oven here, which will now be where we run all the new cables and pipes between floors. Well I can tell you, that made a hell of a mess. I have no idea what crap it was full of but I am very glad that we were wearing our masks when we took it out. That’s enough for one day though as this clearly needs us to be fully togged up in overalls and hardhats.

Time for dinner and some TV – giving the Queen’s Gambit a go – there’s not much of Netflix left at this point in lockdown that we haven’t seen!

[12 January 2021]

Wednesday

Mid-week slump in terms of the house. Matt and I have had a busy day with work. Quick half hour lunch grabbed between meetings – not very French of us – and more meetings and more work not finishing until nearly 9pm. Pizza, TV, bed.

[13 January 2021]

Thursday

Another busy day of work for us both.

I did manage to get hold of the ‘plombier’ today though. Seems that his computer was broken but he has now received our queries regarding a new ‘wet’ fireplace to heat water and radiators, and we are hoping for a devis (quote) early next week. I also followed up again with the window company, nothing back yet though. Fingers crossed we get them soon, getting that new fire would revolutionise our experience!

https://www.stovesellers.com/our-range/woodburning-stoves/hunter-herald14-boiler-stove.html

In the evening I tried to do some work on the house programme but just got a look at an interesting council tender which really interested me so worked on that instead.

[14 January 2021]