Wednesday

After lunch it’s time to start getting the rooms cleaned up a bit, it’s amazing to realise that it’s actually wood under there and not just white plaster dust. I think I’d forgotten that we had wooden floorboards it’s been so long. I’m really keen that we make a start on the tiling of the Room 2 ensuite sometime soon and have been reminding myself what tiles we actually bought.

After work it was time to get washed up and ready to go out as we’ve been invited to Tita and Jean-Marc’s to watch the football semi-finals at theirs with some friends. Tita had also dug out a load of old photos to show us of the family and friends at the house, it’s lovely to see the history of the house and how she shares it with us. It was a fantastic night all round with dancing in the kitchen and on the chairs and celebrating a great win for the French team. Oh and dinner was fantastic too, although both Matt and I did give the oysters a wide birth. Neither of us are really football fans but it was the most brilliant atmosphere and we were incredibly grateful to be invited.

That’s quite enough of that, time for Matt to get me home before this party gets out of hand!

[14 December 2023]

Thursday

Busy day today with work and preparing for Tonia’s visit. I managed to get the tree up ready for her to help decorate when she gets here but that was about it. Unfortunately we got a message from Tonia saying that she’d managed to lose her phone. While we knew where it was she sadly couldn’t find it and thought she’d dropped it down a storm drain or something but a lot of time was spent trying to explain where it was. Time for bed as Tonia needs to be up and leaving at the crack of dawn, fingers crossed she makes the journey ok! Good luck Tonia!!

[15 December 2023]

Friday

Very lucky today that the lovely Rane has volunteered her day to come over to help and give me a lesson in taping and joining while she’s at it, not a bad result from taking her to the airport. We got a huge amount done working as a team. First taping and joining done in Rooms 1, 3 and 4, go team and thanks Rane!

While Rane finishes up I’m just packing all the rubbish into the car ready to go to the dechetterie and clear the house. It’s been a busy day so time for dinner. I’m not sure where Tonia has got to but hopefully she’s not too lost. I know that she was lost around Paris for about an hour so hopefully she’ll arrive soon. Meanwhile we’re playing with the lights on the outside of the house and watching some House of Games, which incidentally had a question that was quite close to home.

Tonia and Anya finally arrived around 11:30pm ready to be fed and watered before going to bed, it was a long day.

Tonia:

So as many will know, the car was a question as to whether I could fit it all in… turns out I pack at least as well as my mother (think Tetris level 100+)

Having lost my phone last night, we have not only lost the alarms for the morning but also the details for the train and probably more importantly the sat-nav for the route… It turned out the alarms on Alexa were not loud enough and we were running 20 min late, added to then having to de-ice front, back and side windows we were almost an hour behind schedule.

A quick google of how to get to Folkstone the night before and I realised I only looked at how to get to the M25 from my house… it appears this will be a theme…

Having made it really well with no phone or sat nav to Folkstone, I was starting to feel pretty confident in navigating with no external resources. We just missed the originally scheduled train but were on the 08.25 which was pretty good going (if you know me and that I was up and doing things at 5am and had been sleeping).

10:30am local time we arrive in France and I will be working from this as directions/map From Calais to Marignac.

So, obviously we got lost in Paris for about an hour – I was not confident enough in my directions so panicked as I decided I needed to pull off before I was at the Eiffel Tower and basically in a lot of trouble! Obviously, I was wrong, having stopped at 2 petrol stations they didn’t sell maps so it was a bit more of the guessing game… I finally found a sign for the road I wanted only to then have 2 direction opportunities, I knew St. Dennis and there was an airport in my direction so took that route… again I was wrong. Another 15 min in the wrong direction, realising I went the wrong way and then another 15 min trying to get back on the A15 in the correct direction. 

I finally made it to the middle of town and the very much awaited A86 and had an easy route right through to the A10 which would basically take me through about 1/3 of the south of France.  Thought I was home and dry… sadly I only recognised the sign for the airport and knowing there was an airport to the South I started heading towards Charles De Gaulle, which as many of you reading this will probably know is not the right direction, I was in fact heading North again.  With my brain finally clicking in I reaslised I had to turn around and go the other direction. Having gotten ourselves turned around and now heading South, things seemed to be on track as I made it to the long-awaited tunnel.  From here it was actually pretty easy, getting to the A10 was a doddle and other than a very sore back and a numb bottom by the time we reached Toulouse I was ready for the journey to be over. The last hour was definitely the hardest just due to being very sore and having only stopped for fuel twice and to pump up the tyres, on my arrival at 11:30pm I had been going for 16.5 hours and just 15 minutes of that spent outside the car. That said we arrived and were in one piece, Chan and Matt helped me empty the car and Matt made me chicken nuggets and chips as I had only eaten a bag of popcorn all day.  Followed with a glass of wine and it was definitely time for bed. 

[16 December 2022]

Saturday

Chan:

Up just before lunchtime, since it’s a nice day and I’m also keen that the plants go back up sometime soon, my first job of the day is to get the pool house a bit more weather tight. It shouldn’t let any water in now but we will still need to finish off the very top at some point before we put the plasterboard on the inside to ensure that it keeps out the moisture. Doesn’t look too bad from the inside now, you can’t really see the gap at the top. next job was to sweep out the inside and then load the summer furniture in.  We got the majority of it in the pool house but had to then clear more space in the chicken coop for the cabana, when Matt saw there was a bit of extra space the smoker was then going in as well. It turns out that the wheels are a very tight squeeze but just about made it through the doorway. Since the weather is due to change at some point Tonia’s come to help me wrap up the outside table, lovely that should do the job, it looks like a present.

A quick run to the dechetterie while Tonia sweeps up a bit in the kitchen. Rane’s up at Marignac house so I quickly jumped out there on the way back and told Matt to send Tonia up so we can quickly pop up to say hello and see how things are going up there. It’s been a while since I’ve seen the house and she’s clearly been doing a lot of work on the taping and joining up there too while Rick’s back in the UK. I also love that they’ve covered their walls in French grammar to help them learn while they work!

Time to head home and get Tonia to work. After all the sanding that Rane and I did the other day it’s time to get it sanded ready for the second coat. This is a very long process: Tape, plaster 1, sand, plaster 2, sand, plaster 3, sand – and hopefully that’s it, although probably some touch ups too so you’ll be seeing a lot of this. It’s a slightly delicate job as you have to be careful not to rip or pull off any of the joining tape.

Whilst Tonia was diligently creating more dust (because this house needed more), I was working on removing the old wallpaper from around the windows.  As we had moved the scaffolding around to complete our chores, we had a quick switch of jobs as well, while she took over sanding at the top on the scaffold, the combination of leaning over a hot radiator and the heat from the steamer to get the paper off made for a pretty toasty job but we were finally done.

We’ve worked hard today though and are covered in plaster dust so showers while Matt made a nice dinner of roast [microwave] chicken and air fried chips, and then relax.

[17 December 2023]

Sunday

Tonia:

Sunday morning and I am back to work in room 3.  When we have previously stripped the wall paper some of the plaster was rather loose and so the next job is to remove some of the loose plaster.  With Matt having a quick review and knowing that none of the walls in the house are straight the decision was made just to take off just a quarter of the wall to where the plaster thins out.  It turned out that what I had thought would be quite a time-consuming job with my hammer and chisel in hand was not as arduous as expected – I know not a phrase you usually read in this blog! – with it off and cleaned up in just 30 minutes I needed to find something else to do.  The strong efforts being put into room 3 and the fact that the radiator won’t turn off has led to a discussion on whether Jeff and Vivian spend their upcoming visit in that room rather than 4. Currently that discussion is still up in the air as we crack on.

As the weather was still looking pretty good, I decided that it was a good day to pop out and get the hedges out of the front trimmed back.  Sadly, without mum’s handy and light weight hedge trimmer, I was doing this with purely manual efforts, just me and the clippers. The bonus was that Chan had already started the job and once wrapped in my warm coat and with Anya supervising from inside the fencing I had worked the full length of the front and around the corner when the call came to head in for lunch. After a chilli lunch it was time to get changed into outside the house clothes, pick up Rane and head down to Luchon to watch the football. 

Chan:

Since Tonia is here we decided to take a bit of a break today to go down to Billy’s to see Loz and Seb and watch the football final, even Matt’s duck lamp has his fancy necktie on ready to celebrate (hopefully!). We are very much supporting France of course. Rane came with us and when we arrived we bumped into Andy, he was the estate agent that showed us the house and helped us through the purchasing process. It was good to catch up with him and will be great for him to see it once it’s done, it’s already so different (even if it is hard for us to see sometimes).

It was a tough game and France played well but sadly not well enough. We’d best just enjoy the Luchon lights and head home.

[18 December 2023]

Monday

As always with this time of year, while I’d thought I might get a bit of a break that’s all gone up in smoke as we’ve just had a new project land so busy morning with work. With Tonia’s help though that’s not going to stop us, and since the weather is still nice it would be good to get a bit more of the prep work done in the pottager.

Tonia’s taken Anya for a nice long walk so I can get some more work done. It seems that Anya’s been investigating who’s around the neighbourhood.

This afternoon I’m back to looking at these bathroom tiles. We’ve laid them out but I’m not sure that the number is right so while measuring is all well and good it was much better to use Matt as my ‘yard stick’, and I was correct, we need another layer. That’s much better. If Simon, Doug or Dodd come over it needs the extra height.

After work it was time to help Matt start the tiling – he’s on a ‘working holiday’ so getting lots done. It’s our first ever go at tiling so fingers crossed this works out well. The fancy new fandangled gadets should help significantly however with ensuring that the tiles are all level which is even more helpful with the larger scale tiles.

Well that was hard work just to get the first 4 blue tiles and 6 small tiles on. Time for dinner and relaxation. Anya however appeared to have a problem with where Matt was sitting and despite her protests to me and Tonia we weren’t telling Matt to move so there was a bit of a stand off for a while there.

Time for us to get to bed, but not before saying cheers to the team back home, love you guys x

[19 December 2022]

Tuesday

Wow, what amazing pictures first thing this morning, must be another sirocco. #nofilter

One of my key jobs with the tiling is to make sure that they go the right way round so that there is a sense of cohesive pattern and style between them. Matt of course is responsible for actually putting them on the wall. I have however learnt that the best thing I can do, other than just stand back and direct [which I’m very good at doing] was to prep the grout on the back to Matt can just grab the tile and pop it in (it’s not quite that simple, he’s doing a lot of hard work).

Annoyingly there appears to be one tile in the packs that is actually from the grey range rather than the blue one, this definitely does not belong with the others. I’ve taken lots of photos as I’m going to have to go back to the shop to get it exchanged, we apparently ordered exactly the right number for what we need so I can’t let it slide.

More dog walking and work.

After work it’s back to the sanding, it really is a dirty job.

I left Tonia to it while I went go and make dinner, which in Tonia’s words was ‘super yummy pasta bake’ – we don’t have pre-made pasta bake sauce so I made my own but it’s easy and I can make lots of it in one batch so we have lunch and dinner for tomorrow. I do hope people don’t like variety! More showers and bedtime. Good work team!

[20 December 2022]