Living Room

The room which needed least doing to it was the living room.  We did need to clean it thoroughly, put up curtains, install lighting (there are no over-head lights, hence the two uplighter/standard lamps).  Sofas and arm chairs completed the line up, although after the first year we bought a couple of low tables - handy for that glass of wine or bottle of beer!

Important improvements were the installing the TV, DVD player and UK satellite digibox (although the first year, we couldn't get that to work).

Later in the year, we aim to buy a new grate for the fire place, which will make fires in the winter easier - we also need to do something with the top of the chimney, as, for some reason, it goes straight up, with no cover or device to stop rain from coming down onto the hearth!

The attached photo of what it was like when we initially visited with the estate agent is not that inspiring, and shows what a bit of daylight and less clutter can do! 

Summer Time

The Summer period is now here, and from last weekend, we will have visitors at the house virtually all the way through the summer until we go in early September.  It is encouraging that we can get so many bookings given the economic climate, but also a bit scary: we hope that people will enjoy themselves, and that the weather stays good.  Last year was a cracker down there after a poor year in 2008 - lets hope the summers do not alternate each year!!!

We are asking guests if they are happy to send us photos for publishing on this blog - obviously of people looking happy!  Watch this space for a small photo album coming soon!

The Bunk Bedroom

The other bedroom downstairs again was one of the rooms originally created about a dozen or so years before we bought the house.  The bedroom was used by the 11 year old son, and it was decorated in very very faded wallpaper, and a carpet that was completely threadbare and really filthy.  The wallpaper was nursery stuff - obviously not for a 11 year old boy - and was papered onto some form of polystyrene wall covering, which was badly dented and coming away in places.  Behind that covering one wall was very damp.

Unfortunately, I did not take any photos of the "before" - I was too busy concentrating on stripping the wall covering, ripping up the carpet etc.  Not knowing why the damp was there, we took a gamble and simply sealed the stripped walls with watered down PVA and then painted onto a rough finish.  The damp came back slightly right at the beginning, and the very first visitors we had complained about an unpleasant smell in that room.  However, since then (touch wood), the damp has not come back, and there is no smell.  We are now convinced that the cause was that insulating wall covering not allowing the wall to breath properly.

With the plain white walls and new flooring, we have furnished with bunk beds, a wardrobe and other small bits and pieces to make up a child's bedroom.

We may well be getting a camp bed, which could easily be used in this room, which will increase capacity in the house to 10 (ok, at a push!)

Downstairs Double Bedroom

When the barn was originally converted, there were just two bedrooms, both downstairs - upstairs rooms came later.  When we bought the house, these two bedrooms were in a poor state.  I'll write something about the bunk room later, but this article is on the room which we now have as the double.

Although the ceiling isn't really low, it was clad in tongue and groove timber, which was quite dark and therefore gave a bit of an oppressive feel.  There was a very old carpet on the floor, which was very dirty, and the wallpaper was peeling off in a number of places.  They were kind enough to leave the wardrobe, which, although not to our taste has saved us having to buy one for the room.

Once the wallpaper was stripped, I set to laying the flooring for both the downstairs bedrooms.  That first week, I had a heck of a lot of work to do - building beds, wardrobes and other furniture, as well as laying the flooring.  Sadly, I do not have a "before" photo, but I do have one during the work.  It was quite tricky having to move the wardrobe around the room as the flooring went down.

 After that, the next time we were down - May half term, I think - we put up lining paper for painting.  Finding decorating equipment matching what we were used to in England was not easy, not helped with my basic but improving French.  We ended up buying very expensive fibre-glass paper, which came in wide rolls, but was a dream to put up - it simply would not rip!  This was excellent for covering small cracks and imperfections.

Emulsion paint in France is very different from in the UK - it goes on very thin and translucent, but then dries back to the colour.  It also takes more coats to cover than we are used to, which adds to time.....

Anyway, here is the room once finished:

 

Master Bedroom

As mentioned, when we moved in, most rooms were incomplete, and, whilst the master bedroom looked spectacular, that too needed work doing to it.  The large external wall was beautifully rendered, the flooring was down.  However, it was finishing it off that was lacking.  Some of the skirting board was down, but most was piled in the corner.  The lighting consisted of a single 60w bulb on the end of the wires coming out of the main exposed roof beam.

A carpenter who was commissioned to put architrave around the upstairs door frames was also asked to finish off the skirting in the main bedroom, and I managed to wire in the lamp (it is a long way up there!).

Kitchen

When we decided to buy the house, we had not planned to replace the kitchen straight away.  However, when we took possession and started to move our furniture in, we had to have a rethink.

This is what it was like when we visited with the estate agent:

 And later, after we had boght it:

Quite apart from not being to our taste, doors were falling off the units, there was no oven, and the extractor fan was a bit of a monstrosity.  The hole for the eye level oven was not a standard size, and there was no space for the fridge we had brought over.

As a result, we decided to change earlier than expected.  We took a risk on choosing an Ikea kitchen, which I think has worked, and our friendly local works manager fitted it himself with his electrician son.  Photo below (not really intended for publication, given the state of untidiness....)

Anyway, we think it is an improvement on what was there before.  This year we have gone a stage further and installed a dishwasher - we regret not doing that at the beginning, as having 9 people in the house without a dishwasher is not our idea of a holiday!

Buying Wine in May

One of the advantages of taking stuff down in a van is that logistics determine that there should be a payload for the return journey.  Coming from the Bordeaux region, that can only mean one thing - Wine!

Whilst we were out there, Bill and I visited St Emilion and Pomerol.  We had a good session in a wine shop, where they sold Petrus and other fine wines, but we weren't in the market for them (€3,000+ a bottle).  However, we did part company with a few euros for some good wine (around the €30 to €40 range).  Whilst in St Emilion, we had lunch in Chai Pascal, a really good bistro with a great atmosphere and a good wine list (as you would expect).

Anyway, we also made other trips to the local co-operative at Les Lèves and to Berticot at Duras to stock up on day to day drinking wine.  In the end, I travelled back with over 380 bottles of wine - not all of them were for us: Bill had a quota, and there were purchases on behalf of other friends which made up most of the quantity!