The Holiday Home @ Le Mas d'Ayen -The Bedrooms

Where we now live also includes a holiday rental house or gîte, as it is called in French.
We were lucky enough to have been left the charming furniture of said gîte by the previous owners, and while in keeping with a country atmosphere, we found that with a few changes it could become even better.
Take a look.

The main bedroom has been completely refurbished, except for the curtains. A new bed 160x200, mattress, bedlinen and 2 new bedside tables. All other furniture, lamps, paintings, etc we've had for a long time.

After

Before

We didn't touch the walls, nor the floors,  because they where beautifully done by the previous owners. The furniture that was here, we just moved to the second bedroom, as you will see later down below.

First, a few more of the main bedroom.

Before

After

 After

After

As I said, it looked beautiful before, but I just had to put my own stamp on it and add some personal touches.

The second bedroom looked like this, with the wardrobe on the opposite wall from the two single beds. One of these beds has been moved to the spare room of the main house.

Before

After 

The wardrobe got moved to the other wall, with a writing desk next to it. The two single beds from the main room are now in here. The rug is added for extra cosiness

 After

The bed that stayed, will serve as a 'daybed' or 3rd single bed if we have 5 people staying.

After

The two beds from the main bedroom are now adorning this one. The red and white bedlinen I already had. I still have plenty in the pipeline for this room, but it'll have to wait just a bit longer, because next week the new kitchen in the main house will be installed. 

And after that, a few tweaks to the gîte's bathroom, sitting room and kitchen. Well, who am I kidding?  The kitchen will get a back door, replacing the existing window, a terrace and steps leading out into the garden.

I'll keep you posted.

Salut

Patricia xxx...x

Perpetually Cold

Chilled to the bone. I'm irritable and in a constant state of snappiness. Because I'm cold !
I know there are many, many people in a worse state of cold than I am, but I can't think of that right now.
We've moved to the south of France and I want to feel some warmth. In all fairness, it is more bearable outside than indoors.
Our house is draughty. Uninsulated floors with cold cellars underneath, gaps under and around the doors, single-pane windows.
We have one gorgeous woodburner in the sitting room, but it can't keep up with the cold in the house, and we can't keep up with bringing the logs indoors.  The other rooms have electric heaters, which we don't use too much, because if we boil the kettle, or use the washing machine, etc. the fuse will blow.

I'm not sure if we made the right decision by replacing the woodburner in the kitchen with a range cooker. It is a stunning beast, granted, but it doesn't radiate much heat.

Now we've made up our minds to install central heating, but until that happens I'm wearing several layers, including two thick jumpers, mitts on my hands (fingers still cold) and a scarf around my neck. I've closed off most of the gaps under the doors (with rolled up throws) and hung some curtains at the most offending one. Double glazed windows have been ordered as well as new outside doors.
Next step however is insulating the floors.

I would say, roll on summer, but no, we've still too many projects to start and finish before we can open up our campsite ! Oh Jeez what have we taken on ?

Patricia xxx...x

Finally !

The windows fitted, some of the walls re-plastered, ceiling and all walls painted.

And the Christmas tree is up and bedecked. 

It took us longer than expected to get here and that's why I have been missing from the blogosphere  for a while.

I have a lot of catching up to do with reading all your blogs. I'll get to it shortly.

Patricia xxx....x

More Window Stuff

These are just a few more photos of the work in progress. 

Later today the sitting room will be ready for me to clean.

This post was (and still is) 4 cm out at the top, compared to the bottom.

Nothing to do with the window company, but with the builder who erected this house. 

As you can see the damp proof membrane was lying flat, bridging the cavity and bringing rain right into the inside wall. 

 We had a leak in the ceiling around this time last year. Which had been temporarily fixed (or so we thought). The damaged ceiling has been cut out...

...and replaced with new plasterboard, ready to be skimmed.

Now that we know the damp proofing under the windows was bodged, we're certain that the leak comes from the windows upstairs. But we'll have to wait and see.

Oh dear. Ha ha ha ! What fun it's going to be to get everything back in order.

 The sliding door.

Would you believe the window company made all these windows smaller than the original ones ? 

And that is why they didn't want or need to chisel away at the plaster to fit the windows. They could skip that step by literally breaking out the old windows.

The blown plaster has been removed and will be redone.

All the other brown windows, fascias and soffits will also be replaced with white, but in a few weeks time. 

At least the sitting room will soon be ready. Clean and redecorated.

Have great weekend.

Patricia xxx...x

The Window Saga

It's okay. The work started yesterday morning. 

It is a very slow process and lots of dust, but our motley crew of  very skilled craftsmen/builders are doing a fantastic job. They are from the village and we know them well.

Not a destroyed window in sight. So far so good. 

You just gotta love this picture. Ha ha !

You've got to wonder how on earth the window company were going to fit in the new windows without chiseling away plaster and rendering. 

A bit of rubble and a lot of dust.

The old windows were fitted abysmally. The damp course membrane underneath the windows were lying flat underneath the indoor sill. No wonder we had water seeping in with the wind driving the rain through. Our team will fix this. 

This is a gap around the old windows. No insulation like expanding foam. Just simply plastered straight up against the window frames.

It won't be so draughty anymore when the new ones are in.

Thank goodness we put our foot down last week as all of us are certain we would have ended up with quite a bodge job from the window company.

Patricia xxx...x

New Windows

Yesterday morning, before the window fitters came, we'd put everything safe and away from the surrounding areas.

It looked something like this :

Last night (and this morning) the sitting room looked like this :

No new windows were fitted. Yes, the fitters came but they couldn't take out the old ones without breaking and damaging the old ones. What !!! ?

"No, it is not possible to take them out without damaging them"

Well, that's not going to happen in this place. These windows might not be to our liking but they are perfectly good windows and deserve repurposing and/or recycling.  We wanted to reuse some of them for a greenhouse at a later stage, others we wanted to give to our friends.

When the sales representative came for a quote he said it wouldn't be a problem but there might be a breakage. You know, we can live with that.

After a lot of telephone calls to a fro (some of them with tempers flying) to the company, we will keep the new windows and have someone else fit them. Amazingly an acquaintance of ours is going to take out the old ones without breaking and installing the new ones for us.

Thank goodness it will be sorted in the end after a fairly stressful morning/day.

Why would you want to destroy perfectly good windows, that's what I want to know ?

Unbelievable ! Isn't there enough waste on this earth already ?

Okay, I'm calm.... ahuuuuuummmmm.....

Patricia xxx...x

Soon.

I've been hankering for new windows from the day we moved in. Well, earlier. Since the day we put an offer on the house actually.

The new windows arrived last Thursday and would have been installed this week. But that isn't going to happen for another week, at least, as the 4 largest windows were all wrong and had to be taken back by the guys who delivered.

Aaaargh ! 

What's another week or two in the grand scheme of things ?

Soon.

Patricia xxx...x

Little by Little...

And I mean very little by very little, I am organising (or trying to) the house from top to bottom.

After living in this house for 3.5 years it is time, isn't it ?

You move into a house that is actually not suited to your lifestyle (and clutter) and you dump all your belongings wherever you find a place. Then after building an extension onto the original house you get so used to things being stored in the wrong drawer, cupboard, wardrobe, room, which inevitably leads to days spent looking for this or that. 

But it has been niggling me for so long, I can't stand it any more. Thus, I made plans (in my head) to tackle one drawer at a time, one cupboard, one chest freezer....

I started with the medicine cabinet. They were stored in one of the original (deep) kitchen cabinets that now resides in the pantry. Too deep to find the things in the back and generally often used items ending up in the front to the extent that when you opened the door the lot would fall out. Bert I'm looking at you !

We have installed wall cabinets above the freezers and one of them is now the medicine cabinet.

It has made such a difference already, it is hard to imagine. And such a little thing.

All the meds for the pets are now also separate. No more rummaging through everything to get to a paracetamol for a splitting headache (not that I have many of these, luckily).

The wall cabinets above two chest freezers in the pantry. Note to self : paint walls.

Staying with the pantry, I've concocted a system for storing the eggs.

I found a sturdy piece of cardboard and glued  egg boxes onto it. First I cut away the lids of the boxes 

The eggs are pencil marked with the date and we fill from the left at the back and keep going, always from left to right.

Empty egg cartons are stored just above, where the medicines used to be.

We have 3 chest freezers, 2 in the pantry and one in the center of Bert's office.

They also got a sorting through (read, emptying and filling). One of them is now for pork, another for chicken, lamb and other meat. The third one is for vegetables, ready meals (homemade, of course) soups, cheese, .....

The kitchen was from the start reasonably well organised. The only thorn being the drawer with plastic containers. We found another unopened box in the attic which said plastic containers, still unpacked after more than 3 years. 

So far, so good. It's been tidy for several weeks now. I love those yoghurt pots. They are ideal for freezing soups and whatnot.

Something I did, before I received my surprise sewing machine was organise the sewing boxes.

 I just can't resist temptation when I shop at Lidl's and there are sewing materials on special offer.

It won't stay this tidy forever, I know, but it will for a while at least.

Have you organising tips to share, bar getting rid of all your stuff  ? I'd love to hear from you.

Patricia xxx...x