House/2

When we were living in the Old Notaires House, going to work on the barn conversion wasn't too bad. The house was cold, dark and damp, the barn was cold, dark but actually not that damp and we were guaranteed to warm up working. Now it's different, it's much harder leaving the dry, warm, light barn for a house that, quite frankly, has gone downhill in the last few weeks.

Andrew has been in demolition mode which also meant multiple trips to the déchetterie. So far he's

• knocked down a wall between two of the old notaires rooms
• knocked a doorway through from the tartan room to the guest room
• taken all the plaster off the dining room walls
• knocked the kitchen/corridor wall down
• knocked the loo wall down.

None of which were load bearing, in case you were worried.

The old kitchen & tartan room

He hasn't finished with the hammer drill yet though - still a notaires room wall and two new doorways to go. I however have been spending endless days going up and down the step ladder with buckets of water (Andrew has disconnected the boiler in the house so no hot water) removing wallpaper. I have discovered the thrill of cold water running down my sleeve into my armpit! There have been some discoveries though. The paper in the sitting room left a ghostly image of the pattern on the wall after it had been removed.

Our hall ceiling is quite high, which is just as well as I don't think soaking this electrical socket would have been a bright idea - it had just been covered over with wallpaper, no proper cover.

Just as well we're rewiring

Andrew made his own electrical discovery in the kitchen when he found that all the electrical cables had been put into metal conduit, which wouldn't have been quite so bad if the sheathing on said wires hadn't been brittle and falling off.

I finally unveiled the cause of the tidemarks in the hall. It was obviously due to damp as it got worse when it rained but why halfway up? It didn't make much sense until I started pulling the paper off. The bottom section had a backing sheet of thick, metallic paper stuck to the plaster which we assume was there to stop the damp coming through. It did achieve this to a degree but all it really did was to push the water higher. Still I suppose they thought it a better solution than the carpet that was stuck on the wall to dado rail height in the summer kitchen! We will be actually solving the issue by going to the cause, removing the banked up soil around the house and using products to let the walls breathe.

Damp - and the solution!

We're still doing some tweaking to the plans, nothing serious and mainly centred around the kitchen. We also have to make a decision about the flooring in the hall and dining room, at the moment they are concrete but we can't give the final measurements to the company making the doors until we have decided what is going on top.

Back in the barn I've been making full use of the new kitchen and last night made Ottolenghi's 'very full tart'

As always please feel free to follow/friend here on Facebook for more snippets of life in Corrèze.

The little Correze kitchen

I don't know how big Rachel Khoo's Paris kitchen was, her apartment measured 21 metres squared so I'm guessing not huge. Neither is ours, in fact it measures 2.5 metres x 3 metres, a far cry from my last one at  Nelson House

Nelson House kitchen

When we bought the house it had just a ceramic sink and drainer plus an ancient oak armoire. Because we will be moving the kitchen downstairs it's not worth investing in, but we still need to live with it for quite a few months. Improvisation and re-purposing were the answers.

My old dressing table has become a worktop and cutlery drawer and two trestle legs from an Ikea desk hold the Nespresso machine and vegetable box. An emptied Christmas hamper is filled with herbs and spices. We had the foresight to buy a cheap Ikea wooden kitchen trolley which at least gives us a clean prep. area and holds our single induction hob. We also have a halogen grill and a slow cooker. The fridge is in the sitting/dining room which is also where the china resides in another armoire (we were fortunate enough to 'inherit' six of them). When Andrew returned from London he brought back a wall mounted drainer and utensil holder. Nearly forgot but we also have a freezer in the garage.

I've got quite used to it now, meals take a bit more planning and I use more tinned food than I have ever done but they are making life easier. I miss baking but with a boulangerie/patisserie two minutes walk away it's not a real hardship.

Yesterday...

... was glorious. The first dry day in ages, it was sunny and warm.

Morning walk in Correze

So did we get to play outside? Hell yes! 258 concrete blocks, 2 tonnes of sand, a couple of lintels and a few bags of cement all needed moving.

Welcome to a French renovation project!