The rest that needs doing up...

We have a long haul ahead before we have the place looking ready for taking guests but these pictures will show you other rooms of the house that we need to work on.  Nothing major needs doing but it all certainly needs a coat of paint and some new carpeting for the upstairs.  The plan is to add 2 ensuites up stairs and one room will not have an ensuite.  The upstairs we will rent out to guests once we get the B&B open and our bedroom will be downstairs in what would be a dining room.  I will keep the blog updated as we make the changes and any useful tips would be much appreciated if you have any?!

Jacks Room - he loves the flowery pink border round the room!  That will definatley come off on the next trip.

There is an area off his room behind the door to the left of the picutre that an ensuite shower room will fit in so this room will become a letting bedroom once it has been done up.

Harriets room - no space here to put an ensuite but large enough to take a double and a single bed so we would have the option of renting this along with one of the ensuite rooms if for a family and they were happy to share the bathroom.

Our bedroom will also become a letting bedroom - there is a large room off our bedroom that will become an ensuite bathrooom, we will be able to fit a bath and a shower in this room and it will be the main letting room. There is more room than this picture shows you so it should be a good sized area.

The landing is in good condition and all it really needs is a coat of paint and new floor covering.  Most of the windows in the house are white pvc which wouldn't of been our choice as I would of preferred a wood colour but as most of the house is done it is pointless spending out when we don't need too.  Just our bedroom and Harriets room need new windows as they are the older ones.

The staircase I think is lovely and is the original staircase but long term it will need replacing or at least new treads put in to make it very secure!  That is on the list somewhere for the next year or two!!!  Hopefully Simon you will take the hint for your trip over from Australia!

The stairs then come down into a lovely large hallway which has been retiled in lovely tiles.  The walls are not too my taste but a quick roller of paint should sort that out. When I give the measurements to Rosemary I hope I will have a nice curtain to replace the one covering the door through to the attached barn!

Hopefully after the next couple of trips I will be able to update these photo's with the changes as we would certainly like to get the work done before we have our first visitors this summer!

Plumbing - French Style!!!!

The shower and toilet have both seen better days and with 3 of us using the shower by the time it came to the 3rd person getting in it couldn't cope anymore and most of the water ended up over the floor.  In the kitchen there are two sinks side by side which look fairly new and are in a ceramic material.The sinks look  really nice as does the rest of the kitchen, it was one of the things I couldn't remember well from originally viewing the house so it was a relief to know that it was all functioning as it should be!  We will eventually be moving the kitchen into the downstairs of the attached barn but that is on next year's list.  We also knew before making the purchase that the Fosse Septique needed replacing which is going to be a major job and expense and one that now looks like it will need doing sooner rather than later.  We discovered, after washing our red paintbrushes off in the bowl and pouring the water down the right hand sink, that the water then appeared on the bathroom floor, quite how that happens I don't know but something is wrong somewhere with the plumbing!

So... it was off to Mr Bricolage in Guret where we bought a brand new sparkley white toilet and a lovely shower cubicle and did a quick shop at E LeClerc and grabbed a quick buffett lunch before starting back for Bousseresse.  As we pulled out at the top of the hill the van steering suddenly wouldn't work well and on pulling over Phil discovered the fan belt had come off.  For those of you that know us well you will know that a Waters trip is not complete unless something has gone wrong with our transport!  Phil managed to get to a local Quick Fit type of place and with limited French discovered that they couldn't help but they kindly pointed us in the right direction... or so we hoped!  No they couldn't help either and the nearest Mercedes dealer was 10km away which with no fan belt was going to be a difficult trip especially when we discovered it was nearly all up hill.  We set off stopping every couple of kilometers to let the van cool down before crawling off again.  Finally we got to the Mercedes dealer and he couldn't of been more helpful, again no English spoken so the whole experience was a great learning curve for our French and we now know where to go if anything else should happen!

Phil set about the next morning installing the new toilet with sucess but ran out of time for the shower so that will have to be done on the next trip.  I can imagine as we progress through this venture there will be alot of running out of time and waiting till the next trip for a lot of things.  However here is the new loo!!

A Splash of Colour.

The lounge hasn't been painted for some time and was quite a dirty white and also made the room feel stark and cold so a touch of colour was called for.  The Fireplace is beautiful and has a huge log burner which was a delight to sit in front of in the evenings.  Phil wasn't too sure on my colour choice but hopefully you will agree that it adds warmth to the room.  These are the pictures before we started painting..

 The floor has lovely original tomette tiles which unfortunatley have an uneven surface but they do give character to the room.  Back in the summer when we first viewed the house it was about 85 outside and on entering the lounge it was such a pleasure, so cool, so you can see why they have these floors, what the winter will be like though remains to be seen - think I will be needing a fluffy pair of slippers.

Jack and I got started on the painting of the lounge, Jack was a real help and painting the walls with the rough plaster was quite frustrating  you had to go back over what you had done to get rid of the white bits especially when it came to putting the Cranberry paint on!  It was great however to see it all coming together and by the time I got my new Laura Ashley curtains hung it was really starting to feel like our home.

The other  3 walls are painted in a beeswax colour which is almost like a dark clotted cream, however if you ask Phil he thinks it is smokey pub wall colour, but then he was never very good with colours.

Getting Started!

One of the first jobs was to get on top of cutting the grass which with a petrol mower wasn't the easiest of jobs but good excercise for Phil!  We have since purchased a second hand tractor mower that needs fixing but hopefully by our next trip he will be able to wizz round the fields and keep the grass down.  Our neighbours asked how we would feel about their two horses grazing in the field which we thought was an excellent idea and it was lovely to look out and see them in the field. Plenty of dandelions for them to eat!!

We've Got the keys!

On Friday 8th April 2011 after 8 months of negotiations and paperwork we finally arrived at the Notaires office to sign for our house!  I think we had both spent the few hours preceeding the signing thinking "What on earth are we doing"!  It was a long drawn out process with 57 pages of contract to work through all read to us in French.... note to ourselves ... we must improve our French!!  After both parties had signed all 57 pages the keys were handed over and I can't tell you what a good feeling that was.  We headed off to the "Cafe Chaud" for a celebratory glass of beer with the vendors and our agent who was a fantastic help with all the translation.  We finally arrived at the house at 8pm along with M.Gruin who kindly showed us where all the electrics and water supplies were operated from.  Feeling exhausted the most we could manage was to unpack the van and to drag the mattresses upstairs to sleep on, the rest could be done in the morning.