Boys and their Toys

I know I have a bad reputation for spending money on gadgets and toys, however luckily Emily agreed that a Sit-on Lawn Mower was an absolute necessity for the chateau gardens which are huge – over 3 acres! Also, we got a lot of advice about buying something decent that will last and can be easily serviced. So, having used my friend Mike Wood’s awesome John Deere Sit-on around Fontley, I looked around for a French equivalent in a nearby town. Fortunately our neighbouring village of Messeix has a specialist shop that only seems to sell Mowers and Chainsaws – it’s an Aladdin’s Cave! And they are all Viking or Stihl which, I am told, are excellent makes. So with the help of my father I bought the 2^nd best in the range – a Viking MT585.

I can’t tell you how long I have dreamed of owning such a machine.

As you can see the grass was in severe danger of being cut for hay by the local farmers so my first cut was long overdue (which reminds me, I need to find a French Barber!)

It looks much better now and after a further cut this weekend it should start to get its stripes back. The bit in the middle that hasn’t been cut is where Mr Martin has planted some tulips and daffodils. They look pretty but it was a very odd place to put them and I still haven’t worked out what to do about it.

Everything else is starting to grow now and all the bulbs Mr Martin planted at the front are really colourful.

The Virginia Creeper on the wall is a bit slow though, but there are a few buds that are breaking out here and there so within a week it should look very different.

Quick Progress Report

Apologies for not blogging for a while. This is a quick progress report so you can see what has happened in the last couple of weeks then I will add another blog later today to tell you about a great day with the Brocard-Saidi's at Giat agricultural Easter market, a fun meal with all the family at the local bar and a nice day out that Em and I had in Clermont Ferrand after Easter.
Ok, so I'll start at the top of the house and work my way down. Captions are below the photos:

This is Suite 4 Bathroom which Mr Gayton is working on. If you flick down to an earlier post you will see that this had nothing in it before. It is now tiled and half painted.

This is Suite 3 bedroom that my sister, Katie, stencilled and hand painted over Easter. It is easily the most impressive room in the house at the moment. (Wrong bed mind!)

This is Suite 2 which is now completely finished. However as you can see the decorators are using it as there store room so it was tricky to get some nice photos.

Beleive me though, it looks stunning.

You can't quite make it out but our decision to put the wallpaper above the sink and bath was a good one. It looks much better now.

This is a detail shot of the wallpaper so you can see how it reflects the light.

At first I thought the staircase colours were a bit boring - French grey below the dado and off white with a hint of green above.

However, now that the white wood work has been done they look really smart and grown up!

They are using a massive scaffolding structure to paint it.

This is the floor in Suite 1 Bathroom that has now been fully sanded and is about to be varnished. However, you may remember there was some nasty white filler between some of the floor boards. Well it is still there, however it has been given a paint effect by Simon to make it look like wood - incredible! Also, the old green bath is now a nice cream colour thanks to Simon and Emily who did a coat each.

The floor in Suite 1 bedroom has been sanded too.

And so has the sitting room.

The hallway in suite 1 was in a dreadful state.

God knows why I decided to take it on instead of letting Mr Laine do it.

I have to do the loo as well.

Well I have started and it is coming along nicely. This it with its first coat of primer.

And another view.

In the big living room over Easter Richard hung all 5 new chandeliers.

And Emily and Betty hung all of the crystals on them.

I finished painting the whole room at long last. I filled all of the cracks and gaps in the beams and have given all the woodwork a final coat of white satin. It is now looking the part.

And the fruits of Mum's Easter labour are now on display. Her wonderful curtains!

It has been very difficult living without the kitchen these past 2 weeks but this room probably has the most work to be done out of all of them.

They started by pulling down the old foam tiled ceiling.

And taking off all the wall shelves

They are going to put 2 brand new walls up on either side of the fireplace.

The old ceiling was now exposed in all of it ugly glory.

A really bad botch job was done around the top of the chimney

As can be seen more clearly here

A new wall is going up on either side of the window too so there was a lot of demolition to be done. Mr Laine saved the old sink next to the big sink in the window though!

The little window on the same wall as the big window.

A mess of ugly piping and wiring that had clearly just been chucked up was now exposed.

Mr Faye, the electrician had a job just working out what half of it used to do as most of it was now redundant.

The old spot lights were really badly hung.

On the commercial side of the kitchen it was a similar story

Though worse. That is a big metal beam holding up the wooden beam in the middle that is wrotten at the end.

Needless to say we are covering it all up again but this time with a nice plastered ceiling. Which went up really quickly.

All new electrics too and much more uprated with sockets on every wall.

Mr Faye is doing a real pro job. He is bringing all the electrics over to this one point in the commercial side and he is going to install a fuse board with an emergency cut off button - hopefully big and red!

Mr Laine quickly spoiled our fun and covered it all up!

Within 4 days the ceiling and all of its hidden electrics was complete.

The frames for the new walls is now going up (photo taken today)

Snow in April

Katie and Simon had arrived in the early hours of Monday morning after a long drive down from Bristol on Sunday. It hadn’t started snowing when they got to Dad’s cottage and gone to bed. So when Noah got up in the morning and told his mummy that it was snowing, Katie said “Noah, it can’t be, are you sure it isn’t thick fog?”, he exclaimed “it’s snowing, it’s snowing!” and sure enough it was.

I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised because we are in a Ski resort area but the temperatures last week had me believing that summer was here.

So it has been pretty cold here these last few days but it is now brightening up and hopefully another heat wave is on its way.

Progress this week has been frantic. Mr Laine has brought in some extras so we now have the full team. Let me introduce you to them:

The Plumbers

Monsieur Jean-Jaques Degulange and Monsieur Jean-Charles Kettler

The Decorators

Monsieur Joel Laine (the main man)

Monsieur Andre Gayton (his right hand man)

Monsieur Jonathan Calliere (his apprentice)

Monsieur Jean-Claude Protin and Monsieur Jean-Michel Ondet (the extras)

The Electrician

Monsieur Didier Faye

Monsieur Laine is the joker in the pack and is constantly making the others laugh, especially when I am around which is slightly concerning. He speaks pretty good English though and is always greeting me in English which doesn’t really help my small talk that I am trying to improve.

Monsieur Gayton is a gentleman and I think he sticks up for me when the others are all taking the piss out of the Englishman.

The 2 new extras are good fun too and always rattle some small talk off to you when you pass them on the stairs (which is often, because they are painting the stairs!) and then have a little chuckle when I say “oui” when I probably should have said “non” or more likely it does not require a yes or no response.

The 2 plumbers are my best friends though because they are so friendly and never make fun of the Englishman. They don’t like small talk and instead we have intellectual conversations about the pros and cons of geo-thermal heating in the Volcanic region of the Auvergne – seriously!!

So back to the work: Katie, Simon and I get on with it straight away in Suite 3.

Katie has made this beautiful stencil that she is painting in Gold on the Aubergine wall. She will hand finish it afterwards

Simon is creating a painting of an Orchid on a canvas to hang in Suite 4.

I am being less artistic and simply painting out all of the blue. We have got a fantastic Farrow and Ball colour called “Great White” which is slightly pinky and goes really well with the Aubergine F&B colour called Brinjal (Indian for “Aubergine” don’t you know!).

My Mum is making the curtains for the main living room. A long process that requires a lot of dedication. Mum has chosen some beautiful fabrics that she lugged here all the way from Cardiff.

The stair case has been stripped right back and is having its first coat of primer painted on. The “trop grande Anglaise” has whacked his head on the scaffolding at least 3 times already whereas the short Frenchmen just breeze straight under it!

Monsieur Gayton has made Suite 2 a labour of love and filled every hole and crevice in the room. It has taken him ages!

It must be frustrating for him because Monsieur Laine then just strolled in with his big machine and sprayed the ceiling with paint in about 30minutes.

The bathroom in Suite 5 is now fully tiled.

The plumbers have fitted Suite 3 bathroom now, however the curse of the short Frenchman strikes again. I got in the bath and the shower head is at my eye-level!. I had a good humoured conversation with them about it and of course they blamed it on Mr Huin, their boss, (who started the work and is surprisingly quite tall!). Of course they will change it and it only means 2 tiles will have to be reset. Luckily all the other showers have been set at the right height.

With Suite 3 nearly finished I decided to crack on with suite 4, however Monsieur Faye has asked me to do this later because he wants to finish the lighting in there and is expecting to make a mess – Great!

So I got back to the never ending project of the living room and painted the red with more red! We have got a new F&B paint called Radicchio which is much better than the old colour which was too bright. However, when I put it on it looked exactly the same. All was fine though because it went a lot darker when it dried and it now looks great – very pleased with it!

Joe has also been really busy overseeing things and making sure no one is slacking – except for him of course!