End in sight

Sort of. 

Over the last year I've been walking into our building site with mixed feelings, but in the last couple weeks positivity is gaining hold as we reach the slightly lighter, and more creative tasks. 

The space is beginning to look like a dwelling rather than dumping ground of tools, discarded building materials and renovation debris. Our fabulous builder friend has finished his time with us, the electricians and plumbers have done their mysterious works and now it's down to the family team to complete the rest, which we can do, I think.

                                                                                before

                                                      after - and not finished, obviously

There are still large gaps in the form of windows and doors and as with everyone else trying to renovate at the current time, there are delays but ours are being constructed and will hopefully be installed this month. I've learned a lot over the months: much new French language especially building vocabulary; tiling, plaster boarding, grouting, jointing, basic masonry; organising the order of the various artisans, making the right strength coffee for them, etc.

Some of the rooms have obvious uses - the kitchen and bathroom, others, less so. The salon really needs a wood burner but due to the height of the main house it's apparently not possible; it also has the staircase taking up a chunk of space. Maybe it won't be the salon, more a dining area, the main room upstairs. It'll gradually become obvious as we pass through the plasterboard-jointing/paint phase and we get to source various rescue bits of furniture from our amazing local charity places.

                                                   The space that became the bathroom 

Today will be continuing the wood ceiling in the kitchen, tiling in the bathroom and preparing for guests while imagining a time I can invite them into the new space and not into the house; it's been fine but building site plus guests has been an interesting cleaning challenge . . .

                                    Ezra's work boots which finally pegged out this morning...

More things I know nothing about

We have B and B guests arriving and suddenly the loo broke down and the cooker . . . The loo looked fairly straight forward and I did some DIY in the cistern; this worked for a while providing you gave the button three 'clonks' perhaps not something to have to request of your 'invitees'.
I tried to improve on it and then broke the whole thing. No plumbers answering phones, so I went to the plumber's merchants and spoke to a biker who was delightful: didn't sell me anything unnecessary, explained what to do with the thing I had bought and gave me the number of a local reputable plumber in case it - me, failed.
Yeah . . . instructions! bits of ratchety plastic! things to unscrew, tighten again, lose down the bog . . nope, need the right person for the job. Mark can play extraordinarily complex bits of Scriabin or Chopin but faced with a dribbling loo and a spanner or two - nope, encore. Luckily the plumber was free; came round with his backpack of tools, accepted a glass of water and tamed the bog - in about ten minutes. Lesson to be learned, hm - yes, don't DIY unless you have an awful lot of spare time and patience. There are people who know about theses things, just as I know about . . . lots of other things.
The cooker . . . Oh, God, what a thing of fearful complexity. From the outside it looks Aga-like; friendly, solid, dependable, but when the 'special man' (electrician had sucked in his teeth and advised a specialist) unbolted it all and took the top plate off, it was full of wires and tiny skinny bits of metal as fragile as a spider's leg.
I went and tackled something simpler - cleaning the bathroom (I'm good at this - water, Jif, scrub, done) while he talked to himself - 'Alors, donc . . . cette fil blue, hm, pourquoi ça . . . ah, d'accord. Bon . . .alors, donc . . . cette fil marron, hm', etc. After two hours he announced he knew what it was, and that IT would have to be ordered and that he would have to come back again when I had agreed to the price of the thing that was to be ordered, uh?
I suggested I didn't have much choice and perhaps he could just order it. Suppose I could haunt ebay for a few days, but time wasted and possibly not the right IT would be even more annoying. So Mark will have to suppress his cake-making urge for a few days and we won't be able to offer our guests home-made bread, but at least the loo works.

Loo and oven I probably could mend