La Maison

 This month, we put our mind to sorting out the external stone walls in the main house – it was a good month – making a good amount of progress:

The Sitting room

 What an absolute delight – knocking the house down with a 5kg lump hammer – I couldn't wait to get started, sooooo satisfying.

Whilst Dan pulled down the ceiling:

I striped off the revolting wallpaper, tore down the plasterboard and took a hammer to the walls, removing the crumbling plaster to reveal the stonework beneath:

Happy as larry the lamb was I, swinging at the dividing wall between the kitchen and sitting room, with the lump hammer. With great thuds, the red brick and mortar fell to the floor – it was superb!!!

Until I found out I was 6 weeks pregnant! – Whoops, well that was a surprise! Earlier than planned but both of us are overjoyed, once we had got our heads around it!

We should now, definitely star on an episode of “No going back” – “Just as progress starts, the fiancee falls pregnant,” – oh well, at least the tomato crop didn't fail!.

We also took out part of the back wall, which used to look like this:

and we made an opening for some double doors onto the terrace:

And the view from there will be like this :

The laundry and main bathroom

Just to remind you, the bathroom did look like this:

Dan demolished all of the exterior walls so that we could rebuild in its place, a double storey pigeonnier on a larger footprint.

We took part of the roof off the house, where access to the pigeonnier will be gained from the main house:

I suppose it's going to look worse before it looks better but suddenly it all feels a bit daunting – so much to do!

We started rebuilding it by constructing breeze block walls. We put in the beams for the first floor:

Thereafter we placed insulation (Styrofoam) on the exterior of the breeze blocks and then started to build a stone skin around it:

A few more days needed to finish that!

The main bedroom

We made an opening for a new window in the gable end wall of the main bedroom:

So the whole of the gable end now looks like this:

Just need to sandblast it and point it now!

Bedroom 2

Here is a picture of the room before – with some crazy door to nowhere:

We have built up the door in stone to make the door into a window:

Visitors

Karen (click here to see Visitors) came to see us mid – August, unfortunately the weather wasn't amazing but warm enough to go in or should I say on the pool:

Of course Karen is braver than me – the water was only 26 degrees:

Karen, as glamorous as she is on her lilo, also got stuck into finding stone for Dan to build walls with - which was a great help.

Later in the month, Polly came again, she also made it into the pool – bravely diving into 22 degrees of water – the baby and I declined – not me, you understand, it's the baby – not keen on cold water! I sat by and ate pain au chocolat – again for the baby's sake!

Will Polly ever get a holiday when she comes here,? Once again, she worked like a trogon, digging and moving earth, chopping wood and like Karen, she also did some stone finding and moving. Again Dan tried to send me back on the plane and keep Polly. I tried to explain that, of course, if I wasn't with child, I would be just as useful but Dan wasn't sure that that was quite the case!