Tuesday 29 November 2011

The Story So Far

I have decided to write a blog for three reasons; our friend Alan suggested I do one, friends keep asking me to post photos of our progress so far and as I have such a bad memory it will be nice for me to look back on (although I am sure this will be one experience I will not forget in a hurry!).
I am not going to get technical by detailing the R-values of our thermal insulation or the concrete to sand ratio because no one will want to read that (OK  just for you Alan it’s 1:4).  Hopefully it will be a light-hearted overview that you can dip into and enjoy reading.  (Alan, take note - enjoy reading, try to refrain from looking for grammatical errors and smelling mistakes!)
So here goes.  We had previously converted a three walled, dirt floor barn, complete with hay loft, into a comfortable three bed roomed house. Building a new house seemed a much simpler option for a new project.  With that in mind we bought a plot of just less than two acres in the same village. 
We took a chance and bought a Ford digger on eBay from the UK without viewing it!  We took another chance arranging the transportation of the digger with an unknown company.  For a couple of weeks we were being told the delivery was delayed, for all we knew it was digging holes in deepest Mongolia never to be seen again.  She arrived.  I say ‘she’ because she is now called ‘Daisy the Digger’!  Don’t you hate people who give their vehicles names?  We also have ‘Jenny the Generator’, ‘Willy the Wacker’ and ‘Minnie the Mixer’.  Sad!
 We were very excited the day we laid the first block for the garages.  Dad and Fiona (a friend) were on site and there were hundreds of gendarmes and a cavalcade for President Sarkozy’s visit.  No, no he didn’t come to visit us to cut a ribbon or crack a bottle of champagne against the building permission sign; he was visiting a farm down the road.  However, we did get a visit a couple of hours later from an old lady who told us the land belonged to her and we should stop building immediately because she was informing her ‘avocat’  Needless to say, we stopped building and contacted ours!  It was our land, just another Gallic family feud!  A letter was sent to the dear old lady and work resumed.
To date we have completed a quadruple garage with a terrace.  No, we don’t have four cars but Brendan needed somewhere for storage and ‘making things’.

4 comments:

  1. Our car is a Subaru Impreza and we have named it after my dad: it's Tezza the Impreza!

    I'm looking forward to reading your updates.
    Neil

    ReplyDelete
  2. My car's a VW Beetle called "Helga" beause she's Gestapo army green, and our Citroën is called Albal because she's the same colour as kitchen foil. Our French friends think we're nuts. Who cares :-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Half our English friends think we are nuts! It's a good place to be :)

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your comments. Nice to know there is someone out there!