MARCH UPDATE

March 2005 will remain in my memory for the rest of my life, although to be honest I can’t remember that much detail.  It’s a bit of a blur really; I had the inspired idea of keeping a daily incident diary but never had the time to do it.   We started the month quite calmly, knowing we had 21 days to finish Jasmin, move into it and clean up La glycine before our first guests arrived.  It seemed a huge amount of time to do not that much in, were we ever wrong.

When we started on Jasmin, we had a plan of action to start at the top and work our way down but somehow we ended up doing the exact opposite.  The downstairs was virtually finished bar the tiling while upstairs was a skeletal mess.  Ian installed the water heater, and the rest of the shower room without incident and it all worked – no leaks, wonderful.   Too good to last, we then had a massive problem with the bedroom wall, although the loose grout had been stripped off, there was still a lot of discoloration coming through and we had used up the one can of stain sealer Ian had brought from the UK.  I trawled through the local DIY shops and eventually found something similar in paint form in Bricomarche in Redon.  It took 3 coats and 2 tins to stop the stain coming through.   Then just in case, I decided to paint the wall a dark red/terracotta colour.   In order to use up what paint we had and not spend more money, I managed to mix it with an apricot base and various colourisers.   Looks good too, much warmer and more intimate – perhaps we can eventually market the gite as a honeymoon special.

My next job was washing down the beams downstairs, yuk, but they looked much better for it.   After we painted the whole place, Ian started to lay the floor tiles and was making real progress when he suddenly realised that they had become 2 mm larger.   We bought (we thought) enough tiles for all 3 gites at the outset but then recently had to buy some more and the new ones although in the same boxes, same name, same listed dimensions and colour were smaller!    Those were the ones Ian had just laid and now had to take up.  He was a little annoyed for a while but managed to reuse them in out of sight places.

We then moved in, again calling on Maggie & Alistair for help with shifting and lifting and again many thanks to them.   Alistair did a grand job of clearing the mess and levelling the ground in front of jasmin and Ian paved a patio area the following day.  Time was now marching on and on the 19^th we had to spend the whole day at Coeur de Chene, brushing off the winter cobwebs for guests coming from Minnesota.   Then back to cleaning and dressing La glycine for the 21^st, I never realised how much time that would take and used to laugh at the people depicted in TV programmes rushing about like headless chickens minutes prior to guest’s arrival, I assure you they now have my every sympathy and understanding.   For every job done there were still endless others waiting, but after 2, 12 hour days and much stress, I emerged broom in hand 15 minutes before their estimated arrival.

It was such a very strange feeling, a kind of vacuum where we suddenly had nothing to do, or at least nothing with a deadline attached to it.   We sort of drifted around on Sunday and slowly started to come to on Monday and by Wednesday were ready to attack the next project.   The lean to roof had to be replaced and the area cleaned up, as it was the first thing visitors would see and it was a mess.   The roof up to now had been half terracotta tiles and half corrugated iron so that had to all come down, timbers replaced and retiled.  As one of the main house lean toos had had the same tile we hoped there were enough good ones to do the job and with only a few to spare the job was done.   We then cleaned up in plenty of time to welcome our next guests.

Since then we have certainly slowed down and are now just doing small bit and pieces but the weather has turned against me (now that I have the time) to do my veggie garden.   I managed to get half my chitted spuds in before the sky opened and that took a lot longer because I ran into another bottle vein in the ground I thought I’d cleared.  This time the harvest was 30 assorted bottles of varying sizes.   Why did they bury their bottles?

All I have left to do now apart from the garden, is to tidy up Le chevrefeille as it became a bit of a storage area in the transition stages and I am due to be inspected by the local tourist office to get my star ratings – watch this space.  I am also think of doing a Portes Overtes and inviting the mayor and others (Tourist office suggestion) as well as neighbours which might help us to get to know them now that we have the time for a social life.

Well, one year and 2 weeks to the day we have finished the project, we feel sad in a way but definitely relieved.  The only fly in the ointment is lack of money but hopefully things will pick up and we will have enough to tick over on.    We certainly have no regrets.