
Sunshine and storms
Hello again
I hope you are enjoying the blog? It is great to be writing it a little more regularly again. I would love to hear your views and find out what you would like to hear more about.
Our week has been filled with thunderstorms, sunshine, renovation work (more on that shortly) and of course regular work. We have to pay the bills after all! There are times when I would love to stop work for a while and focus on making better progress with the house, write more for the blog and get on with my upholstery course (there are a lot of upholstery projects dotted around the house), not to mention have time to get out and about with my camera. However as a freelancer, no such luck!
On the subject of thunderstorms, some of which were pretty scary and caused powercuts, the welcome rainfall has meant that the garden is full of produce at the moment – the first courgettes are ready, yellow and green, the cherry tomato plants look like they will have a good crop and the fruit trees are looking promising. It is the first year since we arrived here that we have masses of quinces on the ancient quince trees. Let’s hope they all ripen, along with the grapes, pears, plums and apples.





The markets are also beginning to fill up with lots of summery fruit and vegetables so a whole new range of dishes has come into play. A seasonal food and recipe post will be appearing soon. Courgettes, aubergines, peppers and tomatoes are in abundance and the air is filled with the sweet scent of ripe peaches, nectarines, apricots and cherries. We took a trip to St Antonin’s Sunday market last weekend and came back with a basketful of peaches, apricots and cherries, along with beautifully fresh salads. A gorgeous tray of peaches cost only 5€ so clearly was not to be left behind. I am keen to get on with some summer chutneys but we are still waiting for the cooker to be connected properly to the gas.

I think I mentioned we had finally got a fabuous new cooker – four years in the making, a bargain as it was ex-display. We have managed with the cooker we inherited with the house – an old gas cooker with a temperature dial that bore no resemblance to gas marks, centigrade heat or anything. It was a bit like cooking with an AGA – guess roughly what the temperature is and cook! Over the 4 years I have learnt what needs what temperature and cooking time. Now I seem to be having the relearn using a regular cooker that does what it says it does! When the delivery people arrived to install it we discovered that our gas connection was not quite up to code! Oops. Who knew?! I have to confess it did always look a little dodgy but as we are on bottled gas that you keep in the house (I have got used to this now), we just assumed this was correct. Mais non! Long story short a plumber arrived to quote on the job and discovered we also have a major water leak, which explains the damp floor and problem with a wall in the séjour. We had suspected that it was a bit of damp from the ground, but of course that would have been too straightforward. Now we wait for the work to be done.

We have been busy painting and mending too, trying to finish off the many unfinished jobs in time for the various visitors we have over the summer. On Sunday after the market and coffee out, we set to and emptied, cleaned and moved the enormous dresser that has stood in the kitchen for probably about 30 years. Luckily we have some wheels to put under such items as there was no way I would have been able to move either part very far. The shelf part went out through the kitchen door to what is now the dining room. The bottom part had to go out of the kitchen into the garden, be wheeled along the terrace and then hoisted up two stone steps into the dining room and dragged on blocks and a sheet across the room to its position. We were hugely impressed once it was done that neither of us had caused ourselves any injury, and we had managed to finally move it. Another project years in the making. Now it needs painting but that will have to wait until we are ready to decorate that room.


We did make a bit of a discovery moving it, remnants of some old wallpaper hinting at the room’s decor once upon a time. We also finally got to see how curved that bit of the kitchen wall is. Almost a whole floor tile difference from the start to the corner – just in that small part of the whole external wall. I am sure that this part of the house is the oldest and certainly the walls in the kitchen are the most uneven, none of them straight. They are also the thickest walls of the house. This part is built about 90cm (3ft) below ground level, and as the walls have been plastered probably with the wrong type of plaster, and repaired with, in some places, what looks like concrete, there are unsurprisingly some damp issues! Old stone walls need to breathe; they were built to allow the house to breathe and regulate temperature, and worked along with the original windows and doors. Many walls have since been covered in plaster on the inside and render on the outside. Sadly in our case, as with many others, the wrong type which causes damp problems. If we could afford it we would remove the render on the outside for a start and lime render it or ideally repoint leaving exposed stone. However we have a lot of render (crépis in French) and it goes up 4 floors to the tower, so not really an option at the moment. Likewise inside, we cannot replaster everywhere. We are just patching up as best we can for now.




We have also made some progress on various other projects. More will be revealed in a renovation post, but for now a hint. We have put up a new panel, stencilled an alcove, made a little progress in the main entrance hall and added a new light to one of the bathrooms, along with changing lilac tiles to white using some amazing tile paint. Look out for future posts on the various rooms involved. It has been busy, long days and some major furniture moving, as I mentioned, all rather overdue, but worth it to feel like we are moving forward with our plans – finally. I am impatient to keep going but do have to slot in some work, some food shopping and various jobs that need doing more routinely! C’est la vie.





For now I wish you a lovely remainder of the weekend. I have just enjoyed a refreshing swim after painting the next coat in the hall. The sun is out, the temperature is rising and the water is perfect. Now back to the next painting job – a brocante mirror purchase that will soon grace the entrance hall, but not in its current colour – magenta.

I hope you all have a great week ahead. Thank you for keeping us company in France.
A bientôt
Ali xx

