The Build

Our first year in France saw us with a fairly soft start to life here - we almost had the year off apart from settling in, Stephen's operation, setting up the potager and making decorative changes to our two person gite and running this gite plus managing four others for someone else over the summer. This new year sees an enormous change to all this as we commence the conversion of a granary into accommodation for six to eight people.
This decision to do the build ourselves was precipitated by our reluctance to take on an enterprise to do the work as the costing of it was extortionate. We are still seeking more advice from other builders and workers to put it in some kind of perspective but the devis outlined to us by the building company recommended by our architects was very off-putting. Included in the quote were large sums of money quoted for removal of rubble to the dechetterie, and the washing of old stones to re-use in the build. We quickly realized if we were to get anywhere with this we would have to do the majority of the work ourselves. We started only a couple of days before new year by picking off the old plaster rendering to expose the stone underneath on the inside of the house. This job was made harder by the fact that we did not have quite the right tools. A friend was supposed to lend us an air compressor tool to speed up the process but we had finished the job by hand before they had a chance to get it to us!! Although a very messy and painstaking job it did come off fairly easily except for some tough areas where Stephen used the SDS hammer drill. The house already has some charm to it - the downstairs area is openplan with a large stone fireplace in tact and an incredibly pretty oak staircase in need of some repair but otherwise in excellent condition leading to the upstairs. In some ways the process of having to take on the build ourselves gives the entire mission an extra dimension. We can feel ourselves becoming consumed by this job - each day we imagine the house as it will be when it is finished and in the meantime we are very much linked with seeing the house emerge. There are times when even in this short span of days that we have been hard at work that I feel completely overwhelmed by it all. This has to be the most ambitious building work we have ever undertaken and I am terrified we can't do it. But there is actually a lot of things that we can do - and this type of conversion lends itself well to the would be do it yourself builder.

There is a raw pragmatism to the construction of these wonderful houses - two hundred and fifty years ago methods and materials were simple but effective. Everything that has created the house has been forged from stone and oak and dirt. The house possesses atmosphere already. Without quite knowing how we'll get there I do feel we shall achieve it. Already we have taken trailer loads of gravel and plaster to the dechetterie saving ourselves much money. Also picking off the plaster is a saving of a few more euros. Our next plan is to clean the beams of their black coating - we were going to use a sandblaster but this is an extremely expensive tool. We have been told the cleaning agent SanMarco lessive works. We bought some today and will give it a go tomorrow. The black on the beams seems very stubborn and impossible to shift. It will be a miracle if this stuff works. This entire project will be made more difficult by the fact that Stephen will be going back to UK in bursts to bring in some much needed income.