Snowy brittany

It's been snowing here! Quite a rare occasion for Brittany - the children have been having great fun - school has been cancelled for two days and I have lost count of the number of snowmen, ladies children and of course, snowdogs, igloos etc that have been built!

Pomme finished

Hooray! It's finished!

I started to renovate Pomme in the middle of January, four months ago. I have replaced the staircase, doors, and windows. A wall has been knocked down, a ventilation system put in, cut granite stones for the front step, decorated all the walls, replaced damaged doors in the kitchen and laid a laminate floor upstairs.

Several coats varnish, wood stain, paint later, I have replaced all nets and curtains, bought new furniture, and, even though I say it myself, I am really proud of it.

The finishing always takes more time than you anticipate and I had to move the furniture back in on the 3rd May due to the next door gite where I was storing being rented out. So I have taken three weeks to complete the finishing touches.

Staircase

The main reason for renovating Pomme gite was because of the staircase. The original staircase had been put in 'on a budget' and was a straight, open treaded pine staircase. You can see it behind the rocking chair on the left of the first picture. Because people often don't like open treaded staircases, the previous owner had nailed a piece of plyboard on the back. The problem with this is that the treads were not wide and now your feet could not poke through to the other side, making it feel even more like a ladder!

Very early on, we took off the piece of plyboard, but there was still a problem that where the stairs arrived on the top floor it was on the side the building under the sloping roof. The ceilings are very low and it meant having to bend over at an angle to step onto the upstairs floor. This was acceptable going up, but going down took a bit of getting used to.

Generally people like the gite, finding it cosy and full of character. However during the five years here, I have had two older clients who were not happy at all with the stairs, happily they were in quiet periods and I was able to re-house them in other gites.

The new stairs had to be made to measure, and my main aim was to have them arrive in the middle of the room upstairs, so that the sloping ceilings were not and issue. Stairs take up a lot of room downstairs, so the solution was to move them to one end of the gite and to turn through 90° twice to arrive at the top.

The stairs took about a week to install, the carpenters also built me a stairgate at the top, which I am really pleased with. They are made in a hardwood called Movingui, which is yellow/orange in colour. I experimented on scraps of wood with various stains and varnishes, and eventually decided that it was best with just a clear varnish (the upstairs photo shows the first coat of varnish on the left hand side).

Pomme Renovation

The smallest gite here is called Pomme.

A cute little 2-bedroomed house with sloping ceilings and a downstairs bathroom.

The stairs are very straight and upright and open treads. People are often worried about going up and down them. This coupled with the top of the stairs arriving under the sloping ceiling (you have to duck considerably) led me to take the decision to carry out a major renovation of Pomme this winter.

Starting in January, a local carpenter came to fit new doors and windows, here's the before and after:

Winter work

Sorry that I have been absent for a while. Contrary to most people's impression, winter is my busiest period here with the gites. I spent the time bringing up to scratch the gites for the next season.

This teamed with the fact that I have had problems with my computer and also uploading photos, has led to an empty blog for a while.

Before Christmas, I replaced two of the bathrooms in Cerise. Originally, the bathrooms had showers recuperated from two other bathrooms downstairs in Poire, but the shower trays had to be installed raised from the floor in order for the waste pipes to pass. This together with corner opening doors, made it awkward to get in and out.

The main bathroom shower was taken out completely and I put in a bath with a shower over. Baths are more popular for families with small children.

The ensuite shower doors were replaced with a complete side opening door.

All the pipes in both bathrooms were boxed in, to make it easier for cleaning.

This finished I decorated the hall and replaced the polystyrene ceiling with tongue and groove wood cladding.

Chouette

I have two chimneys in my house, both lined with a stainless steel chimney liner. From time to time a bird comes down the tube and flies into the wood burner at the bottom, this is not a problem (so long as the fire's not lit!), I just open the windows in the room and open the wood burner and off goes the slightly puzzled bird.

The other day I woke up to hear noises to indicate that this had happened. I went downstairs, but could see no bird, so I pulled down the flue that covers most of the tube. After an hour or so I could hear the noises increasing, and out popped a Tawny Owl (Une chouette, which incidentally also means smart or great).

The owl was very sleepy (this being day time for humans and so night time for owls, I presume) and did not want to fly away.

After leaving it there for most of the day, I decided that I needed to move it, so donned some thick gloves and put it in the wood shed. I thought that it would fly away during the night, but the following day it was still there, bearly moving. Oh dear, it was surely suffering from shock, my daughter wanted me to find a dead mouse to feed it, but not have too many dead mice in stock, I left it for another night. Happily it flew during the night and now I can hear it twit-t wooing in the oak tree in front of the house each night. I like happy endings!

Child's Play

Well I did it! It cost a lot of money, but its fantastic, mows and collects wet grass and you can empty the collecter without even getting off your seat!

It is so simple to use that my son, Hugh, mowed the lawn today








Hey, that's great, no more lawn mowing. As a single mum, I'm all in favour of child labour - hey look he can empty it, too!