Cream paint and the turquoise section of the house.

Cream paint

If you remember in my previous “blog” from last year we had to have a new radiator installed in my bedroom due to the fact that we had a “Lake Garda” episode after we turned on the cold water. After a while I noticed that due to the lake, cutting up of the old, very heavy cast iron radiator and the installation of the new radiator my skirting board was not looking good at all. A quick coat of paint over the dingy section was needed.

We had used up all of the cream paint, so new paint was needed, yet another trip to the DIY store. The paint we bought looked like it was the same colour when I started to paint only to realise that it was a different tone of cream after the paint dried. Not one for giving up easily and armed with an almost full tin of paint, I decided that all was not lost, I needed to paint all around the room, around the door and the French windows, and needless to say this job was not going to take a morning to complete!

Master bedroom with the new “cream” paint.

The turquoise section

On our last visit we decided to turn our attention to the “turquoise” section of our home which is through the kitchen door to a hallway which leads to a pantry, boiler room, another room which we hope to turn into an office, the downstairs toilet and utility room and eventually out the courtyard at the back of the property. A lot of work, most of which will need to wait until we move to France because we would like French windows installed from the utility room to the courtyard. We can turn our hands to a variety of DIY but not fitting of French windows, experts need to be called in.

The pantry before we started to paint:-

Gas cylinders in the turquoise pantry.

And after:-

The cream room.

When we have time I would like shelves in this room for preserves and also a chest freezer for the times when the village is cut off from the outside world due to snow and ice, which it was two years ago.

Our side door and hallway, the kitchen door is on the right.

This will be our next job, roll on 2015

The “first leaks of the year” Working holiday

I had better explain the above, every time we go to France for our first working holiday of the year we experience radiator leaks. Our first was the most dramatic with Lake Garda in the bedroom and last year we had leaks from three of the downstairs radiators, not serious and easily fixable.

Well my list gets longer and longer for things to do when we get there:
1 Leave home in the middle of the night for a very early flight, find the airport, then where to park, the usual check in hassles then the long wait for that first flight of the day. With only a few hours sleep this is quite difficult.
2 Arrive in Bergerac, tired, find the rental car firm then find the rental car and find the way out of the airport – it always reminds me of the film ‘A Good Year’, where Russel Crow drives around and around in ever decreasing circles to find the exit of the airport car park.
3 Find a supermarket and shop quickly; it will close at 12’oclock. We have seen people having to leave their shopping and walk out of a supermarket at 12’oclock.
4 Check out the first leaks of the season, mop in hand ready for the deluge of water.
5 Look at and check our new appliances that were fitted over the winter period. See Tah Dah – the on going saga of the Kitchen
6 Have lunch, then clean several months of dust, make up the beds and fall onto them warn out.
7 Measure the interior of the property, so that Adam can create his 3D magic. He will model the interior so we can plan how the furniture will fit.
8 Trip to a brico (DIY store) to buy paint, wood, cupboard doors, knobs etc for the kitchen
9 Paint all of the downstairs, this will take about three or four days.
10 Work on the kitchen, shelves, cupboards, worktops etc.
11 Visit friends. I think that this should really be at number 7
12 Go to the local markets, always a must.
13 Pick up my sister from the airport, her first visit.
14 Visit the local tourist sites, restaurants and of course more markets.
15 A little early in the season for Brocantes, but I am hopeful.
16 Another pre dawn trip to the airport, arrive back in England and sleep for a week.

Our gorgeous village of Daglan, just to get us in the mood for our visit.

The village square, Daglan

This is a small part of the large park at the back of my favourite Chateau in Daglan.  You can just see the forest that surrounds the village in the background.

Daglan

Sarlat – this picture always reminds me of Christmas Carol:-“up a lane, where it has so little business to be. That one could scarcely help fancy it must have run there when it was a young house, playing hide and seek with other houses, and had forgotten the way out again”.

Christmas Carol?

Sarlat – we shall be sitting at a local café next week sipping our morning coffee before we go and buy the fresh produce for dinner.

Sarlat

This will be our last “blog” for a few weeks, I will have lots to tell when we return

Lake Garda in the bedroom

Well, we had decorated all of the bedrooms the previous year and drained all of the radiators for the cold winter period, however we did not expect Lake Garda on our return to our home in France the following May. We had been in our home about twenty minutes, Paul had turned on the water, when on looking up at the light fitting in our lounge said, “There is water coming from the light fitting”. At which point, he ran to turn everything off, and Adam and I ran upstairs. This is what we saw, an indoor Lake Garda, complete with a water fall.

Lake Garda

The radiator had exploded because the small amount of water left in the bottom of the radiator had frozen during an intensely cold snap in the winter months -18C for nearly two weeks.

The bed had to be covered, on top and underneath and the two carpets pulled up and taken away. Paul ran to our friends for help, they in turn arranged for a plumber to come to inspect the damage. I cannot thank Loren and Jan enough in their help over the next few days we would have been lost without them.

Starting to remove the sodden carprt

Underneath the carpets, (which I am sure was glued down with superglue) was a substance called screed (like a concrete skin), that only comes off a centimetre at a time.

Carpets seemd to be fixed with superglue

This is sparky, (Paul), cutting through the radiator, even cut into four sections the radiator was so incredibly heavy it took two people to carry each section down stairs. We had to decorate once more and order a new radiator.

Sparky