The before's, durings and afters 2: The kitchen

The original kitchen with doorway

I thought I could kill two birds with one stone here and show the before's, during's and afters of the wood burner too, but there's so much has happened to bring the kitchen from the three rooms that were, to the one room that is.

It's been a long time coming, but finally, just a little while ago, we finished the kitchen - well, as far as we can for the time being anyway.

When we first got to the house, the kitchen as we now know it, was actually three rooms: a kitchen, a small salon and an entrance vestibule. None of them worked that way for us. We had always dreamed of the 'great room'; that huge expanse of space where we could spread out and just be.

Dark, narrow and very old-fashioned

All the houses we have lived in have had small rooms. Ironic when you think about it as England has some of the biggest people, yet as a general rule of thumb, has houses with some of the most miserly spaces to live in.

Plywood and Formica everywhere -
well-built but had definitely seen better days

Take our last house. It had three bedrooms, yet had a kitchen that was no more that three metres in length - or about ten feet and was less than two metres wide (about six feet or so). I could put my arms out and touch both side walls and if one of us was doing something in it, the other had to stay out. Even the cat was wary of being in there if either of us was. This is what laughingly passes for a family home.

Scary isn't it?

From the kitchen down through the
entrance vestibule

 Our first thought here, was to bash the walls down and open the whole area up, but the closer we looked, the more scary a prospect it became. I'd guess, it wasn't until about our third visit that we actually bit the bullet and began removing the walls. Not a job for the feint of heart, I can tell you.

The original salon

 It's quite a prospect taking walls down in your house. There are structural considerations to be made, but after we had been assured that the walls were not supporting ones, down they came.

As you can see, the pictures give ample reason to want to rip the downstairs to pieces, I mean, we wanted space, not 'spaces' and whilst the demolition wasn't easy and would mean we would have a room downstairs that until we moved in permanently, would feel like a building site, the job had to be done.

It took umpteen trips to the dechetterie with bag after bag of broken bricks, plaster and sundry rubble, but soon we had what we had always wanted - space.

So here we have the beginnings of our great room.

With the walls removed - requiring no small amount of blood, sweat and tears on our part - the amount of space was something bigger than we had on the entire ground floor of our rented house in Blandford.

We've never had anything that big.


We had room to move about, room to put our stuff; stuff that had been in boxes since we left the house before Blandford - about three and a half years in real money.

I spent days and days before we moved here, using Blender to create an accurate 3D representation of our ground floor complete with cupboards, tables, chairs - everything including the kitchen sink!

Once the visualisation was complete, we had the ideas we needed to put the kitchen back together. Of course, so much of what we were hoping to achieve was dependent upon how much money we would have to do it with, and the further into the renovations we got, the more it was looking like it was going to cost us far more than we budgeted.

... and we didn't have bottomless pockets ...

With the addition of our wood burning stove, we're really pleased with the results of our labours. Pen made new curtains for the windows and with the walls and ceiling painted, it's really come to life.

We have elected to leave the floors as they were as being commercial grade tiles, they're more hard-wearing than anything we can afford for the moment, and saves us the bother of trimming the doors.

Exposing the beams was, we feel, an absolute necessity. They add so much character to the room, which at present is a little bland. We haven't had the time to find things to go on the walls other than the pebble clock that I made and the 'Keep calm and carry on' tea-towel that Pen framed, to work as accents.

We had initially planned to keep the original wooden cupboard unit that used to be under the window in the kitchen, but when we pulled it out so that the plumbing could be done, we discovered that it was in foul condition. It had been built when everything everywhere was Formica on ply.

Sadly, on all but the top, the Formica had peeled off, leaving behind the glue that had once held it in place. Had we tried to remove it, it would have been costly and extremely time consuming. Besides, where it hadn't been moved for probably several decades, there was all manner of crud everywhere, making it unhygienic, or to use today's vernacular - minging.

So, as you can see, the old crap that used to be there has now been replaced by new stuff - at far greater expense than we had anticipated, but in the end, it's far more fitting than anything I could have built.

I did have to assemble all the cabinets and drawers, but essentially, the kitchen furniture - worktops, cabinets and drawer units - all came from Brico Depot, coming in at about 20% the price we had seen locally and is far better quality than similar units in England.


It maybe the only room that can be classed as finished, but it's made such a difference.

Next room is the new bathroom...

Amber's first visit to the vet

With a new cat in toe, our responsibilities have gone up quite noticeably. Not only do we have the decorating and finishing off in the house - which might not get finished until long after we're drawing pension - but now we have this tiny little life that right now, is totally reliant upon us

... for everything.

She's no bother though and eats very little, so that's good, but she has to see doctors - or a vet in her case. After the fiasco with the bath, I just knew she wasn't going to like this.

As luck would have it, she didn't mind the journey at all. She was surprisingly easy to get into her cat box, probably because she wasn't big enough to go star-shaped and stop me from putting her in it. Nevertheless, unlike Sammo, who made noises like someone was trying to strangle him all the way from home to the vets, Amber was very quiet.

Better still, she was quiet when the vet - a very nice woman, who had been recommended by the lady that told us about the cat in the first place - poked, prodded and generally woman-handled her before dropping the bombshell.

Now anyone who has read my stories, will know that I have written one or two stories of a transgender nature; mainly those that involve an unexpected change either by magic or accidental. I suppose it would therefore be fitting to be told that Amber was not what we thought she was.

She was - or is a boy.

To further add to our confusion, she wasn't three months old either, but more like two - as denoted by the fact her eyes - sorry, his eyes were still violet-blue.

So Amber was not an Amber after all and try as we might, we were not able to associate our little bundle of fluff with a name that to us, was definitely feminine.

To begin with, Pen didn't think it mattered, as once he got to seven to eight months old, he would be neutered anyway, making him if anything, A-sexual.

"I don't care," I grumbled. "It's a girly name and he's a boy - apparently."

"Says the man whose name in French sounds just like Nicola?"

"Yes and I don't like that anymore than he's going to like being called Amber. It's a girl's name."

The upshot was, we decided a name that was more appropriate for a boy cat was in order - regardless of the fact that he would only continue to be male for the next six months or thereabouts and we began considering alternatives to Amber as a name.

He was not precisely ginger, and we began tossing other names into the mix like Oatmeal, Butterscotch and other gender non-specific names, but nothing really stuck. At least, not until I began calling him Biscuit Brain. Somewhat derisive I know, but it was because of his clumsiness and his propensity for doing completely daft things, having us in stitches; laughing like drains.

To cut a long story short, Biscuit has stuck - though I don't always drop 'Brain'. Not only does it kind of fit, but he's actually responding to it and in the month we have had him, he's doubled in size and daftness.

True, he's lost a lot of that clumsiness that he, like all kittens seem to have and replaced it with sheer lunacy, enjoying nothing more than racing and tear-arsing around the kitchen, arms and legs akimbo, whilst dragging his favourite toy - a bit of gardening twine with a bit of paper tied to one end - around in his mouth.

Yup, he's going to continue to be a handful. He's learning how to jump with height and distance increasing on an almost daily basis and as he has settled in with us, his confidence and curiosity have also increased, meaning that there are fewer places in the house that he won't go nosing around.

He's certainly keeping us on our toes, but makes up for it by being extremely cute and cuddly, which has made a really nice change, since our previous cat, Sammo, was such an ornery bugger.

With the cold weather upon us, we spend many a pleasant evening relaxing in front of the wood burner, watching one of our favourite shows on the TV, whilst polishing the cat.

See; I told you he was cute ...

Amber's shower

Amber. The eggcup-sized moggy

As some of you may know, we added another member to our family a week ago in the form of the three month-old, 454 gramme, Amber - so named by us, largely because of her colour.

We weren't actually looking for a new pet, but we'd kind of decided that after Sammo - a black short-haired male cat that we got from the Cat's Protection - we wanted a girl cat, as they seem more affectionate and far less obstreperous.

Amber turned up by word of mouth. A neighbour asked if we were interested in a little girl kitten and she didn't have to ask us twice.

We discovered she was living in someone's garage, which didn't bode well, but off we went to go see whether we'd want to take her. Actually, whether we wanted to wasn't really an issue. We had already decided that provided she had a heartbeat, we'd want her.

She is the smallest cat I have ever had in my hands and our first kitten; our other cats both being rescue cats and fully grown when we got them. Amber, we were told, was just three months old and not a lot bigger than the eggcup she's photographed beside. Her mother was a tiny marmalade-coloured tabby, while her father was a ginger tom - hence the sort of biscuit colour she has. The name Amber just seemed spot on for her.

Once home, she took to us immediately and shared herself between us, which is more than can be said for Sammo, who was a right vindictive bastard. He didn't like to be touched anywhere other than his head and then only sometimes. He was rarely demonstrative with his affections and only very occasionally graced Pen with his presence. He was marginally better with me, but still left me with numerous scars and reasons to use his insides to string my guitar.

Amber however has proved she is happy with both of us and we definitely feel we made a good choice in taking her in.

De-fleaing

All has not been sunshine and roses though, as Amber came to us with a very bad flea infestation - something we didn't notice in the gloom of the garage we saw her in. Anyway, we bought a flea collar and the problem did lessen, making her a much less itchy cat, but it did not alleviate the irritation from the dirt the fleas had deposited. So we figured that some anti-flea shampoo and a good clean-up would probably do the trick.

Now, we were both avid watchers of programmes on Discovery back in England like, 'Animal Cops - Houston' and had often seen the guys at the Houston SPCA, shampooing kittens to rid them of fleas and their dirt. It didn't look difficult - in fact, the animals concerned always appeared grateful and never got violent in any way.

Well the truth there is that it was either trick photography and the wonders of Hollywood, or they had been tranquilised. Cats are notoriously hydrophobic and Amber was no different. However, at this stage, I was under the misguided impression that since she was so young, she might well take it in her stride and realise as soon as the warm waters began rinsing away those blood-sucking parasites, it actually felt good.

Dream on, buster.

Regardless of how she was going to take it, I took her upstairs to the bathroom feeling a little like Androcles - with a very small lion. We had thought about giving her her treatment in the kitchen where it was warm and the surroundings familiar, but once we'd read the instructions on the flea shampoo and the fact she was going to have to sit around for five minutes before being rinsed off, perhaps the bath was the best place to do it.

It seemed such a good plan.

We were not stupid enough to tell Amber what was in store, I mean, even our Rotty was able to spell well enough to know that 'W', 'A', 'L', 'K', 'I', 'E', 'S', meant fun, so we were not about to take it for granted that she wouldn't suss out that she was in for something she wouldn't like - even if that dislike was just out of some cat-only-knows principal.

I gently placed her in the bath and set about arranging the towels and shampoo within easy reach, while her mewling got louder and louder, a noise that worsened as soon as I turned on the tap to run the water until warm.

The agitation clearly showed as she tried her damnedest to get out of the bath. I couldn't help laughing. She looked so comical as she slipped and slid around the bath, going star-shaped a couple of times, but at the same time, I could tell she was scared and didn't want to be there, her plaintive cries tugging vigorously at my heart strings.

"It won't take long," I told her as comfortingly as I could, but my words fell on deaf ears.

Regardless of how much discomfort she felt right then, I knew doing it would make her feel a hundred times better. I had to see this through and picked her up, taking the shower and getting her wet for the shampooing stage. As I doused her with the gentle running water, she became even less happy with this than she had been - which isn't saying much, and who can blame her? Despite her tiger-like stripes, it didn't in any way mean she was a water lover.

Clearly, she wasn't one of those.

Worse, she seemed to shrink in size, her normally fluffy coat lying slick against her tiny body, making her look small enough to fit into the eggcup. In her bedraggled state, dripping and looking extremely forlorn, my heart strings were once again tugged - only harder this time. It's really difficult in these situations to believe that what I was doing would be for the best.

I placed her gently in the bottom of the bath, to get the shampoo, making soothing noises and trying my best to placate her, while her big eyes seemed to be imploring me to stop and as soon as I let go, all hell broke loose.

She made her extreme dislike of the bath and my impending plans abundantly clear, by trying even harder to escape, slipping and sliding around and occasionally managing to get her claws into me as I leaned over the bath - which was bloody painful.

"It's alright," I said as soothingly as I could, placing the shower in the bath then turning the water off, thinking that that may calm her.

Clearly, it wasn't alright and my soothing noises were having absolutely no positive effects whatsoever.

Now, not only was she wet, but she was probably thinking that I hated her and was trying to do something nasty - as if dousing her with water wasn't sufficient - but then I think she caught sight of the shampoo bottle and turned from bananas to completely schitzo.

I took the bottle of anti-flea shampoo and read the instructions again, just to make sure I got it right. Meanwhile, Amber's plaintive cries were getting louder and much more insistent. She was also beginning to struggle a lot more and keeping a firm hold of her was nearly impossible.

'... using 1.5 ml per kilogramme of cat ...' said the instructions and I wondered just how I was going to be able to lather up a whole cat with just 0.75 ml of shampoo. In fact, I wondered what 0.75 ml of shampoo looked like, trying to associate less than a fifth of a teaspoon in shampoo terms.

I just used a little spot of shampoo and began lathering the cat, which set her off into an even higher gear. Her howling could possibly have woken the dead and coupled with my own squawks as claws dug into my wrist, the bathroom suddenly became extremely noisy.

At this point I can only say that transmogrification - or in this case, trans-moggy-fication is factual. The normally placid little ball of fluff suddenly transformed into a cross between a set of twenty ninja stars and an out of control chain saw.

The good thing was the dirt that dripped from her fur was astonishing. She may not have been happy, but she was clean.

Worse was to come though, as although she calmed slightly when the rinse cycle was applied, I had to repeat the process, this time with a five minute wait in between the application and the rinse.

As I tried to repeat the process, I have to question the logic in producing flea shampoo for cats that is going to be used by the general public. If it's not difficult enough trying to give a cat a pill or put it into a carrying basket, the concept of giving a cat a bath can't even be considered in the same league - especially not for the average cat owner.

My arms, wrists and hands were systematically being mauled, slashed and generally eviscerated and something that dry, fitted on the palm of my hand had become something else entirely. It was akin to fighting an octopus with a cutthroat razor on the end of each of its tentacles.

Definitely not for the faint of heart.

Probably worse was the way this little beasty made me feel afterwards. I mean, I cut the process time of the shampoo down to three minutes as I simply couldn't take her yowling anymore. I dried her off and went next door into the office to cool off with her wrapped in a towel. She was shaking and I have to confess to wondering whether I had done her irreparable damage - unwittingly, you understand.

The next day

Now this was a complete turnaround.

Prior to being given her bath or shower, she was itchy, which resulted in almost constant biting at herself. The day after, this had all but gone. She was bouncy, soft and gentle, displaying those typical behavioural patterns one normally sees in kittens. 

Since then, it has been like owning a different cat: one that almost constantly has us in stitches thanks to her exploits.

The shampooing did the trick, but I really wouldn't recommend it.

Hitler's Bunker

Now, this is a little behind what's actually happening, but that's because I haven't been able to work on the blog for a while.

When last I left any mention of what was going on, work had reached the stage where we had just had our first wood delivery. A massive amount of interest that generated too, I must say. Mind you, I can't blame you. How interesting can ten cubic metres of chopped wood be?

Our electrical cabinet before the work was completed.
Notice there isn't a fuse in sight - nor is there an earth -
just to make things really interesting

Well, shortly thereafter, we got the electrics finished. We didn't think that constituted much to see as far as that was concerned, since I'd already posted pictures of the electrical dreadlocks that spewed from various places around the house.

I can't tell you how good having electrics again felt; being able to plug into sockets and actually have things hanging off the end working.

What we didn't bank on, was the difference in wiring protocols in France, meaning that the nice, simple wiring conventions of England went out of the window, and asking for surface mount to save money in this case, resulted in something totally unexpected.

Here's a list of the typical fuse board in an English two to three bed house:

• GF Lights
• GF Sockets
• Cooker - if it's not gas
• 1st Floor Lights
• 1st Floor sockets
• Immersion Heater - if there isn't an oil or gas boiler.

That's chickenfeed as far as ours is concerned.

Our consumer unit - one or two more trip
switches than a conventional English unit 

You see, in England, one cable effectively feeds all the power sockets on one floor and one for each of any others. They're called ring mains. The same principal goes for the lights and apart from high-drain items, such as the cooker - unless it's gas and the immersion heater for the hot water - unless there's a gas or oil boiler, which would both have their own trip switches or fuses, the electrics are reasonably simple in an ordinary house. The house we moved from had just six trip switches, the one before even fewer.

Obviously, there are more complicated systems out there, but the above list represents a pretty much run-of-the-mill set-up and the simplicity is because almost every appliance from a radio to a hairdryer; TV to food processor has its own fuse in its plug. Each appliance is rated according to its power usage and an appropriate fuse fitted in its plug to protect itself and other appliances on each ring main.

At least, that's the theory. It doesn't always work in practice as my circular saw was fitted with a 13 Amp fuse even though it was rated at just over five. Well there are only three fuses out there aren't there - three, five and thirteen ...

Here in France, there are no fuses in the plugs, but the trips in the 'fuse' box are what look after the household electrics.

Instead of the ring circuit used n Britain, smaller 'spurs' are used. Each of these is usually rated at 16 amps for sockets - higher for electric cookers or water heaters, which gives a total of about 3500 watts per spur and there can only be a maximum of eight sockets on each spur, depending upon their usage.

The above means that there are many more trip switches than in the English 'fuse' box or consumer unit - many times more.

I suppose that's why it's so damnably expensive and why it looked for a while like our electrical cabinet had sprouted dreads.

Our wiring now is a far cry from what was originally there when we bought the house. Were were junction box access points all round the house, but there was no clues left as to where they went, what they fed or what.

To give you a clue as to how tangled our original wiring was, we asked the boys to replace the electrics in the garage. It was duly wired in and tested, but then what was thought to be redundant wiring was removed from the opposite side of the kitchen and the garage went dead. The boys wouldn't have minded so much, but the wiring they disconnected was going to the front of the house, not the back where the garage was - or so they thought.

All we know is that there was a dearth of sockets that were at all useful in the house until we had this done and it meant that out of all the rooms in the house, only three had at least one socket. Now we have protected and earthed sockets, lights and all the other electrical niceties that a house should have.

Oh and if you're wondering why this blog entry was entitled Hitler's Bunker, it's because during its conversion to a butcher's shop, a fair amount of reinforced concrete was used, which would have made it impossible to chase all the wiring into the walls anyway and some of the switches have ended up in some somewhat unusual places.

We're calling it character!

Next, the plumbing ...

Our first wood delivery

One of the things we have found so frustrating in France is the lack of livraison or delivery. You can order huge amounts of stuff yet they seldom deliver.

Thankfully, when we bought the wood burner, we got it delivered. Just a well since it weighs hundreds of pounds, thanks to being cast iron. However, the delivery cost us an extra fifty Euros.

Pricey.

When we booked the winter supply of firewood, we had been led to believe that about two and a half  stères (about two and a half cubic metres) would be sufficient for a winter. So we order five - just to be on the safe side. 

Then a friend told us that they got through about fifteen to seventeen over winter and we immediately doubled our order to ten stères. We asked about delivery and the farmer's wife seemed to think it unusual that we would think they didn't. 

We set the delivery for Friday. 

Friday was bright warm and sunny and we waited for the man with the lorry, truck or tractor to trundle round the corner, but no. By six that evening, we rang and the man's wife couldn't have been more apologetic.

"We completely forgot," Penny was told.

Were were understandably annoyed, but at the same time happy that she had agreed that he would deliver the wood instead the next day.

The tractor and trailer we every bit as big as they look in the
picture, the wood piled high and dumped somewhat
unceremoniously on the road outside our garage.

Saturday, the weather was not at all pleasant. We had been shopping earlier and it had been teeming down. The sky was leaden and didn't look at all promising for the arrival of our wood - which had been set for two that afternoon.

Right on time, he turned up with his trailer and dumped the wood outside our garage. There seemed so much of it. 

"Oh this is only half," he told us and said he would try and get the rest to us later that afternoon.

Our friend had offered her help in getting the wood into the garage and we set about shifting five stères from the road into the garage. At least it wasn't raining by then.

It took about an hour or so for the three of us to move and stack the wood and once done, we settled for a hot drink in the lounge, only to be half way through when the telephone rang. It was the farmer's wife telling Penny he was on his way back with the second instalment.

This load was bigger than the first and no sooner had we started, it began raining.

At seven feet tall, three to four feet wide
and ten feet long, that's quite a few lumps of
wood

We slogged on with the moving and by about five that evening, finished, soaked to the skin and completely knackered.

It was hard work, but that's it now - hopefully - until next winter, when the whole process begins again, but then we will be more prepared, won't have builders in our garage or anywhere else on the property and can order it earlier so we might have more chance of it being fine for the work.

We might also have more of an idea how much we'll need, but it's an inexact science anyway, because it depends how cold it is and how soon winter and then spring arrive.

Nevertheless, it would be safe to say that there are three people in our village now that ache in places we didn't know we had!

Prior to this, we had no real idea what ten stères would look like, but as you can see, it's no small amount.

I was hoping to be able to work in the garage - making the airing cupboard in the bathroom and one or two other bits and pieces, but where we would have been able to fit our sizeable Volvo in the garage and open the doors, now I'd be lucky to get my bicycle in between the main stack of big bits and the little stack of smaller bits.

We can't wait to fire up the wood burner now though. 

Bring it on, winter!!

Will this torture never end?

The kitchen under siege from the builders ... The sofa, coffee table
and wood burner are all under tarps and polythene, but the wall
behind the wood burner has been rendered and looks nice

I had lofty ideas about becoming the next Peter Mayle when I first began writing these blogs.

Like Mr. Mayle, I had intended to employ a dry wit and impress you with a wry look at our exploits. However, despite us both coming from the same seaside town in the south-east of England and both of us choosing to renovate a house in France, there the resemblance ends.

For a start, when Mr. Mayle penned 'A Year In Provence', there weren't so many Brits purchasing those Gallic piles of stones in the belief they had got themselves a bargain. However, since the book, they have turned up in droves, armed with screwdrivers, hammers, half of B&Q and a look of grim determination on their faces. Hundreds, thousands or even more have flocked to the various regions of France to experience their own versions of that famous book.

Not only that, but many others jumped on the bandwagon and penned their own accounts, flooding the market and making what I'm doing here old hat.

So we have heard stories about people moving to France to start their lives in everything from B&B's to snail farms, holiday homes to permanent homes, small houses to chateaux, artist's retreats to music schools, with varying degrees of success ... or failure. Right now, we could fall into either category, as we haven't been in our house for a year yet.

The central heating control box that was removed from the
garage. No wonder the bloody thing did't work.
Looks like we got this renovation under way
just in time, eh?

We also failed to take into account what living in a house with two workmen busily working away day after day after day would be like while they were doing the plumbing, electrics, putting up two walls and creating a bathroom where once there was just empty space.

For the first three weeks, we thought of this process as nothing but a slight inconvenience; a hurdle, which didn't seem anything other than something to gently step over - once you got past the mountains of dust that was.

Last week however, everything changed ... dramatically. So writing the blog in anticipation of the success of our move to France might well have been jumping the gun somewhat.

There's a reason why Mr. Mayle wrote 'A Year In Provence' . It was because of the renovation process and as we have discovered, 'Four Months In Normandy' doesn't even come close to covering the building work, let alone the rest of the stuff that begins for us when the boys go home for the final time.

And we haven't got anywhere close to the time when we can say goodbye to the boys yet.

Our existing electrics cupboard. Note the three plates of
spaghetti dripping off the top. That's not all of it yet either.

We thought that the worst was over when the the cutting out of the office doorway had been completed, the walls erected, the brick dust settled and swept up - well, mostly anyway. Therefore, the so-called messy jobs were out of the way.

We were so sure of that, that we believed the rest would be plain sailing.

What a mistake that was.

If anything, the mess has increased with more holes being drilled in walls, cable everywhere and not an end date in sight.

Stress levels have gone through the roof and although I wanted to make this blog light and fun, this week has been anything but.

Monday evening, we had to move the majority of the kitchen stuff out of the kitchen and into the lounge so that wiring could begin in there, but for some reason, that didn't happen, turning up the stress level another notch. But I think the majority of stress is because it's been three full weeks and by the end of Friday, it will be four. We were expecting it to be finished in four.

Our only worktop has also been kidnapped. Oh and behind
the wall there is Rob - one of the boys - trying hard to
escape being snapped - and failing miserably!

'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' this is not. How is it they can build a house from scratch in seven days and we can't even get a few simple upgrades done inside four weeks?

We have a very small area in which to cook, clean and an even smaller area in which to do everything else; areas which are sadly not free of builders rubble and general detritus, but we're trying to make the best of it.

I suspect we have fallen foul of the English mentality. Everything there is expected to be done in next to no time. Let's face it, at home and work we're constantly bombarded with things that need our immediate attention and we have doubtless brought that with us.

This situation is not the fault of the boys at all. They turn up every day and work, it's just that we - or that is, I - don't have much concept of how long it takes to rewire a four storey house to French standards in three phase, or re-plumb it either, never mind all the other jobs they've had to do or still have to do. So with every day, I was getting closer and closer to wanting to throttle someone.

We are both under stress. Living in a bedroom and having to poke around under polythene sheeting in the dust and grit will do that to you. Bathing in what feels like a sand pit and spending one's day trying to work to the dulcet tones of a hammer drill and Rob's singing will take its toll.

Our lounge - or what is to be our lounge, with cupboards
and shelves borrowed from other rooms while the kitchen
slowly comes together - which I am assured will happen ...

We are however, beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel - and it's not a train coming towards us either. The home stretch is in sight, but whilst that may be the case, there's worse to come.

Right now, we have a toilet, we have a bathroom and as scabby as they may be, they work, but as soon as the boys begin working on the plumbing, all that will change.

Fortunately, we have somewhere to go during the time that's happening and we will be able to cook, clean, eat, drink and spend a penny or two, but I can't say as I'm looking forward to it.

I'm not the world's most patient bloke and waiting is not my strong point. However, having said that, I know what's up the road and it's going to be a vast improvement on what we have right now.

There is a model call the Kübler-Ross model also known as 'The Five Stages of Grief'. Using this, we have actually defined the five stages that you will probably go through when living in the house that is being renovated, upgraded or just repaired.

• Denial: This is where you try and kid yourself that it's not bothering you. The constant throb of hammer drills, dust and general mayhem as well as the workmen themselves, making it feel like your house isn't your own. The longer this goes on, the less you can kid yourself that you don't mind.
• Anger: Your anger will be unfocussed and irrational. However much the builders do on a daily basis, it's not enough, it's taking too long, they're making too much mess and it's driving you mad. It's actually a mixture of frustration and anger, because it's unfocussed.
• Bargaining: You'll probably be tempted to pay them more, just to get them out quicker, but this is a false cure. Not only will you be out of pocket and the work cost that much more, but you will only be kidding yourself that the work will actually finish sooner. The work takes as long as it takes and chucking your hard-earned at it won't change that.
• Depression: Not sure that depression is the right term for being so tired you're actually dead on your feet. You've been giving so much energy being angry, frustrated and denying that it's getting to you, that you're not yourself. Once you can have breakfast in a room that not covered in dust sheets, sleep in a bed that's not full of scratchy builder's rubble and walk on floors that don't crunch underfoot, you'll be right as rain and that nervous tic will disappear. 
• Acceptance: Just let it go. You can't do anything about it. These old houses are riddled with issues that until things are taken apart to fix the things you know about, you don't know exist. They have to be rectified before the issues at hand can be dealt with. Yes they are going to cost more money and yes it means that they won't be finished when you thought they would, but worrying about it isn't going to help.

We have both been or are going through the above. Whilst Pen reached the acceptance stage some time back, I have only just reached it and what a weight off my shoulders that has been. It's so like the 'Money Pit' here, it's unbelievable. The only differences here are we don't have the Shirk Brothers working for us, we are definitely not living in a million Euro mansion, nor have I taken a fairground ride down the scaffolding to land head first in the ornamental pond to have a cherub pee on my head.

Well not yet anyway.

This stage of the renovation is not forever - as I am constantly being reminded (for my own good and for the good of those around me), and as tough as this is, we have to go through it to get to the end. It's unusual for renovations like these not to have a stress level that goes well into the red zone. Whilst neither Pen nor I have suffered a nervous breakdown, tried to kill each other or anyone else - yet, we've come very close.

And anyway, the end results are going to be so cool.

Well, we hope they will be ...

The before's, during's and after's: 1 The outside

The house as we first got it

This house is a curious construction of stone, columbage and concrete.

Perhaps this is because originally, the house was just a house and was converted into a shop. Of course, we're not keeping it as a shop, but have been granted a Certificat d'Urbanisme and the shop itself will be our lounge.

The outside has its issues however and we were presented with a building whose ground floor is anything but domestic. Its red, black and gold façade with huge dual aspect windows is a little too 'in your face' for us, however, plans are afoot to change all that. All we need is the money ...

The majority of the vines removed

There is obviously another side to this house, but this is the one I'm concentrating on here as this is the side that's had the work done.

Well one day, we decided to get creative and remove the vines we could from the side of the building. It took an age and uncovered some pretty nasty holes in the exterior rendering.

There was nothing we could do at the time, but we knew the stuff had to come down and that was that. The vines may well have looked really pretty at one time, but they play havoc with the walls.

When we came over, one of the jobs we labelled 'really important' was having the outside of the house re-rendered. 

So the first thing the boys did, was take down all the rendering and the straw-like gubbins behind, which exposed the columbage makeup of the upstairs.

Unlike buying a property in England, you don't get all the ins and outs of the building's makeup, so whilst we were aware that the stonework to the left of the picture wasn't real, we really didn't have a clue what was behind it.

One of the issues with having bought the house without a surveyor's report.

It wasn't long before the replacement cladding went up, which as I said before, was something akin to those packs of dried noodles you can buy.

The good thing about them is that whilst they may well look like they're nothing but holes, they don't allow water to penetrate - a bit like thatching really - and they're really good insulation.

Heavy snow in the winter is not uncommon here, so that's a bonus.

Yesterday we got creative again and this time, we removed the vines from the rest of that side wall above the shop.

Our house no longer looks 'hairy' and although the rendering on the rest of the house isn't the same colour as the stuff that's just been applied, it really was at one time. 

We believe that once the new stuff weather's in, it will look the same as the rest and that's good. The only issue now is that the vines have worked their magic on the whole of the outside and really, we should get the rest re-rendered too, but that's going to have to be another project.