First Snowdrops

Great to see something is growing in this wet and cold weather


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Repointing stone walls in upstairs PMR gîte bedroom

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The exposed stone work in the PMR gîte is not the best quality, it was originally a horse stables, or perhaps for cows and also storage/workshop.  Not surprisingly it turned into a very dusty and dirty job and our arm/wrists were aching at the end of each day. We has to remove all the sandy/crumbly mortar and then repoint with chaux (lime) mortar. This allows the walls to "breath" whereas concrete creates a solid barrier. For the upstairs bedroom we used 34 bags of mix, 850 kg! The different darknesses of the mortar are just where some is older and dried out more! Small stone wall in downstairs bedroom Next repointing job is the living room and joining wall with the kitchen.
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After being on order for 4 months, the doors and windows for the chateau were fitted this week. It is now sealed except for the gaps between the roof and wall tops (in the roof where the B&B rooms will be).  The bats have relocated from the pool equipment room to inside the chateau so hopefully they will vacate soon so I need to leave a door open.
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The previous owners had planned to convert the barn into a cottage with a second floor so had put four extra horizontal beams as the floor support. To have two floors the beams had to be quite low which made the ground floor a bit claustrophobic.  The plan was to remove the four redundant beams (added to support the first floor) and raise the three structural beams 50cm. As we had the electrician is the gîte to cable for the wi-fi network, I decided we'd finally get this job done.  Nearly a year ago Dan and I had designed the supports to join the raised beams to the diagonal roof trusses. A local metal works made the custom supports  As the beams are around 5m long and made of oak, we needed a machine to support them as we cut the ends and then raise them again into place while we attached them. As usual with oak, they might look rotten and wood worm ridden but under the first few millimetres it is sold and very hard. We rented a machine to do the job and it was...
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