Chateau de Firbeix

After a lot of preparation work around the PMR gîte, mainly involving digging to level the ground, today the concrete was delivered to raise the living room floor to the same level as the other ground floor rooms and lay the terrace and path slab. All three areas came to 9.5m3 which is the largest load so far. Everyone was up between 8 and 9am and we were finished by 11, very exhausted as it is quite intense work over a short period but it looks great. Heavy rain overnight but it remained dry all day and should set enough by the morning. And a brief video taken by Em showing the huge concrete pump arm going over the gated wall and most importantly the electric cable between the chateau and the gîtes.

We had to get professionals in to plaster board and joint the atrium area. Firstly because it is a huge open space and our scaffolding is tall enough but couldn't work around the beams and the different floors levels currently on the ground floor. We need to now catch up and finish plaster boarding the other wall of the bedroom and bathroom. We will have a large multi light statement piece in the atrium as it is such a big and open space. We will paint the plaster board but likely not until the new year. The plasters agreed to leave their scaffolding until we're finished painting and the lights installed.

It's been bitterly cold these last few days and it snowed Monday, gently early on then very heavy later on, only for an hour 30 minutes or so .

Some pictures of the barn with the new windows and doors installed, especially the new barn opening which looks amazing. I can say that as it was the masons who did all the hard work! I'm sure I noted this before but when they excavated the ground around the barn (to the left of this picture and also the other gable end), they discovered that side of the barn's wall were built directly on bed rock (at best) so we needed to reinforce the wall. The same masons built this beautiful wall.

When we put in the concrete floor for the rest of the PMR gîte, the door opening between the kitchen and living room had not been created so we're now preparing to bring that floor up to the same level as the kitchen. The living room has been our store room for all our building material so this took ages to clear out and find a new home. It also revealed a 15cm slope from back to front so this has posed a few challenges. Once again the DeWalt laser level has totally indispensable.  Instead of using a ton of extra concrete to level out the floor, we staggered expanded polystyrene floor insulation from 50mm up to 200mm at the window end. The new floor level will be the same as the floor in the kitchen and the window sill level. There was a door to the left of the window that went to space outside the next door gîte living room window. No idea why is was there but needed blocking up so this was also done over the weekend tied to the opening using 90° metal brackets, screwed into ...