Monthly Archives: February 2015

As January faded out with a beautiful sunset, February breezes in with a cold wind but the bulbs I planted last autumn under the trees in our garden are beginning to poke through to say hello. Let’s hope the impending frost and snow doesn’t make them change their minds.

By the time we come back from our holidays to Cape Town, hopefully spring will be well on her way here in South West France.

Our last week on January has been very eventful and busy. Here’s what we have been up to.

We have started work on the garden area at the back of the house, here we want to create a concealed herb garden. We have started by creating a walkway with Cherry and Mirabelle trees [tiny yellow plums] very delicious, either side of these will be a hedge which will be planted later in the spring when we have decided which type of hedge we want. Then walking through the trees you can enter either side of the herb garden which will have raised beds, eventually the horrible fence at the end will be replaced with wrought iron railings to match the ones we have put up on the the walls of the front gardens.

Doesn’t look much at the moment but when they are blooming I’m hoping it will look much nicer.

The rest of the week has been taken up by renovations on the interior of the house. Before we can do anymore work creating our two new bedrooms out of the loft space we had to put in a staircase.

So we set about cutting a hole in the floor.

Then support beams had to be fitted to strengthen the floor and all the existing plaster removed to reveal the beautiful old wall beneath.

I have never seen so much dust, we started with a good old hammer and chisel but thankfully Ian soon charged up the air compressor [one of the best presents ever] and the task in hand was made so much easier and quicker, but still as dusty.

We are really happy with the results, although the stone and bricks still need sand-blasting: another dusty job for another day me thinks!

Now for fitting the staircase and what staircase to fit! Anyone who knows us will know that we love anything reclaimed, so it was by great chance that we were introduced to John Dene who as well as being a fully fledged industrial engineer has a fabulous reclamation yard and if he hasn’t got what we need he will either know where to get it or will build it for us. And after looking at a number of unsuitable staircases he decided he would make one for us.

So off we popped the other day to see the fruits of his hard work and WOW we were not disappointed, he had created a stunning staircase using floorboards from an artists studio. Now i know some of you will probably be looking at this photo and thinking, why are they getting excited about dirty old staircase? But as i mentioned if you know us you will know we see beauty in anything old and battered about a bit.

And today John turned up with Lucas and his dog Tigan to fit our staircase, with some help from us.

Did i mention it weighs a ton and needed to be hoisted up and through the window?

Finally in, now all we have to do is lift it into place!!!!

And after a lot of brute force it’s finally in place and looking like it has always been there, which is the effect we were after.

And finally what have the pets been up to whilst we have been busy?

Well Miel has become a wine conoisseur….

But only after a hard day on her laptop…