No More Plaster Insanity!

I am going to give the hammer and chisel back to Aussie John. I am going to cut off my hands. I am going to lock myself in the cellar so that I cannot hack away at the colombage with my bloody stumps. I cannot, repeat, CANNOT allow myself to knock anything else down. The dust is driving me potty.

I'm escaping to the Correze this weekend for some jollity involving a party and a trumpet and no dust. When I go back, I'm going to get on with the far more urgent task of applying 3 coats of Xylophene to all the beams. And for a little house, there's a heck of a lot of beams.

It was this that got me started. Remember the post that ended: There's only on way to find out? Well, this was what I found. Obviously needs a clean and some Xylophene...

I was actually attempting to CLEAN UP when I had an innocent little poke about and ended up doing this. Jolly good thing, as these beams all need treating.

Now I could be going a little crazy as a result of an overdose of dust but it looks to me like the previous owner has put in a decorative beam and that triangular nonsense isn't actually supporting anything. Hmmm. Paul???

The real insanity is this. I got overexcited at the sight of colombage and started chipping away at a partition that Paul is taking out anyway! I now have straw and mud at my back when I sit on my 'sofa'. Nice one Lally.

So a little R & R is just what I need. The Correze is further south than the Haute Vienne and generally warmer by about 2 degrees, which in April is definitely a good thing. They'll all be coming to me in the height of summer when they can't move without leaving a trail of sweat behind them.

If you want to daydream check out some of the properties here: http://www.francehouses.com/
It's an agency run by nice English-speaking Dutch people who've been selling houses in the Limousin for donkeys years and have oodles of experience. Anything is possible when you don't have to pay astronomically high UK prices...

The Master Plan

My Little House is bigger than it looks. It has 2 large downstairs rooms, two double bedrooms and a huge grenier that runs the length of the house.

My original plan was to spend my entire budget renovating the attic. WHY? I have no kitchen or bathroom. What fricking good is an attic going to be if I can’t eat or bathe? Perhaps I could practice yoga up there until the stench of my unwashed body drives all thought of food from my mind. Or maybe not. Hence the need for a new plan.

I have been back and forth, round the houses and to the foot of our stairs and back trying to decide what to put where.

Some things are fairly obvious. Like having the bedrooms upstairs. No point in being contrary for the sake of it. We’re not in Salford now.*

Other things are less obvious. Like which room is the kitchen and which the living room. Where do the things go that need water and electricity? Where the heck am I going to put the second toilet? Andy D. gets me thinking outside the box and the plan starts to take shape.

The kitchen has to go at the back because I am going to have a utility room in the courtyard. With … and this is the bit that has me jumping up and down… a terrace on top. L'Architecte des Bâtiments de France won’t like it. So flipping what? He doesn’t need to see it. I think, if I remember rightly, if he can’t see it, I don’t have to apply for permission. I’ll have to check.

My nice neighbour AJ is a bit doom and gloom about it, but I’m sure it’s only because I’ve rejected his idea of a glass roof as a passive heating system. I want a terrace dammit! Geraniums! Croissants and morning coffee!

Even if I’m banned from having a terrace it makes complete sense to utilise the courtyard. It’s too narrow and the walls are too high for it to work as an outside space, so making it an indoor space is sheer genius.

Paul comes round tomorrow morning. Terrace terrace terrace terrace terrace…

I need to check the Architecte's rules.

*Urban Splash's achingly trendy Chimney Pot Park sees Salford's old red brick terraces reinvented as loft-style living areas by, yes really, putting the bedrooms on the ground floor and the living space up above with terraces and balconies.

The Bank, The Satnav & The Missing €2,400

THINGS THAT ARE GREAT

The Vision

I have been tying my brain in knots trying to get a master plan together that will enable me to use Paul’s superior building knowledge to full advantage whilst I skip off to the Stephen Joseph Theatre in Scarborough to play at dressy-ups. Today, with the help of Andy D, that comes to fruition. More about that later.

Cut Price Xylophene

On my way out of St Leonard along the Bujaleuf road, I pass a Briconaut. Such is my obsession with all things renovatory, I cannot resist stopping and looking at power tools and paint and the like. Inside they have the tipetty-top kill-all-insects-and-anti-fungal-into-the-bargain Xylophene for a mere €31 for a 6 litre tin. I buy 3, hoping that the local builders yard will give me a refund on the Cecil on the grounds that the name is not scary enough. Hmmm. If they don't, I will have spent €200 on woodworm treatment.

THINGS THAT ARE A BIT RUBBISH

Payback time at the bank.

They’ve given me my mortgage and in return I know that I am going to be pressured into taking out their package, which will include a bank card, cheque book, insurance for these items, internet banking, £400 overdraft facility… and for these privileges they are going to charge me, yes people, CHARGE me, over €100 per year. When I empty my purse and show Mme Faury my array of free UK plastic, she is gobsmacked. However, if I don’t take out the package, it all costs a lot more. I hate it. €18 per year for internet banking??? Tant pis.

Road Closures.

I’m a bit wrong footed when I get to the bank because a journey that should take me half an hour has taken three times that. I’m bowling along through rural limousin loveliness when I’m hit by a yellow sign. Route Debarré. Bollocks! I don’t believe it but yes it’s true, they’ve closed the road exactly at the only point I can cross the river to get to St Leonard de Noblat.

Satnav.

Useless useless bloody useless! People who know me know my view on Satnav. I know my own view on Satnav. So why oh why do I choose to rely on it?! When the road closes, it recalculates then spends the next hour telling me to turn round and go back the way I’ve come, whilst I end up at Feytiat before I have the good sense to stop at a garage and buy a bloody map. My view on Satnav is, for those who don’t know me: Invented for people who can’t read maps and deserve to be lost.

The Dodgy Notaire:

Whilst at the bank I get sight of a statement that says that the bank have paid just over €30,000 to the Notaire. Remember him? Scary teeth and a dodgy dye-job? Well I got my maths O level and it doesn’t take a genius to work out the following:

Cost of house: €24,000 (yes really)

Agent’s fees: €3,000 (I’m in the wrong job)

Notaire’s Fees: €3,000 (are orthodontics tax deductable in France?)

So what the hell has happened to the €2,400 I paid as my deposit?? After the bank, I head straight for the Notaire’s office. Access to him is restricted by three female pitbulls so I’m frightfully polite and ask to see the relevée de frais du prêt as I think there may have been une erreur. They are frosty in the extreme but do as I ask, and from the adjoining office I distinctly hear someone say: ‘Merde!’ Suddenly the atmosphere thaws and they are being extremely nice to me. What name would I like on the cheque? I ask for a transfer electronique. There’s no bloody way I’m driving all the way back to St Leonard, map or no map.

Actually, this should really be in the ‘things that are great’ column as I totally kick ass, in French, and get my money back.

It’s all good.

Shiver Me Timbers part ii

The pay off for all the scariness in the cellar is when I get to put on plastic eyewear and a gas mask, and play with dangerous chemicals. Yeeeehah! If any woodworm or capricorn beetles are lurking in my beams, the sight of me in my protective gear brandishing an innocent looking flower spray will strike terror into the very fibre of their beings. My fibre. From MY timbers. There is no nice way of doing this. This is war. They have to die.

A quick word about products: I’m going down the nasty-nasty route. Apparently you can use boron solution, which is less evil but I don’t want to take the risk that it is also less effective.
My builder has recommended Zylophene. I can’t face the drive up the A20 to castorama so I go for what the local builders yard have, which calls itself ‘Cecil’. As names go, it’s not one that inspires fear but it’s still got little orange pictures of dying fish on it and is guaranteed to keep the little feckers at bay for 10 years so I reckon it’ll be ok.

Shiver Me Timbers!

Today I am mostly scaring myself rigid by tackling the timbers in the cellar.

I had a good meeting with my builder, Paul, on Friday. He and Nikki live up on the plateau of a thousand cows. I lodged in their guest apartment before Christmas and Nikki was the first person I called when I drove my car into a ravine. Logical. If she can cope with raising four sons, she can cope with anything.

Paul and I agree that as my current budget is limited, he’ll do the more skilled, builder-orientated work like stuff involving roofs and walls and plumbing; and I shall stick to reasonably disaster-proof tasks such as timber treatment and painting.

Ha! I am not a faint-hearted individual. I am not afraid to tackle scruffy-headed youths who drop litter on city streets, but my knees start to buckle at how much rotten wood comes away when I attack the beams in the cellar with a wire brush.

Here’s the thing: the theory is that oak is so invincible that the little bastard woodworms can eat away at a good third of the outside without touching the heartwood. Nice theory. These beams are holding up the entire house, so I defend my right as a property owner to be a bit scared.

TIP OF THE DAY:

Get someone else to do it. You’ll save yourself a fortune in valium.

Hidden Treasure

I've always been good at demolishing things. Food, wine, relationships...

When I tell JL I'm getting busy with a crowbar he laughs wryly. He remembers the time I pulled down the ceiling in his Chelsea flat then promptly got a job and buggered off on tour leaving him with piles of rubble.

In this instance I am buggering off, to Scarborough this time, but not for a couple of weeks. Plenty of time for a little exploratory work...

I'm just trying to imagine the thought process behind it. I mean WHY? Why brick the fireplace up in the first place? And why hide not one but TWO woodburning stoves behind it?

The chains, I'm reliably informed by my neighbour, were used for cooking. No reason whatsoever why I can't recycle them in the torture chamber I'm planning for the cellar...

Aha! OK, this is starting to make sense. Central heating. Boiler. Flue. No wood burners required.

Now how the feck am I going to hide that boiler flue?

THE BOITE A LETTRES:

Mine doesn’t conform to post office standard apparently, so one of the first things I do is buy and fit a new one. One of the things the Notaire kept repeating was that ANY changes to the outside of the house have to be agreed with the Architecte de Batiments de France, a process that involves applications in triplicate and sometimes pentaplicate. M le Maire, who is also M le Docteur at the surgery next door comes round to introduce himself so I take the opportunity to establish that La Poste ranks higher than the Architecte and my boite a lettres is exempt. Phew. He looks uncannily like my youngest sister’s husband, a man I would definitely trust on matters postale, so I take his kind advice on where to put the new boite.

The Beginning

This is the story of the Little French House.

Last September, after my stint with the circus, I came to the Limousin to get some perspective on a turbulent personal life. Today I am the proud owner of the most amazing little house in the whole of France. Or at least it will be when I have finished renovating. Renovating whilst trying to maintain a flourishing acting career back in England.

I am not French. For this I blame my parents. Had they moved to France when my mother became pregnant, I would be French, and this whole thing would be a lot easier. Some might call it selfishness on their part but I’m not one to bear a grudge. Eh? Maman? Papa??

Furthermore, I have never renovated anything in my life. For this I cannot blame my parents. They did their best. Most of the places we lived in started out as draughty ruins and once they’d attained a basic level of comfort and warmth were sold on, before our expectations got too high. If I’d known what lay ahead, I’d have paid more attention.

So I’m sitting in the Notaire’s office, with a slight sense of being outside my own body, wondering if I have in fact bitten off more than I can chew. The Notaire takes his job very seriously but is also, I suspect, a frustrated actor. He hammers home the salient points with a stern demeanour but is also prone to cracking jokes. My French isn’t good enough to keep up. He doesn’t signal the joke until it’s over by which time he’s laughing his socks off and I’m left to chuckle along nervously, hoping there isn’t a sub-clause in French property law that forbids the sale of pretty village houses to stony-faced bints with a sense-of-humour by-pass. I’d like to tell you that he’s wearing a toupee but that would be a lie. His hair is, however, an alarming shade of brown and his teeth are very scary.

A big thank you to my lovely Immobilier (estate agent) who has made this purchase sail through with minimum stress to me. I don’t feel that I have done anything, but I suppose somewhere along the line I must have, as find myself the proud owner of a gorgeous little house in need of a great deal of TLC. For anyone else contemplating doing what I’ve done, I’ll try to itemise the stages involved but I suspect that it’s a bit like child birth… having come through it I’m in denial about how painful it actually was.

If this doesn’t interest you, please feel free to scroll down to the bit with power tools and pictures of people doing things.

Lx