April, 2016

See, we don't just work, we take time to goof around too.

For several years, I had written about the forge I spent endless hours at in our old village of Langoat in Brittany. The blacksmith there had taught me some rudimentary forging techniques and allowed me to putter at projects every year when we were there. This month, a friend told me that a film crew from Paris had come and shot a segment on him and his forge, as he is the last of a dying breed. I have posted pictures before but they do little justice to the medieval environment where I had the pleasure of transforming raw metal into something of use or beauty. It is a short but quite impressive clip and can be seen by clicking  HERE

Working with the master

This month I managed to get the doors to our 'wine cellar' up that I had forged a few years ago and brought with us when we moved. This is just inside our front door where there had been a closet of sorts that we converted into our wine cellar.

Mayday!

We woke up one morning last month to witness an impending ship wreck. A few sailors misjudged a raging storm in the Mediterranean and lost control of their sailboat. It landed up on the rocks below our garden and I rushed over to see if I could help. Fortunately, they had had gotten out on the rocks safely where their boat had beached itself before I arrived.

 

We spent the next 36 hours watching it getting pounded on the rocks mercilessly every 5 seconds or so by one wave after another. This now being an insurance issue, they had to decide if it was worth paying for a salvage operation or if it would be cheaper to write it off, destroy it in place and haul out the pieces. 

It was a little harder to get to than it looks in the picture because after the storm, the boat was high and dry on the rocks in a difficult place to access. Another first for us was to discover that after big storms we have to go around and wash all our windows as the sea spray leaves a coating of salt on all our windows.

What a problem to have...:)

 More of the usual

Month after month I write about our projects and the progress we think we are making in improving the home we are at. It would be easy to mistakenly think its always smooth sailing and that we really know what we are doing since in one way or another, we are always at it.

Time for a reality check. Take the plumbing I was doing earlier today for instance. I have done plumbing for decades. What you may not know, because I have never written about it, is the simple fact that I am no darn good at it. Friends that have helped me with other projects would be quick to point out, given the opportunity, that there are a number of other skills I am no darn good at either. But I digress.

You would think that doing something for decades would slowly improve your skill set. Balderdash! For me, plumbing has always involved 6 old bed sheets to sop up the inevitable ‘few drips’ as a result of my fixing things, and a whole slew of words I learned in prison. 

You would also think that at some point of being a dismal failure, you would throw in the towel (I could have used one of those too), but noooooo, I am nothing if not persistent. As I have told my kids many times, “half of success in life comes from just showing up”. I will not quit. I will try again. Maybe someday I will solder a joint that will not leak. Apparently, just not today.

Are we done yet?

In a word: no. But, we are almost ready to start! Hard to believe that we have been here over 3 months and having worked our buns off, we would be right on schedule, if this was February 1st. In these kinds of projects, the old axiom is that everything takes longer that expected, costs more than planned and is far more complicated than anticipated. This project is following that to a "T".

In January, I wrote about my building a poor man's workshop. This month saw it's completion. So here is how to build a workshop in 4 easy steps.

One of many building material deliveries made this month. Step one was getting the sand and gravel to make the cement.

Step  two: get a competent, knowledgeable  inspector on site.

Step 3: pour the stab, seal with black waterproofing (in background) and gather a little wood.

Step 4: simply assemble, tile interior, add finish and roof. Bingo, time for lunch.

Having come to grips with the fact that we will not come close to completing what we had planned and hoped to do this season, we have doubled down in ambition and pushed ahead with adding considerably more to the mix. We will focus on getting the ground floor of the villa, the exterior and the grounds in tip top shape, then do as much as we can on the lower level before we leave.

A little terrace tile

So, what's left to do? Well 770 sf (70 sm) of terrace tiling for one, 710 sf (64 sm) of Travertine stone tile for floors for another and another 330 sf (30 sm) of kitchen bathroom and assorted tile [not shown] in the living room and bedrooms, for starters.

Travertine stone floor tile

We'll need a few bags of tile adhesive to start...more to follow.

All this work doesn't just create a mess but at some point it begins to amount to something as seen in the pics below.

As always, all work / no play makes for boring grumpy people so we were fortunate enough to have Island friends Ian and Lyne drop by for a few days away from their French home in the medieval hamlet of AUDABIAC in the  Languedoc-Roussillon part of France to give us a break.

Full disclosure: I took ALL the pictures seen here this month. 
Eh... except for the good ones that Ian took.
When I have 7 picture books  published and I get a bunch of awards for my photography like him and spend what little remains of our children's inheritance on cameras and the like I will take great pictures too.

Picture Ian took from our terrace at night