Recently I posted about the renovation works that started in 2013. If you missed it you can read it here
Mr Normandy went back out a year later in 2014 to spend another two weeks working on the house with a young chap called Tom. Tom set up his tent in the garden whilst Mr Normandy roughed it in the house. The house that had no water, heating or toilet facilities. I remember him saying once that we could all camp out for two weeks with the kids in the summer. Needless to say that never happened. There’s camping and there’s camping – call me old fashioned but having a wash and somewhere to go to the toilet are this gal’s basic requirements.
Prior to the building works taking place, when Mr N came up with this bright ridiculous idea, our neighbour (who sold us the property) had been letting his sheep and donkey’s graze in the garden. Whilst this was great for keeping the grass down – it did mean there was a lot of animal poo to add to the thrill of the no facilities “it’ll be an adventure” type holiday.
Anyhow, Tom didn’t mind camping and Mr Normandy didn’t mind roughing it. Fair play to them.
Now, I will let the photo’s do the talking but what he managed to achieve in two weeks was quite something wouldn’t you agree? He managed to get to 1st floor level and you can really see how we had to build around the existing ‘house’.
We heard recently (although not sure how reliable this is) that someone had purchased something probably similar or an old stone barn set in some acres. The Brit decided to knock it down and then apply for planning. The mairie refused as it had changed from being habitable land (where the old building once stood) and reverted back to just plain old land aka green belt/agricultural. Now this person has land but no hope of building.
We would have loved to have knocked it down but thems are da rules.
He started building on the foundations for the kitchen which you can see here and how we had to work around the existing building.
The building starts to take shape and we did happen to get our water meter connected. How we did this I’m not sure as we had tried contacting them for a few years. In those days I wouldn’t have dreamt of phoning them. I much prefered to have ignored emails. Anyhow, just by chance Saur the water company contacted us with a date that they could come out. This just so happened to be at the same time Mr Normandy was out there for two weeks.
I have no idea when we will receive a water bill. Granted we haven’t really used much but I am sure we’re going to have a nice surprise soon!
And that was the end of two weeks non stop work. Next time Mr Normandy returned a year later and then there was only one donkey…
Our water company is called Saur – here’s there website
Our Normandy Life 