The Full-Time Building Works Commence

So, we had left the house for another two years prior to moving out full-time.  If you’ve missed the previous renovating stories you can read them here, here and here.

Mr Normandy had a deadline. To make the house water tight within 2 months so that we could move all our worldly possessions, from our damp rental accommodation, into our home. This was a tall order.  We knew we had to be out of the rental property (which was big enough to store all our contents etc) by mid July. We needed to ferry all our stuff over in stages to avoid paying storage costs. We’d already saved money by moving all our goods ourselves from the UK. We had made sure we’d rented somewhere where we could combine rental and storage together.

You can read all out our relocation in the link but essentially we were quoted between £5,000 (cheapest) and £10,000 (most expensive) by the removal companies. How do they even make a profit I wonder?  Futhermore, this wasn’t a question of the removal guys saying, “where do you want it luv”? Job done. In a few months we’d have to move it again ourselves so this was just taking the piss just too much expense.

Yes, it was hard work but so worth it when you consider that  the micro station (because our land slopes downhill) for the fosse was 5,000 euros on its own. It really does pay to save money at every stage of your journey as you’ll be thankful of it later when a “how much?” expense comes up. And believe me it will.

We did have some absolutely glorious weather when we first arrived – it kind of died a death in August and no one is talking about the winter we’ve just had. The scars run deep here in Normandy.

Not bad for a first attempt – what do you think? Mr Normandy really admires the French workmanship of the roofs around here. He regularly tuts that it isn’t right in certain places but I think it looks just dandy.

Next it was all the internal stud work – wood is much dearer here in France – what supplies are more expensive said no person ever that has lived her longer than 2 months.

Then there were windows and if you’re wondering what the domino effect is on the house – that’s insulation which works a treat. We sat indoors in t-shirts during the winter.

So that takes you up to about August of 2017. Stay tuned for the next installment of the renovation.

And if you want to tile your own roof in France then please see below a nice link to a youtube video. There are so many out there and are well worth a look. Mr Normandy often uses youtube, it’s a great source of reference, not just for renovationg but lots of different things.

Until next time.

You Tube Video on How To Tile Using Slates