La onzième semaine

Yep 11 weeks in - sometime is feels like we have been here for longer but then again the weeks are just flying on by! We have had a bit of a strange week weather wise here in the Lot.  Monday was extremely hot - about 40 degrees but by Friday it was absolutely freezing - with a max of 18 and drizzling.  It's good because it keeps everything so green but a little bit too extreme thanks!  Here is a shot I took on Thursday night of the storm clouds brewing behind Jouanicou village.

We have managed to get some beams finally to replace the large one in the living room downstairs which had been hacked by a previous owner to make a new door. We needed to get old oak ones and not new ones so they all kind of match and stay with the theme, so to speak but we have been having trouble getting ones long enough as it is a span of over 5 metres.  Well we found some for sale on "leboncoin" - kind of like Gumtree in Aus - for 50 euro each - which is very reasonable - the problem is they, at the time were still in situ - in a very old cottage lodged in the stone walls.  We went to the place to have a look at them early last week and came away thinking we might not end up getting the lengths we need, due to the sheer amount of effort it was going to take for the couple renovating and selling them to get them out in one piece. We are only going to use two of them in the living room which is lucky as we have now heard from them that they had to cut two of them short. The other two will be used somewhere along the way. We are surprised they managed to not cut them all as they are about 25cm square and weigh roughly 400 kg each. I couldn't work out why they didn't want to keep them but they do look pretty awful now as they have the black soot build up etc from being in a room with an open fire.  But Paul has been playing around with some of the oak beams that we have here and tidying them up to make furniture etc.  They do clean up very nice with a water blast or planing.

Before

After

Paul also found a beam under our 'scrappy' wood pile he sorted out this week that he could use to replace a dodgy one in the attic - so a bit of a clean up and and away he went.  Here is a shot of him putting it in and looking way too cheeky to be up to anything good!

Other reno things achieved this week include the fitting of all the little windows in the attic and Paul got stuck in today and pulled the majority of the floorboards out.  It's my job tomorrow to denail them all. Maybe I should say - my job for the week!

Floorboards coming out - note the dust!!

New little windows mudded in and floor ready for new boards!

In to town tomorrow to get some new floorboards in the van that has finally been over the pits - not quite passed but as long as it's insured apparently you can still use it for a couple of months - it only failed on account of the hand brake not working so it should be fine!  We also need to have a look at a little truck that we can hire to see if it will be sufficient to pick up our beams on Saturday.
Ok well, I am over and out - Chelsea had a big weekend playing in her first hockey games of the season - they had two big wins and she has 5 goals to her name already.  Must take after me hahaha...Go cats!!

ps - whoops, almost forgot to mention - some of you that are more observant will notice that the name of the blog changed this week. Well it had been brought to my attention that I was using the plural feminine form of the word crazy - so thought I better sort that out - good ole Google translate strikes again :) hopefully got it right now but who knows??