Retour en France..

So we can finally say we have been at our house during a snow fall. We arrived home last Sunday night to a reasonably chilly minus 8. This is after three weeks in Western Australia where is was over 35 degrees for most of the time we were there so just a little bit of a difference! Mind you it seems we have managed to miss the worst of the wintery weather here as the neighbors had a minus 19 on their car temperature gauge while we were away. We thought we had drained our pipes of water before we left but no unfortunately we had only turned the water off and should have spent a bit of time making sure it was all drained out. Consequently we got home to pipes that had frozen solid. Not just the pipes mind you - both toilets bowls and cisterns had frozen and I went to get my hot water bottle from my bedside table and it was also frozen - hard for us to even comprehend how cold it must have been here. So no water for a few days and we had to spend many hours with all sorts of techniques trying to get the pipes to clear. This included pumping with a bicycle pump - warming with heat guns - and other more radical methods such as just unhooking the original pipes and bypassing them with new ones. This ended up being how we got it to work again with the old pipes only defrosting and clearing today five days later..

From this on the Friday night at a beach in Perth - about 30 degrees with daughter Gabs.. to this two long days later!;

Lucky our friends had come over and put the heaters on in the attic so we could sleep in our own bed - who needs water and showers in this weather anyway hey??

This is a pic of Paul with the offending pipes - if you look close enough you can see the core of ice coming out.

Will, having a run around in the snow after spending a few weeks at a cattery. They both have put on weight from sitting around eating all day but they haven't wasted any time catching up on the mousing since coming home - I am a bit over them bringing in both live and dead mice through the cat door at all hours to show off their bounty - gross...

So most of this week has been taken up with the plumbing issues but yesterday we went down to Prayssac to the salvage yard to get some more 'fer cornier' or angle iron that Paul is using to make brackets for the floor. We asked about some doors they had there too but from what I could understand they ended up being a bit out of our price range - they also needed a lot of work to be usable too so will keep looking. Here is Paul today working on the floor in what will be our bedroom and ensuite.

Only a couple of weeks until my mum and dad arrive for a visit from Australia - hopefully the weather keeps warming up for them. We are trying to get back to the snow at some point before then too. Not sure if it will happen though - the days just keep rushing on by... and we do still have a little bit to do to the house...eek..