Lundi, Vingt quatrieme Octobre

So lovely day here in the Lot today - well not quite.  It was doing what we would say in Aus 'blowing up for rain' and man was it blowing!! My boys stayed in the barn all day today and Will was a bit scared of the noise the wind was making - lucky he had his very relaxed bro to calm him down and give him a cuddle.  This was how they spent pretty much all day - good life for some!

 We on the other hand have been pretty hard at it the past 10 days.  Well Paul has anyway - I have been keeping the food and coffee coming and helping when I can.  The verbal abuse given to the trades assistant sometimes gets a little too much and I have to take a break before it all comes to a bloody end since there are lots of sharp tools involved!   However I have gotten better at holding the dumb end of the tape and cutting the steel for the wall framing - we actually didn't stop work last night until after 10 as we were trying to get the internal walls done as much as possible for the plasterer to do his thing today.  We didn't get as far as we would have liked but it is really coming along.  The bathroom and kitchen areas are close to being done with just the wall around the stairs to be done tomorrow.  Then the finishing will be done on the plaster - so that will lead to painting and then installing all the cupboards - bathroom bits and all the other stuff.  Should be an exciting couple of weeks!

Check out the thickness - 24 cm of insulation - hopefully will be cozy up there!

Many days work right here!

It was actually extremely chilly here this past week - down to below zero one morning.  It was cold enough for me to order the heater for the attic and buy a little blow heater for the van.  Most of the past week though, despite being cold in the mornings and at night, the days would warm up to being absolutely gorgeous with sunny blue skies and not a breath of wind.  On one of these days I went on a hike with my friends John and Aileen - 13km and 3 hours later we got back!   Was a really great walk though with lots of Autumn scenery going on - it really is a pretty good spot we've found ourselves in.  I really would like to get a horse or at least have access to one - I keep meaning to make contact with the riding school that is only a km or so away but my experience with riding school horses is not great.  However their horses actually don't look too clapped out so will have to do it soon as there is so many nice places to ride through.  It is prime hunting season at the minute so you do have to be a bit careful - lots of men strolling around with guns and bright orange vests on.  We actually got home from a trip to town one day to find a hunter and his dog (covered in blood!) in our driveway.  He obviously wanted to speak to us which always scares us a little due to our awesome grasp of the local language... but as it turned out I could understand him reasonably well and he told us our house once belonged to his wife's family - with the family name of Malvey, which of course we have found written and carved in several places - once of which says "Paul Malvey 1881".  He said they lived there up until the 40's which fits in with what we have kind of worked out with the what the other neighbors had told us.  They would have been the last people actually living here.  It would have been good to get more information from him but I had used up my complete French vocab already -was very interesting though to know they are still in the area as he lives in a village not that far away.

We are still getting heaps of walnuts from our tree.  Paul has a mild obsession with picking them which has lead to an invention of a method to collect as many as possible at one time - it involves attaching a largish rock to a rope - slinging it over the tree as high as possible and then pulling the rope and basically shaking the nuts off - it is quite amusing and fun too.  Here is a shot of Paul with his contraption after collecting walnuts from the two trees down closer to our front entrance.  After today's wind he also picked another half a large shopping bag full.  I have been using them in pastas and salads.  I have actually developed a strange addiction to something that goes very well with walnuts - Blue Cheese!! Yum - yes Murray Royce you were right - Blue Cheese is amazing - never thought I would be saying that ha.  Particularly good with the fig jam I made too.  I have got a microwave/convection oven on it's way so I can finally bake something (walnut and date loaf anyone??) - 5 months of cooking with a two burner camping stove has gotten a little bit old.  Although I do have a slow cooker which has come in handy and will do so even more now its gotten colder.  I actually made some Grape Jelly in the slow cooker using the grapes from our vine - they have all become ripe at once and we are struggling to eat them all so I thought I would make some juice from them.  However it's quite labor intensive and after I saw how much juice I was getting I decided to make jam from it.  I only used sugar initially but it was super runny so I then added in some pectin and it did set pretty well.  Peanut butter with grape jelly and French bread - yummo! Lucky it's winter - we need a good layer of fat to help us survive a French winter - or that's my plan and I'm sticking to it - ha.

Nuts galore...

On Saturday we had our first relatives to visit.  Well sort of relatives - my dads sisters husbands sister and her husband came to visit.  Joe is French but they live in Canada, however they still have a house here in France which is only and hour or two away from us that they visit a couple of times a year.  Was lovely to meet them and show them around.  Joe is a plumber so Paul also picked his brain a little re the plumbing which was handy!  Here they are outside our barn.

Ok well I think that is about it for the goings on over the last 10 days.  You'll see from the next lot of photos the attic is coming together nicely - Paul and I are off to buy the bathroom fittings tomorrow whilst the plasterer does his thing.  We are going to take the van to Cahors - might have to have John on speed dial ready to come and rescue us if the van doesn't make it there and back!

Paul gyprocking!

Bathroom taking shape - Green board is the water resistant gyprock..

And the plaster finishing begins!

Bathroom framing

Door goes on the bathroom!

Treizième Octobre 2011

Ok - well finally got some things happening around here so it's about time for a fresh blog.  I actually spent pretty much the whole of today breaking a local French law - but thats a story for a bit later on!  We have been enjoying some beautiful Autumn weather for the last week or so - very chilly in the mornings and at night but the days fine up to be clear and warm with no wind.  Am enjoying it as pretty sure the forecast is for very chilly days in only a week or two's time.  Here is some pics of all three boys enjoying the late afternoon sunshine.  You will see from the shot of the cats that the forest behind us is starting to go brown and dropping leaves.  Paul is excited about being able to see all the interesting things in the forest that you currently can't see for the trees.  Not sure I am so thrilled ha.

Paul has been busy finishing off his attic flooring,  putting in the plumbing and electrics in the attic as well as doing some of the plumbing in the downstairs kitchen.  When digging into some of the older foundations he found this old hand blown glass - not sure if it was put there on purpose - very strange.  Would love to know what era it comes from - the glass is very thick at the base.

Since I last blogged we also had our interviews for immigration at Toulouse.  After much stressing and reading of expat sites information etc it turned out extremely routine and not scary at all.  There was no language test - just a chest xray to make sure we weren't bringing in TB with us - some very general health questions - a bit of waiting around and voila - good to go.  So we are currently legal until March next year when we have to go through the process of getting a visa extension which can take up to three months hence the early start on it, since our actual visa wont expire until June.  Anyway we spent most of the day in Toulouse and then after the interviews we headed out to Ikea for some kitchen stuff for the attic - after about 10 minutes I had a major dummy spit about Paul not measuring what I wanted him to (why oh why can he not read my mind!!) so we pretty much just left.  I have decided it is very hard to storm out of Ikea with any style at all since I got lost a couple of times trying to find the 'quick' exit out.  No such thing - and yes we still had to do the tour of the kiddies section!!  Was a very quiet trip on the way home - but we got over it after a day or two ha.  The joys of spending 24/7 together - it's just not natural I think!  Other events of note this week included spending Saturday night at our closest neighbors house (or garage to be more precise) for a commune 'fete'.  It was good to meet a few more of our French neighbors from a little further across the way and it is a good example of the community spirit that you find here.  The food was, I hope, not really traditional French unless you call chucking some lumps of meat and whole vegies into a stewing pot for a day and then serving it up, French cuisine - hmmm probably not the best meal we have had in France but it's the thought that counts.  And the entertainment was mildly amusing albeit very confusing -  it consisted of our neighbor Michel putting on a blonde wig and doing a spiel in French - it was all too fast for me to have any clue as to what it meant but apparently it had something to do with Celine Dion...Another of our French neighbors is also obsessed with Kangaroos and eating them everytime he sees me - which never gets old - even after the 500th time.  I am going to bring back a Kangaroo steak with me from Aus when I go in January for him if I can get it in!
Yesterday was another big day as the van finally passed it's inspection.  Paul had spent hours trying to get it ready to go so it was a big relief to hear the inspector say ' c'est bon' - even Paul understood that!!   And today was the day Paul and our new expat Aussie friend Bernard starting doing the plastering in the attic.  Here are some shots.  Lots of setup work to be done prior to the plaster going on, including the very thick insulation going in.

Metal railings to connect the plasterboard to.

Getting the ok from the local site inspector/foreman/engineer/architect and general quality controller!

Whilst the guys were in the attic I spent the day planting out our new hedge.  This sounds easy enough but it took me all day to plant just 12 bushes.  The ground is literally all rock hard clay and so for each hole I would use the crowbar then fill it with water - let it sit for a while - dig out what was soft (er) then start process again until the hole was big enough for the plant to go in.  But it looks good and will hopefully block out some of the more aesthetically challenging parts of a house across from the barn and provide some privacy for us.  We have a very strong and active 'neighborhood watch' in our little area.  The day after we got back from the US the English neighbors had been very accurately informed by several other neighbors that we had arrived home at exactly 9.30! 

Check out the water in the holes - it can stay like that for ages!

 Anyway whilst I was doing my hedge today the post lady drove up the driveway as I had done some shopping on Amazon and she had a parcel for me. Well she then started talking about me planting the hedge of  "Laurel"  - which at first I thought was just small talk as she only speaks French but I soon realised she was telling me that the planting of the hedge was 'Interdit' = ie illegal!  Apparently the local government has  banned it due to the recent 'drought'.  They must use too much water.  Anyway after saying I didn't know anything about it she left and I carried on ha - well we have bought 30 plants already so now we will just have to wait and see if the Posty is a spy and the Laurel police turn up to make us remove the hedge!!

The illegal hedge...

Well thats about it for now.  Just thought I would apologise to my friend Carol who would like us to hurry up and get to the after shots of the house a la episode of 'Grand Designs' ha ha.  Trust me Carol - I would like nothing more to get the magic wand out - but hey wheres the fun in that hey?

Autumn view out what we one day be our bedroom window..

Le Mois de Septembre

Hello - I'm back.  We have spent the last three weeks in the US of A visiting our daughter Chelsea and catching 10 of her field hockey games.  It was a great trip but boy are we happy to be back in France and not living in hotel rooms or eating the nutritionally challenged meals that abound there! 
After having our winter coats and boots on in the US, it was a nice surprise to find the weather here in the high 20's - although luckily we missed the high 30's just last week!  So variable here - not something we are really used to.  We spent the majority of the time in and around Chicago where Chels is based but also managed trips to Washington DC (on the weekend of the anniversary of Sept 11 - not great timing!) and Vegas with some road trips as well.  Just this last weekend we drove from Chicago to Michigan State for a game then on to Penn State for another game before heading back to Chicago for our flight home to France on Sunday night.  Nearly 3000 miles done in the rental car over 9 days - crazy.  But Chels and her team are going really well with 10 wins and 4 losses at this stage and are ranked around 16 in the nation which is great for them.  Hopefully they can keep it up and make the national championships for the first time in ages.  Chels also broke a couple of her schools all time records for goals and points that have stood for over 20 years while we were there so was good to be there for that. 



Pic of us three on the day Chels broke the record (hence the flowers) - Photograhy by roomate Claire! x

Chelsea and her boyfriend Hunter - we went to all you can eat sushi in Chicago - was goood too!

Anyway 3 weeks and several kilos later we are back in France and nearly ready to get stuck back into work.  We got in at about 9 last night and went straight to bed as we hadn't not really slept on the plane from the US - but of course we woke at about 1 am - luckily both got back to sleep again but I woke with a jolt at about 10.30 realising it was nearly too late to pick up the cats from the cattery as they shut at 11 - but I ended up getting there in time and the boys are very happy to be back chasing rabbits and mice - Will sat with us at tea time tonight tossing a dead mouse around he had just caught - lovely..  Hopefully we can sleep through normally tonight and not have too much hassles with jet lag. 
Paul is a bit grumpy tonight which is understandable as his flooring that he laid before we left has all shruck and left gaps much larger then he would like! So much for the timber being seasoned and dry!  Is very frustrating as he likes to get things as good as possible which it was when we left.  Can't really pull them up and do again either as it has been 'secretly' nailed so will tear the grooves if pulled up again.  Oh well - lots of floor rugs should do the trick.. The only other problem is that we have about 1/4 still to lay as the timber merchant didn't have any in just before we left so we got some more today but now Paul doesn't want to lay it until it has been left for a few weeks to make sure it is dry.  This could delay the gyprocking of the attic which will delay all the other work that needs to be done up there.  The joys of building/renovating I guess!



Paul unloading the last lot of boards today for the attic floor.

 I spent a few hours this afternoon picking walnuts from our tree.  There are thousands and a lot have fallen on the ground which is fine but since we have a lot of ivy growing under the tree heaps are basically hidden
and you have to ferret around a bit for them.  They are very tasty though - I don't know why but we really get ripped for the quality of nuts in Australia - maybe we have to import them from somewhere and we get them when they are too old or something but a walnut or pecan in France or even the US tastes nothing like the ones in Australia - ie they are amazingly crisp and not bitter like in Aus.  I made a walnut and basil pesto and used it with some pasta for our dinner tonight - was yummo.  A meal without some form of animal fat was also good to have after our last three weeks - however I am sure it won't be long and I will be missing ribs and Paul is probably missing Chipotle (mexican burrito chain) already!  I brought some canned chipotle chillies back with me to make the barbacoa beef in the slow cooker - will wait until it gets cooler though I think.  I also brought back some proper maple syrup which might come in handy to make a walnut pie.  So much for dropping those extra kgs!

Well this Thursday we have to make the trek back to Toulouse for our immigration interviews.  I will spend some time tomorrow making sure all the paperwork etc is organised.  This is the final process of formalising our visa although after re-entering France last night I am not sure why I have been so worried about it all - we had a stopover in London and no-one checked our passports - then in Toulouse there was only a very quick check of the the passport - quick stamp and we were in.  I guess we don't look too much of a threat to anyone!  Anyway Thursday entails of a medical interview and chest xrays and also an 'integration' interview which may or may not entail a language test.  If you fail that then you are enrolled to do 400 hours of language classes.  These are paid for by the government so may not be a bad idea but it depends on how long you have to do the hours - 400 hours within a year is a lot a week!  It will also be a pain if they don't offer them locally to here as I suspect they may be in Cahors which is about 40 minutes away.  Will have to wait and see.
Anyway I am off to bed.  Sorry not many photos this week - I took my camera to the US and took a total of 10 photos - pathetic. Ha - talk next week - hopefully with something to report re the renovations!

La semaine douzième

Well bit late on it this week - usually blog on Sunday nights but had a game to watch so it didn't happen.  Is a bit miserable here this morning - low cloud - chilly and light drizzly rain.  Good time to stay in my jammies,  drink several coffees and sit on the computer and sort out banking stuff and do the blog! 
I am actually struggling to remember what we did this week but think I have got it now.  Monday and Tues we were going to start doing the new flooring but then Paul decided he needed to finish doing all the water blasting so the house could start to dry out - there are issues here with wood getting 'champignons' - french word for fungus funnily enough - makes sense - and we have been making the perfect environment for it - water and warmth - so Paul has been having to spray a chemical to kill them as they pretty much just eat away at the timber leaving a light shell of rotten wood - not what you want in your house!  But before he could water blast in the last area to be done - our 'living' room - we had to finish digging down the floor to the level we need for the underfloor heating.  This took quite a few hours of both of us either using the crowbar or shovel.  We have ended up filling in the old duck pond with the dirt and stone - I wasn't sure if this was a good idea but it was a bit of a nesting place for mosquitoes so it's probably for the best.  Will be a good little area for a herb/kitchen garden.  Anyway we finally got to the end of it and Paul did the spraying, then on Wed Paul started doing the setting out for the flooring.  It took a while as it looked quite level when the old boards were on but once the stringlines had been set up it became apparent it wasn't so level after all!  We have nailed timbers to the beams that the boards can be nailed into to even it all off.  Paul is now just putting the last few boards that we have in this morning - the merchant didn't have enough and aren't getting anymore in until tomorrow so we will go and get the remaining 10 or so mtrs sq then.

Something else done- de nailed and stored this lot!

Nearly done

Duck pond - no more - future vegie patch

Paul doing last bit of water blasting in the living room

New attic floor from underside.

Getting there...

We had an adventurous day on Saturday picking up our beams that we had bought a couple of weeks back.  The French couple selling them to us said they didn't want us trying to take them with our old 'Trafic'van so luckily we spotted that one of the local supermarkets hire small trucks and moving vans - so that's what we did.  We had to do two trips (it was about 30km or 40 min away) but that was fine - it all worked out really well.  We got slightly concerned when the boys lugged the first two big beams onto the truck and the front part of the tray made some fairly concerning cracking noises but we didn't break anything.

Cottage where the beams came out of

 As the story goes as told to the couple with the cottage by their neighbors, the beams came from the village chateau which would have been dismantled during the revolution - all the locals used the stones and timbers to build their own houses - this is actually quite likely and happened all over France during this time.  The beams have very old mortice and tenon (spelling??) joints in them so have definitely been in another building at some time. 

Very heavy - according to Paul anyway ha

Nearly in place - well not quite..

 Had a lovely lunch on Friday at our local Auberge with our friends and neighbors - Don, Anne & Aileen & John - such good value - four courses of really great food - 12 Euros a head including wine - thanks to John & Aileen was even better value this week ha. 
 
Ok, well I better get organised for the day - not much I can do in the house when Paul is flooring - I will be in charge of the girlie stuff like oiling them later on today... I did make a heap of fig jam yesterday - our fig tree is loaded and neither of us really like them a la natural but don't mind the jam - I didn't use a recipe as I don't have scales - just figs sugar and water into the slow cooker for several hours - looks ok to me so we'll see!

From this...

To this...

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??

Le Dixieme Semaine

Will be quick post this week - we are currently sitting in the barn - the temperature sitting in the high 30's at 8 in the evening with no breeze - having a few drinks and listening to some music just trying to stay a little bit cool.  Now planning to put in a "piscine" (pool) ha.  Had a fairly uneventful week.  Would have like to have got more done towards getting the attic ready but it's a bit difficult as a lot of businesses - ie timber yard are closed down for their summer holidays.  Never mind - I needed a break from the hard labour anyway.  Paul hasn't stopped however - he has started digging out the floor in the living room after we got some more info as to what we need to do to install underfloor water heating.  It means the floor needs dropping by about 30 cm - he now thinks their must have been some animals or something housed in this room as it is extremely hard and I can vouch for that after having some brief turns on the end of the crow bar.  He is probably nearly a quarter of the way through - I keep throwing out the idea of hiring a mini digger but I think sometimes the hard way is the only way for Paulie!

Earlier in the week he got sick of me having the washing hanging in the barn where he was trying to get into so he slapped up this temporary clothesline for me - not sure if it will be patented - I wasn't sure it would even fit one load of washing but it does easily and works a treat.

We have been doing a bit of research for bits we need - I have hopefully located some old oak beams that we need to replace some dodgy ones in our ground floor.  However they have been advertised on a French website and I am having some communication problems with the guy selling them so not sure if we will end up being able to get them or not - we'll see.   We had fun today - we ended up at the big 'Troc' fair in Cazals that we tried to go to last week. 

Cazals - lots of "Troc"

It was pretty cool - we ended up going around about three times as we kept seeing more things of interest.  We got some bargain chairs - 25 Euros for all six - Paul thought he wasn't reading the sign correctly.  They have got some fairly dodgy looking vinyl on them but the wood is all in excellent condition and it will be easy to to recover them down the track if we get the urge.  I also spotted a timber and material room divider which is perfect for hiding off the twahlett from the rest of our living room.  The only other things we got were some lovely old cast iron shutter holders that you embedd in the stone.  We did find a couple of building material reclamation yards earlier in the week but other than an iron frame for the front porch we didn't end up getting anything.  One of the yards had some pretty nice front doors - for 3 thousand euro - maybe not!

Bargains...

Yayy - some privacy at last!

Paul and John took the van in on Friday to get it checked ie put over the pits - looks like he just needs to sort out some braking issues and it will be good to go. The wierd thing is his vespa three wheeler doesn't have to be licensed as it's considered a scooter so needs no registration or checking.  Lookout Degagnac! 
We went into Sarlat for lunch yesterday and they had their big market on - lots of the usual 'market stuff' which is not much interest to us - tonnes of people.  We had our usual yummy duck lunch.  As the regional speciality you really need to like duck - lucky we do!

Paul amongst the Sarlat market hordes

We checked out the beautiful church while we were there and got a special treat - three guys that were standing up the front when we went in started to sing - they were practising for a concert that night - the sound in the church was amazing - fantastic accoustics. 

Church in Sarlat

Ok well that's about it for now - was Gabbi's birthday this week - we miss her although could still throttle her from the other side of the world sometimes as she has managed to lose her iphone during her trip to Melbourne.  Oh well c'est la vie as they say....love ya Gabs.....