work begins

The raw material. 

An old one-room schoolhouse in rural France needing a little TLC. 

Okay, a lot of TLC: new roof, new windows and doors, and a new ground floor.

Basically we'll have four walls and a hole in the ground to begin with.

The back of the school showing some of the stone beneath the cement render, which will be removed.

The plan is to open the bottom windows to the ground to create two large french doors opening onto the garden. 

Behind the school, on the other side of the garden/courtyard, is the 'preau' or covered kids play area. Another blank canvas to convert into a couple of bedrooms, workshop and garage.

Using a bit of poetic licence, the preau should end up something like this.

What follows is a random selection of photos from the past few weeks. I've found a young Frenchman who is good at demolition. I haven't discovered if he has any other skills yet. I know cleaning up and punctuality are not in his skill set, but at least I can practice my French with him. His father is a good brick and stone man who helped me immensely when putting in the big beams for the kitchen and fireplace.

This is the beginning of cleaning out upstairs including removing solid brick wall and tiles glued to chipboard.

Several tons of bricks, tiles and chipboard ended up in a pile in the back garden, which all had to be wheeled away by yours truly.

No wonder my shoulders ache.

This is the reason all the floorboards have to come out. The woodworm in this country puts our termites to shame. The floorboards I was hoping to recycle into kitchen cabinets and furniture :(

Marking out for the kitchen beam. There is a brick wall on the other side the stones that needs to come out too.

First tentative stone removal for fireplace void.

And, Yes. We have pets!

This little fella is always darting in and out of his hole in the door step.

Half the French army came to town for three days of exercises. They occupied our local glider/model airplane airfield and set up roadblocks/checkpoints in the hills around the district. Fortunately they only stopped and checked each other, not civilians who they pretty well ignored. It wasn't so easy for us to ignore them with their jeeps, armoured vehicles, jet planes and helicopters. There was plenty of rat-a-tat-tat gunfire, hopefully blanks.

It appeared that half of them were defending the 'airbase' and the other half were trying to sneak up and attack it.

Frank filling the first beam with concrete. This wall threatened to collapse a couple of times, but a bit of quick work with the supports held it all together until the beam was in place.

The kitchen opening almost complete. Now we wait a week or so for the concrete to fully cure before removing supports and tidying up stonework.

Ditto for the fireplace.

It's a long drop below the joists. Luckily Deb won't be carrying any panes of glass on this job.

The narrow driveway is making deliveries interesting.  

Mirepoix, one of our favourite towns. Here there is an antique market in full swing.

Chief chippie on the job! 

Somebody has been using the hollow in the staircase as a pantry!

The garden is in full bloom, with lots of roses, lilies and other flowers I don't know the names of. Despite running wild for several years they all seem to be very healthy and happy. The rest of the garden is overrun with nettles so the soils seems pretty good too.

At last the roofers have arrived and we are looking serious. 

The crane blocked the road for a while and brought out half the village for a chat in the street. 

Once the security rails were in place it was moved to the back garden where it will stay until the roof is complete, very soon I hope. They expect to be finished in about three weeks.

We had to remove several branches laden with young plums from the tree overhanging the driveway. There goes a chunk of this year's harvest :(   Hopefully many more to come.

While the roofers were busy making life difficult on the first floor, I started removing the ground-floor floorboards … once again all riddled with woodworm. There is a good sized airspace under the floor and quite a few good stones that we can use for the wall of the preau.

Upstairs we have a bare stone wall where the fireplace was. The heat had completely loosened the lime plaster so it peeled away in big sheets when the fire bricks were removed. 

Initial floor panels down for workers to walk on and the first spray of wood preservative applied to all beams and joists. A nasty job with hazmat mask and overalls. 

 Out on the bike, I found this quiet farming hamlet. There are plenty like this dotted about the valleys.

A big deal for me, after many trips to Montsegur I finally made it when the chateau wasn't hidden by fog. Of course the sun was on the other side so only a silhouette, but at least a shot. Not having a lock for the bike I couldn't walk to the top. Will save that for more relaxing times, when the house is finished.

Don't fill up your water bottles a this fountain in Ax-les-Thermes. The water running out is over 50°C! The sign says 'risk of burns' but only in French. Not much use in a town visited by cyclists and skiers from all around the world. I guess in winter the steam would be a useful clue!

The local bar/cafe filled our bottles up with ice-cold water instead.

Our valley on a misty morning. The clouds usually disperse early but these hung around all day this time.

There is still a bit of snow dusting the peaks of the Pyrenees. This was taken at the Col de Chioula, above Ax-les-Thermes.