Lost en France

Monday 3 August I was wrong, I didn't have two more socket apertures to drill/chisel into the wall, I had four - two in internal walls (relatively easy) and two on outer walls (buggers, due to the granite). I also had to lift another floorboard. Doing this took all morning and well into the afternoon and was very dusty work. Once that was done, I used the dying Miele vacuum to do what it could and then showered, ate (post noodle) and headed over to (you guessed it) Leroy Merlin to get a new vacuum. Thanks to Sally's research we'd settled on a Karcher WD3 which LM had at what looks at really good price. On top of that, I decided to use the (one-off) 5% discount the store card gives me during the first three months - as I may not get another opportunity. As I was burning the discount, I bought a few extra bits and bobs for the house electrics. There is a Renault garage just down the road from LM so I took the opportunity to take a brief look at the Dacia Duster and Renau

Today was all about working of the rewiring. I started by chiselling out more of the channel in the 'study' on the first floor. This channel will carry the cables from the second floor down to the garage.  I'd cut the channel last week, but wanted to remove more of the granite wall to be sure the conduit could run down the entire length without 'bulging' through the plaster - when it was added. Being granite, the chiselling was tough but, thanks to the SDS drill, was perfectly manageable. The rest of the day was spent lifting floorboards and removing skirting in the two bedrooms on the second floor (the landing has already been prepped) and then core-drilling apertures for the socket back-boxes and chiselling out channels below, to the floorboards, for the wires to run down. The work on the outer walls was tough due to their granite construction - but, again, the SDS drill prevailed. I got all but two apertures done. These can wait till tomorrow when I will al

Not a lot of work done over the last three days as we've taken a bit of a holiday - but still lots to share with you; just hoping I can remember what it all is... Thursday A really nice day. After a small amount of painting of  hinges and fittings for the backdoor shutters, we decided to follow one of the driving routes around the local villages, as described in a guide from the Tourist Information Office. We decided to just take our time. If we didn't complete it (and we didn't; far from it) we could pick up the rest of the route on another trip. We set the Sat-Nav to take us to the first destination : Espartignac. Before long we were on some very narrow back-roads, watching for pull-over spaces as we passed them, in anticipation of needing to reverse back if we met anyone coming the other way. We came to a 2 m wide bridge. It was so narrow that concrete blocks had been placed either end to prevent over-wide vehicles attempting the crossing. For the first set I had