The rest of the Week, 16th - 21st April, 2019

Up early, again, for the IKEA delivery due between 08:00 and 12:00. It arrived at 12:30.

Two armchairs, two beds, three mattresses, bed linen and two toddler bed-guards. Quite a load.

The rest of the week mainly consisted of assembling the furniture and continuing to rubdown, fill and paint doors and shutters.

One  of the prime objectives was to get the ground-floor ready for Natasha, Tom and granddaughter Serena coming over in July. The beds were for them and we had a door and two large shutters to paint - especially the shutters as they were in a state of poor repair and covered in flaking lead paint.

Day bed that will pull out for mum & dad

And a special, extendable bed, for Serena.
~It will grow with her to eventually become a full-sized single bed.

The larger bed took Sally and I a considerable time to assemble, compared top that, Serena's bed was a doddle.

The shutters were prepped, repaired and painted over several days. They were in a poor state - Sally tried to persuade me to replace some of the sections of wood - but that would have been a significant task and could well have resulted in me destroying rather than repairing.  

 The photos above don't really show just how poor a state the shutters were in.

I was fairly confident that filler would suffice and, luckily, I was right - even Sally agreed once we had finished them.

The kitchen door was equally flaky (de-flaked in the first picture below) and cleaned up nicely too - this was all Sally's solo work.

Other 'highlights' of the week were driving to Leroy Merlin, in Brive, to buy wood filler and a selection of drills and sanding pads; borrowing a ladder from a neighbour to allow me, with a stretch, to clear a blocked gutter (an event that attracted the interest and attention of three sets of neighbours);  twice clearing both local supermarchés of their stocks of Roche Mazet Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon (£2 a bottle) as well as buying a selection of other wines - around 70 bottles in all - all for the Uzerche Wine Club* (OK, a few were for us too); dining out for lunch twice (none of the dinner menus really appealed.

One of the lunches consisted of galettes and crepes at a restaurant/bar we'd not tried before - and it is the closest to us, being literally behind our house. It was nice; we'll be sure to go again.

View from our local.

We took the e-bikes out for a couple of short runs and the electric-assist made short work of some fairly serious local slopes.

On the Saturday morning we prepped the house for departure and left around 11:30. The drive home was fine other than once again hitting the Paris peripherique - oh, and the car in front having a fairly serious blowout at 85 mph. We arrived at the Calais hotel, the same one we stayed at on the way in, at 19:15.

Up at 06:30 on Easter Sunday (and my 58th birthday), we got onto the 08:15 Eurotunnel. We're staying tonight with Natasha, Tom and Serena in St Albans and then completing the trip home tomorrow.