It's Official - Work on Gite Started

Posted by Simon

Yesterday I started work on the gite. The first part was to clear out anything stored or dumped there. Although we had sorted it out previously it had been used to put things that we couldn't find a home for. I did have a bit of a surprise at this stage - but more about that later.

We had also used the barn as a place for the dogs. If we were out for a long time and there is food about in the house we put them in the barn (see previous post re Sarri). We had given them bales of hay to lay on but we think they had had great fun pulling these apart and playing in them. This took awhile to tidy up too.

I then gave the whole barn a good sweeping down. I know it is going to get dirty and dusty as we do the restoration works but it is much more pleasant working in an environment not full of hanging spider's webs and old hay and dust. I also started to rip out some of the old timbers.

Today I started digging up the old stone floor and now have a large pile of rocks outside. I want to re-use these for a patio area outside and a friend suggested we use them inside the gite doorways and fireplaces. I would love to re-lay them but they only covered two-thirds of the area but by doing the above is a good solution.

I felt a little sad pulling out these old timbers and stones -it's part of the history of the house. But having ideas of saving some of the timber, worn by the cattle over the years, were soon dispelled when they just fell apart, due to rot, in my hands.

I have timber coming later in the week to do the beams and joists for the upper floors. I am also looking for a local supplier of hemp which I'll mix with lime to make a lime/hempcrete for the ground floors. This will help with the insulation as well.

And the surprise I mentioned earlier - well I found rather a lot of the boys toys up on the first floor. Now I was a little hacked off by the extra work having to clear to these up, especially as they were scattered all around. Then it occurred to me, and later verified by Rosie, in their own way Tom and Ben had already started building. Most of the toys were for them to carry out the work. They had the trolley as a wheelbarrow, their tools, old bits of wood to build things, the quarry to get sand and stone from and the sand pit to mix it all up. Plus they had swept one of the upstairs floors and what a grand job they had done. I obviously didn't stay hacked off for long - in fact I was a bit proud.