The maçons tell me they will be finished on Monday lunchtime apart from pouring the concrete for the kitchen floor on Tuesday morning once I've tied in the electric cabling for the kitchen. Most of the afternoon was spent tidying up and removing scaffolding etc. They do work fast. We've had four blokes for the last couple of days, and the kitchen is finished. They only put in the foundations two days ago !

You can see from the picture the outside is almost finished. Some slate roofing on the kitchen (far left) and the two new lucarnes (same as the middle one), a bit of blockwork in the central opening to make two windows then some cream coloured enduit on the blockwork for the kitchen and in the middle.

It's difficult to see but under each window sill they have deliberately left out stonework from the center. There is just a void. The head maçon told me it was to stop the stone breaking if the supporting stone at each end dried at an uneven rate. For example if the right hand side sunk very slightly any central stonework could act as a fulcrum on a lever causing the stone to be bent and break. Once dry and any danger of settling has passed they plug the hole.

I've been very impressed with our French builders. We've used English builders in England, English builders in France and obviously French builders here. Our best experience has been with the local French builders. They are a little more expensive but the work is guaranteed for 10 years and because they specialise (there is a strict demarkation of trades) the quality of their work is superb.

A profitable day and a stressful day.

First the profitable part,

With the granite lintel in place the maçons propped up the wall, window and floor above it so they could remove the two old oak lintels. For the first time I've actually seen them use steel girders for support instead of wood, so I guess there must be an awful lot more load this time. They also 'chocked' up the lucarne with zig-zag bits of wood, I assume to prevent collapse due to the lack of support. Once supported, the oak was chainsawed out in sections, ready for concrete and stone infill.

Of course, having two wood burning stoves in the house I pounced on the wood as if they were made of gold. A few hours chainsawing and splitting gave us a substaintial pile of wood for the winter. I got over 1 cubic meter of logs, which is not too bad. Based on last year we reckon that we need 8 or 9 m³ (3 cordes) to last the winter.

…and the stressful portion,

The digger man (and digger lady) arrived this morning to demolish the lean-to and dig the foundations ready to rebuild it into a kitchen for one of the gites. Those of you that have followed progress will know about the rising water main in the lean-to. It's a rigid plastic pipe sticking out the ground next to a wall that has the stopcock, water meter and pressure reducer attached with a supply pipe for our house and the three gites.

As you would expect, just before a man starts swinging around a 1 ton steel articulated hydralic arm, I pointed out this vunerable aspect of the demolition work. Be careful. Well the inevitable happened. The was a ring at the door “The pipes come off. What's the number for the water board ?” says a rather sheepish lady, “Where is the stopcock ?“. I go out to turn off the stopcock on the pipe and then realise, that's the bit that's come off. There is water everywhere ! We can't find the main stopcock in the road or the verge, so whilst I divert gallons and gallons of water into a nearby ditch with old bits of rainwater pipe and guttering lashed together with sticky tape, the water board is called.

This has put a bit of a dampener on the day.

A very very grumpy water board man arrived and before even trying to turn off the water, started to complain about us having a water meter outside and it should be inside a building. Well 10 minutes ago it was inside a building and next week it will be back inside a building, but this didn't cut any ice. “It should be inside a building“, he says. Arggg!! OK, armed with metal detector and stopcock key water man (WM) stomps up and down the verge looking for the main stopcock swearing under his breath.

In the meantime the bread lady arrives and informs us that the village upstream from us hasn't got any water. The problem is it's spewing out all over our building site and we pinched all the water pressure!

Finally WM locates the stockcock and turns it off. Nothing happens, apart from the village downstream having no water ! Digger man is hiding. WM decides to give up on the main stopcock and just fit a new one onto our rising main with the water still on. Water reconnected and normallity is restored. Apart from everyone being up to their knees in mud.

A quick discussion with WM and the builders and we decided the best thing was to position the water meter etc. outside the new building in a plastic box buried underground. It means that the WM can read the meter without bothering us. I go off shopping to get the necessary plumbing supplies to re-route the pipes on our side of the meter (the private side) and expect the WM to re-route his pipes (the public side).

By now the digger man has finished the foundations and the pair of them leave, sharpish.

I'm expecting to do a bit of plumbing in the afternoon, but now find out that the concrete mixer is en-route to fill the foundations ready for building. This is now getting stressful, water meters in the wrong place, no time for plumbing, and it all about to be covered over with tonnes of concrete.

Fortunately our trusty builders sort it out and put a conduit under the foundations before they are poured so I can thread a pipe and get water into the building from the proposed new meter position outside. Once the new meter is installed we will just cut off the old rising main pipe.

Voila. Beer time.

The new granite lintel for the old barn door was placed in position today. You can just see in the photo the original oak lintel above with a metal runner for the door. The old plan was to directly replace the oak lintel with this granite version, but once you see things in the flesh they look quite different to on a plan. So in order to make the building look less like a barn and more like two gites, we have lowered the new lintel to align with the tops of the new doors then the old oak lintel will be removed and the space above infilled with stone. The large opening will then be 'hidden' and hopefully it should look less agricultural but still retain the charm and appeal of an old stone breton building.

The three maçons didn't seem that stressed by the whole operation, but we did notice them puffing away on several cigarettes beforehand and very quickly lit up another round of fags once the stone was safely in position. It's a big piece of stone to be swinging about on the end of a fork lift.

The stonework for both the lucarnes is in position. Once the uprights have set hard, they will pop on the two lintels then it's over to the carpenter and roofer. Because the stones are 'free' standing they have actually drilled a hole in the tops and bottoms of the stones and passed and glued a metal bar between each pair to add strength. The top two smaller stones on each side are actually one piece with a groove cut around the middle to make it look like two stones. Once it's all pointed you would never know.

The digger man was meant to arrive today to demolish the lean-to (new kitchen) and dig the foundations for it's replacement. Originally we just expected to put a new roof on, but when they dug out to lay the new concrete floor in the barn they noticed that the lean-to had no foundations and was very fragile. Hence the extra work (and cost). He's hoping he arrives first thing Monday or else our builders will run out of work very soon.

The staircase has finally been installed in Poire. There is still a bit of finishing off with trim and skirting etc. but everything is in position and glued and screwed. The builders came and gave me a lift up to put the staircase in position. It's solid oak and very very heavy, there was alot of grunting and groaning for several minutes. I must of measured and re-measured a dozen times before asking for a lift up to ensure it fitted first time. I did learn a few new French words that were muttered under their breath when I asked them if we could lower it again to allow me to drill two fixing holes under the bottom step. I couldn't find the words in the dictionary so I've no idea what was said.

I was very grateful after they helped lift it into position for the second and final time (I suspect they were as well). It's a huge improvement over the old stairs. A much more comfortable angle and all the steps are even. It also makes the room alot bigger without the old partion wall.

The front doors are finished, as is the back window and side door. This morning they started on the new lucarnes, (dormer windows), but it threw up a problem. The A-Frame beams upstairs that support the roof would foul the proposed position of the windows. They architect had drawn them directly above the doors, and had not taken the beams into account. I think it was fairly obvious that he not been upstairs and just drawn them in the most aesthetically pleasing position.

The builders' have been really helpful, visiting the architect, getting a carpenter on-site within 10 minutes to see what options we open to us, getting the plans re-drawn and taking the time to explain everything. We had the option to invoke the architect's insurance to move the beams and put the windows in the original position, but being pragmatic and to save time, we decided to move both windows (the left one right and the right one left) to keep the symetery.

It's quite humbling living here in France, compared to what things were like in the UK, everyone has been really kind, generous and taken the time to be patient and help us enormously. The language is still a bit of a barrier for me and the cutural differences take some getting used to, but the fact that people seem to have more time (and space) for each other makes everything a whole lot better.