Dordogne Retreat - a farmhouse tale

While it has been very helpful to have photos emailed from friends on the progress of the installation of the doors there is nothing like seeing for yourself. So after an overnight ferry crossing and the 6 anda half hour drive we arrived to near total devesation inside the house! While we had covered up the furniture with dust sheets and plastic and the builders had attempted to use dust sheets as well the place was a mess. Luckily I had 2 days before Sue arrived and so by that time the devestation status was downgraded to merely dusty.

But the good new is that all the cleaning, scrubing and dusting was well worth it as the doors are a great success. The masons finished them on Friday afternoon and just have to come back to collect there scaffolding etc (it was pouring with rain on Friday afternoon so they left without it). The final invoice was of course higher than expected but only by around a 1000 Euros and due to our insistence on stone facing so was not unexpected.

The before and after pictures say it all.....

Some better quality photos to show the progress inside and out.

Dining Room:

Living room:

Bedroom:

And from the outside

So what do we think this big piece of wood is for? Have they broken one of the windows already?

And is then paint or plaster I wonder?

Answers on a postcard please......

More pictures of the work progressing on the house. The 4 external pictures were taken yesterday (by Tony) on a cloudy day and show some more detail. The stone cladding has yet to be arrached externally.

The internal picture was taken from one of the security cameras this afternoon and the sun/shadow clearly shows the outline of the middle set of doors on the floor.

As they say "a picture is worth a thousand words" and the latest image just received from Ben certainly is. After having seen the pictures of the holes in the wall, just imagining the mess inside and wondering what it would look like from outside then we are now starting to get a good idea.

Day 6 and the first of the three doors has been installed according to our neighbour Ben! So should be 2 more days to install the other doors and then the exeterior stonework and internal plastering!