It's been a while. Far too long since I spoke to you.
Firstly a very Happy New Year to you and I wish you all a very happy and successful 2016 (what ever that may mean to you)
The end of last year saw Phil working really hard on creating a dining room in the barn. Our guests when the weather turned, were foced to have breakfast in our kitchen / living area which as far from ideal. an unfinished room and not much space - also from our point f view the only space other than our bedroom that is exclusively ours.
I cant remember exactly when work started - October sometime I think. We cleared the barn out and there were tip runs to get rid of a couple of hundred years of stuff. Our friend came and concreted the whole floor area and put up an enormous beam half way down to carry joists and provide us with a ceiling and more importantly a storage area on top.
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| Ceiling going in |
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| New upstairs storage space |
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| Stairs to new roof storage |
The stud partition walls and plasterboard ceiling then went up. Also we odered a new window to replace the 'false window'. It was only a week late arriving - not bad for France.
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| New toy for lifting plasterboard |
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| Taking old window out |
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| New window overlooking garden and repointed wall |
The wall around the window was pointed to save the lovely stone surround and also the wall closest to the courtyard just to retain some character.
View from the outside now that Phil has made some new barn doors (at some point these will be painted in the Charente blue/grey to match the rest of the outside doors and shutters)
Floorboards have been laid and stained and the inside I started painting the walls.
It's the first colour we have used (other than shutters) since we have been here and I have to say it's nice to see something other than white. However the colour wasn't as duck egg blue as I would have liked. In fact it's much more like the shutters outside. Oh well!
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Please note wine rack in far corner (Phil has also popped a wine fridge in)
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When we bought the house we found a metal wine rack that holds a hundred bottles. We saved it, painted it black but weren't sure where it was going to go. as you can see (above) we have found the ideal place.
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| Table set for a dinner party - our first in our new room which we held just after Christmas |
So there you are- pictures of the finished room. I would love to know what you think.
