Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8
Hi all,
I am new to blogs but here goes...
We started our quest towards self sufficiency in Sept 2006 (after being inspired by Hugh to try to recreate River Cottage in France) when we purchased our derelict house and about 1 hectare of land in the hamlet of Voulons ,Haute Vienne, Limousin (unfortunately not Dorest or Devon but very close in terms of climate and countryside although hotter in summer).
Our eventual plan is to have courses for all aspects of self sufficiency and accomodation we are also hoping that there will be winter hunting available very soon carried out british style as the french pastime of hunting is not very ethical.
This continued and I visited every 4-6 weeks with little getting done with the house as builders and tradesmen proved very hard to pin down to times and prices etc.
Well in November 2006 my then boyfriend moved to France permenantly to try to get the ball rolling on renovating the house, leaving me back in England living with the outlaws (as we had sold our tiny 2 bed end of terrace to support our eventual new life in France) and working full time to bring some much needed extra finances.
HICCUP No1
On January 9th 2007 (6 days after returning from an Xmas visit) I received a call at work from my boyfriend telling me that he still hadn't located anyone who could carry out the work on the house ( all very major structural stuff) and there was even more bad news, he had arrived at the house that morning as he did every morning to carry out minor repairs and general cleaning up of the barns and wait endlessly for another builder who would never arrive.
As he pulled up to the house he had noticed that there seemed to be a large pile of rubble outside the front ground floor window, as he looked up the building towards where the roof should be there was nothing but a few large beams pointing upwards (it had totally flat packed itself).But not only this he walked around to look at the rear of the house only to find that the area which had taken months to clear was now full of what used to be the entire rear wall.
Then insued the letters from the insurers of the Parisien lady who owned the attached house threatening action if we didn't do something about the state of the building.
Finally in March 2007 we found someone who seemed to be the answer to our prayers and could carry out the building work and would be able to start in April 2007.
All was going well for a while and the wall was being built and the roof structure was in place (surprisingly quickly). We were told thet the house would be water tight by the end of June.
On this promise I handed my notice in at work and started preparing to move to France to help my now fiancé start on all the internal works which we planned to do ourselves.
HICCUP No2
Well, the end of May came and the builder left to go on holiday leaving the roof half done. See you in a week, ok so we expect a builder back on site in 8 days to finish the roof and render the rear wall.
Job done - maybe a week late but we can now start our work.
This was not the case.
Some 3 weeks after expecting him to return we finally managed to get hold of him to be told that he wouldn't be coming back for another 2 weeks from this point on relations between us started to deteriorate when eventually in late august after months of stress and arguments he left the job unfinished and overpaid.
By this time we had made lots of new friends and found a builder we could trust to make the best of our bad situation and finish off the roof.
Now the hard work really started 3 months behind and thousands over budget.