Wrapping up

The weather is turning a little and rain is forecast for the rest of the week. This is very much needed but means outside jobs are on hold now until after we come back from our 10 days in UK. Our last job before the rain was to finish wrapping the garage in its breathable membrane to protect the OSB.

As you can see all doors and windows are now in as well, so the garage is watertight and secure. The next job is to paint the floor (as once everything is in there it will never get done), render the concrete blocks at the bottom and batton and clad the outside. Then we should be able to move our boxes out of storage and the tools out of the house!

Marching forward

March seems to be going by rather quickly. Our aim is to get the garage sealed and secure by mid April, when we are returning to UK for a week. With that in mind Ian has been putting in windows and doors. These are the latest pictures.

Back of garage 21st March

Double doors still needing fitting

End view; door still needing fitting

The roof is now completely finished, including cementing and pointing the ridge tiles. The large shutter doors still need installing and then the whole outside can be clad. I think I am going to call the garage the EBay garage as that is where much of the materials are from. The cladding is a type of fibro cement panel, popular in the United States. Ian saw it on EBay and had two pallets shipped from the UK. The windows are not EBay but special offer in our local DIY store and cost 70 euros each. The roll down doors, all the nails, the breathable membrane for the outside and all the tools required for the build (nail gun, stappler etc) were all EBay specials, and even with delivery have saved a considerable sum of money on the costs.

The garage is looking rather good now, to the extent that we were told by the local Maire that people are concerned that we are building gites, not a garage. I decided to make a joke of it (because it is a bit of a joke!) and told them that there was no doubt that the garage was going to be nicer than the house, but that was because Ian thinks his tools need a special place to live!

This week we have had our first real experience of French administration. Ian has been trying to register the car and I have been trying to exchange my drivers license for a French one. This has required three or four trips to various offices that are only open between 8.30 and 12.00 every day and very slow progress. One trip to the local town hall in Bergerac was the closest I have come to experiencing a visit to the DHSS in the UK. We are resolving to do as much as we can by post and email from now on, even  though everyone says you only get things done if you go in person!

The problem with exchanging the drivers licence is that as soon as you send it off if you are stopped by the Gendarme you can be fined for not having a licence. We struggled to find out the correct procedure in this case. The town hall suggested we asked the Gendarme and the Gendarme suggested that we asked the town hall! In the end we we to the village council and got a letter from them certifying that they had sent it all off to the appropriate people!

Garage gets a hat

More news on the garage building. Pleasant weather has continued and we now have a roof, minus only the ridge tiles. It was a three person and a tractor job, and once all the preparation had been done the placing of the tiles took two half days in total. Here are some pictures.

Extremes

Ian and I have been struggling to fight off a rather nasty cold for the last two weeks and are only just winning. I suppose that's one of the problems with having temperatures of minus 20 one week and plus 20 a few days later. We had a quiet weekend to try and recover, but this week Ian could sit still no more and started to work on the roof of the garage. Tomorrow the tiles go on, but in the meantime here are a couple of pictures.