The focus for the last 7 days has been, as you’d expect, progressing Granary.
In last week’s blog I had hoped that, by now, we would have completed both the kitchen and bathroom. Unfortunately, neither have been finished, which is disappointing but, thankfully, not disastrous for the timeline. I have been able to progress other things that would have had to wait if I were working on the kitchen and bathroom.
The reason we were unable to complete the bathroom is that, having moved the socket that I mentioned last week, the filler I used was evidently well past its use-by date! Having filled the hole, after 3 days it still had not dried properly so I couldn’t take the next step. On Friday, I scooped out all the old filler and replaced with new that set, as it should have, in a matter of hours. I can at least progress next week.
The kitchen has progressed with all the cabinets, worktops and sink now installed. However, these took a little longer than we’d hoped, and availability of people meant it couldn’t happen earlier in the week. Again, it will be progressed early next week.
I have continued to apply paint to various surfaces, some of which actually needed it! Today I have been painting ceilings which were previously white, white – so there doesn’t appear to be too much change.
What was most frustrating was there are lots of very small thunder-fly-like insects flying around that appear to have a moth-like attraction to wet paint. Despite trying to deter them, if they landed they became stuck in the paint so some have been ‘absorbed’ into Granary history, thankfully not to the volume that it has affected the hue! Perhaps another Farrow and Ball off-white tone – Bug White!
Although, despite mocking F&B paint names, even B&Q seems to have joined the trend of using ridiculous paint names. We know this, as we bought some paint from Castorama which is owned, as B&Q, by the Kingfisher group. The shade we have chosen is called ‘Elk Antler’!
I have decided not to share any pictures this week of where we are in Granary because I don‘t want to spoil the surprise (not least to me!) when it is finally finished.
However, as we are very guilty of being more concerned about what we have yet to do rather than look back at what we have achieved, what I thought I might share this week are some pictures of, what we now call, Granary as it was when we arrived in 2015. The ‘Before Then’. These images were given to us by the previous owners that they used to market the gîtes with so were actually taken some time before 2015 …
I didn’t want to use any of these as the featured image on this blog!
To show the progression, next week, we will share some images of Granary as it was between the end of 2015 and the start of this year (the ‘Then’) and, in 2 weeks to have the ‘big reveal’ of the Now.
This will allow me to be quite brief next week (in case things are getting tight in Granary!) but also means, if you’ve looked at Granary on our website, you will be familiar with most of the pictures so you can ignore it and wait for the finished article.
À bientôt.