Well my wish for the weather to improve at the end of last week’s blog has come good and this Easter weekend has been bathed in wonderful sunshine.
Apologies (again!!) for not posting this yesterday as I usually do on a Sunday but, as it was Easter and today is a public holiday, it’s sort of the end of the weekend now – at least that is my excuse! I will however write this as if it were yesterday evening and leave today’s fun-based activities for next week’s blog …
This week has been completely focussed on Hayloft to turn that around and make sure it is fabulous before we welcome our first guest in 5 weeks’ time. You may have seen the pictures on last week’s blog of how Hayloft’s kitchen used to look a few years ago and what it looked like last Sunday when we had ripped the old kitchen out.
Monday was spent continuing to rip out the old (you can’t make an omelette …) to provide a blank canvas on which to rebuild. Tuesday was in Brest searching for furnishings and inspiration for the style when
complete (a little early perhaps …?) However, on Wednesday we were joined by Andrew who will be with us for a few weeks helping with our renovations, and we were back in Hayloft building cabinets and carcasses for the kitchen units. If you can build an IKEA chest of drawers a Cooke and Lewis kitchen is much more straightforward – and more robust.
Thursday was principally electrical work for Andrew (I don’t like touching electric string) so little to show externally although I re-erected the old wall units from Hayloft, and some from Granary which we have started to strip, into our laundry room in Kergudon – waste not, want not! We now have more storage in our laundry room than we previously had in our old flat (almost!)
Friday was fitting the completed units, replacing plasterboard and fixing some of the new solid wood worktops – already the difference looks great and it is evident that the finished space will be amazing! Saturday was back in Brest committing to the things we had seen earlier in the week (ouch – a spendy day) to be delivered at the end of April including Hayloft’s internal and garden furniture.
Sunday was a break for us and brought another example of why Saint Cadou is an amazing village to live in and visit. Since we moved here there has been a run-down old agricultural hangar on one of the roads out of the village, about 300 yards as the crow flies from us, with the obligatory old Peugeot on blocks out the front.
We learned a few weeks ago that there was a plan to try and raise funds through crowd funding to buy the hangar to convert into a community facility for music, arts and crafts. We didn’t know that the team behind it was a dynamic group of individuals born and raised in the village, or close by, who had set up an association (Assomniak) to arrange festivals and music events. Some of these individuals have moved away and / or have young families but they all come back to Saint Cadou and are the driving force behind 3 festivals a year in and around the village.
Sunday was the launch event for the Hangar project, held in the Salle des Fetes where we attended our first Fest Noz, which was a fantastic lunch made from all local organic farm produce, then an afternoon and evening of music until the early hours. As the Fest Noz it was fantastically attended with cars parked on all roads into Saint Cadou some doubling up as accommodation(!) – if only we had our chambers d’hotes accommodation finished!
We really hope the hangar project is a huge success as it will be fantastic for the village – yet another reason to come to Saint Cadou for a holiday – and if the number of attendees on Sunday is anything to judge by there is no reason it won’t be. At least now the Peugeot has gone …
À bientôt.