The floor is finished!

At last we have finished tiling the floor of the bull-barn. This has been quite a marathon, but we got there in the end. The job of grouting, which I was dreading, was made ridiculously easy by a bit of advice from our ex-builder friend John (see blog for thursday 7th June). When I was bitterly complaining about how hard it is to clean-off the grout he simply asked if we had any sawdust? "Use dry sawdust and a sponge to clean it up" was his advice.

As you can see from the photo above, it worked amazingly well. We cleaned-off the last 30-or-so square metres in about an hour, with much less fuss and effort than before. Please note as well the magic knee pads John loaned to us - knee savers!
So now the next job is to get the internal walls and doors into place - we are going to use plaster blocks for the downstairs walls, as well as to build the kitchen units. There will be a bedroom/shower room, utility room (hot water tank & washing machine) and a kitchen in this area. The old fireplace will be left showing and used for a decorative feature (unless we decide to put a small woodburner in front of it).

W actually had some nice weather while Jen was staying. I think she suspects us of exaggerating the awfulness of this summer in general. Our neighbour gave a huge sigh of relief and worked 24/24 to get his wheat and barley harvested.The road outside our house was red-hot with tractors pulling hugely overloaded trailers of first grain and then dozens of giant cotton-reel bales of straw. It was all hands to the pumps, with every friend and family member they could pull in to get it done in the few days of sunshine we had. Yvon is now looking a little less harassed.
We went up to Quintin (say it: can-tan) for their fete de tisserands, their linen festival. Good brocante (lots of stuff as no-one has been buying much this year) a parade with lots of music, costumes and huge horses and a nice lunch out. It was really nice to stop building and do some touristy stuff for a change. Jen, you can stay anytime if you bring weather like that!!