Treasure cave

Finishing the atelier has meant that we have been able to start a mass tidy up. When we moved here last year, in the middle of the pandemic, our intention had been to sell some of our UK furniture before we moved, we were also looking to donate a lot to charity. However the charity shops were either closed or full up with donations, and selling items privately was difficult. We did manage to give away our sofas and a rug on a free website, which was really good, but other than that we moved everything with the help of a removal company to France. Our thoughts then were, ‘it will be fine, we will sort things out when we get here.’

So effectively we had two houses becoming one. Our barns became a very useful storage space, but over the last year they had become more and more untidy, and I find once something becomes untidy, it’s more and more difficult to get it back. Finally though the movement to tidy it all up has now started, and it’s having the atelier finished which has meant we can do this. We have needed to make a few trips to the tip to get rid of stuff also, but we are getting there.

This is the main area where we park the car, we have started to clear this out, but still more to do!

This is a before shot of the second barn, used as storage and Brian’s workshop! The photo was taken a week ago.

We took these photos yesterday, it’s effectively the same shot as the one above, but as two pictures. The right picture shows Brian’s workshop, being brought back - it is now his treasure cave. The left picture, again still needs work, but we now have space to store the trailer in here, which is also now empty.

It feels really good to finally feel like we are on top of things, or at least moving in the right direction. The library was another room full of boxes, and although there are still a few in there, we have managed to unpack a lot and can now get out through the french doors. We do have quite a number of books, hence why we will eventually recommission this room as a library. We had it insulated last year, and completing it will be a winter project, after we’ve done the salon, which is another winter project. I think it will be a really enjoyable room to do, as we want to introduce some colour into it.