House facade finished!

Last Wednesday saw the return of more scaffolding and the final part of the house facades renovation, just a small part of the side of the house that adjoins the house to the barn was to be sorted out. After stripping off a part of the barn roof, Gary (a good friend and stone mason) and I managed to pull off all the old ivy and vine that had attached itself to the old rendering, cleaned all the stone and then finished it off by pointing the area as per the already completed front.
All we need now is spring to arrive, with it all the colour of the wisteria and vine that will look great against the newly revealed stone.

Perigueux visit.

A few days before 'the accident' and our trip to the hospital in Perigueux for Philippa's arm, we had to go to there and I was able to have a wander around an area of the city that has many historic building remains from the Gallo Roman era, the above being one of them, built in 2AD, this huge cylindrical building was the inner shrine of a temple, at 24.5 metres high and 17.5 metres diametre the original entire building must have been huge! Nearby there's also the remains of an Amphitheatre that once could hold 20,000 people, a fascinating area to look around.
There is also a very large museum with many artifacts and remains that have been uncovered over the years, time didn't allow for a visit inside but I will be going back sometime for a look!

 

Cold, crisp mornings!

Over the last week or so we've been very busy indoors decorating the Tobacco Barn gite, unfortunately missing out on the last 3 days of beautiful weather, the nights have been crystal clear and with that brings the cold frosty mornings as above, all the snowdrops are out now and daffodils nearly in bloom...a lovely sign of things to come!
But decorating has its problems, the main one being that Philippa fell and broke her wrist 9 days ago, she's ok BUT she's not allowed on any steps to do any painting for a while!  

1st stage done...

...the scaffolding is down now as the top half of the house frontage is finished, interesting to see how the pointing, between the now visible original stonework, is drying, the upper left half (completed a week ago) is much lighter as than the right (finished last Sunday) and eventually it will all dry out to be an equal lighter golden colour as and when the sun does its job.
To do next is a small portion of the house outer wall next to the barn which needs attention, then it will be onto sorting out the patio area!