Manny's Blog

It’s been a whirlwind of a year… here’s the latest news from Solignac:

Christmas 2024

I never did manage part two of my January blog ! Needless to say, Christmas and New Year were absolutely magical, with Harry and Charlotte here for Christmas itself, (Charlotte’s first trip to Solignac – and it delivered in style with a timely magnificent snowfall on the evening they arrived!). Then Beth and Jacob came just after New Year for a beautiful few days. The whole holiday was mellow and harmonious and easy and just perfect !

Porte d’entree – up with the old floor…

We’re on the final push of the renovation – the last major part of ‘unfinished’ house – the porte d’entrée or entrance hall. A few years ago, we had some artisans come and lay a concrete floor in our entrance. It was the old cow-shed floor originally, so sloped from both sides to a middle gulley which used to run into a drain. It was beautiful, but hugely impractical – and a difficult job to level, so we thought we’d get someone with a little more experience and expertise to do it. Long story short, they did a terrible job !! Didn’t prime the floor, didn’t fill the gulley before pouring the self-levelling concrete, and the result was a floor that started cracking and coming up within weeks of being laid.

We finally took the plunge this January to dig it up, and tackle it ourselves !

Parts of the floor just literally lifted off in huge chunks – and the rest Joe managed to get up with the jack hammer.

First we took down walls and ceilings – then Joe tackled the boiler room, and re-organised all the plumbing installation so that everything was properly fixed to a flat surface instead of to the old stone wall. It was impossible to access until the walls came down. And he did such an amazing job, as it was still really hard to get access behind the boiler and our huge tank !

And laying the new

We then poured a new floor – first priming, then filling the gulley, and then a frenetic day with very time-sensitive mixing and pouring of self levelling concrete – Luke came over to give us invaluable help … and Oscar and Noah were part of the team!

The result was a huge improvement, but we still want to do one final top coat.

A little bit of extra help

Joe and I made a decision at the beginning of the year to call in some manpower to help finish the final stage of the renovation without exhausting ourselves completely. Particularly as I had quite a full time-table of teaching last year – all too often Joe was having to tackle the house projects alone.

We posted on WorldPackers (a similar site to Workaway which we used last year), and were inundated with applicants to come and help us !

Between February and July we had eleven volunteers, sometimes one at a time and sometimes two or three. Honestly we couldn’t have got what we got done without them, and we also met lots of fantastic young people from all over the world – many of whom have become great friends. So thank you, thank you to Samuel, Anna, Kate, Brie, Felix, Jasper, Lauren, Aline, Rawlin, Gustavo and Thais, we are so grateful for your help in achieving our big goals.

With the new floor down, we started building the walls for the new spaces: putting all the plumbing and electrical cables in place, and finally closing everything up with insulation and plasterboard.

Our plan was to move the laundry room to just in front of the workshop, thus giving us an extra room. This lovely cosy space is now my office! This means that we now have two bedrooms on the Mezzanine. We also wanted to put in a new toilet as until now the only downstairs toilet (apart from the gite) was in our bathroom – through our bedroom. This new loo has been a real game-changer when the house is full of family and friends!

Joe then designed and built a beautiful kitchen area to serve the outside kitchen.

And now all is up and running and works like a dream.

We are so happy with how this has all come together – it was a mammoth task, and the flow that it now gives through the whole house of colours and style is really pleasing. Such a thrill to have finally painted every bit of bare plasterboard.

Raising the roof on “the Chapel”

The last two years of the outside kitchen have been such a glorious addition to our summers here in Solignac. We decided last year that we really wanted to have an actual roof to protect the space from the rain, but also to enjoy eating out in all weathers.

The design for a roof that we could erect ourselves, would stand the winter snowfall, and would come within our tiny budget was a challenge Joe rose to as always. The result is simply astounding ! The whole roof took basically three days and 4 people to put up – by creating lifting equipment using our trusty tower, a chain hoist and a beam as a lever; we let physics do the heavy lifting. There were no risks taken, no part of the plan which didn’t work, and nobody got hurt. Hats off to Joe – truly !

Our 2 Worldpackers at the time, chosen for their strength (Gustavo) and carpentry skills (Kate) were the final perfect pieces of the plan.

The exhilaration we felt during the execution of this project, and the huge satisfaction of how well it has served us since is really the triumph of this year I think.

This majestic upgrade of our outside living space has affectionately been nick-named ‘The Chapel’.

Paths and steps

We’ve tidied up the garden with a beautiful curving path all the way to the door of the porte d’entrée, and to tackle the issue of the slope which would get slippy and muddy in wet or snowy weather, and bald and baked in the summer – Joe had the brilliant idea to create gentle steps with bricks and gravel. We also flattened the parking space outside the gite. It was heavy work, and we had the help of our trusty Worldpacker volunteers to bring it to fruition.

And then we did this !!!

And you are pretty much up to date ! I will get this uploaded now and delay no further !!

As always – thank you so much for sharing in our journey ! Thank you to our brilliant Worldpackers who helped us so much this year. (We even managed to get all the windows and doors repainted !)

And finally, for a more frequent and beautiful snapshot of our life in France, please take a look at @soli.barn on Instagram as Joe captures moments from our daily life in the glorious Haute Loire.