The letting season is now officially over.
Villa Picholine has been cleaned and made ready for the winter. It seems strange to have Saturdays back to do things for ourselves instead of doing change-overs. We have the next few months to finish the noisy jobs on site before lettings commence again on the 1st April.

Work on our house has been ongoing but rather slow during the hot weather but now it has cooled down things are going a little quicker.  The roof on the 2 storey part has been completely finished and the large wood beams for the vaulted, beamed ceiling have been put into place. For this we needed help and last week the carpenter arrived with his crane to speed things up. It is nice to see things happening quickly but stressful working towards fixed deadlines. I much prefer it when there is just the two of us.

The windows and doors have been ordered and should be delivered before Christmas and the insulated roofing panels should be here at the end of next week. The next deadline is to have roof on & finished, windows and  doors fit and all sealed up before the end of January.  So no pressure there then.  With a lot of hard work and some nice sunny weather it just may be possible. Fingers crossed.

Yay - we have a roof. 1 of 3 is now tiled and just needing the ridges finishing.
Spring passed in a flash and summer arrived and whoosh it is now September.

Work has been ongoing through the hot dry summer -albeit at a much slower pace.  Being on a roof in 39 degree heat is not much fun. Although the large paddling pool, (allegedly for the grandchildren!!), has been a godsend.

The upstairs floor and roof timbers were delivered in April and put in place. We also bought a small temporary staircase for us to be able to carry all the blocks for the walls and the tiles for the roof up a little more easily.  All the blocks and the roof-tiles have all been painstakingly carried up by hand, little by little, and at the time it seemed like it was never going to end.  But end it has and all has been done by Bryan and I and our trusty scaffolding tower. I'm not sure if when I look out of my office window I feel proud or shattered.   Maybe both.

In between building there has been numerous photo shoots and Villa Picholine has been fully booked for the summer with guests from France, England, (including our annual Heinz Baked Bean supplier), Australia, Germany and Switzerland.
The vegetable garden has been very productive and lots of the produce has been either preserved or made into soups for winter. Keeping everything watered has been a big task and as it has been a long dry summer we are now on water restrictions. Luckily the tomatoes are nearly finished and are ready for pulling up.


We even managed a weeks holiday. As usual it was spent in Spain on the Costa Brava. It is only a short journey and the scenery is stunning. We just needed to chill and recharge the batteries ready for the next phase of building. Plenty of sun, sea, swimming and Tapas and here we are ready to go again......

The first update for a while.

Building has been ongoing throughout the winter. We are now up to first floor level on the last villa. Our son & his family came to stay for a couple of months to help, (before they emigrated to Australia), and a lot of progress was made.

We also visited a nearby quarry and ordered a stone archway for our hallway. This was delivered and is now in place. After building the last two villas this one seems to be taking forever to build - but as someone kindly pointed out - it is twice as big.  It is now back to just the two of us and things are going a little more slowly.  All the floor beams and floor panels are on order and delivery is scheduled for the end of next week. The windows and doors have been decided on and the next project is to order the roof timbers. Bryan is working on the plans for this in his 'spare time' and we will hopefully be placing the order for these next week.

In between building I am spring cleaning Villa Picholine in preparation for the arrival of our first guests.  This year we have added a microwave and a docking station to the list of  equipment.  A garden centre shopping trip has also been achieved and yesterday was spent planting what I had bought in Villa Picholine's garden. The lawn was also mowed and a new flower bed created in the corner of the lawn where the grass was not growing very well.

The vegetable garden has been dug over and we now have broad beans, onions and lettuce planted. The strawberries have all been re-planted and a mulch/weed mat placed on them and we are just waiting for a few consecutive days of warm sunshine and the potatoes will be going into the ground. Tomato seeds are growing on a sunny window sill and are nearly ready for potting on. A lot more is  being achieved with the onset of lighter evenings.  The almond blossom has been stunning this year and has now finished but the peach trees we have in pots ready for planting are now in bloom - we will keep our fingers crossed for lots of fruit too.

Photo shoots have already started and we have a few more already booked. Bryan has been spending his winter evenings creating a video for a fabulous new project to be built in nearby Marseillan and this was completed this week also.  The weather keeps teasing us with nice warm days then it is back to wind and showers....We can't complain though on the whole it has been a good winter but we are so ready for sunny spring days.