Before and After.......New Kitchen complete!

Well......that is our new kitchen finally finished, nothing like the pressure of friends visiting to get things finally finished off. James has done a wonderful job installing our new kitchen, not without some mishaps, like cutting the sink hole with square corners instead of rounded, but we won't mention that really! We are both delighted with it and went for bright red brick tiles and matching red floral wallpaper to give it a lively feeling of warmth. The black tiles on the floor and black worktops, we feel work great with the contrasting white hi gloss units, so we are well chuffed with the outcome. Louis the gardener said it was 'Magnifique!'

Our friends who we met in 2008 on our French Canal trip, Julie and Martin, from MyTime stayed with us last night, a flying visit, as they are on their way back to Gozo to their boat with their new BMW Convertible car which they plan to keep over there. We had a lovely lunch in the garden followed by an excellent meal at night in Chassy, a 10 mins drive from us, at La Terrase restaurant. The restaurant is owned by the daughter of the lady who owns La Petit Auberge in Marly and as they were closed last night, she recommended we go to La Terrase. We had some thoroughly traditional Bourgogne delicacies washed down with some lovely regional wine. Needless to say, one of us had to stay sober to drive the van home in the dark, what a hoot that was with Martin volunteering to sit in the back!

The weather here has taken a pleasant turn with nice hot days and nippy evenings, but no rain in sight, which is a blessing.

Next on the agenda is renovating the pool........Jim is currently emptying it out just now and I have asked him to save the 2 little frogs that are in there, so we plan on re-homing them somehow, somewhere in the garden.

The workmen start on the guttering next Monday and then they will move onto repairing some of the plaster rendering on the facade, before high pressure washing it and painting a lovely 'Rose d'orange' colour. They will finish off with painting the windows and plastering my office downstairs and putting in a new ceiling. We managed through our Estate Agent contact, Barbara, to find a Belgian tradesman called Bert who is going to manage all the work for us, they were considerably less expensive than the French tradesmen we also got quotes from, obviously they rip the British off! We will also get Bert to do our bathroom when he can fit us in, they specialise in building walk in showers, so subject to price, hopefully this will save Jim the hassle as plumbing is his pet hate! We have already bought the wallpaper for the bathroom which is black with huge red bulging eyed fish on it - a statement to say the least, so we will design the rest around the wallpaper!

So it will be all go next week and for the foreseeable future. More updates to follow....