Since our road trip we have been keeping ourselves pretty busy. We use my laptop for watching a film in the evenings which means that it needs charging each day. This has contributed to the delay in updating as, more often than not, when I have been in the right mood to type an update the laptop has not been charged!
Once I had finally recovered from our Fete de la Musique over-indulgence, it was time to make a concerted effort to progress our building. Steve set to continuing with the roof and I was left to play with mud! The weather has been kind to us once again although I now have to leave my overalls in the sun during lunchtime to dry them out enough to put back on after!

Five days after his restart Steve managed to replace the main property roof on the garden side. The second side (roadside) only took from 2nd July to 5th July (including a day off on the fourth to celebrate my birthday!) so I have no idea what he was playing about at whilst doing that first side! (Although I suppose the fact that the wall bulges may have played a part!!)

While Steve had been doing that, I had been making steady progress on the ‘washed-away’ wall as well as the crack in the south end of the main building. I had also started doing some of the more fiddly bits – filling in small cracks and holes, focussing mainly on the garden side of the main house. Steve has been pressed into cob placement duty, as I was too scared to climb the ladder and stand on the roof of the extension to fill the crack up to the main roof. I don’t think he has done as good a job as me really but I certainly can’t complain as I didn’t do it – I tried climbing the ladder once but whilst transferring to the ladder resting on the roof I nearly kicked the one I was climbing away so I think I will allow him the pleasure of doing all cob repairs to that part of the building!

Now that the roof is fully enclosed, we have recommenced a long-running discussion of the roof covering for the main building. Steve really wants to thatch it (or get it thatched!) but as we will have to go back to the architect and planning people to change it from the original decision of tiles I am not as keen! I am also not sure whether I would like it thatched or not! We are both happy that the garage building will have a grey slate roof but we cannot quite agree on the main building! Something to think about but not enough to make us stop working!

Time to focus on the new wall and also what has become known as ‘the elephant’s foot’ – the infill between the garage building and the glass wall. We had originally wanted it to be glass but the architect was dead against it. As this part is stone held together with concrete we were concerned about putting cob on it but so far things look to be ok and we are hopeful that we do not have any issues! We were surprised at how long this work took – from a physical work perspective we could have finished it easily in two weeks, however after two days of building it was necessary to leave it for a couple of days to dry out as there was too much risk of ‘bulging’. This did mean that we ended up with us having to have a few days away – to prevent Steve from fiddling, distance had to be created!

With nothing better to do we decided that we should think about glazing for the property. An online check had discovered a local company (just 4km away at Lanvollon) that appeared to make glass on site – perfect! So one Friday morning we decided to take a short detour after food shopping to the factory showroom and see if we could get a quote. We had our approximate measurements and thought we would probably have to hand them over and wait a couple of weeks for a ‘devis’ (quote). How wrong we were! The lady at the reception desk asked us to write down our measurements on her sheet and she immediately input them into the computer and produced the quote! Of course, as we only really had approximate measurements it was an approximate price but she advised that we should confirm our measurements and send them in by email. On the quote it said that the factory would be shut for the annual holidays in weeks 33 and 34 (not that we could figure out which weeks they were but knew they were sometime in August!) so we were unsure when we would be likely to get the glass delivered. However we decided to bite the bullet, sent in our revised figures, received a revised quote within a day, decided to go ahead and went online to pay by bank transfer. As the delivery charge was separate on the bill we weren’t sure whether we had to pay it at the same time or whether it was paid on delivery and thinking that we would have time to figure it out we didn’t bother paying it. We sent a confirmation email that we had made the payment and wondered just how long we would have to wait for the glass. Our question on our order of how long the lead-time was had gone unanswered so we thought we would just wait and see! We were both concerned that there was a distinct possibility that it would be ready when we were back in England getting our passports renewed and how would we deal with that!! However, we need not have worried. Within a week we received an email to say that our glass would be ready to pick up on Friday 24th July (just two weeks since our first contact!) What a great company – Riou Glass, VICA! So on Friday 24th July we made our way to Lanvollon to collect our glazing – gloves for the pair of us and plenty of cloths and pillows and things to protect it all! The staff were incredibly helpful and we soon had it all safely loaded in the van. Steve decided that he wanted to put an extra cushion between two of the units (turn away now if you’re squeamish!) and without his gloves on he managed to catch his knuckle on the triangle shaped window – Ah, ****, glass is extremely sharp but does make a nice clean cut! Fortunately our first aid kit was close to hand and well stocked so after bandaging him up we went home, unloaded the glass and went away for a couple of days to try to keep his wound as clean as possible. He was rather annoyed with himself as he had wanted to try fitting the first piece as soon as we’d got it! After our couple of days away with his hand bandaged and covered with plastic glove under other glove he started fitting the glass, he couldn’t help me with the cob anymore as he said it was too much of a risk. I assume he meant the dirt!! The first window he chose to fit was the original window at the front of the main house. He decided to silicon it in and use a couple of screws to hold it in place. Due to the success of this he thought he would use the same method for two others. Unfortunately they weren’t quite as successful so we do need to reorder two new units next year, but the existing ones have only cracked on one side each so are serviceable for the winter and may become part of a greenhouse in the future! The big window (that used to be the front door) cracked because he put too much twisting load on it and the window in the new wall broke because he put the screw too close to the glass. Well, it is the first time he has ever done anything like this so I suppose I should allow for a couple of small mistakes. The large sections next to the door were quite difficult to fit as none of the wood was square or straight or aligned or ………! And probably the easiest to fit was his nemesis – the triangle. With the glass in the property looks completely different almost like the type of house that would be in a magazine!

It has become apparent that Steve and I shouldn’t fit cob together! We have two very different ways of doing it and as I am the cob queen I decided that he should b*gger off and leave me to it!! He decided that he would continue working on the lurve shack. So there is no doubt that it is a store, we decided to make use of the galvanised sheets removed from the property roof for the walls and the fibre tiles stacked by the property for the roof and with the offcuts of timber from the new main roof he has made a door – so this 4m x 3m shack has cost us the princely sum of approximately 10 euros (in nails!) and a fair few hours but at least that’s free!! Steve thinks it is really ugly but I think it looks like an old Citroen van and therefore is really rather beautiful!! He did suggest that we could take the light clusters and numberplate from the old trailer tent/tool store and fit them to the rear of the shed but I thought that was a bit weird and I want the numberplate in the kitchen anyway!!

We have managed to use up all the cob from the original main building which was what we removed to create our new doorway and the interior wall. Rather than making from scratch we decided that we would knock the interior wall in the garage building down. This was obviously built at a different time by different people as the quality of the cob was quite different from the main house. In my opinion it appears to contain less clay and I spent many days disappointed in my work but decided, in the end, that it looked the same colour and had stood for some time so should, having been mixed to my standard, be all right! As we still had one window to fit (which had been made last year) I was tasked with the removal of the cob. This was quite good as it meant I would be allowed another shower (two in two days!!) as it can be quite a dirty job! Quite speedy work for us – window cut out, glazed and fitted within two days – excellent. Only thing is it doesn’t let an awful lot of light in!! But surely it is better than not having a window at all!

Having not finalised our roofing plans the completion of the roofing would be a 2021 activity so we thought, in order to protect the cob and timber as much as possible, we would cover the roof structure in some nice thick (quality) tarpaulins which could be used later as weed suppressants in our gravelled courtyard thus not wasting materials. We decided to use the smaller tarpaulin and roof as a practice run as this was 6m x 10m and didn’t need to be pulled as high! The 8m x 12m tarpaulin is quite heavy but we managed to get it positioned fairly easily. Quite a lot of shouting was involved, but this was only because the neighbours’ dogs were barking and we were on opposite sides of the building which no longer has any openings through! A downside to creating a new wall and fitting windows!! It took Steve quite some time to string it as he wanted, especially as I kept trying to put my five eggs worth in, as I can’t risk my cob being compromised!! Once it was all on, we went inside – it is certainly a lot darker now – who knew that small strips of light could make such a difference!