EP11: Renovating a Maison!

We’re in the height of summer here and of course that’s when all the hard work inside the Maison begins! We have, leading up to this point, managed to get the floors professionally sanded and polished as well as organising the design and fabrication of a new kitchen. Our plan is to integrate the removal of the old kitchen before the installation of the new with as little disruption as possible!

We’ve continued to push ahead even with inevitable delays prioritising work on the bottom floor. Lastly, work commences in the downstairs chambre where the room is restored, ready for an incredible transformation.

Bour AV Avenue YouTube Dar there you go I’m practicing a little bit of my French so welcome hello and um and here we are back again at the maon in Dagon I really have a lot to show you in this episode we’re doing a lot of internal

Renovations the work has well and truly begun so inside the house we have the floors the beautiful Parry floors that are being resanded and Polished right now um we also have started in the kitchen tearing out the old kitchen uh and getting ready for tiling and to put the

New kitchen in it’s very very exciting uh and also I’ve been starting work on the shambra shambra shambra anyway the downstairs guest room room um in the in the maon uh so that’s that’s keeping us really busy inside the house before we can do anything else in

The house as far as Renovations go we really need to just ensure that the the floor is of a reasonable standard and we had to look through the house and um it’s pretty good it’s in good condition however it’s quite worn uh lots of marks

Just lots of wear and tear and so we decided to get a Sandra in we were able to secure and get a good price for a Tradesman to come in and sand the floor so we decided first things first we’ll move everything downstairs because fortunately we’ve got

Another bedroom down there while the top floor was sanded once that was sanded and varnished and then 2 to 3 days I think it was to sort of cure and set we then did everything in reverse and went back upstairs uh and the sander was able to come in and finish the bottom

Floor the park Tree Flooring is just stunning and workmanship in it is extraordinary so we didn’t want to remove it we wanted to keep it but there were some areas that were uh falling through so we had to certainly have those addressed very nice very happy now the kitchen itself is in very

Good condition and uh the layout is is good uh it’s just looking old and tied and we wanted something modern we wanted Storage Solutions uh because the size of the kitchen is relatively small so we need to be smart about where we place the appliances and how we you know

Access the drawers and particularly placing a pantry uh into this kitchen given that our last house had a butless pantry but we don’t have the luxury of that here so this kitchen’s coming out it’s going up to the Jeet and we’re going to repurpose it up there uh and I’ll paint

It a light color and maybe some new handles on that but it should come up really well except there was one problem hey so how’s it going oh it’s going to be difficult from the top rather than from underneath so I’m have to take all the

TOs off and try and find where the screws are which won’t be easy might a to do it with a magnet I’m not sure we will have to see all part of theun all part of the Fun Sean ended up finding a magnet in his trusty toolbox or 10 as uh those that have seen previous episode you would know the size of his workshop and uh and how many tools he has so the magnet was uh used to be able to locate

The screws in the countertop so that we could remove that uh carefully to avoid damaging the Cabinetry but this stuff had been built too last and it was uh quite a challenge to remove but we got there in the end well that is until sha tried to remove

The stove hood now that was a job time to do some serious demolition now and remove all the tiles we’ve done a few Renos in the past um so you never know really what to find behind the tiles in the quality of the of the wall we’ve had horse hair plaster

Before in Australian houses and now we’ve got a layer of brick with some plaster that has um being applied to the surface but it’s not past the board it’s just flaky plaster as you you can see here voila success they kchen has been ripped

Out and is now ready for us to be able to start tiling the floors the fabrication of the new kitchen will be completed and ready for installation in approximately 2 weeks uh which hopefully will give us enough time to get the the floors tiled by then in the inm we’re moving

Downstairs Into The Summer Kitchen a lot of houses masons in particular seem to have these summer kitchens located in the basement going and get some we some of that waterproof seiling paint oh okay fix that up for basement I’m I’m going to give that a paint so there’s just it’s it’s just ground

Behind there it’s all just Stone I’ll just hit it with that sealant and I might even you get a a splash back for about1 yeah so I might have just put just a splash back in over here well it certainly make it a bit more of a usable space bit more present

So this cabinet where are you planning on putting this cabinet that’s going next to the stove down here it’s going to go here uhhuh and the Pryer is going to go into a on the side of an under here so you have bench top up here

Okay and I might even take that old lagging down what the the laggings this rope stuff yeah on the old lagging on the pipe I’ll take that off you can actually get new stuff that looks better okay but I’ll take it off rather than have that sort of sitting above where

We’re cooking and that and um oh yeah oh um yeah that’s pretty nasty I’ll replace it with some of the like just the the foil Time stuff so as you can see down here we’re still unpacking uh all of our items that shipped over from Australia uh

Yeah oh dear think I might find somewhere to put the TV we can come down here I tell you what it is so hot right now and the basement is it’s so cool in here it’s almost like it’s air conditioned in here it’s about 40° outside and it is incredible this Stone

Just keeps out that heat um I’ve got all of my art in these customade boxes love very very big pieces that uh have come with and uh some of it’s funny some of the things you find for example now I let me tell you the story so this is a photograph that was

Taken by Lisa Davidson when we were at the school of military survey and I was studying cartography she was studying uh illustration and doing a photography component of that course and she said would you mind modeling for me look at that hey 20 years old just totally glamorous so Funny Sean’s just finished assembling our summer kitchen or as they say here in France Cuisine Le kitchen summer I think anyway it’s just come together so well he’s put these benches in got all the white goods in as well which is fantastic because uh in Europe it’s very

Common to have the dryer in the kitchen so there you go this is is Luke and Luke is our pmer and um he’s currently working on fixing up the connections uh in our kitchen but what Luke’s also doing is he’s removing all of our radiators um

Now that is so that we can isolate each one of these radi we’re going to have those cleaned up and I’ll have those repainted um they weigh a lot to the point where Sean said you’re not going to be able to LIF this with me um and we have some really

Big radiators upstairs on the top floor so I don’t know how I’m going to get those down here’s another one so they’re all coming out they’re going to get some um isolation Taps fitted to them I believe and it’s just so that we can run

Uh you know the ones that we need come winter and the ones we don’t need in certain rooms we can just switch them off so it’s energy saving um let do during this time it just happens to be the height of summer so of course we’ve

Been battling the heat it’s just been so so hot anyway some time out get some fresh air and enjoy our view of De well it’s certainly time to give this room a freshen up and remove the wallpaper it’s pretty old I mean it would have been really quite sweet back in the day I guess anyway lots to do to bring this um bedroom back to life Yeah so what I have been doing these last couple of days is removing the wallpaper and I found that underneath so that is just plaster so as you can see you know we could probably do something to that plaster um as far as patching up and um

You know filling in holes and sending it back uh but look it’s easier and quicker um if we just read wallpaper I found a beautiful um design on um Pinterest and I have attempted to emulate that so there were quite a lot of large cracks and holes um underneath the uh the old

Wallpaper but yeah that’s that’s what it’s looking like currently um the next job is sanding back the cornering and the the skirting boards and the arat Traves so that’s the sanding now finished up I’m absolutely covered in sanding dust so anyway it’s very exciting because it’s one step closer um all of the walls I’ve now finished they’re just beautiful and smooth ready for wallpaper um but the sanding is not

Quite over yet as I have to do all the arraes the cores uh and take the doors off and do the doors and the and the cupboards next but getting closer it’s a good day as always I will leave you with some of my favorite highlights but with a

Twist starting with meeting YouTubers Alan and Kim from V Colorado they follow my channel and we’re on cycling holiday here in the south of France of course riding through the beautiful Doon Valley it was such a thrill to meet them to show them around the property and to

Also learn of their own experiences and zest for life a week later I was watching the rugby vers Wales match at the O stadium in Leon when would you believe it I met Julie and David who happened to recognize me in the stands just absolutely Priceless again meeting some

More wonderful accomplished people who live between Australia and France it is indeed a small world but full of loads of content so thank you for choosing my channel thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time Abiento