Week starting 6th January - The Big Freeze

A week hampered by freezing conditions. With temperatures well below freezing for many of the days it was hard (even with anti-freeze) to use mortar. So cold fingers and frustration all round. The plan has been to continue the stone work to the West elevation and to start to build up the last gable wall (East). This wall will include the french-doors out to the covered terrace and at the other end a doorway out to the garden. The old stone fire place which Bob has reclaimed from a derelict building locally is now to start to be built into this wall. The pieces of stone are very very old and extremely heavy. Many of them are having to be slung into position with the digger. The larger top pieces and final mantel will be the next job - so that should be rather tense!

Also being built into this wall is another of Bob's (he has a thing about old stone) reclamations. An old stone sink - very typical of old stone houses in France. The huge slab of stone runs right through the skins of the building and sticks out into the freshair. Into this huge slab a drainage channel is cut, so that before modern plumbing the household's water would be released to the outside. The sink itself is shallow and has huge stone cheeks on either side. The main large piece of stone weighs about 700kg and so this had to be very carefully placed into the structure and then built around.

Where the stone sink sticks out (externally) will eventually be the covered terrace - but that seems a long way off right now!

Background information

After various issues regarding planning permission October 2008 saw the start of the long-awaited renovation of an old house and barn at our home, Las Razes, Touffailles, Tarn et Garonne. France.


We are going to place photograps of the on-going progress on this site as a way of letting people follow the progress. We have been sending out emailed photographs but this is causing the 'clogging' up of various email 'inboxes'.


Some of the photographs are of 'boring bits' - boring that is, unless like Bob are keen on these sort of details.


We need to get the building up to a stage where it can be secured/watertight before the start of the holiday season and the arrival of our summer guests. So the pressure is on for this self-build project. Luckily Bob knows what he is doing.

For anyone that did not know the old ruin - a set of photographs of the old building appears first. The hope is to return the building as near as possible to its original exterior shape and character. However the ruin was quite unsafe and was built into and around bed-rock, so the plan is to take down the building completely. All the walling stone would then be put to one side and the rubble moved for landscaping. A pecking machine would come onsite to dig out the bed-rock and create a level site. The building would then rise again, benefitting from up-to-date dampcoursing and insulation. The walls would be built with a cavity, with the original stone being replaced on the exterior walls and some of the interior walls.