Wednesday 9 July 2008

Moving Right Along

I can either cut and paste all my emails or just blog. Here's the blog. (I thought a bit of bolding would help to cut to whatever chase interests you.)

We are now counting down the days to moving -- during the week of 14 August. We have an apartment in the village to rent until May. By then, it will be warm enough to either camp out in whatever part of the house or workshop has walls and a roof -- or just camp. The apartment has a ton of storage space, should we need it, a lovely terrace and a garden. Are we lucky or what?

We have free storage space in the village, thanks to another friend. Yes, we are lucky.

We have a lead on space in the village for the workshop until the new one is built.

We can't get the straw locally, after all; no one produces enough. But we have found a supplier. We hope. It's a bit late in the year and we haven't managed to contact him, yet.

Our buyers were here over the weekend to register their kids in school, measure everything, and tell us that they have sold their house. "Good thing for you," they said. "Better thing for you," Nick thought, but did not say. "Now you won't be losing your deposit."

So, we are signing the final papers for the sale in the third week of August and the papers for the purchase about the same time.

We're offered a used cement mixer. When did I ever think a cement mixer would make a great gift?

We have another four days to clean out the house for the July 14th vide grenier -- empty the attic -- a sort of garage sale. I lo-o-o-o-o-ve throwing things out.

Of course, now is when I pick up two translation jobs. Isn't that always the way?

And we're doing 10 days of B&B because I couldn't bring myself to turn down some regular clients who aren't aware that I've retired. Then, again, one of the guys is a landscape architect. . .

2 comments:

  1. This is so exciting! I can't wait to see the photographic documentation of the process when it really gets underway.

    I saw a thing on CNN about straw bale houses in East Germany and that helped me to understand more of what you're talking about. What kind of equipment are you going to need to compact the staw-and-muck mixture down to the required density? And what exactly is the muck part? Mud? Clay? I'm headed over to Wikipedia right now to see if I can glean more.

    Bonne Chance and I hope to read more soon!

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  2. We're not using the straw-and-muck method. We're using regular straw bales held on either side (front and back) by the wooden structure. I'd refer you to a site, but they're all in French, so you'll have to wait for our pictures. The "plaster" will be straw and muck, though, and lime, although the muck may be cement. We don't have good muck around here.

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