October 2010 – Autumn works

Over the next few months the two front doors (!) will be changed into one front door, one window and one set of glass doors. This has been high on my list of things to do  as it will help keep the house warm (the old doors are draughty and offer little insulation) and stop me and anyone over 5′ 10″ banging their heads!

We did get a quote to have this done but we thought it very expensive at over 8000 euros. In fact looking in detail at the quote it was quite clear that a 25% English tax had been applied, which unfortunately is fairly common practice. The big give away was that the prices of doors only obtainable from one place (Lapeyre) were exactly 25% higher than from the shop directly!

So with our Dutch neighbours encouragement he and I are doing the work. And the final price will be less than half the quote we got.

First step was to order the oak beams for lintels and the window frame:

This lot of oak cost just over 300 euros! The main beams are 20×25 cms. You realise how heavy oak is when you try and move them!