And upstairs, the twin bedroom

More work upstairs, taking up ugly carpets, and sanding and staining the floors. Not to mention lots of paint and decorating.

The guest shower room

Formerly beige fixtures with brown and green walls - really needed a change!

The den

The master bedroom

A bit of Canada here, with a quilt made by my mother.

And the master bathroom

Hoping that this will be the last bathroom we do, we thought we would make it nice.

Upstairs again, to the attic

The attic when we came was untouched for 200 years - the first year was spent cleaning the debris and stripping the beams. Then, with help, laying the floor and installing the plasterboard.

Now it's the office, photography studio, sewing room, and oh yes, the original purpose, a storage area as well. We spend a lot of time here.

And another part of the house - the apartment, where we lived for most of 10 years.

Before we moved to France, we had discovered that renting the house to people on holiday was much easier than providing bed and breakfast, as we had first planned. That left one small problem: where would we live ourselves, if other people were in our house.

Harry looked at the adjoining stable/workroom, and issued those now famous words: we could live here, it would only take .....

'Only' ended up involving a major construction project, begun before we arrived, and continued in our first months here. After a new roof, floor, staircase, pointing of stone walls, and lots more, we ended up with a cosy and, we think, stylish apartment.