{"id":22066,"date":"2023-09-20T15:37:47","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T13:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/?p=22066"},"modified":"2023-09-20T15:38:42","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T13:38:42","slug":"ive-been-quiet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/ive-been-quiet\/","title":{"rendered":"I’ve been quiet"},"content":{"rendered":"

But it doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. It just means that I’ve been doing lots of small things, getting organised and clearing away rubbish to the ‘d\u00e9chetterie’, stuff like that, that haven’t lent themselves to being photographed. They were all necessary, however, as part of my gradual move out of the caravan and into the house.<\/p>\n

I say ‘gradual’ because although the move was immediate I’ve had to leave a lot of less essential stuff behind in the caravan where it will have to remain until I have more storage space available in the house. Plus, of course, there’s lots of stuff still in storage, some of which will have to come out soon as it’s now needed, in the kitchen especially. Things like my coffee machine and grinder, my toaster and quite a few more things that I I didn’t have room for in the caravan.<\/p>\n

The first thing I had to do was make the space available in the house more comfortable which I’ve done by making it into a sort-of bedsit. When I came to France I brought with me a set of cane furniture – a table, four dining chairs, a settee and two armchairs – that we had in our conservatory (verandah in French) and which I used temporarily in the dining room and kitchen in my old house in Plazac. <\/p>\n

The table stayed in the kitchen because I never finished it so never acquired proper furniture for it but although I was originally going to dispose of the settee and armchairs I finally decided to wrap them in plastic and store them in the ‘grenier’ (loft). When I moved I cleaned them up a bit and put them in one of my ‘tonnelles’ where they were occasionally used but where they ended up under a plastic tarp from the end of last summer until now.<\/p>\n

After moving into the house I decided I’d do the same again as when I moved into my old house. The furniture is now 25 years old, a bit tatty but still quite useable, and after cleaning off as much of the dust, grass cuttings and outdoor detritus as I could I put the settee and armchairs in the living room, where I also placed my old TV on a couple of the wooden trestles that I bought for when I paint the shutters, and the table and two of the dining chairs in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

I then moved the temporary wardrobe round to make a screen and added a sheet of left-over Contiboard supported by masking tape to make a private sleeping area and was very happy with the result. Much more bright, airy and comfortable than the caravan ever was. Much more civilised in fact, and with my computer on another sheet of Contiboard supported on two more trestles, I’ve got everything that I need for the short term.<\/p>\n

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Obviously the arrangement will only be temporary but my intention is not to buy any new furniture until I’ve decorated the house, or at least the main parts of it, right through. So this old cane stuff could be around for a few more months, at least until the Spring of next year I would think, but that will be no hardship whatsoever compared to living in the caravan. Every time I go into it to bring out a bit more stuff I find it incredibly claustrophobic and can’t wait to get out again.<\/p>\n

I don’t know how I managed to live in it non-stop for nearly 27 months but I guess you just do what you have to. OK, it gave me very few problems in that time and didn’t leak, which was the main thing, but I’ll be glad to see the back of it and if I never have to step foot in another caravan again for as long as I live, I’ll consider that a life-enhancing result!<\/p>\n

Much of the rest of my time over the past 10 days or so I’ve spent doing things in the bathroom and separate toilet. This has included fitting all of the accessories – towel rings and rail, toilet roll holders and supports for robes and dressing gowns. I’ll not show any pics of the bathroom for now as its grand-finale will come next week-end when I pick up the final piece of furniture for it that I have on order from Leroy Merlin, but here are a couple of the little separate toilet.<\/p>\n

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I’ve used Grohe accessories throughout that are made in Germany. They cost a little bit more than the usual ‘Made in China’ junk but their quality is self-evident and I’m sure that they will last the lifetime of the house. They’ll never have to come off the walls again anyway, as long as I’m living in it, that’s for sure! In fact all of the plumbing and sanitary fittings used in the house are from Grohe, excluding the hand basin mixer tap in the separate toilet. And that should have been but after specifying a Grohe part, the builder substituted an Italian one instead. I’ll not be complaining however \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

But it doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. It just means that I’ve been doing lots of small things, getting organised and clearing away rubbish to the ‘d\u00e9chetterie’, stuff like that, that haven’t lent themselves to being photographed. They were all necessary, however, as part of my gradual move out of the caravan and into … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22066"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22085,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22066\/revisions\/22085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}