Bonjour everyone, Right, I'll be honest with you: this fortnight has been an absolute slog at the Chartreuse. Our latest video is now live! Fair warning though, it's less 'dreamy French renovation' and more 'why did we think this was a good idea?' But that's the reality of this journey, isn't it? Watch it now: January decided to throw everything at us: constant rain, an actual storm (thankfully we escaped with minimal damage, touch wood), and then, of course, the universe decided that nothing...

Bonjour everyone, Welcome back! In this week's video, we finally tackle a job we’ve been putting off for over two years: ripping out all the old insulation upstairs, as the first step towards our attic renovation. It’s one of those tasks that nobody wants to do, but that needed doing before anything else could move forward. Why now? The insulation that was up there had been installed back in the 1990s, and it was made of glass fibres. On paper, it should have done the job, but in practice it...

Bonjour everyone, Winter has truly arrived here in southwest France. We've had a proper cold snap this week, and would you believe it, we actually woke up to snow in Bordeaux! It's such a rare sight that half the neighbourhood was out taking photos. But the novelty wore off pretty quickly when we realised just how freezing cold the house had become. And that's what finally pushed us to tackle a job we really should have done ages ago: insulating under the floorboards in the cellar. I know, I...