So we arrived in the Vendee region of western France, and decided to, with the help of my husbands parents, create a "Gite" for summer rental. The above pictures are what it looked like to start with.....not really very appealing to holidaymakers! My parents-in-law came over to stay for the creation, as it was my husband and his dad who were undertaking the works alone. And so in the January the hard work began, for them and for me, as I juggled looking after our 3 children and a full time job. As soon as planning permission arrived it was all hands on deck, as we wanted to have it finished for the summer season, and as you can imagine, with just 2 workers, and given the state of the barn, this was going to be a long job. We have loads of photos of the works in process, but I won't bore you with all the details. They worked very long hours, which was particularly difficult for my husband as I also worked from 9am to 4pm then from 6pm to midnight sometimes later, (that's Hotel/restaurant work for you, but that's also another story), so he was left to cook & look after the children in the evening. Anyway, to cut a 5 month story short, the gite was finally ready for occupation the day before it was occupied, and even on the very day we were still hanging pictures etc...We had put out our first advert on the Internet a couple of months before, (with our fingers crossed that it would be ready in time!), and the very next day we had 15 calls for bookings. Unfortunately, most of the people wanted the same week, but we did manage to fill up the whole summer. We are very pleased with the end result and have had so many lovely comments about the quality of work, not that we are in any way blowing our own trumpets!! Anyway if anyone is interested, check out more photos on the Owners Direct site.
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