The Apéro Terrace

When we left Preuilly on Tuesday morning, Alex was hard at work in our garden.

You may remember that when we last mentioned the garden we had inadvertently managed to bring down part of our back wall, and prematurely demolish that part of the garage we were working towards replacing.

The back wall is now rebuilt on top of its new concrete foundation, and when the weather warms up again (we had rain, sleet, snow and hail yesterday) he will be chipping out all the old pointing and rendering the whole wall with a coat of chaux blanche in the pierre apparente style.

The back wall rebuilt, and most of
the garage wall demolished.

Once that was done, Alex got on with rebuilding
the garage wall using 10cm parpaing
(cement blocks 50cm x 25cm x 10cm)

He also built a second concrete step up to the terrace, which means we have about one cubic metre less rubble to shift before we can lay the surface, replaced some bricks in the lower wall that had come unstuck (literally), and removed most of the demolition rubble.

The terrace as it looks today.

All that needs doing in that section now is levelling the ground surface on the upper terrace, capping the back wall in hard stone to prevent rain damage, and removing some of the iron work that protrudes from the walls at eye level. When the time come for rendering the walls, the cement block and brick walls will be given a layer of slightly peach coloured (it's the traditional finish here) chaux blanche.

Simon