It's a beautiful day up in the Alps, with blue skies and bright sunlight. A great change from the recent poor weather - summer is hopefully here to stay! It would be a great day to go climbing - Chris gave me a shout this morning to see if I fancied it - but unfortunately I've got a bit of an eye infection and prudence dictates it's going to be better to not agitate it and leave it to heal up. It's one of the downsides of wearing contacts but hey - at least it's giving me time to do other things.
So with that in mind I had a dig around and found loads of cleaning products and have been giving the farmhouse a really, really good clean. The kitchen went first today - the sink was fully scrubbed with Ajax and drawers and cupboards cleaned out and wiped down with disinfectant. A new covering was found for the kitchen table so it's now there's a sunflower yellow glow to match the sparkling white of the sink.
Next to go down was the toilet. A nasty job at best and frankly I wasn't going to enjoy it. A heavy dose of bleach, ajax and scrubbing the floor made it look better and a wipe down of all the wooden panels is a marked improvement. The doors to the bathroom and toilet looked like they needed a clean so duly got the treatment.
By this stage I was really get into the flow of things so dumped a load of washing in the machine and gave the bathroom floor and sink a quick clean. A cursory glance towards a window saw dust and dirt and not the clear pristine view so this was duly put right and all windows got a good wipe down with detergent then a dry cloth making sunlight stream into the house. Doors were all opened to push out as much dust as possible and the flowers on the balcony were watered.
The washing machine finished and so that got hung up on the balcony, flapping away in the light breeze. The wooden fire got a de-ashing and a wipe over with a cloth to bring it back to some glory and then for a finale there was a quick whip round with the hoover on the rugs and wooden floors.
There's a few jobs that I'd like to do like mopping the floor and piling up all the logs outside ready for the coming fires. Also I'd like to get teh spare troughs outside filled with earth and plant a lod of herbs and flowers in them but for the moment I think that's about enough. I'll grab my camera tomorrow and post up a photo or two of the results.
The house is now filled with a delicious aroma of spicy merguez sausages frying away on the cooker. Perfect.
