Cellar

It sounds great to have a cellar - all that extra storage space.  Ours turned out to be a nightmare, as we weren't able to see it when we bought the house and the so-called 'helpful English builder' who supposedly surveyed it for us (the French don't go in for building surveys, oddly), failed to notice that there was one and less so that the one that there actually is had a major problem!  So we ended up having to replace the entire living room/kitchen floor, install new cellar beams, get it sorted and then install new drainage in the garden - ouch!

So keeping on top of the humidity in there has since become a vital job.  It's been pretty good over the years, but we'd noticed the beginnings of some black mould growing on some of the beams, so we killed it off with bleach last week, wire brushed it all down and have painted on a mould inhibitor, to keep it sweet.  What fun we have!