Running a Gite in Brittany

Ready for new stairs

I've been working hard for the last few days on getting Poire ready for the new staircase. I know I started it over a month ago, but it's not been an easy job. There has been alot of patching and filling to fiddly detail work to erase all traces of the old stairs and prepare for the new set. The stair hole has been enlarged to cater for the shallower angle of the new stairs, consequently an upstairs wall has been moved, a new cross beam for the landing (which has moved 15cm forward to give more head room and make the site of the stair gate more secure), new lighting circuits (more holes and filling) for the stairs (two-way switch), a light for the lounge (the light used to be on the wall supporting the old stairs which has now been removed), an outside light (while I was there ! [btw drilling a hole through a meter thick wall with a 40cm long drill bit is not easy]), painting patched walls and ceilings and finally cleaning and treating newly exposed beams (bigger hole).

If my measurements are correct the new stairs should just slot straight in. Just a 10 minute job :-)

We have not got a delivery date for the new stairs, but at least now I can shift all my tools into the barn and start working on a 'green field' site. It's much easier with a fresh start.

|   6:56:35 PM   Ready for new stairs   

Waiting...

Not much action on the barn, well in fact nothing since the dalle was laid. The foreman came Wednesday night to let us know that the delay was due to the wait for the granite corner stones and lintels for the new doors and windows. A lorry load of materials (parpaing, sable & ciment) arrived this morning and we are expecting the workers to start Tuesday building a internal wall to separate the two gites. This week is half term and Monday is a holiday (Toussaint). That's the plan anyway.

|   3:20:56 PM   Waiting...   

Google fixed our car

Well strictly speaking a search on Google found the solution to our malfunctioning remote key fob. A while ago the key fob stopped opening and closing the doors to the Peugeot 406. A real hardship. I mean we had to go through the strenuous exercise of turning a key in the door lock.

Anyway, it got too much for me, and to avoid a potential embarrassing trip to a French garage, I did a quick search on Google which revealed the English instructions for resetting the key. Voila it now works perfectly. Apparently it can stop working if the button on the key is pressed too many times when out of range of the car. I suspect the kids (specifically Hugh) for fiddling about.

 

|   11:02:08 AM   Google fixed our car   

Spend to earn

Another end of year for our company, and another loss. The accountant was here all day going through the books and checking everything was OK. Caroline had entered all the receipts and invoices into the accountants recommended French accountacy package, and the accountant was just checking everything tied up. It's not a huge suprise we have lost money again. The last two years have seen a massive investment in renovation, maintenance, improvement and startup costs, so our income has fell somewhat short of our expenditure.

Unfortunately nothing is going to change very fast with the creation of two new gites and the costs associated with that.

|   7:51:59 PM   Spend to earn   

Gite Photo Gallery

We've added a Photo Gallery to our website for the gites to try to give potential guests a feel for more than just the gites, but also the surrounds.

Taking the photos took quite a while, wandering around clicking etc, but then going back through hundreds of previous photos to find different shots and images from other times of the year was very time consuming. The trouble with digital cameras is that is it very easy to take and store too many photos and fail to organise them for easy retrieval.

All the post processing of the images for the web (cropping, resizing, compressing, ...), takes ages. I used an old version of Paint Shop Pro, which I'm starting to get the hang off. Hopefully the hard work will be appreciated. Comments on the new gallery welcome.

|   11:34:57 PM   Gite Photo Gallery   

Chainsaw carpentry

I'm in the process of changing the staircase in one of the gites, Poire, to something a bit more comfortable. The new oak staircasehas been ordered and is due to arrive in about three weeks, so I thought I better pull my finger out and get the new hole in the first floor finished and hopefully repair and re-decorate the mess created by removing the old stairs and cutting bigger holes in the floor.

The new opening is much larger (longer) and I needed to put a transverse beam across between the existing beams for a fixing. After messing about with a hand saw and puny power tools trying to cut a 22cm by 15cm oak beam, I decided to only thing for it was the chainsaw. Fantastic, slices right through and makes carpentry quite enjoyable.

|   7:58:09 PM   Chainsaw carpentry   

Winterisation

Our last gite guests of the year left this morning. Because of the building work we had decided to close-up from today and leave ourselves free to make as much building noise and mess as necessary. This afternoon we have tidied all the play equipment and toys away under cover, moved the trampoline into the dry and lifted all the coir matting on the barn floor. I think the matting would rot away if we left it all winter, hopefully this should prolong it's useful life. It cost a small fortune, so we need to look after it.

Over the next few weeks we will prepare the gites for the winter. E.g. put the heaters on low or frost guard, wash all the nets and curtains, patch up and little dings and scrapes, various minor odd jobs etc.. Just before the first lets next year each gite will need a top-to-toe spring clean.

In passing I stumbled across Google Desktop Search. It's fantastic, I don't know how I managed without it before. It searches the files on your PC, within Outlook and the web pages you have visited for matching search items. If you know you read about "scaffolding" somewhere but can't remember if it was an email, a document you filed or something you saw on the web a couple of weeks ago, just type in scaffolding and bingo. Far far better than the Microsoft search facility, which asks you where to look? If I knew I would be searching !

|   4:28:47 PM   Winterisation   

Concrete floor laid

The concrete arrived today after lunch. The workers did a quick bit of preparation work, shuttering for the doors and finish tacking up the DPC to the wall, before starting to pour. I was quite relieved because mine and Ian's electrical work got a thumbs up.

It was fascinating watching them all work as a team. The concrete mixer driver (CMD) in the grey overalls had a small box which radio controlled the conveyor belt. It was unfolded from alongside the lorry to stretch into the barn opening, twisting and bending as it went, all remotely controlled, until it was fully extented and the conveyor belt was taught. His box also controlled the speed of delivery of the concrete.

The two guys in the stripey top and blue overalls raked and levelled whilst the third chap holding the delivery tube moved the concrete around the floor. The CMD manipulated the arm to follow his movements.

It was quite a joy to watch, real teamwork. There was no shouting, or calling left a bit, right a bit, they all just worked together sliently and efficiently as a team. Real professionals. I suspect this is a spinoff of the French system of having lots of separate 'expert' trades. There are not jack-of-all-trade builders over here, just artisans that stick to a specific job, and do it very well.

In order to get the whole floor flat and level they used a laser level. The leveller was a rotating laser beam that cast an invisible horizontal disc within the barn. Attached to a tee stick (the cross of the tee at the bottom) was the laser receiver that beeped when aligned. When the bottom of the tee was touching the concrete and it beeped, the operator smoothed out a small patch of concrete with a trowel and drew a circle around it. This marked a point. As they worked serveral points were marked about 3m or 4m apart and then they just joined up the known level points with a 3m straight edge. No little sticks pointing out the ground, or bits of string, just a laser. Dead clever and very fast. It also helped that the concrete was poured to almost the perfect level to start with so they did have tons of it to move about.

Anyway, if your still with me, the floor took two mixer loads (30 tonnes?) and was finished before tea time. Now we move onto windows and door openings.

|   9:28:07 PM   Concrete floor laid   

Leylandii again

Finally finished The Da Vinci Code last night. A really good read about the search for The Holy Grail via a series of interlinked clued related to Da Vinci. Good plot with subtefuge, double crosses and suprises. I was really pleased with myself because I solved one of the clues several chapters before the characters, however on reflection I suspect that was the intention of the author. Good read.

Last Feburary (2003) Caroline planted over 60 leylandii saplings along the far edge of the field as a visual and wind break. Because of the hot summer in 2003 I think we must have spent more on water trying to keep them alive as we did to buy them. Luckily we only lost 2 trees. Anyway based on the experience of cutting our overgrown hedge and a friends, I been out with the shears trimming the tops and sides to try to keep the height to 8ft (2.5m) and not too fat otherwise they are very difficult to cut. They have grown well this year, but there is still plenty of growth needed to make a decent hedge.

Lifted a section of the patio in front of the electricity distribution board on the front of the house. Took out a mini-digger's bucket width of pavers ready for the trench to be dug for the electricity supply to the new gites.

No concrete delivery today, maybe tomorrow.

|   7:39:51 PM   Leylandii again   

The end of Gites ?

In the Mail on Sunday property section there was a report of the 'death' of Gites. Here it is, scanned by someone on the Living France forum.

 

One afternoon at the end of August, Clive and Helen Tristram sat down and took stock of their gite business. The season had been their worst, their income plunging to just £10,000 - half the amount their six-year-old business once earned. 'We realised then that it just wasn't worth it anymore,' says Clive. But the Tristrams are not the only ones suffering. Thousands of British families across France have discovered that the gite bubble has burst. Once buying a gite or two seemed a guaranteed ticket to the good life and comfortable living in France, but today many gite owners are struggling to cover costs. And the situation has just become worse: with P&O Ferries closing all but one of the Western Channel routes from Portsmouth, and even reducing between Dover and Calais, British holidaymakers face a difficult journey to France –and so may decide not to come at all. For Clive and Helen, the slump in the market is troubling, but at least they have Clive's income as a management consultant to fall back on. However, for Derek and Angela, the downturn is potentially devastating. Having sold up in Britain, the couple sank a significant proportion of their cash into a 17th Century farmhouse with outbuildings in Clere du Bois in the Loire. After spending almost £90,000 creating four gites with shared pool, they opened for business on September 12th 2001. They expected trade to be slow at the start, but banked on a 14 week season. They have been shocked by the reality. 'Even now we are regularly full for just seven weeks, over July and the rest of the time is in the lap of the gods,' says Angela. The couple are down at least £8,000 on their estimated income – and there is nowhere to turn. 'All our equity was swallowed up doing up the property,' says Angela. This is it for us. We are not doing it for pin money, this is all we have and we are just surviving.' The cause of the problem is supply has outstripped demand Over the past few years thousands of Brits have headed across the Channel determined to fulfil their dream of living in France it is estimated that 150,000 live there permanently, while 500,000 own a second home. Buoyed by the rocketing UK property market and the comparatively low cost of property in rural France, and encouraged by TV programmes describing the apparent ease of turning barns into money-making enterprises, many have chosen to fund their dream by becoming gite landlords. The result is a wholly saturated market in which oversupply is affecting everyone from long established gite owners to beginners Reports suggest there are five gites available for every person wanting to book one. In the past five years, Chez Nous, the annual gite 'bible' for owners and renters, has seen the number of property advertising pages rise from 330 to more than 500, and is now restricting the number of gites advertised. Almost every gite owner complains of a 'flooded' market causing slow bookings and lower prices. Some are getting no one through the door. Kim Armstrong, whose husband works full-time in London, started trying to rent out her three-bedroom gite in the Dordogne last summer, but has not, had one single booking. She has dropped her £1,100 per week starting price to £800, and now will take anyone for £20 per person per night. Ruth Reid, an estate agent, has had gites in the Charente for ten years. This year, for the first time, she was empty in June. 'People used to book two years in advance to get a private place with a swimming pool,' she says. 'Now there is an endless supply of properties with a pool.' Clive and Helen started their business in 1999 with just one cottage in Charroux, in the Vienne, south-west France. A few months later they acquired a second cottage nearby. 'We calculated on both gites being full for 16 weeks of the year and charging the going rate,' says Clive. 'At first there was no pressure on the price during the peak season, and at other times we had good low-season bookings.' They were so confident about the future that for the 2002 season they rented another cottage called Chez Pierre and sub-let it as a gite as well. Two years on, however, the picture could not be more different. This year Chez Pierre had no bookings at all, and the two others just a few - many of those let out at a discounted rate. The Tristrams plan to take drastic action. 'Next year we will not let out the third gite, and we want to sell one of the cottages,' says Clive. He says one reason for the market downturn is that former gite holidaymakers have bought their own property. He estimates that at least ten of his regular customers have now bought homes in France - that's 20 weeks' rental lost. Meanwhile, Angela says many of those buying a second house rent it out at a rate that distorts the market. 'They are undervaluing the property for July and August and that makes it more difficult for people like us who are doing it for real,' she says. lngram Monk, of the long established property website FrenchProperty.com, has some blunt advice for those planning to take on a gite’don’t do it. You're jumping on a bandwagon that's long departed. People see a TV programme, and think they can do it, but by the time they do so, they are following a dream that is a few years old. There are too many gites now. 'It seems that for everyone who wants to book a gite, there's someone looking to buy one. You think you'll be the exception that you will succeed where others haven't, but that's not the case. You will simply be throwing money away.' Especially as the latest news from P&O is yet another blow to an already blighted French tourism industry. Last year visitors to France fell by 20 per cent and reports suggest this year is no better. Last year's decline was blamed on last year's heatwave and the advent of cheap flights to even cheaper holiday locations. 'France is more expensive than Spain and then there are the new destinations such as the Adriatic,' says Monk. But while tourism may have fallen, the cost of a gite certainly hasn't. Estate agent Mike Norman, of Nord Charente Homes, says that ten years ago you could buy a hamlet for £30,000 and spend almost the same again renovating it into a gite complex. 'Today you spend £200,000 to buy a property, then another £30,000 per gite in renovations. It takes about 12 years to recoup the original outlay.' And customers have become ever more demanding. 'People expect more and more for their money now,' says Jonathan White, marketing director VFB Holidays, which has been in the self-catering business for 35 years. 'Once they were happy to have a rustic gite and go back to basics. Now they want a washing machine, dishwasher, swimming pool but they don't expect to pay any more.' All this means that making a profit is tough. Tim Williams, who runs a course called How To Buy And Run A Gite Complex, says the return on gites has fallen over the past few years - from ten per cent per annum to between five to seven per cent. 'The ability for gite owners to raise prices has been curtailed because of the competition, yet the costs of a gite complex have risen,' he says. Potential gite owners often overestimate the return. 'For example, if you are buying a property with gites for £400,000 ~ and the house you live in is worth half of that, then you calculate your rental income on the remaining £200,000 only " says Williams. 'The return would be about £12,000 per annum.' Monk's grim conclusion is: 'Gites are no way to make a living. To have a chance you need at least three gites, but then the workload is astronomical. , Having an annexe or a barn gives you no return at all. Colleen Snitch, from the holiday rental company Simply Perigord, has 78 homes on her books, mostly those of British second-home owners. 'You earn enough for your own holidays, to pay for maintenance and redecoration, but that's it. It will not pay back a mortgage and if you are highly geared, don't expect it to work,' she says. Clive and Helen calculated that even when they were doing well, their profit was just 20 pence per hour. Now they hope to get 200,000 Euro (about £138,000) for the cottage in Charroux and that will go some way to alleviate the pain of previous low returns. As for Angela and Derek, and anyone else struggling with half empty gites, Monk does not hesitate in his advice. 'Sell now,' he says. 'I know it sounds morally reprehensible, and in a way it , is, but if you don't get out now, it will be too late. 'Soon more and more people will realise that gites are not a good investment and want to bail out. And then it will be too late.'

|   5:40:17 PM   The end of Gites ?   

First fit electrics

Hopefully we are now ready for the concrete to arrive on Monday for the floor. The builders have covered all the hardcore, waste pipes, conduits and sand with a plastic membrane as a damp proof course, then two layers of polystyrene and finally a heavy duty wire mesh. Since they left Caroline and I have fed the water pipes through the three pieces of blue conduit buried in the floor. It sounds easy, but even with the supplied string to pull it through it is tough going. Any bends or kinks really build up the friction, and after about 10m of pushing and pulling you think you're never going to make it and you've got you're fingers crossed that the string doesn't break or come untied.

We had the same situation with the big fat electricity supply cable, but by now we were getting the hang of it. Even on short runs with two people it's not that easy. I think for the 30m run from the distribution board to the gites I might pre-load the conduit laying straight and flat on the ground before burying it in the the trench.

Before pouring the concrete floor I have had to place all the electricity cables I need on the wire mesh. All the cables run within flexible plastic gaine (conduit between 16mm and 25mm diameter depending on the number and size of wires) and are tied to the wire mesh and fixed to the walls in the appropriate positions for sockets, light switches etc. I've had to do alot of reading and research to understand the French regulations in NF C 15-100. Distribution uses a radial system, rather than a ring main like in the UK. Everything runs off a separate spur, each with a disjoncteur (circuit breaker) from the fuse box. Various spurs are then grouped together and further protected via an interrupteur differential (RCD) of various types and sensitivities depending on the destination (kitchen, bathroom, etc.) So you end up with lots and lots of wires spreading out from the fuse box. So far I've used about 250m of cabling just to provide the power supplies (and a couple of lights) for both gites downstairs. They each have their own fuse boxes, so everything is duplicated both sides. I'm glad my friend Ian came over this morning for moral support and to help tie in the last of the cables.

If you really want to know more about French electrics then try this book, L'installation électrique, it's my bible at the moment.

The last thing to worry about was the walk-in shower in the downstairs bedroom. The intention is to have a 'wet room' style shower without a shower tray to give access to people in wheelchairs. It adds extra complication because all the drainage and waste traps for the shower need to be below the floor level buried in the concrete and the floor tiles will need to slope slighty towards the plug hole. If I just leave the whole floor be level I'll never get a fall on the floor. I've no idea if I've done the right thing, but Ian and I knocked up some shuttering 1m by 1m square and placed it over the shower drain. The resulting hole can always be filled later, but I'm sure the builders will have a bit of a laugh on Monday morning.

|   8:21:02 PM   First fit electrics   

Now the ducks have grown a little it seems that we may have been a little premature when christening them. We now think Victoria is Victor and Albert is Albertine. We are not experts in sexing muscovy ducks, but judging by the relative sizes it look like we may have guessed wrongly.

It's turned a little chilly this week, so the new fireplace has been pressed into action for the first time since it was finished. I've been burning some old oak floorboards from the barn, a broken wooden stepladder and an unused grain shute. Apart from a grate full of rusty nails, we get a week of free heating.

|   3:42:37 PM      

Free advertising

Added the details for our gites onto another couple of websites, here and here, mainly for the back-links. |   1:22:20 PM   Free advertising   

New Bobcat

This morning at 07:30 a new bigger bobcat arrived, but strangely they left the old one stranded in the herrison.

Just after 08:30 the workers arrived and within a few minutes, another broken bobcat ! By the end of the week we should have a fine collection of plant, enough for a bit of digger dancing.

A bit more wheelbarrowing and a phone call, and everything is back on track. The pickup is loaded with underfloor insulation, various coloured gaine (conduit) for water, electricity and telephone to run under the floor along with a bunch of waste piping from yesterday. We spoke to the foreman and showed him the new positions of the toilets etc, which is fairly critical to the positioning of the waste pipes. It didn't feel that mentioning the changes once the floor was laid was a very good idea.

 

|   9:39:12 AM   New Bobcat   

Floor base

The building action started again after lunch today with the arrival of the workmen, three huge lorry loads of herrison (hardcore for the base of the floor) and a bobcat on a low loader. Once they get going, they really get moving. The first lorry load was dumped in the barn, with the other two by the side. The bobcat driver was buzzing around at top speed until, CLANG, the bobcat broke.

The repair guy arrived but failed to fix it. So they resorted to wheelbarrows. Not for long. It's hard work shifting 30 tonnes by hand.

 

|   8:36:45 PM   Floor base   

French Knitting

It's been raining just about all day and the kids were at a loose end. Caroline had an inspiration and thought of French Knitting. Remember that, the cotton reel with pins in the end ? The only slight hitch was the cotton reels, I don't think I've seen a wooden cotton reel for over 10 years. The only thing for it was to make two cotton reels out of some scrap wood. A trip to the workshop, a bit of drilling, sanding and hammering and voila, two French Knitting kits.

Neither of us could fathom out how to do it, so a quick search on Google and here are the instructions for French Knitting.

|   7:59:21 PM   French Knitting   

dig dig dig ... dig the whole day through

I spoke too soon about the 'lean-to'. It looks like it has had it's chips. When the digger man (I must ask him his name) and the foreman where talking yesterday about the excavation I thought I heard DM say that the lean-to was shaking and cracking whilst he was breaking up the floor, but my French wasn't good enough to be sure. Well today Caroline asked and yes, the lean-to is not fairing terribly well. On Monday we have a meeting with the grand foreman and will decide on wether to demolish and rebuild, or patch and continue. I suspect demolish.

We've always been told you get suprises and nothing is straightforward with groundworks.

I was just about to post (it's 20:15) and DM has returned with lorry and is currently digging in the dark!

|   8:21:23 PM   dig dig dig ... dig the whole day through   

Laundry room

The final staircase man came, measured, and left. The quote is in the post.

The laundry room is almost finished. Caroline has glossed the doors and stained the frames and architraves. I've finished painting the walls and fitted a couple of shelves. A couple more shelves in the linen cupboard and a new coat of paint on the floor and it's finished.

|   8:20:17 PM   Laundry room   

Still digging

Digger man didn't turn up yesterday. Today he needed to excavate in the 'lean-to' where the rising mail and water meter are located. Up until now we had the main water pipe to the house and gites strung across the floor and he was digging round it. Not possible today, so I had to disconnect the pipework at the meter. Whilst my pipework was dangling freely I decided to dig around the water pipe where exited through the barn wall. At the moment there is a joint inside the barn, which if left would be under the floor inside the new gites. Not a very good idea. So I've dug an 'inspection hatch' just outside, inserted some conduit in the wall, and pulled the pipe through to make the joint outside.

At the end of the day the foreman arrived with his laser level to check the depth of the excavation. In order to get the floor as low as we wanted it would have meant excavating under the foundations of the 'lean to'. The main barn was OK, just the side building had shallow foundations. The digger man had removed about half-a-meter of spoil throughout, and stopped because of the problem. The easiest, and cheapest, solution was to stop where we were, 20cm short of the proposed level. Our main ground floor was going to be slightly higher, meaning a step outside, but the on the plus side the staircases would be shorter and cheaper.

You can see in the photo our water pipe reconnected at the end of the day. The pipe exits the barn just in front of the digger bucket with the rising main behind the camera in the lean-to. Hopefully after the excavation it's not leaning any further than it should.

|   7:08:05 PM   Still digging   

Staircases

We spent most of the day shopping for a new staircase for to replace the old one I removed from Poire. I trip to Rennes to a large builders merchant that makes made-to-measure staircase took most of the morning. The gap between the beams for the hole up to the first floor is 62cm, rather than 70cm+ for a standard width off the shelf staircase and the floor to floor height is 20cm higher than standard. Nothing is regular in an old building.

The assistant entered details into the computer package in the shop, floor height, opening width etc. but the key measurement for us was the length of the staircase downstairs. The further back the bottom step is from the top step the more shallow the angle and consequently the more comfortable the stairs are. We wanted something more comfortable as the old stairs were quite steep. We also preferred to have risers, i.e. not open treads, so this also meant a more shallow angle to increase the depth of the tread. With open tread staircases your foot can stick through each step. After choosing various handrail and balastrade styles we came away with a couple of quotes, one for the stairs in pine and another in exotique hardwood.

In the afternoon a different staircase salesman came to call. He arrived with various measuring sticks, brochures and samples to tempt us. We went through the same choices again, but we also had to choose the number of steps we wanted. The computer decided in the shop, but in this case, it was up to us. As with everything it's a trade-off. More steps means less height between each tread, BUT the depth of the tread reduces. Less steps means deeper treads but a greater rise (and fall). A bit of head scratching and measuring of other staircases we came up with one less tread than the computer, but consequently slightly deeper treads, which we felt added more to the comfort. They worked almost exclusively in oak, so the quote was for the new stairs in oak. Amazingly it was only 100 euro more expensive than the hardwood version from the morning and oak looks beautiful.

We have got another chap coming tomorrow to give us another quote, then we can decide.

I never realised it was so complicated, and it's going to get even more complicated with the next two staircases (both with two quarter turns) in the new gites.

|   7:37:08 PM   Staircases   

Floor removal

The demolition of the floor started a pace this morning.

As a nice suprise for the digger man, we seem to have two concrete floors in the barn. It looks like it was previously a cow shed with a flat floor and troughs (mangers?) round the edge for feeding. There are series of rings set into the wall to which the cows must have been tethered. At some time a new floor was laid on top with two gulleys running down the middle of the floor. We suspect it was for veal production, because the newer addition of the 'lean-to' had a hot water cylinder and some sort of drainage to possibly prepare the warm milk feed for the veal.

He's shifted about 5 lorry loads of rubble and there is a fair bit still to do.

|   5:18:22 PM   Floor removal   

The renovations have started

The builders arrived today. Well, not so much a builder more a demolition man. The first job is to break up the existing floor of the barn and then the macons will come and create a new lower and flat floor for improved access. Building on the current floor would make the front doors too high.

The lorry arrived at 18:30 and within a few minutes of unloading the mini-digger we had no water in the house. Fearing the worst we expected a very wet mini-digger driver, but it turns out he had spotted the fact that the rising main was in the barn and turned off the stopcock just in case he fractured the pipe. He didn't know that the supply for all the gites and our house comes from the one meter, currently located in the danger zone.

I think I might go and buy 50m of water pipe + connectors tomorrow just in case.

|   8:17:05 PM   The renovations have started