Month: September 2023

Like most Brits, of the older generation certainly, I’m a tea rather than a coffee drinker. Sure, I’ll drink and enjoy a cup of good coffee but if I’m allowed to choose my source of caffeine, I’ll go for a proper cup of decent strength tea every time.

And I don’t mean made by hanging a pansy teabag over the rim of a cup and adding hot water. I mean a proper brew made in a china teapot that’s left to sit awhile after adding the boiling water while you savour the prospect of pouring it into a decent size cup or mug, adding milk and sugar and sitting back and enjoying it. That’s the proper British way.

For the first few years after coming to France I was able to source my tea direct from the UK, either by buying it in bulk and bringing it back with me when I returned from seeing my family, or by having family bring stocks down for me when they visited. That proved to be more problematic however as time progressed and the journeys made in both directions began to diminish in number.

So I had to find an alternative which I did in the form of packs of 80 Ty-Phoo tea bags – specifically referred to here as Ty-Phoo black tea – that I could buy in both Intermarché and the local Carrefour. Until very recently that is when they suddenly disappeared from the shelves in both stores. I think PG Tips may have gone as well but I’ve never been a fan of that particular brand preferring to leave it to the monkeys who were used to advertise 20 or so years ago.

I don’t think there’s any Ty-Phoo tea at all in the Montignac Intermarché although there may be some Earl Grey which is of little interest to me. The local Carrefour certainly still has Ty-Phoo Earl Grey on the shelf but for all I know that may just be because it’s old stock and, like me, proper tea drinkers don’t bother with it 🙂

Forced into a corner, I ended up buying a pack of 100 individual Lipton Yellow tea bags. Now I’m sure that this product has its fair share of fans and devotees but it’s my opinion that it’s aimed at people who don’t really like tea but is there for them when they are absolutely forced into drinking a cup.

That’s why each bag comes with the dreaded length of string to hang it over the side of their cup, so they have an excuse not to have a second, and is packaged in a paper pouch printed with an eco-slogan. Then even though they might not be enjoying the experience they can at least persuade themselves that they’re helping to save the planet while doing precisely the opposite and fishing out the string and its associated cardboard tab after they’ve fallen into their tea because they didn’t tie the string around their cup’s handle.

And the other thing, of course, is that if like me you want to make a decent brew in a teapot that inevitably requires two or more teabags, you have to remove each bag from its twee little pouch and remove its twee little string and tab before adding the bags to the pot. I’ve been doing it in batches of 20 or so at a time but it’s a tedious and boring task that one would prefer to avoid if at all possible.

So even before getting through the pack of Lipton, I began to diligently search on line for a proper alternative and I found it on Amazon.fr in the form of a 2.5kg catering pack of 1100 Ty-Phoo tea bags. The cost of this monster was just under 32€ with free Prime delivery making for a very economic and competitive cost-per-teabag if you’re a big tea drinker like me.

It’s labelled as coming from Ireland although Ty-Phoo is based in the Wirral in north-west England, so no silly, restrictive post-Brexit trade barrier which I suspect is what has caused the disappearance of Ty-Phoo from Intermarché and Carrefour. It’s also described as ‘thé vert’ (green tea) on a little label that’s been attached to the bag it came in, although I’m sure that it isn’t even though I haven’t opened the pack yet as I still have quite a bit of the Lipton to get through first.

In the UK we refer to a good, strong cup or mug of tea as Builders’ Brew. It’s what gives workmen the strength to toil tirelessly through the working day and also enhances the bum cracks of workmen who spend a lot of time bending over and displaying this signal element of their anatomy over the tops of their work and bacon sarnie-stained jeans.

Even more potent, of course, is loose tea to be spooned into the teapot and separated from the steaming potion as it’s poured into the cup or mug using a tea strainer, preferably vintage in years and stained with tannin. Such a brew as well as providing the above-mentioned benefits, also puts hair on your chest so let this be a warning to any unsuspecting lady thinking of adding it to their repertoire of refreshing drinks. I’m thinking of looking for some as this supply of Ty-Phoo approaches its end 😉

I recently received an email sent to all their customers by the company from whom I purchased my new shower screen. They said that if they received a photo of your project and they used it on their web site you’d be entitled to receive a gift.

As I had shots that I’d used on my blog I sent one off and lo and behold got a message back saying that they were going to use it and what would I like to receive – either a discount off a future order or some bathroom towels. My bathroom’s more or less finished so I decided on the latter and below is what I’ve just found in my post-box.

I know that they’re worth only a small part of what I paid for my shower screen so in real terms represent a tiny discount but I still think that it was a very nice gesture by the company involved, Cuisibane, who as a result I’ll try to buy from again in the future.

Another 70 paving slabs today but this time from Brico Depot Brive and with this number I not only had enough to extend the terrace area at the back of the house so it would accommodate my large table but also to run some along the front to create a sort-of pathway. This will hopefully be only a very temporary arrangement but it helps to take away some of the starkness of the blue stone that the builder put down and will also allow me to position some plant pots and tubs in the front to pretty the place up a bit.

It’s too late this year to plant out the pots and tubs but at least I’ll now be able to retrieve them from behind the caravan where they’ve been languishing unused for the past couple of years or so. However, time flies and it won’t be long before Spring comes around again and if I’ve used the Winter well decorating the inside of the house I’ll have something to look forward to when the days begin to warm up and lengthen again.

I had a lot of fun getting the big table up onto the terrace from where it was inside the ‘tonnelle’ close to the caravan. It’s much too heavy for one person to lift but not too unwieldy if you’re canny enough to spin it around on its legs onto the trailer and off again. The picture shows how I accomplished the second stage of the process by reversing car and trailer up the slope at the back of the house close enough so the table could be transferred direct from trailer to terrace. Sometimes all that’s needed is a little bit of ingenuity 😉

I have to say that once I’d finished and everything was clean and tidy it was idyllic sitting there with a cold beer and admiring the view. We’re being blessed with hot, but not too hot, sunny days with little wind to speak of and still evenings and at times like this it’s magical living in this part of France.

That’s how many I loaded into my trailer at Brico Depot this morning. It was almost their whole stock at that branch and I would have taken the rest also except I was a bit concerned about overloading the trailer. Then I carefully drove home stopping at the little Carrefour in Rouffignac to buy a ‘baguette de campagne’ for lunch.

After a brief rest to recover from the morning’s exertions I then unloaded them all again in a temperature of 27 degrees Celsius and laid them out on the terrace area at the rear of my house. But it was all worth it because at the end I was able to move my small round table, four chairs and the little parasol up from the ‘tonnelle’ at the bottom of my land near the caravan and after cleaning them I’d created a sweet little seating area

The area is only large enough for the small round table at present but it’ll take four people which’ll do for now. Ideally I want to be able to move up my large table and the rest of the chairs but that’ll need more paving slabs. There aren’t enough now at Trelissac but I’ve just checked the stock at Brive and they have over 400 available.

I’ve left the trailer hooked up to my car and I think I’ll drop over there tomorrow and pick up another 50 or 60 which I’ll lay while the weather is good. After all, I can do the work inside the house any time but it’ll be impossible to do much outside once the weather breaks and I really do want to get the two ‘tonnelles’ emptied while the going is good.

I was pressing on with my original, admittedly somewhat simplistic, plans for my bathroom until the lovely Chantal suggested to me that I needed to include more storage, for things like towels and stuff like that that we men tend to ignore or overlook. As she’s usually right about such things I thought that I’d better listen to her and decided to do a revamp.

My new plans took into account what she was saying and they finally came to fruition today having started just over a week ago when I fitted a cabinet above the washbasin. I don’t usually like such things because there’s always the danger that someone will be careless and allow something to fall into the washbasin and break it but you’ve got to have things like toothbrushes and toothpaste, shaving stuff and aftershave for men and the exotic creams and unguents that ladies find indispensable close to hand and not over the other side of the room.

I also found to my cost in my old house that if you leave toothbrushes etc in a rack out in the open they get filthy and covered in dust so they’ve got to go inside an enclosed cabinet and this cabinet for the reasons mentioned above needs to be over the washbasin. After a false start when I bought two cabinets at Brico Depot which, fortunately, I was able to return for a full refund, I found just what I needed at the French store But’s web site.

It was delivered a week or so ago and I took great care to measure its position over the washbasin and fix it to the tiles. It has a mirror front and as it’s made from bright stainless steel, it’s highly reflective. I think it fits into the room beautifully.

The final piece of the jigsaw slotted into place to day when I fitted the storage unit that I ordered from Leroy Merlin a week ago and collected yesterday. It’s a wall-mounted column with a mirror front and two drawers below that can be used to store cleaning items, toilet rolls and stuff like that. Behind the mirror are four shelves that provide plenty of storage space for towels and other linen, so much in fact that even Chantal will be over the moon when she sees it 🙂

The over-handbasin wall-mounted cabinet is a masterstroke of design. The reason I’m so impressed with it is that it has two doors but unlike other twin-door cabinets, the divide is not down the middle where it would annoyingly cut your face in half when you’re shaving or a lady is applying face cream or makeup. That’s because the second door on the right is much narrower than the main door and is just the right width, actually, to open and get access to things like tooth cleaning kit and aftershave.

With mirrors now on two opposite walls the bathroom is now highly reflective, which I like immensely.

What is lacking now are a few splashes of bold colour which I intend to deal with in the future. I have a white-framed oval mirror in storage that I brought with me from my old house that I intend to position opposite the shower above the large towel rail and I also have a couple of brightly coloured Edwardian figure wall ornaments that I think I’ll place over the toilet. Then it’ll just be a matter of seeing what comes up that will further enhance the bathroom but right now the priority is to get my heat pump connected so I can have hot water. As the summer draws to a close nightly cold showers are getting a little bit too parky 😕

But it doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. It just means that I’ve been doing lots of small things, getting organised and clearing away rubbish to the ‘déchetterie’, stuff like that, that haven’t lent themselves to being photographed. They were all necessary, however, as part of my gradual move out of the caravan and into the house.

I say ‘gradual’ because although the move was immediate I’ve had to leave a lot of less essential stuff behind in the caravan where it will have to remain until I have more storage space available in the house. Plus, of course, there’s lots of stuff still in storage, some of which will have to come out soon as it’s now needed, in the kitchen especially. Things like my coffee machine and grinder, my toaster and quite a few more things that I I didn’t have room for in the caravan.

The first thing I had to do was make the space available in the house more comfortable which I’ve done by making it into a sort-of bedsit. When I came to France I brought with me a set of cane furniture – a table, four dining chairs, a settee and two armchairs – that we had in our conservatory (verandah in French) and which I used temporarily in the dining room and kitchen in my old house in Plazac.

The table stayed in the kitchen because I never finished it so never acquired proper furniture for it but although I was originally going to dispose of the settee and armchairs I finally decided to wrap them in plastic and store them in the ‘grenier’ (loft). When I moved I cleaned them up a bit and put them in one of my ‘tonnelles’ where they were occasionally used but where they ended up under a plastic tarp from the end of last summer until now.

After moving into the house I decided I’d do the same again as when I moved into my old house. The furniture is now 25 years old, a bit tatty but still quite useable, and after cleaning off as much of the dust, grass cuttings and outdoor detritus as I could I put the settee and armchairs in the living room, where I also placed my old TV on a couple of the wooden trestles that I bought for when I paint the shutters, and the table and two of the dining chairs in the kitchen.

I then moved the temporary wardrobe round to make a screen and added a sheet of left-over Contiboard supported by masking tape to make a private sleeping area and was very happy with the result. Much more bright, airy and comfortable than the caravan ever was. Much more civilised in fact, and with my computer on another sheet of Contiboard supported on two more trestles, I’ve got everything that I need for the short term.

Obviously the arrangement will only be temporary but my intention is not to buy any new furniture until I’ve decorated the house, or at least the main parts of it, right through. So this old cane stuff could be around for a few more months, at least until the Spring of next year I would think, but that will be no hardship whatsoever compared to living in the caravan. Every time I go into it to bring out a bit more stuff I find it incredibly claustrophobic and can’t wait to get out again.

I don’t know how I managed to live in it non-stop for nearly 27 months but I guess you just do what you have to. OK, it gave me very few problems in that time and didn’t leak, which was the main thing, but I’ll be glad to see the back of it and if I never have to step foot in another caravan again for as long as I live, I’ll consider that a life-enhancing result!

Much of the rest of my time over the past 10 days or so I’ve spent doing things in the bathroom and separate toilet. This has included fitting all of the accessories – towel rings and rail, toilet roll holders and supports for robes and dressing gowns. I’ll not show any pics of the bathroom for now as its grand-finale will come next week-end when I pick up the final piece of furniture for it that I have on order from Leroy Merlin, but here are a couple of the little separate toilet.

I’ve used Grohe accessories throughout that are made in Germany. They cost a little bit more than the usual ‘Made in China’ junk but their quality is self-evident and I’m sure that they will last the lifetime of the house. They’ll never have to come off the walls again anyway, as long as I’m living in it, that’s for sure! In fact all of the plumbing and sanitary fittings used in the house are from Grohe, excluding the hand basin mixer tap in the separate toilet. And that should have been but after specifying a Grohe part, the builder substituted an Italian one instead. I’ll not be complaining however 😉

My father, bless him, was old school of his generation and this is how he referred to anything that was ridiculous, stupid or the the product of some kind of otherwise inexplicable madness. And never was it more true than today.

Now that my house had its permanent electrical connection I wanted Enedis to disconnect the temporary connection that I’ve had for the last 2 years that was used for the caravan and for the house construction. I’d fired off an email last week to the contact in Enedis who’d previously helped me out but had received no acknowledgement or answer so I contacted Enedis by phone on Saturday.

The young lady who I spoke to was both lazy and bored and said she couldn’t do it even though Enedis claim to offer a full service on Saturdays and suggested that I called back on Monday (today) when someone would be able to help me. However, I thought that rather than try to go through that painful process all over again I’d send a secure message to Enedis through their web site.

I was heartened when I received a quick automatic response saying that my request would be promptly dealt with and waited to see what would happen. I didn’t have long to wait this morning when my house’s new connection was abruptly cut off. Just in case this was a local power cut I went to check my temporary connection and found that it was still live so it was obvious what had happened. Some fool in Enedis had pulled the plug on the wrong connection.

I quickly sent another less courteous message to Enedis through their web site using my mobile phone and shortly after that the house connection came back on again. But that was not the end of the matter – far from it.

Almost as soon as I turned my kettle on to make a cup of tea the power cut yet again. When I went to investigate I found a message on the new Linky smart meter saying that power was available and to press an illuminated button. So I did and the power cut again almost instantly.

When I checked the Linky more closely I found another message which, translated, said that the contract power had been exceeded. I thought this was weird because everything had been fine last night with much more power being used so I was already beginning to smell a rat.

When the supply contract for the house had originally been set up it had been for a power of 9 kVA. However, due to an EDF cock-up at the time a second had to be set up and this time the adviser said that all I needed was 6 kVA. I thought this was a bit low and thought that it might be the source of the problem, but if so, why was everything OK last night?

So I phoned EDF this morning to try to get the problem resolved and as usual, half-way through my explanation I was cut off. Funny how this ALWAYS happens, isn’t it. So I phoned back and after a lengthy delay got through to a second agent who said he’d help me sort things out.

And we soon found the problem. When EDF had first set up the new permanent account for the house instead of using the correct PDL (meter reference number) that I’d given them, they’d made a cock-up and used one for yet another temporary connection, which would not function as it did not agree with the reference baked into the Linky meter’s software.

Then this morning when Enedis had incorrectly cut my house off, the idiot who reconnected it shortly after I’d sent my second message used this incorrect PDL. I said above that it would not function, but it does, but only at a minimally low power level.

Having got to the bottom of this, after hanging on my phone for about half an hour the EDF adviser returned to say that he was having difficulty contacting Enedis at that moment (no surprise there then). He said that it had all been communicated to them, that yet another (my third) new contract had been created for my house connection, this time again at 9 kVA, and that everything would be back to normal within a few hours.

This evening I can’t even boil a kettle because nothing had been done all day. Oh wait a minute, that’s not quite true. I thought earlier that in that case I’d run a cable down from the temporary connection and use that to boil the kettle. Know what? It’s been disconnected. The utter incompetence of Enedis knows no bounds.

It was hot yesterday. The highest that I saw on my car outside temperature gauge was 36 degrees Celsius but for the first time it was making me feel slightly ill. I decided that I couldn’t face another excruciating night in the caravan so although I’d planned to leave my initial move into the house until my new high-tech mop system had been delivered and I’d had a chance to mop the floors right through, I decided that I’d have to do it yesterday.

To be honest, the floor in the living room was not that dusty as I’d given it a thorough sweeping only the other day and in any case, I was able to give it another going over before getting myself organised yesterday. And as an aside, the inside of the caravan is much, much worse as I’ve been putting off cleaning it in anticipation of moving out.

I also wiped over all of the shelves in the kitchen cupboards as well as all the stuff that I moved up out of the caravan so I was starting with everything relatively clean. The last thing I moved up was my computer system and to do that I had to buy another sheet of ‘table top’ Contiboard from Brico Depot which I supported on two wooden trestles. I had a couple of spillages right at the very end but nothing serious and here’s how things are looking this morning.

I’ll be grabbing some more stuff out of the caravan today, especially including clothes and stuff. I might also bring up some furniture that’s in one of the ‘tonnelles’ as the little chair in front of my computer is far too low and I’d also like to have a table and some chairs in the kitchen. But at least the deed is now done and there’ll be no going back 😀

By the time I got myself organised today it was already too hot to do any productive work so I thought I’d try to finalise the design(s) of the Ikea units that I intend to fit in bedrooms 1 and 2. I want full height units with mirror-fronted doors and these alone work out to just under 500€ for each room, but what the heck, it’s what I want and you only buy them once.

I’ve been playing around with lots of internal variations for shelves, drawers, hanging space etc and although I haven’t quite yet made final decisions for the two rooms I thought I’d check on availability. The nearest store for me is in Bordeaux but I thought OK, I’d take my trailer, make a day of it and pick up the components for both rooms at the same time.

That’s when I found that (a) to pick up at an Ikea store having prepaid for your order, you now have to pay a collection charge of 5€, which seems petty, (b) the doors I want are not available in Bordeaux so I have to pick up everything from an Ikea pick-up point (‘point relais’), the nearest one being Niort, 150 miles away and (c) the collection charge then goes up to 29€!

Alternatively I could choose another Ikea store that does have the doors in stock but that’s in Nantes, over 250 miles away! The saving grace of doing that, of course, would be that the collection charge would fall back to 5€.

Ikea don’t seem to have thought of saying hold on with your order until we can order the missing items for you and we’ll let you know when they’re in your local store. The best that they can come up with if items aren’t available is to suggest that you knock them off your order.

Thank you Ikea, but I don’t think that fitted bedroom storage with no doors would really work somehow 😕

I made a start on bedroom 1, my bedroom, this morning. Just the making good and it’ll be a day or so before it’s completed ready for painting. But before that I’ll have to rub down the walls and ceiling and put up the coving and before I can do that I’ll ready need to have fitted the Ikea fitted unit in the alcove. There’ll be one in bedroom 1 and a second in bedroom 2 but although I’ll buy and collect both of them at the same time, the second one will be able to wait until I’m ready to start on bedroom 2.

So there’s a lot to do, and that’s without fitting the floor laminate, so it’ll be some time before the room is usable – my guess is going on two weeks, possibly more if other things crop up in the meantime. But I don’t want to wait that long before making a start on moving in. Once the electricity is sorted out and the heat pump connected I’ll have everything that I’ll need and even as things stand as of today, I could manage without hot water (cold showers are great!) and the lighting in the corridor.

I’ve already got an inflatable double bed to use temporarily and all I needed was some kind of storage for clothes and other small personal items. Up to today, that is. A few days ago I ordered one of those temporary wardrobes so beloved by students and impecunious bedsit dwellers. It arrived today and I had it erected and ready to go in about an hour.

And it’s very impressive for the money – just 29€ including delivery! It has 12 shelves, two hanging areas and a snazzy well-fitted cover with two zipped front doors, although I wonder how effective it’ll be at keeping the dust out. I’ll maybe place a sheet of cardboard on top of it when I start using it so it can’t get in from the top.

My idea is that I’ll leave it in the living room where it’s shown in the pictures and put my bed in there also on the facing wall. Then I’ll do what I did when I moved to France from the UK just over 11 years ago – I’ll put the glass-topped round wooden table and chairs in the kitchen that we used to have in our conservatory (verandah in French) in the UK and the matching two -seater settee and two armchairs in the living room.

The furniture is old but it’s still quite serviceable and stored at the moment in one of the ‘tonnelles’ if the mice haven’t got to it. That way with a few more items that I’ll bring out of storage I’ll have all the comforts of home. Well, almost. And it’s bound to be much more comfortable than the unbearably hot (again) caravan 😉

My new shower screen was delivered this morning on a pallet. I’d hoped to get it fitted today but my initial reaction on seeing that the glass alone weighed 45 kg (99 lb) was that I’d need help just getting it off the pallet, let alone safely unpacked, raised vertical and installed in the bathroom.

Nevertheless, me being me I decided to give it a go anyway as it appeared that the glass was pretty well protected, on its edges especially, and by scooching the pallet round so it was aimed towards the front door, carefully sliding the package off the pallet onto the floor of the house and then slowly sliding it on its edge along the corridor, I eventually got it into the bathroom.

I was then able to cut away the packaging, gingerly remove the sheet and walk it across the room on its long edge until I could lean it against the handbasin.

The next step – raising it to vertical – was the most critical as I didn’t know if the glass was strong enough to support its own weight if laid flat and then raised to vertical from one end. But first I had to attach a stiffish cushioned rubber U-channel along what would be its bottom edge on which it would eventually stand when placed upright on the tiled floor.

This was very easy to do in its current position and then I decided to have a go but hedge my bets by holding it about two-thirds of the way along its length, pivoting the sheet on one corner and lifting it at the same time and taking as much of its weight as possible until the short edge with the rubber channel was on the floor. Then it was fairly easy to raise it to fully vertical and lean it against the bathroom wall.

That was the hardest bit done. All I then had to do was drill and attach the vertical metal channel that would hold the glass to the wall, slide the glass across the floor (kudos to the tiler for making the floor tiles so level and flat) into it so it was supported, mark and drill the floor for a little foot that would secure the corner of the glass farthest from the wall and stop the glass moving away from it and the job was complete. Complete, that is, apart from finally fixing the horizontal bar that secures the top of the glass to the other wall.

So yet again I managed to achieve my aim single-handedly which I was very pleased about. I took another cold shower just before starting to type this and I must say it’ll be nice when I have the choice of hot water to help ease some of my aching muscles. It shouldn’t be too long now 😉

In both senses of the word. The only task I had planned for today inside the house was to mount all of the LED spots in the kitchen ceiling and I got that done by lunchtime. And I have to say that they have come totally up to my expectations, possibly even beyond, because after looking like a bat cave with all of the light fittings hanging out of the ceiling it now looks like a clean, bright, modern kitchen, just as it was intended to be.

It’s stonkingly hot here again today, in the upper 30s Celsius, and as I type this in the caravan my floor-mounted fan is wafting me with hot air. All I intend to do when I’ve finished is load my trailer up with the empty paint tins, old masking film and the other rubbish I’ve collected while doing the current phase of decorating and take it to the déchetterie in Rouffignac. Then I’ll be able to cool off under a cold shower.

My new shower screen is arriving tomorrow so fitting that will be the principal job for the day. I’m also pressing the builder to get the electrician back as soon as possible because it’s unacceptable having a live system that hasn’t been professionally checked in any way, especially when there’s a key breaker that keeps popping off every few minutes and more so when that breaker serves some of the key areas of the house that I want to use (kitchen, bedrooms, corridor).

Well, nothing just yet, but at least I’ve now got a useable kitchen in which I can cook if I want to. And do washing up and store food and other things, in fact all the things that you associate with that room in the house that are so difficult to do in the confines of a caravan. But first I had to top-coat the ceiling and the walls that were to be painted. The tiling on the wall areas above the worktop can come later and don’t need to stop the kitchen being fully useable in the meantime.

I used the high pressure spray when I undercoated the walls and ceiling previously but as the area being top-coated was far smaller I thought that it wouldn’t justify the time and effort involved in cleaning the spray machine when the job was completed and opted instead to go for a traditional roller. But I decided to mask the room up anyway as then I wouldn’t have to worry about paint splashes and damaging any of the new appliances and kitchen furniture that I’d so painstakingly installed.

Compared to spraying, the effort involved in roller painting the kitchen was a lot greater but cleaning up afterwards was easier and far less time-consuming. I also think that the finish in the kitchen is far better than in the living room, but I’m sur that that’s just down to my inexperience with the spray gun. Here’s how the kitchen came out.

Now that there’s a useable kitchen and bathroom and a bed, I could theoretically move out of the caravan and into the house. I do intend to do so, but not quite yet. Aside from the whole place needing a clean right through and the electrical bugs sorted, I need some extra storage space, for clothes for starters. I’ve ordered one of those fabric wardrobes that should do the job nicely and need to decide what else I need before I make the move. But it can’t come soon enough, let me tell you!

In the future, but probably not this year sadly, I’ll be wanting to sit outside on the patio at the rear of the house with the outdoor lights on as the night draws in. I was always a bit concerned that the lighting that I built into the design of the house might be inadequate and having spotted the ‘cheapie’ LED bulbs in Carrefour yesterday, that they also might not be sufficiently bright.

My fears about their brightness were somewhat allayed after trying two of them yesterday in the front of the house so today I went back to Carrefour and bought four more. Having just seen the results a few minutes before typing this, I’m now totally happy that the house’s outdoor lighting will be perfectly adequate. The photos speak for themselves.

I wish I could say the same about the system indoors. I found out more about the living room lighting today that I can now make work on two of the three wall switches that are connected to them. I won’t bore readers with the details but I’m now led to believe that either the system is bedevilled with faulty components or it was a bit too complex for the electrician to install given the number of weird things that are happening. I’m sad to say that I’m inclined towards the latter. 🙁

I spent most of today wrestling with my house’s electrical problems so ended up not painting the kitchen. I wasn’t too worried about that, however, as it won’t take long to do the kitchen and the electrical problems are a much higher priority. I started by phoning Enedis to arrange for their technician to return to make the house’s permanent connection to the electrical supply.

What I heard surprised and made me a bit angry. I was told that that wouldn’t be necessary as my house was already connected after yesterday’s visit and that for the time being I had two connections (permanent for the house, temporary for the caravan) and this would continue until I ask for the temporary one to be disconnected. So the information I’d been fed by the electrician and Didier about the house being on an ’emergency’ low power connection was a load of rubbish.

So that freed me up to go and start making my own investigation into what’s going on. The main issues are to do with the lighting and here’s where things could begin to get a bit tricky. The builder proposed the usual hanging type of light fittings throughout the whole house which I rejected because I wanted LED spots everywhere. I paid extra for the electrician to run the cabling and drill the holes in the ceiling to take them but because there are 43 of them I decided to wire them up and install them myself.

Clearly if I’ve done something silly and somehow mis-wired one or more there could be problems that could well prevent the system from working correctly and there have already been rumblings along those lines. If it could be shown that the problems were down to me, or even just might be, it would be convenient for both the electrician and the builder for whom he was working as I’d end up paying and not them. My being confident that I hadn’t made any errors would not be enough.

Enedis had told me that I could go ahead and turn on all the breakers on my panel as the system should be fully up and running, so that’s what I intended to do. The first thing I noticed was that the night before I’d left the circuits for the lighting that I’d found to be working on but now they had popped off, which in itself was a bit suspicious. I then checked the hob unit by turning one hot plate on and it worked but while I was doing so the circuit for the corridor and bedroom lighting popped off again.

Whatever I did I still couldn’t get any lighting to work in the main living room area though, although the four spots in the dining area were fine and have never given any problems right from the outset. Also the bathroom lighting was solid but I couldn’t get the two spots in the separate toilet to come on so this still left the possibility that I might have messed up when wiring up one or more spots.

At that point I decided to get some lunch and as I needed to do a bit of shopping as well I thought that I’d pick up some bulbs to see if there were any problems with the exterior lights which so far I hadn’t checked at all. Carrefour are selling 6 watt LEDs that they say are equivalent to old-style 60 watt bulbs for only 1.72€ each, a snip at that price, so I thought that I’d just start by buying a couple (I need 6) to see how they perform and whether they are bright enough. When I got back I returned to seeing what I could then find out about the problems.

Before lunch I’d switched the breaker off that serves the living room lighting because it was causing a loud buzzing sound to come from the breaker box. I started by switching all the lighting breakers on including the living room one and noticed immediately that there was no buzzing. When I went into the living room I found that all of the spots that previously wouldn’t turn on were all shining brightly.

There was only one problem. Neither of the switches installed by the electrician would switch them off and the only way to do so was by switching off the breaker at the breaker box. I then realised that there’s a fault detection knob and depending on how I set that I could make the living room lights come on at will, although I still could only turn them off at the breaker box. This is bad news, you might say, but I say it’s far from it.

The fact that ALL of the spots that I wired in can be shown to be operative means that NONE of the lighting faults are down to me or some error I might have made. They are due to faults or errors in cabling due to the work of the electrician whose job it will be to come back and sort them out. He needs to come back to check the system anyway as only now is it connected to power and not to do so would be like a garage fitting a new engine in a customer’s car and handing it back to him without running, or even starting it.

The bedroom and corridor lighting breaker is in the same breaker set as a couple of plug socket circuits and its popping off only seems to happen when the plug socket breakers are left on. So there appears to be another problem there, and as a footnote, I don’t think the two spots in the separate toilet have been connected at all, as with all of the lighting breakers on and the lounge spots working they show no signs of life whatsoever.

But what about the exterior lights? Like I said, I only bought two bulbs one of which I wanted to put in the porch because that’s on the same circuit as the living room spots. Here are some shots that I took as it was getting dark.

Obviously I’m still far from having the problems sorted and I’ve asked for the electrician to return as soon as possible to deal with the growing list of issues. I think that the living room problem is due to the switches that have been installed which I think are incorrect – or one of them at least, anyway. But all of this stuff is not helping me get the house ready to move into and yet another serious issue has also reared its head which I’ll go into in another post 🙁