Month: October 2023

Bedroom one is now completely painted. What do you think? Have I gone completely mad with the colour this time?

I don’t know why, but I always saw the wall behind the bed in this room being a golden yellow. I’ve looked on the internet and seen some beautiful gold, yellow and autumn brown bed linen and having lived with ghastly pink floral patterned duvet covers that I inherited from my marriage I always knew that it was time for a change. I think, or at least I hope, this is taking me in the right direction.

Now all I need to do is assemble the interior of the Ikea unit and fit its doors. The latter could be quite challenging given their size and weight.

Over the last couple of days I pressed on with fitting the Ikea unit in bedroom one but I didn’t want to keep posting part-finished shots of the job and have waited until today when it’s finally complete to show how it’s come out. The outstanding tasks after last time were just to fit the floor plinth across the front of the final unit, seal the wall gaps at the ends, fill in the gap between the top of the unit and the ceiling and fit the ceiling coving but these were fiddly and time-consuming.

But I’ve finally finished and I’m very happy with how it’s turned out.

I’m especially pleased with the tiny bit of coving at the end of the unit that juts out from the wall. I wasn’t very optimistic in the beginning but in the event it turned out OK I think.

The room is now ready for painting. I bought the colour for the wall that will be behind the bed but apart from saying that it’s bright and warm I won’t say what it is. I’d like to get the room painted tomorrow but I don’t think that it’ll be possible because first I’ve got to seal the coving and even if I get that done in the morning it probably won’t be dry enough to apply a top coat over it until at least the evening. But anyway, I’m pleased with where I now am and we’ll see how things go tomorrow.

Out of interest, I’ve just done a comparison of my electricity consumption in my new house (heat pump for hot water and heating, LED lighting, electricity for cooking and everything else) and my old one (steatite electrically heated hot water tank, electric background heating, electric oven but only used occasionally, some LED but mainly halogen and incandescent lighting).

Old house: 19/09/20 – 18/11/20, 1557 units consumed (26 units/day)

New house: 12/09/23 – 26/10/23, 246 units consumed in total of which the heat pump accounted for 34 units. Thus ‘all other’ accounted for 212 units in 44 days (5 units/day)
Heat pump: 19/10/23 – 26/10/23, 34 units consumed (5 units/day)

Thus my total daily consumption in my new house has been about 10 units/day ie under 40% of my consumption in my old house at about the same time of year.

I find this staggering especially bearing in mind that my old house was always cold, especially during the day, and had to be additionally heated by my wood burner whereas the new house has a constant room temperature of 24 degrees C throughout the building and hot water at 55 degrees C.

I think the figures show that modern heat pumps really do work so long as the houses in which they’re installed have been designed around them, like mine has been. Obviously I’ll keep monitoring the figures but I don’t think I’ve made a mistake – in any sense of the word 😀

The Ikea Pax unit in bedroom one that is. I’m not rushing things because the two units for bedrooms one and two have cost a lot of money and I don’t want to make any mistakes. I also want them to look good when I’ve finished.

Today I got all three of the cabinets in bedroom one fully installed and permanently fitted in place. I was extremely lucky because they went in with no gaps at either end and look as though I must have made the alcove in which they’re fitted to the exact width to take them. But I didn’t. It was a lucky accident.

As I mentioned previously, I raised them by 2.5cm so I can fit the wall plinth from the floor across their fronts to match the rest of the room. I did this by laying two lengths of timber on the floor inside the alcove below the fronts and backs of the units.

The chance of the timber moving in the future was minimal unless there’s an earthquake but I made sure that couldn’t happen by attaching it with brackets to the backs and fronts of the units. These will not be seen as they’ll be under each cabinet’s floor.

All three cabinets have been firmly fixed back to the wall so they can’t try to topple when their doors are opened. They have also been joined together in the same way as my kitchen cabinets were using the special screw-together joiners that Ikea provided with each cabinet. Here’s how they looked at the end of the day.

The next tasks will be to fix a fill-in panel between the cabinet tops and the ceiling to which I’ll be able to attach coving, together with the floor plinth. Then it’ll just be a matter of painting the room, fitting out the cabinets and adding the doors to complete the bedroom and make it useable. Then on to bedroom two to do it all over again.

But not quite as far as I’d hoped. The missing narrow unit that I needed for bedroom one was delivered on time this morning and I wanted to get all three assembled and fixed in position by the end of the day. Unfortunately after I’d had my lunch I sat down in a comfortable chair that was so comfortable I dozed off and ended up losing quite a lot of time 🙂

I got all three of the units assembled and only when I came to position the narrow one did I realise that Ikea had incorporated a method for attaching the units to the back wall so they can’t topple forward that allows you to drill the wall and fix them without having to remove them again. I then found though that I didn’t have enough of the shorter fasteners that I needed for the job so had to pop over to Brico Marché in Le Bugue to get some more.

By the time I got back it was too late to finish the job but here are a couple of shots that show where I got to today.

The first part of the Ikea Pax wardrobe and storage unit in bedroom one. It will be fitted across the full width and to the full height of the alcove that I built into the wall and will consist of two units 1 metre in width and one of 0.5 metre. The four boxes that took two of us to load into the van at Nantes were the 1 meter wide units for the two bedrooms, one and two, and this is the first of those.

It’s quite fearsome and Ikea recommend that two people are involved in building it. However, I’m doing it just by myself and although very heavy to lift and move due to the thickness of the ‘melaminé’ board from which it’s constructed, it’s no more daunting than other projects I’ve taken on. It’s height is the most impressive thing about it. I took a shot of its components early this morning (around 6.00 am) when I first started.

It’s sides and back all come connected and folded together wrapped around with securing bands so you don’t have the choice of moving it piece by piece. When you have stood it vertical you remove the bands and unfold them like a giant birthday card and having done so add front and rear bottom rails to stiffen the structure followed by its top and bottom. I’ve only fitted its top for now as after moving it into place I have to raise it by a couple of centimetres so I can fit the floor’s wall plinth across its front. The next shot is of it standing in position waiting to be raised.

I’ll be nipping out to Leroy Merlin after typing this to buy four lengths of 2.5cm thick timber (2 per room) on which to stand the cabinets in each bedroom and raise them to the required height. When the whole job’s finished I’ll probably need a long ladder to place things on the top shelves… 😕

I hired a van from Leclerc in Trelissac to drive to Nantes on Friday (20th October) to pick up the two wardrobe and storage units for bedrooms one and two. The vehicle was the smallest they have for hire, a Ford Transit of 8m3 capacity and knowing the length of the items I was picking up I was concerned that it might be a bit too short and that perhaps I might change my order for a larger vehicle. However, there wasn’t one at either of the two local Leclerc depots so I decided to take the chance. Little did I know that this would be the least of my worries.

The total distance there and back was a bit over 800 kms and the little van proved to be more than up to the job although the first problem I encountered was the weather. It was cloudy and already raining by the time I left Périgueux at around 9.15am and things went from bad to worse as the journey progressed. Rain with high wind gusts had been forecast and this proved to be an understatement with the conditions on the main roads being a nightmare with the amount of spray being thrown up from the wheels of trucks making passing them a distinctly less than comfortable experience.

However, I arrived at Ikea in Nantes at around 2.20pm and was thus able to meet my intended pick-up schedule. The shopping centre that Ikea is located in is huge and impressive with an enormous car park at ground level under the centre’s main structure and on entering the latter you have to ascend moving ramps to get to Ikea on the first floor. They refer to it as levels 1 and -1. Here’s a shot I took of the foyer with the ramps leading up to Ikea.

On entering Ikea I had no idea where I was supposed to go but there was a small arrivals desk just inside where I entered the store and the lady standing there very kindly took me to where I could pick up my purchases. The young chap there said everything except one item was available and for that I’d have to go to another Ikea depot, the address of which he gave me. Luckily Waze, the satnav on my mobile phone, recognised it immediately as it had the address of the main Ikea store which I was then in.

I was staggered when the young guy wheeled out my purchases. Because of their lengths the ten mirror doors were laid across two large trollies and the remaining items the same on two more. I said I’d need help to load them onto my van and another young colleague kindly agreed to do so. We had to take two lifts to descend to the car park because of the widths of the loaded trollies and when we got down there he suggested that he would wait while I brought my van over and parked in the ‘mother and child’ bays close by to load it.

So off I went to find it, but easier said than done. I found the van some way away via a tortuous route and then had the task of trying to find my way back to the lifts where the young chap was waiting. I ended up driving around the car park several times before I finally noticed him waving at me in the distance. OK, I thought, but it still took me another couple of goes before I found the right aisles in the car park that took me back to where he stood.

With the volume and weight of several of the items it took the two of us to load the van. Luckily everything just fitted in for length but I was amazed by the shear volume involved. I was already then beginning to think about how I would be able to unload the van at the other end as it would be night time, I’d have no one to help me and I’d have to get it all off so I could return the van early the following morning. Here’s how the interior of the van looked after it had all been loaded, and don’t forget there was still one more item to come.

I had an horrendous drive home. It was fine but still blustery when I left Nantes in the late afternoon having picked up the final item at the other Ikea depot. It was the longest of all, too long to go directly in the van but fortunately it fitted in diagonally placed on top of all the other items. As I headed south and it became dark I drove back into the stormy weather again. The rain wasn’t as hard as in the morning but the spray from other vehicles was just as bad in places and was exacerbated by the headlights of oncoming vehicles.

It was a terrible driving experience but there was worse to come. I was in a stream of vehicles on the main road heading south in the Charente when a large wild boar sprang out of the woods on the right hand side of the road, right in front of my van. With all of the vehicles to choose from why did it have to choose mine? I slammed on the brakes which were remarkably effective given the state of the road and the weight I was carrying and the animal crossed in front of me over to the other carriageway.

There happened to be no oncoming traffic at the time but instead of continuing it stopped and turned back again, right in front of me. I could do nothing to avoid it but luckily I think I only gave it a hard tap. But anyway, when I got out to check there was no sign of it and there was no apparent damage to the front of the van, so I continued my journey home where I eventually had the job of unloading the van at around 10.30 pm in gusting wind and rain showers. I succeeded with difficulty in getting the items off that took two of us to load in Nantes and here’s how the main part of the load looked afterwards on the floor of my living room.

And here are the remaining small items that I put separately in bedroom one.

But my nightmare still wasn’t over. It continued when I returned the van to Leclerc. The first thing was that they said the van was ‘dirty’ and demanded a 50€ ‘cleaning’ surcharge. I said I’d never heard of such a thing before. Usually when a hire vehicle is returned it’s prepared for rehiring by the hire company. Now Leclerc expect you to do it for them apparently.

The vehicle only had normal road grime on it and I said that I’d take it away and clean it myself but that I wouldn’t pay any additional hiring fees while I was away. I ended up taking it to the car wash in the Leclerc facility and that cost me an additional charge of over 11€. Nearly half of that was wasted as you have to buy ‘jetons’ (tokens) to go in the machine and the minimum you end up paying for covers two washes at least. Not much use to me living in Fleurac.

But it wasn’t to end there, far from it. When I’d picked up the van I’d mentioned how many knocks and dings had been noted on its sheet, none of which had been fixed or repaired as all were minor or cosmetic. When they checked the van after I’d washed it I was called outside and told that there was a problem. It was a stone chip on the front bumper about the size of a little finger nail, acvtually a bit less, probably as a result of debris thrown up by another vehicle. It was nothing special and anyone would have just dabbed a spot of touch-up paint on it.

But not Leclerc. They made a huge issue of it and said that the vehicle would have to go off to the body shop to be assessed by their painter. In the meantime despite my protestations they have seized my 1500€ security deposit and I know what I now expect. A huge bill for repainting the van’s front bumper. They won’t do it, of course, it’ll just be marked on the sheet as another cosmetic blemish on the vehicle as far as future hirers are concerned.

I suspect Leclerc is making more out of ‘repairs’ on the van that I hired than from the actual hires themselves. You hear stories like this but usually about less reputable vehicle hire companies. But it would seem that Leclerc has now decided to go the same way. I’ve used them several times since I’ve been here without any problems but this will be the last time, that’s for sure.

Really interesting. I was paging through the heat pump’s main menu on the unit itself and found a section called ‘Information’. When I looked into it more I found it had the following sub-menu.

‘Malfunction history’ was interesting because it showed there was a repetitive problem labelled ‘Water flow problem’ on the morning of installation which probably explained why the engineer was on his phone so much. However, as all now seems to be working what I was more interested in was ‘Energy data’ and when I selected that the following sub-menu came up.

That caught my attention so I decided to immediately investigate ‘Energy input’ and was treated to the following data screens showing the heat pump’s consumption of energy by day, week, year to date and since commissioning. I was really impressed.

Then I decided to look at the data for ‘Produced heat’, was presented with a similar set of data screens and was even more impressed!

Amazing! So with an input of only 14 kWh since the pump was installed on Thursday it has produced a heat output of 72kWh, over 5 times as much! That figure blew me away. I’ve previously read about heat pumps having a performance factor of 3x but to be getting over 5x I find to be almost unbelievable.

I don’t know what this means for the future – it’s still very early days and the outside temperature is still relatively warm at 16 degrees C. However, the heat pump specification sheet says that even with an outdoor temperature of -15 degrees C the pump can produce an output temperature of 65 degrees C. I find that amazing and very encouraging as I think that that should be quite adequate to keep my new house very cosy through the winter months here in the Dordogne 🙂

On Thursday (19th October) an affable young man arrived from Daikin to connect and set up my heat pump. It took much longer than I expected, several hours actually, and he seemed to be on his phone quite a lot.

Having arrived at around 9.00am he finished at around mid-day and said that he’d give me a quick run through of the controls. For that we went up to the wall-mounted thermostat in the corridor and he implied that everything I needed to do I could do from there. First he showed that when you initially touched it, it would light up and show the room temperature ie the temperature of the space it was in.

Then he showed that by touching the button again you could see the hot water temperature. In the following image it is at 54 degrees C but when he showed me it was only at 45 degrees, much too low. Nevertheless, he said that I’d be able to have a hot shower by the afternoon.

Then he demonstrated how to see the temperature of the floor heating and said that by increasing or decreasing that on the thermostat you could change the room temperature, which seemed pretty logical and straightforward.

So after he’d gone I waited to see what would happen and the result was nothing. The hot water temperature remained at 45 degrees and no matter how much I fiddled with the thermostat setting I couldn’t get it to change either upwards or downwards. And the same with the heating system.

A massive wad of papers came with the heat pump and one of them was a user instruction manual for the thermostat tweely referred to as a Human Comfort Interface so you immediately suspect it to be cobblers, which it was. It said that you could change settings on it and I was mainly interested in the hot water temperature which failed to respond to the simple instructions contained in the manual.

I immediately suspected a fault in the heat pump thinking that was why the engineer was on his phone for so long and scooted off so quickly and sent a snotty message off to Daikin Europe saying that I was rather unimpressed. However, being an inquisitive soul and fairly tech-savvy I decided to take a peek at the main heat pump unit that I’d previously already discovered while I was waiting for the pump to be connected had a master menu of its own.

The engineer had not shown me this at all and I suspect he didn’t know his way around it and after I’d changed the language from French to English I started to pick my way through it. One of the first things I found was that there are two heat settings for the hot water – Eco, the minimum setting and Comfort, the higher, both of which are user-settable and both of which were at 45 degrees C, the first clue.

So I left Eco at 45 degrees at set Comfort to 55 degrees, a much more usual temperature for domestic hot water. I also adjusted the settings for room temperature, 24 degrees and floor temperature increasing the latter to 28 degrees in an attempt to evoke a response but still nothing changed.

Paging through the menu I then found that there were sub-menus for some settings and the interesting one for water heating was ‘schedule’. I wondered if the reason why nothing was happening was because the system needed a schedule to work to and entered one for the day (Thursday) the best I could. Nothing seemed to change so then I paged through to see if heating needed a schedule too, which seemed logical.

And sure enough it did, so I went ahead and entered one for that too, setting one up for Monday which I then copied and pasted for all of the other days of the week. Then I went to check what was happening on the Human Comfort Interface and was astonished to find when paging through its menu that the hot water temperature had already increased to over 51 degrees C! So I was on the right track.

So I then went ahead and set up proper schedules for both hot water and heating and both systems are now working as intended. I’m not saying that I understand them fully as there is at least one other temperature in the menu that you can change but whose relevance I don’t know and the instructions provided in the main wad of paper are scant and aimed more at the installer it seems to me, than the user. But the house is comfortable and I can now start to fiddle with settings to see what happens.

Here’s how the pump unit main menu currently looks with hot water at 54 degrees C, room temperature at 24 degrees, floor temperature at 25 degrees and an outdoor temperature of 15 degrees.

The next two images show what a schedule screen looks like and the daily schedule I’ve set up for hot water, referred to as ‘tank’.

And the final image shows the schedule I’ve set up for heating.

What I find slightly annoying is that none of this was explained to me by the Daikin commissioning engineer and I’ve had to find it all out for myself. He didn’t even show me the main menu on the heat pump unit and I don’t know how someone less tech-savvy than me would have fared as I’ve failed to find a Youtube video that explains this stuff despite the engineer saying there are several and the paperwork doesn’t cover it in sufficient detail. Shame on Daikin! Their heat pump seems to be working but their instructions seem to me to leave more than a little to be desired 😐

The deed is done. I’ve ordered the Ikea fitted wardrobe/storage units for both bedrooms 1 and 2 and have arranged to pick them up from Nantes on Friday. And it’s even more painful than I thought because there’s no way that everything will fit into my car. The alternative would be to load it all onto my large trailer but somehow I don’t think I can risk having 10 mirror doors worth 950€ bumping along in my trailer for the 400 kms from Nantes to Fleurac. So I’ve decided to play safe and hire a van for the job which will add around another 150€ to the cost.

But there’s a sting in the tail. Ikea Nantes does not have one small 50cm wide cabinet carcass in stock so I tried to order that from Bordeaux for pick-up at their ‘point relais’ in Trelissac, incurring a delivery cost of 29€. No, Ikea want to play silly beggars yet again. For some reason they have decided that delivery to a ‘point relais’, that’s any ‘point relais’, will not be permitted and that it must be delivered to my home for which the delivery charge will increase to 39€.

This will be the last time I buy anything from Ikea. At least I hope so. It’s all been so painfully difficult 🙁

I think I’ve cracked my Ikea conundrum. As a reminder, it’s when you can apparently create a product to your required spec using the design tool on their web site but when you come to order it you find that certain items are unavailable either for collection, in store or from a ‘point relais’, or for delivery. If not, why are they still being offered for sale on their web site, you might ask?

Well, it appears that Ikea are playing a special game without telling anyone. If you check availability more closely you find that you can check out other stores to see if they have the item(s) you need. When I did so I found that just one in the whole of the western sector of France, possibly in the whole of France outside Paris did have. And that’s in Nantes, a 5 hour, 250 mile (400 km) drive away.

I remember that when I was helping my friend Val with her Ikea kitchen down in the Languedoc we had a similar problem, having to go to Toulouse for everything, not quite as far as from my house to Nantes but far enough. But there’s a catch. The absolutely key item for my project not available except at Nantes is the 50 cm wide mirror fronted door, of which I need ten, five per bedroom. However, if I go through the process of placing the total order for collection from the Nantes store I find that there they are missing the 50 cm wide carcass, of which I require two, again one for each bedroom.

First you ask yourself how come a global organisation like Ikea can be in such a ridiculous pickle as far as stock control is concerned. Then you have to try to work out how to get around the problem as there’s no way that you can influence them to solve it for you. Leroy Merlin would order the missing item(s) into their local store for you and let you know when they’re available to pick up but from the evidence available I think it would be futile to think that Ikea might do the same. So what do do?

It looks as though the way to go is to knock the 50 cm wide carcasses off the order placed on Nantes and drive there to pick up everything else that’s available. I think I can then place a separate order on the Bordeaux store for the 50 cm carcasses for collection at a ‘point relais’, the closest being at Trelissac near Brico Depot. For that I’d have to pay an extra delivery charge of 29€, which is annoying, but at least I’d then have what I need to complete bedrooms one and two which would otherwise be at a standstill 😐

Alternatively it appears that I could order everything from Bordeaux except the mirror doors for pick-up from Trelissac for a delivery charge of 29€ and then just drive to Nantes for the doors. This would be a much better option as I’d only have to transport the bulk of the goods over a much shorter distance.

I’ve come to a decision. Yesterday I fitted as much of the plinth as possible in bedroom one before the proposed Ikea wardrobe unit is installed and I like the result even though in my opinion the plastic brackets that attach it to the wall are too flimsy and allow it to bell away in places from the wall surface.

However, on checking as on every other occasion I’ve tried, various items are ‘unavailable’ at Ikea either for collection or delivery. Notably these include the mirror fronted doors which are key to the whole bedroom design. When I attempt to place the order I am invited to either delete them (yes Ikea, really sensible) or add them to an ‘I’d love to have’ list.

This means that unless and until this situation is clarified I am totally unable to proceed any further with work in bedroom one and I have the opportunity therefore to move over onto painting my shutters. However, I have to complete and deliver my newspaper piece by the end of this week so have decided instead to press on and complete that today if possible, or by tomorrow at the latest.

But this does not mean that the shutters will be left out in the elements if, or rather when, the weather changes. They have to come off to be painted and they are not necessary to protect the walls or windows. So there’s nothing to stop me taking them down and storing them in the barn with my aircraft until next spring. That will remove the pressure I’m under and break my mental log-jam. Job done.

Before going to bed last night I took a good look at the floor I’d just laid in bedroom one and realised that it was awful. There were a couple of sheets in the centre of the floor that were hardly connected to their neighbour at all and moved as you walked over them. And it wasn’t down to the product. I was the one who was at fault.

By the time I’d got to the last few rows yesterday I realised that my original technique was at fault and I’d been trying too hard to get the sheets to connect. The long edges are key and you don’t have to force them together. All you have to do is gently angle up the back edge of the sheet you’re connecting to the one in the row above that’s already down and gently push its leading edge forward. Then it clicks in.

And I was unfair. Sure, this product doesn’t clip one sheet to the next but if you do as I’ve said above, when both sheets are lying flat they wedge tightly together. The end joints are a bit more problematic but by slightly raising the end of the sheet to the left that you’ve previously laid and aligning it with the one you’re now laying they push together to get a nice joint, not always completely but always enough for a good appearance.

So I resolved last night to take the whole floor up this morning and re-lay it. That’s the problem with being a perfectionist, but it was well worth it because with the sheets already cut to the correct lengths it only took just over an hour to redo the whole job. And now although it may not be 100%, it’s pretty close, as the pictures show. And more to the point, I’m happy 😉

I’ve decided that I shall try and go as far as I can with the bedroom at the expense of the shutters. I had to take a decision one way or the other and that’s what I’ve decided so today I’ll press on and get as much plinth fitted as I can before moving on to the Ikea fitted unit.

I resolved yesterday to get the new laminate floor in bedroom one laid today but I soon realised that when I’d bought the flooring many months ago I’d not included an installation kit. It consists of a set of plastic wedges that you have to place around the edges of the floor to act as spacers to allow for expansion of the flooring sheets, a metal tool that you use to whack the sheets on their ends to make them budge up tighter without damaging them and a special plastic block that you can use to do the same along their long edges.

Without one it’s difficult, if not impossible, to lay the floor properly so my first task was to head off to Leroy Merlin who have the best range to choose from, but it meant that it was lunch time by the time I got back. I bought a fresh ‘pain’ (large baguette) on the way home so after a delicious crusty ham sandwich with red onion and Branston pickle I was all ready to get going.

This is the first laminate floor that I’ve ever laid and from what I’ve seen on Youtube it shouldn’t be that difficult. However, I’m afraid to say that the flooring I bought is the first Leroy Merlin product that I’d describe as low quality, and it doesn’t help that after laying it it’s so light that you can feel it moving under your feet and floating almost on the ghastly underlay that I mentioned yesterday.

I noted today that Leroy Merlin now have a different type in stock that wasn’t available when I bought mine. It comes in flat folding sheets that would be easier to cut and will lay flat when in place thus avoiding the problems that I experienced today and would also make laying the flooring sheets more precise and much easier.

From what I’ve seen you can buy flooring sheets that positively click together and can’t move therefore, once they’ve been laid. My product doesn’t do that – its top and left-hand edges just tuck under the adjoining sheets – and I found that with the ruddy underlay able to lift the sheets the ‘joints’ between them soon move and come undone. To my regret, I bought enough for all three bedrooms so I’ll be tearing out what little hair I have left even more when I move on to doing bedrooms two and three.

However, I had to persist and do my best and by early evening I’d got to the last section in the threshold of the bedroom door. This will need special care marking and cutting the material and the left and right hand door jams should also be cut for the sheet in the door threshold to slide under them to allow for expansion as you can’t fit a plinth there. I thought therefore, that this would be a good time to stop as I was feeling tired and will tackle this first thing tomorrow.

As the photos show, within a very short time the bedroom will be ready for the Ikea wardrobe unit that I’ve designed for the alcove to be installed and maybe going west to pick it up will be the best way to spend the afternoon.

I’ve also got some very exciting news. I’ve been asked by a national newspaper in the UK to write an article about my house-build. I’ve obviously got gazillions of material but they would like to receive it this week – yes, while I’m trying to sort out the bedroom and get my shutters painted before the winter. However, there’s a suggestion that if it goes down well there could be a series in the offing so there’s quite a bit at stake and I really do need to get it done.

Remind me, will you. How many hours are there in a day? 😕

Here’s my problem. I need to paint my shutters before the winter otherwise the new, bare wood will be fully exposed to the elements. To do the job I need good weather and it looks like the current amazingly hot, sunny spell will come to an end by the week-end when the weather will revert to a more seasonal cool, damp pattern.

I also still have quite a bit of work to do inside the house. In particular I need to get at least one bedroom finished with the wardrobe and storage installed that I have planned for it. Until I’ve done that I have no hope of reorganising the living room so I can get my dining table and chairs into it and also of clearing other stuff out of the storage that I’m renting.

As well as the financial aspect, the space is not of very high quality and is also prone to dampness so I definitely don’t want to leave my possessions in it for another winter. That means there’s an urgency to getting at least one bedroom done, but I can’t do both the shutters and the bedroom at the same time.

For the past few days I’ve been working on bedroom 1 so even if I can’t get it totally finished, I can get it to a stage whereby it can be used, its storage is installed and I can put my bed in there thus vacating the living room. For that to happen I need to have the room’s walls and ceiling undercoated, as much of its coving up as possible given that I have to allow for installation of the storage unit and the floor laid, minus the plinth, and that’s what I’ve been doing.

Here are some shots taken this evening showing the progress I’ve made. I put up coving and laid the floor underlay today so should be able to finish laying the floor tomorrow. Then it will be ready for the Ikea wardrobe and storage unit to be installed.

Ultimately I’ve decided that much as I’d like to paint the shutters, the bedroom has to be made useable first. We still get some lovely warm, dry weather in October and even beyond and with a bit of luck I’ll be able to get the shutters done before winter sets in. However, in the final event, I’ll just have to press on and take my chance.

I contacted Oliver yesterday who, as well as being a friend, is also the mechanic who looks after my car and already has my Kia in ready to repair when the new fuel pump is available. I explained my dilemma to him about the part having arrived, but in Montignac where I can’t get to because of having no transport, and asked if he had an old vehicle available that I could use to do the journey.

He told me that he has two but that both are at present out with customers whose cars are in for repair. However, he had another suggestion. He said that he’s never loaned it to anyone else and I’m the only person who he’d entrust it to, but if I turned up at his workshop today at 1.00 pm I could borrow his Audi TT. What a fantastic offer!

So I rode there on my trusty e-bike and headed off to Montignac in it shortly after 1.15 pm. I just happened to drive the long way via Rouffignac, Plazac, Fanlac and Thonac, a route that just happens to include some gorgeous windy roads that you don’t have to drive that quickly on in an Audi TT to have fun. And great fun it was too.

When I was picking my parcel up I found that in my haste to leave the house I’d left behind my wallet, bank cards and all my money. This was a blessing in disguise. I’d intended to do some shopping in Intermarché to see me through the next few days while I don’t have a car. Imagine if I’d turned up at the checkout at Intermarché with a trolley-full of goods only to find I had no way to pay for them!

So after I’d picked up the fuel pump I had to go straight home again, pick up my wallet and then go straight out again to do my shopping in Rouffignac. Then I had to return home again before returning the TT to Oliver. Oh dear… all that extra driving 😀

Here are some shots that I took of the car before I jumped on my bike and headed back home again. It’s been around the block a bit and is charmingly scruffy inside but its body is in beautiful condition and is also excellent mechanically, as you’d expect.

Before leaving for home I mentioned to Oliver that just as he’d found someone to buy my old C-Max, if someone turned up who had a cheap runabout that they wanted to sell to let me know. You have to have a car down here and if your car breaks down, as mine currently has, your life is put on hold.

This especially applies for me with the work I’m doing on and in the house frequently requiring me to dash off to Leroy Merlin, Brico Depot and elsewhere at the drop of a hat. I can’t do that on my e-bike trusty as it is, so having a handy runabout in reserve that doesn’t incur anything like the costs that apply in the UK, would be very handy indeed.

I made it to Rouffignac and back on my bike this morning and quite enjoyed the experience. I’ve lost a bit of weight and am quite a bit fitter than I was after the work I’ve been doing in my new house and garden so that was a big part of it.

I left in plenty of time to make my appointment and it only took 20 minutes or so to get there so even after doing a tour right round the village I was still 20 minutes early. Afterwards I even dropped into Carrefour to grab a couple of items and rode home like a real Frenchman with a baguette and a litre of milk strapped to my bike carrier.

It was a bit fresh this morning and I wisely chose to wear a baseball cap and a light scarf and if I hadn’t done I don’t think the ride would have been as enjoyable as it was.

My next challenge will be more problematic though. The new fuel pump that I ordered for my car will be delivered to a ‘point relais’ in Montignac. Rouffignac is a comfortable distance from Fleurac but I think Montignac is a bit too far for me to go to by bike. I’ll have to think about it 😕

My damn car has broken down again. It’s the fuel pump again which destroyed the engine last time by pumping neat fuel straight into the engine and ruining all of the engine bearings. The engine just stopped on the way home and I don’t think it’s done damage like that this time. I’ve ordered a replacement but it won’t arrive until the end of the week.

I have an appointment to see the nurse in Rouffignac tomorrow morning and without the car it’s too far to go by foot. So I’ve had a brainwave. I shall go by bike. I’ve brought my electric bike up to the house from the ‘tonnelle’ where it’s been stored for the past couple of years, given it a clean-up, pumped up its tyres and charged its battery so it’s ready to go.

I’ve just given it a trial run up and down the road and it’s running fine. I’ve ridden it since I’ve been here during my house-build but not for over a year and Rouffignac and back will be the farthest I’ll have gone even compared to when I was at Plazac. But tomorrow morning is forecast to be fine and I’ll make sure I allow myself plenty of time so it should be fun as well as interesting 😉