New floor screed

The floor levelling screed went down over Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, so by today had had three days to cure. Typically for my house-build, we’ve had terrible weather since then, while the team was applying the ‘Crépi’ finish to the outside walls and it’s a huge surprise that they managed to end up with such a fantastic result.

It took them two days and by the time they’d finished on the second day it was raining hard so unfortunately they didn’t spend as much time as maybe they might have, clearing things up afterwards. One result of this was that they’d left a slab of hard Crépi in front of the main entrance that was up to the height of the doorstep. The problem with that was that if it was left, at times of really heavy rainfall, the water could flow down the entrance roadway and straight onto the doorstep.

I did go into the house yesterday, in my socks in case the floor screed was not fully hard enough to take my weight (it was), and because of the weather, the water coming out of the screed as it dried was causing a great deal of condensation inside the house, as the first image below shows.

Today was windy but dry with some bright spells, so I wanted to go inside, sweep the floor throughout the whole house to remove the many small concrete fragments that were left on its surface and in the corners and open all of the doors and windows to get some air passing through. Before I could do that though, I needed to remove the slab of Crépi in front of the main entrance, which I had to do with a pickaxe, and clear it away.

I also replaced the bridge that the builders had been using previously to enter the house so as to prevent as much muck as possible being walked into the house when work resumes next week.

Now shots of the interior as it now is with the new levelling screed down starting, as usual, with the living room. The house’s true proportions are now much more apparent.

Now the kitchen.

Looking across the living room towards the main entrance door, the separate WC and what will eventually be the cloaks cupboard.

Looking up the corridor towards the bedrooms.

The ‘cellier’ (utility room).

The bathroom.

Bedroom two. Now that the floor screed’s down, all of the windows are at a much more comfortable height, as they were planned to be, than previously.

Bedroom one.

The alcove in bedroom one that will be fitted out with an Ikea full height storage cupboard with mirror doors. Bedroom two has a similar alcove that will be fitted out in the same way.

Bedroom three. As can be seen in these final shots, I’ve already begun to use this bedroom for storage, at the moment the bathroom handbasin, its column, its mixer tap and two special keyless door locks for the bathroom and WC.

I was pleased to see that some good progress was made last week because it means that I’ll soon be able to start doing work inside the house myself. Because of this I needed to place a large order on Leroy Merlin for collection next week when the floor screed will be good and hard so I can store the items inside the house. They will include the wall tiles for the bathroom which will need to be available when the tiler arrives and so are very important.

I tried placing the order last night several times and to my astonishment, it was declined on each occasion. My bank, Crédit Agricole, operates a ceiling system for my account debit card and bank transfers and when I looked into it, I found that the problem was that due to the number of orders I’ve been placing recently for things to do with my house, I’d hit my debit card ceiling.

This was annoying but there was also another problem. I ordered the goods some time ago but left them in my Leroy Merlin pannier and now that I was trying to process the order, I found that there were no ‘wave’ motif wall tiles available at Périgueux. And I need 6 cartons. More worryingly, when I checked around other Leroy Merlin stores in the area, in the whole of Nouvelle Aquitaine actually, not only were there none locally but one store stated that the product was no longer available.

Bearing in mind that the supplier that I’d originally chosen for the same, or a similar, tile had told me the same thing, this was a cause of some concern. I searched further afield and lo and behold, I found that 80 cartons of the tile I need are available at Biganos, which is on the other side of Bordeaux. But there was another problem. If I couldn’t use my debit card to snap up the 6 cartons that I need, they might also sell out and I’d be left with a hole in my plans.

I dashed off a message to my bank asking for my ceiling to be raised thinking that nothing would happen until Monday at the earliest, or probably Tuesday as banks here are closed on Mondays. So imagine my surprise when I received a call from a customer service agent about the problem who arranged for the increase in ceiling that I’d asked for.

But that wasn’t the end of it. When I again placed the order it was declined yet again and when I logged into my bank account I found that the ceiling increase hadn’t gone through. While I was logged in I noticed that the CA customer service department is available until 5.30 pm on Saturdays and as it was around 5.00 pm I began ringing. All I kept getting after several tries was a ‘leave a message’ message so I was just about to give up when, at about 5.25 pm I got through.

It transpired that the previous customer service agent had increased my limit for bank transfers, not debit card transactions, and after the second one had taken the appropriate action I was at last able to place the Leroy Merlin order.

Two actually. The first one was for items that I will collect from Périgueux/Chancelade next week which had to exclude the tiles that that store could not supply. The next one was for six cartons of those tiles that I’ll be picking up – from Biganos. Tomorrow, so I hope the weather will be nice, because I’ll be making a trip towards the west coast 🙂