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 🙁

You could not make this up. After weeks of waiting, the technician from Enedis arrived today as scheduled. I thought that he was only coming to see what had to be done but in fact he told me that he was here to connect my house to mains electricity. What a result!

But not so fast, this is France. He checked outside and then came into the house and after he’d checked the system over he said that he was unable to do the connection because the electrician had failed to connect the incoming mains cables to the house’s main switch. He said that if the electrician could come and do it he’d have the house connected in a trice but that, of course, was a forlorn hope.

I phoned Didier, the builder’s clerk of works, who tried to contact the electrician who, unsurprisingly, wasn’t taking any calls, so the technician explained the situation to Didier and left. I was fuming.

Later on shortly after I’d begun masking up the kitchen ready for painting, tomorrow if all goes well, Didier arrived out of the blue with the electrician on his phone. He went into the utility room and as instructed by the electrician pulled the two wires out that had been stuffed unconnected into the back of the cabinet. It took him ten minutes to connect them but it was too late.

I’ll now have to go through the whole rigmarole of making another appointment with Enedis for them to come back again and do the connection. How long will that take? Who knows. Two weeks? More? How could the electrician have been so thoughtless and stupid to have left the system in such a state.

It is not Enedis’s job to connect the incoming cables to the system. They expect the system to have been checked by the Consuel, as it was on 31st March and ready to be connected outside. Imagine if there was a system fault, they did the connection inside and the house caught fire. It was utter madness for the electrician to try to lay the blame on someone else, as he did.

It was not a complete disaster, however, because it appears that a ‘live’ Linky smart meter provides a minimal emergency power, how I do not know. But with the electrician still on his phone, Didier cut off the seal that Enedis expressly says must not be removed except by them and began to switch circuits on in the house. It turned out that all the lights except those in the lounge worked and we surmised that the ones in the lounge didn’t because 12 spots draw in excess of the emergency supply power.

All of the power points that I checked also worked, as well as the cooker and hot plate and also the house’s ventilation system mounted in the roof. I just connected one spot in each bedroom and the utility room to make sure that their lights worked but the lights in the dining area, corridor and bathroom which are all fully installed all worked perfectly.

I’ll contact Enedis again tomorrow but I won’t be holding my breath about getting an early date for the connection to be done. In the meantime I’ll go ahead with painting the kitchen tomorrow so I can get its lights up and then I might think about making some tentative arrangements to move in anyway as I’ve now got an inflatable double bed in bedroom one and with a working kitchen and bathroom it’d probably be more comfortable in the house than in the caravan.

I had to remove all of the wall masking and floor covering plastic before I could see the living room and corridor in a state to judge how well they had turned out after all the time and effort I’d put into them. I started removing the wall masking yesterday and finished the job today, together with all of the film covering the floor, before bundling everything up ready to be disposed of.

By the way, all of the previous shots I’ve posted have shown the green walls as being much too green and this time I’ve tried to edit the photos to make them closer to how they really are. They’re still not quite right but are a lot better.

So far so good. They’re not perfect but heck, I’m not a pro and don’t claim to be but if I’d been asked beforehand if I’d accept the way they’ve come out I’d have said that I sure would. The proof of the pudding though, was getting the LED spots all mounted in the ceiling and doing the making good of the green areas below the bottom edge of the coving which had been damaged when the masking had been removed. What do you think of the finished product?

The results are certainly good enough for me. I think the space is fresh, clean looking and modern – all the things that my old house wasn’t, which is what prompted me to embark on this project in the first place. Yes, there are still things to be done but the living room and corridor will be perfectly good enough for me to move into – after a good clean that is 🙂

Some of the shots shown above were taken with my Nikon Coolpix camera rather than my phone camera which is why the colours, especially the green are closer to the real thing. I also took a shot of the bank of sockets in the TV corner of the living room and the green in that is closer still. Unfortunately, however, the corner was in shade when I took it so it still doesn’t give the right impression of how the room looks when it’s bathed in sunlight.

At last! But first, more masking, this time downwards from the bottom of the coving. I had to start by putting up more of the masking paper but this time the other way up and as previously, before I’d even finished some at the beginning had begun to come off again. But I had no choice except to press on even though it meant keep going back to check work I’d already done to ensure that it was still positioned on the walls where it was supposed to be.

After the masking paper to give me a straight line below the coving I then had to hang sheets of film down to the floor to protect the green walls from the white finishing coat that I was about to apply to the coving and ceiling. And lucky that I did as the following shots taken after I’d finished spray painting show, this time with absolutely no hitches or hiccups.

Like the surgeon said after the operation, the dressings come off tomorrow, but after I’d cleaned the spraying machine and the other bits and pieces that I’d used, I couldn’t wait to take some of the masking down from the walls to see how the colours work together and also some of the masking from the floor in the corridor which has been down for what seems like weeks.

My phone camera makes the green a bit greener than it really is but from what I could see this evening, I’m delighted with the results. I’ve always liked fresh green and white together and the white switches and sockets also accent the combination beautifully. So although it’s taken a very long time and been a very painful process, I’ve got what I was aiming for. The proof of the pudding will be when I go back tomorrow, remove the rest of the masking and take a closer look.

There is some making good of the green line below the coving to do caused by the ‘gentle’ blue masking tape tearing the plasticky edge of the paint off when it was removed. But that won’t take much to do and I’ll be more interested in seeing how the white finish has come out on the ceiling. I can’t wait to install all the lights in it tomorrow which have been hanging down for what seems like forever.

In all honesty, my living room and hall walls and ceiling actually represent a huge painting project, especially for a single person working alone, and I doubt that I’ll ever again take on anything else like it. Having a two-colour combination also made it considerably more complicated and time consuming, but if tomorrow the results do turn out to be OK I’ll have got what I wanted and it’ll all have been worth it 🙂

When I checked how the paint spraying had gone yesterday the first thing I noticed was that although most of the walls were OK, parts of them were very patchy. This was partly due to my reluctance to overload the surfaces and get runs but was also due to occasional uneven spraying, possibly due to the jet becoming slightly blocked and delivering more paint in parts of its arc than others.

The professionals would probably have just started the machine up again and given the walls another coat but I couldn’t do that because (a) I don’t have enough paint and (b) I couldn’t face doing it over again what with all the mess and cleaning up afterwards. So I decided to just go round with a large soft paintbrush and see how it would come out.

In fact it looked OK as shown by the following shots taken after I’d removed the masking from around the coving.

Getting the masking off was actually very tricky. This was because the Olive Green paint that I’d bought from Brico-Depot isn’t actually a paint in the traditional sense. It actually dries into a very thin plastic film which is great on the exposed flat surfaces as it’s hard-wearing and washable even. However, it’s very vulnerable at its edges, in this case where it interfaced with the edge of the masking tape.

Consequently until I realised that and tried to find a way to avoid it, pulling the masking tape off in the usual way brought the edge of the film off with it in some places, sometimes in lengths of several centimetres, which will need repair work. If I’d known this I’d never have used it but it’s too late now and that horse has left the stable.

I’ll probably leave that until after I’ve painted the ceiling as that will require masking along the top of the green paint below the coving and although I won’t be using exactly identical masking tape, it’ll be similar and could result in yet more damage when it’s removed. To say that I never thought that painting the living room and corridor would be so challenging is a total understatement 🙁

I went into the house this morning all fired up ready to start painting the walls in the living room and corridor. My enthusiasm was somewhat dampened, however, when on opening the front door I found that half of the masking paper that I’d attached yesterday to protect the ceiling had fallen off and was hanging limply down.

I had no choice but to go all round and reattach the sheets that had fallen off and check that the ones that hadn’t were still attached securely enough for when I started spraying as evidently the glue on the strip that attaches the paper to the surface to be masked off was just not up to the job. I suspected as much when I’d spotted some already beginning to fall off when I left last night.

After dealing with the masking paper I then went all round and rubbed all the walls down yet again. I’d noticed that there were some areas with a texture like sandpaper, mainly high up near the coving but some also lower down, and then made sure that all the dust created was swept away from the base of the walls. Then it was time to think about painting.

I’d originally bought two 2.5 litre tubs of Olive Green satin from Brico Depot and had then increased that to three. Having seen how much paint I’d used so far I decided that this would not be enough for the area I planned to spray which I’d estimated at around 65 square metres, and as I didn’t want to have to stop half-way through, I decided to make yet another unscheduled trip to Brico Depot to pick up two more tubs.

And lucky I did, because I ended up with exactly the amount of paint that I needed for the job. I was all ready to get going as soon as I returned but yet again some of the masking paper was already in the process of detaching itself and again needed attention to get it back in place again before I could do anything else.

I planned to make the green lighter by adding some white paint to it and had already bought a tub of ‘cheapo’ white paint from Leroy Merlin on one of my previous visits there. I’d bought some new plastic buckets from Brico Depot to mix paint in and a rotary paint mixer yesterday from Brico Jem in Rouffignac so now was the time to get the job done.

Unfortunately it started badly with a large leak from around the spray gun nozzle which made the customary mess on the floor at the far end of the corridor but this was rectified, thank goodness, when I tightened the securing nut further.

Spraying in the corridor was a nightmare as it had been before because you can’t easily get far enough away from the wall. It’s also dark up there with all the doors closed and masked so it’s hard to see what you’re doing and easy to get runs which I mostly managed to avoid this time. The pressure tube also has a habit of coiling itself and then hitting against the wall that you’ve just painted which is very annoying to say the least.

Painting the walls in the living room was much easier and although the masking paper proved far from reliable I at last managed to get all of the living room and corridor walls painted. By this time it was already becoming a bit dark for photographs and in any case my main priority was tying to get everything cleaned up. This green paint proved to be particularly difficult and intractable to remove as it seems to dry with a kind of plastic film on its surface and I had to do the best that I could to make sure that my spray machine was as clean as I could get it before doing anything else.

It was hard to tell in the light available by that time how well the job had turned out. At first glance it didn’t look too bad and the small amounts of overspray that managed to find their way onto the ceiling past the bits of masking paper that gave up during spraying will not be an issue. However, I won’t be able to tell for sure until tomorrow in the daylight.

If things have turned out OK, tomorrow I’ll at last be able to remove all the masking from around the windows and doors in readiness for doing the ceiling, which will require new vertical masking all round from along the bottom edge of the coving. With a bit of luck I might even be able to get the ceiling done tomorrow which would be an enormous leap forward. There may be a few areas of wall that will need touching up but I have enough paint left over to do that with a roller and that could also be left until the ceilings are done, which is actually the bigger priority.

I had another very disturbed night last night. The very hot spell (42 degrees Celsius yesterday) mercifully came to an end as they usually do here with a thunderstorm. Trouble is it was at about 3.00 am and I found it impossible to get back to sleep again after it had died down again an hour or so later. I finally got up before 6.00 am and just managed to catch a very brief nap before starting my day before 9.00 am with a drive to Rouffignac.

I got going in the house immediately after I returned with the aim of getting another full day of masking under my belt which I knew would be the most difficult of the whole paint job. There were several reasons for this. Because it was to do with getting the walls in the living room and corridor ready for painting it involved masking up the ceiling in those areas, which meant the masking would have to be done upwards. The same will apply when I come to do the ceilings in the bedrooms but the area being masked up today is far and away the biggest in the house and whereas the bedrooms are all rectangular it also contains several angles and corners.

The job involved making a straight line below the bottom edge of the coving using wide blue masking tape and then adding masking paper to that to protect the ceiling. Here’s how things looked after applying the blue masking tape.

Here’s almost the same shot as above but with the masking paper now added.

The masking paper had to be added around the whole area which meant climbing up and down the steps and was both tiring and time-consuming.

Every time I get close up to the walls and ceiling I find a few more small bits of making-good to do and today was no exception. Most of it was to do with the damage caused when the paint spray machine’s pipe exploded but there were a few other small areas as well. With the masking now all done I should all being well be able to move onto colour spraying the walls tomorrow.

I’ll have to check all of the paper masking beforehand though, as it’s still quite warm inside the house and one or two areas were already beginning to sag a bit and detach before I left this evening. But fingers crossed, it will only have to last one spray session tomorrow 😉

What a difference! I made an early start so I could resume painting the living room while it was still cool. I opened the door and walked in at around 9.00 am and by 11.00 am I was all ready to leave with the paint machine washed and cleaned out and everything else tidied and cleared away just as I wanted. This time the machine had operated exactly as it was supposed to – comme il faut.

Compared to previously this was a completely different experience – no spilled paint all over the floor to be walked everywhere and no more wrestling with a blocked jet. This time if the jet began to stutter a bit or spray less or in a more restricted pattern it was a simple matter to just swivel it through 180 degrees in its mount, give it a momentary burst into the paint can, swivel it back and continue spraying. The old jet supplied with the machine would not do that, although it was supposed to, so was rubbish.

Here’s the room after I’d finished spraying.

And because everything wasn’t in such a mess and plastered in wet paint it was so easy to clean everything afterwards. Except myself, to a degree. I’d got everything ready and tested the machine just in my boxers with my cover-all protective suit ready on one side to put on. The spray worked so well that I decided not to take the risk of stopping but just put on my respirator and carried on.

As a result I received a goodly covering of paint spray dust all over me. It all came off when I eventually had a shower after cleaning everything else beforehand, so it was a small price to pay. I am now so much more encouraged and just hope that spraying the walls in colour, which is the next job, goes the same way as today. If so I’ll then be well on the way to being able to move in, with our without a permanent electrical connection 😐

Well yes, more or less. I had to hang around today until the new high pressure hose for my airless paint sprayer and the Einhell wet/dry vacuum cleaner arrived as I can’t do anything important inside the house until I have the former and can continue painting. The vacuum cleaner will be a bonus that I hope will help me get rid of as much as possible of the dust that’s still plaguing me and speed up the progress.

I’ll say one thing for Colis Privé who were delivering both items, they may arrive late in the day but they always arrive – 6.00 pm today – unlike the company delivering my new shower screen that I expected to arrive in 48 hours but which has been ‘out for delivery’ ever since 18th August, a week after I placed the order. The supplier said that once they’ve released it to the delivery company it’s up to them when they deliver it so I think that I’ll cancel the order tomorrow and find another supplier, pain in the backside though that will be.

I’m pleased with the new high pressure paint hose that arrived on cue. It seems more robust and of better quality than the original and already its coils have unwound to give a straight tube. That was the overriding problem with the original that I think contributed to its failure as you couldn’t stop it kinking in use. And because it was always bunched up in coils it kept touching the wall when you moved and damaging the work that you’d just done.

But today’s star was the little Einhell vacuum cleaner. It is what it is and is of a simple design that’s in no way pretentious. It has a capacity of 12 litres but that will be enough for my needs and at just over 50€ delivered from Amazon Prime, what’s not to like, although I think the price may have gone up a bit?

It has only a 1500 watt motor I think but it sounds as though it’ll do the job. My main household vacuum cleaner is in storage and is a pathetic French copy of a Dyson. It’s pretty useless and who knows, this little machine might end up being a good replacement for it.

I also had another pleasant surprise today. I still haven’t got my original house keys and have been relying on a single copy that is always either in my caravan when I’m in the car or the other way round. I took it back to where I had it cut to get a copy of the copy which can often be problematic. Sure enough, when I got the new copy home it didn’t work, so I took it back.

The key-cutter man squinted at it through his glasses, put it through the cutting machine two or three more times and then squinted at it again before making some more adjustments with a hand file. He handed it back to me and said that if it still didn’t work, if I came back with the original he’d make a copy of that for half-price. And sure enough when I got home again it didn’t.

When I took a close look at it and compared it to the original, I’m no expert but it looked to me as though there were still some small differences, so I decided to have a go at it myself. I told myself to take it easy because when it comes to keys, taking too much metal off is as bad as leaving too much on and filed it a bit before trying it three or four times. On the last try it worked! So I’m thinking that maybe I might start a second career as a locksmith – or on second thoughts, a burglar… 🙂

Vevor, the maker of my airless paint sprayer, has said they will send me out another tube to replace the one that burst. I suppose that’s all I can hope for as it’s the only thing that’s actually broken but if it’s of the same construction as the original what’s to stop the same thing happening again?

I’ve ordered another one from another supplier and I’ll have to see how that compares. It’s also half the length of the original which was difficult to control because of its length and I think that a kink in it may have contributed to its failing.

I’m also expecting a new dust/liquid vacuum cleaner to arrive today and shall use it to reduce the amount of dust in the living room and corridor before continuing painting. I never thought that painting would turn out to be so difficult or so protracted 🙁

I now understand entirely why the whole of France goes on holiday in August. It’s just too hot to work, unless you’re in a fully air-conditioned building that is. We’ve had temperatures consistently over 35 degrees Celsius for the past several days and it’s become very hot inside the house. With all of the living room and corridor windows and doors being sealed and masked up it’s actually become quite stifling in there and just moving around doing light tasks brings you out into a sweat.

And to make it worse, while I was cleaning up after the disaster the other day, I had to go into the fringe of the trees near the house in order to remove paint from tools etc using the hosepipe. As soon as I did I was descended upon by a swarm of biting insects all persistent in their intent to eat me. The same problem is now becoming almost unbearable down near the caravan.

I think that it’s been superb breeding weather for mosquitoes and in the morning and early evening especially, I’m being plagued by Tiger mosquitoes. These are quite small with black and white striped legs and bodies. If you feel and see one biting you, you can often slap it and kill it. But usually blood (yours) then smears your arm or leg meaning it was too late and soon you come up in a large, itchy welt.

From what I read they are prolific breeders in any water that’s around – puddles, buckets, watering cans etc, even just small amounts. It also appears almost impossible to get rid of them once they’ve moved onto your patch, which is not very encouraging to say the least, and it’s another reason why I’m desperate to get out of the caravan.

Every day, by mid-afternoon, the caravan has become sweltering inside and it stays that way for almost the whole night even when it has cooled down outside. We’ve got temperatures in the 40s through to Thursday this week after which it is forecast to cool down so I have no choice but to grin and bear it for a few more days yet.

I went to bed quite early last night, slept badly and woke early so decided to make an early start. I was in the house by 8.00 am and the first thing I did was replace the area of masking film on the floor that I had to remove when the pipe of the high pressure paint sprayer burst.

Having done that I went around the walls and ceiling with a fine tooth comb and found areas of paint splashes that I’d originally missed when the disaster first happened. I then rubbed them all down with a new sheet of sandpaper so they’re now ready for painting again when the new high pressure tube arrives tomorrow.

It made quite a lot more dust and I picked up as much as I could with the dustpan and brush but would like to remove even more if I can. I’m expecting a new dust/liquid vacuum cleaner to arrive tomorrow so before I start painting again I’m going to run all round with that.

I might even quickly give all of the walls (and ceiling if necessary) another rub down as many areas have a feel like sandpaper which I can only think has come from dust blowing up into the spray during painting. But that will have to wait until early tomorrow morning when it’s cooler as it’s much, much too hot to do it now.

I bought my new Vevor high pressure airless spray machine to paint the interior of my new house. After assembling it with difficulty according to the cursory and inadequate instructions that came with it (I had to bend the circlip that secures the main paint pick-up tube to the machine to make it fit) I managed to undercoat the kitchen without too many problems. Frustratingly I did find though, that the volume emitted by the jet was very variable from insufficient to way too much causing runs.

I then started on my living room a few days ago which is very large and a prime candidate for such a machine but have had nothing but problems with it. The first time I switched the machine on after purchasing it it would not generate any pressure, needing to be switched off and on several times and this has continued to keep happening.

But worse still, while painting my living room I eventually had to give up because the jet kept continually blocking needing the pistol and jet to be disassembled and cleaned. Inevitably, as this meant venting and opening up the high pressure line, some paint found its way out meaning that not only was paint wasted every time but a terrible mess eventually resulted due to the leakage.

As it was impossible to continue, let alone achieve results that were anywhere near acceptable I ordered several new jets and threw away the one that Vevor supplied with the machine. After testing one of the new ones for several minutes with water as I was sick of the mess made by the old one and keeping losing so much paint I tried to resume painting my living room today.

Once again when I switched the machine on it did not develop any pressure. When it eventually did after switching it off and on several times and constantly raising and lowering the pressure setting, before I could start spraying there was a muffled ‘Whumph’ behind me and when I looked round I saw that the main paint delivery tube supplied by Vevor connecting the machine to the gun had exploded sending paint all over the ceiling and walls of my living room.

Before I could do anything about the huge pool of paint forming on my living room floor from the hole in the tube, first I had to dash round with steps and a paint brush to try to brush out the considerable number of paint droplets now on the walls and ceiling. Only after having done that could I try to clean up the huge mess on the floor.

Luckily it turned out that my floor masking was very effective. I cut out and lifted the area of film covered by the paint and miraculously none had gone through onto the tiles. I was even able to return much of the paint to the can and the bigger problem was walking around on the splatters of wet paint on the floor and transferring foot marks to areas which up to then had not been affected.

I find it incredible that the tube was apparently not rated to take the pressure generated by the machine (3500 psi) with a safety margin and that it should have failed so early on anyway. I can only surmise that the jet blocking problem was due to the pipe breaking down internally and constantly sending small pieces of debris down the line as it disintegrated. I also had problems getting the joints of the extension wand and pistol gun to stop leaking and my confidence in this machine is now extremely low.

As I must try to continue getting my house ready to move into I’ve had no choice but to order another tube which will be delivered on Tuesday when I will try to carry on. What worries me, however, is that since I’ve owned it the machine has succeeded in doing much more harm than good and that it might continue doing so.

Over many years I have purchased many different types of tools for many purposes but this Vevor airless sprayer is definitely the worst tool that I have ever been unfortunate enough to buy. I notified Vevor of the issues yesterday and I’m now waiting see what the outcome of this will be but I’ll be surprised if I’m not disappointed.

Welcome to the dystopian world of dealing with French bureaucracy. On Thursday August 17th I was on the phone the whole morning with EDF trying to sort out my house’s electrical connection problems. Initially I got Jerome in Poitiers. Jerome is not someone who likes challenges or dealing with anything out of the normal run of things that will disturb his easy routine. Jerome is both incompetent and lazy.

As such he’s a typical EDF customer service employee who will go far in an organisation where the most simple tasks are either impossible, done incorrectly or not done at all, mistakes are the order of the day and nobody is ever held accountable because there’s no way of making contact with the organisation except through them. It’s a carefully thought-through setup.

As I mentioned in previous posts, having had a temporary connection via EDF for over two years, I now merely need to convert that to a permanent one. You’d think that would be the simplest thing in the world to do, but no, in France it’s not. If it was done just with the click of a mouse button asking for an engineer to attend and switch the connection over (10 minutes) and making the necessary changes to the charging tariff, half the people in EDF and Enedis, it’s sister company and partner in crime, would be put out of work and the French state could never tolerate that.

So a completely new project and ‘dossier’ has to be created with all that that entails including the massive potential for cock-ups, which are inevitable. First there was the inevitable confusion over my address. When the temporary connection was set up there was no house number because there was no house so it was described as ‘the place know as…’.

Now I’d have thought that EDF would have been pretty used to that – it must be so for every new-build house that they connect – but the concept was a difficult one for EDF client services to grasp and it was challenging for them to set up a NEW account (yes, a new dossier means a new account even though the client ie me, and the supply address are the same as for the existing connection) with a minor change in the address details.

Just for information, although I’ve only had my old address at Plazac and my new address at Fleurac, I was told that at the time of my conversation with Jerome there were 4 ‘dossiers’ in my name – only God and EDF know why – and unbeknown to me, things were going to get worse.

So by now we were about 20 minutes in and we’d managed to resolve the address issue but that still left what for some reason has turned out to be the huge stumbling block of what’s called the PDL or ‘Point de Livraison’. Nobody has bothered to explain but I’ve found out myself that this is a unique code that’s applied to the meter that records the usage of electricity at the location, so quite simple really.

The meter in my temporary connection box has a PDL and it’s shown on every bill that I receive. Before they could go ahead and instruct Enedis to make the connection to my new house they needed to know the new PDL. Naturally I had no clue what they they were talking about, just as a lay French person wouldn’t either, and nobody was either willing, or more likely able, to tell me where to find it.

Way back on 1st August I had a telephone ‘rendez-vous’ with an ‘engineer’ from Enedis in order to progress my connection. He helpfully told me that I was already connected and that was it, before rudely ending the conversation without making any effort to deal with the issues that clearly existed. He was evidently another lazy, incompetent person who didn’t give a damn about the customers of the organisation for which he worked.

Almost two weeks prior to my conversation with EDF’s Jerome I’d also had a conversation with another EDF customer service agent who’d set me up with a new ‘permanent’ account. I’d then received an email from yet another EDF tosser called ‘Mallory’ who assured me of their fullest attention in getting my connection done but then proved incapable, apparently, of replying to emails.

Both of these parties were, however, useless and merely compounded the problems. When we’d hit the PDL stumbling block it appears that they’d used, or made up, a PDL to create the ‘new’ permananent contract. Sadly, the system, as it is, doesn’t work like that which I know but apparently they do not. When I emailed a helpful contact that I’d made in Enedis she told me that the PDL being used by EDF was for another temporary connection which, of course, is the last thing that I need and that only the real PDL would be acceptable to progress the connection.

At this point I decided to do my own research and it didn’t take long to establish that although it’s not live, the PDL can be obtained in seconds from the new Linky smart meter that’s installed in my house. Apparently the EDF buffoons either aren’t aware of this or can’t be bothered to share such information with you as with it the situation could have been well on the way to being resolved weeks ago.

I checked the Linky PDL with Enedis and my contact confirmed that it was correct, referred to an existing Enedis connection project which was ready to go with all fees paid and could be connected on the same day. I passed this information on to ‘Mallory’ in EDF by email but it apparently was totally ignored.

I found this out when I was in contact with Jerome who listened while I explained the whole saga for the umpteenth time, assured me that he understood what the problem was and after sorting out the address issue, said that he’d fix it. He said that all he’d need to do was update the PDL on my new contract and that the line would go quiet while he did so.

It did do alright, because after about five minutes the line went dead. This has happened to me so many times I now know what it means. Jerome found that he’d have to do some work for a change so just put the phone down.

I didn’t call back immediately but left it for a few minutes before redialling the EDF customer service number. I said that I’d been talking to Jerome but the young lady on the other end of the line said she didn’t know who that was and that she’d deal with my problem. And this young lady was like a shining star compared to her colleagues.

The first thing we established was that Jerome had done absolutely nothing, so she made the necessary amendments to my contract address and then went on to deal with the PDL problem. It didn’t take her long to find that the system wouldn’t allow her to do so (what happens if your meter breaks down?) and the quickest way to deal with it was to create yet another new contract for me.

There was an interesting result from doing this. The temporary connection I’ve had for 2 years is of 12kVA power (12 kilowatts) and when the contract for my new permanent connection was originally set up it was found that 9kVA would be sufficient making it a bit cheaper. This young lady went through the whole questionnaire yet again and said that 6kVA should do it, making it cheaper still and that if later this was found to be too low, it could be increased. See what I mean compared to Jerome?

She then said that she’d contact Enedis while I waited in order to expedite the connection and after several minutes she came back with the bad news that put the cherry on the top of the cake of this whole farce.

When she’d cross-checked the address of the connection with Enedis she found that there was a discrepancy that she came back to me to ask about. It turns out that yes, there is a live Enedis project with the correct PDL but not at my address. Despite having connected up my ‘branchement provisoire’ it’s shown as being at the address of a neighbour down the road who has been connected for many years and is definitely in no need of another.

Oh no, you think, just another cock-up. Yes it is, but this one has ramifications. It means that an Enedis engineer will have to come on site to make an ‘inspection’ and the earliest that one can do this is 31st August – another two weeks away. Then Enedis will have to arrange for the connection to be made and I’ll be surprised if this happens before the end of September.

And this is after I applied for it to be done on 11th July. This can’t be normal surely, you ask. Yes, a similar thing happened when I ordered my current temporary connection and also when I ordered my water connection from Veolia. So it is normal – and my French friends also agree.

Only half a day today (Wednesday) because having done all of the making good I want to leave it to cure before continuing. I’m very happy with the way it turned out – and for me to be happy it means it’s perfect, or close to!

I also did a few more bits of making good that I wouldn’t have done if the ‘disaster’ hadn’t happened so in a way it was a blessing in disguise. That’s how I’m going to look at it, anyway 🙂

And no pictures with this post – after all that, there’s nothing to see!

We had a huge thunderstorm two nights ago and one massive thunderclap seemed to be directly overhead and shook the whole caravan. We had another last night, so that’s two nights in a row of disturbed sleep, not to mention the nights when I’ve had difficulty sleeping due to the heat.

This morning I found that yet again the roof of one of the ‘tonnelles’ (gazebos) was damaged by the high winds and torrential rain so whereas I thought all of my problems in that area were over following the end of the winter it appears that things are just as bad as before, and possibly even worse, as the end of the project approaches.

So one way and another what with these things and the challenges I’m facing getting the inside of the house ready for occupation, I think I’m becoming tired and stressed both physically and mentally. As I’m becoming aware of the fact that nobody can keep working non-stop day in, day out as I’ve been trying to, I therefore took it easy yesterday and did nothing more for the rest of the day after collecting three more 12 litre cans of sealer-undercoat from Leroy Merlin.

That was appropriate anyway as yesterday was a public holiday here in France and it was unfortunate that my day of rest was ruined by last night’s storm. As it was, I didn’t re-wake until after 9.00 am having gone to bed at about 11.30 pm last night, so I must have derived some benefit from it.

The good news is that I’ve checked the paintwork in the lounge and corridor again this morning and it’ll be a piece of cake to make good the problem areas. Afterwards it’ll be impossible to see that they were ever there and work will be able to resume, possibly later today but more likely tomorrow, after the making-good has had time to cure and my spirit has also had time to recover a little bit more.

Then it’ll be ‘onwards and upwards’ once again. You mustn’t allow events to get you down when the rewards of renewed effort will be so great ?

After all the work that I did prepping the living room and corridor for painting it was heart-breaking this morning to see the results of yesterday’s spray painting debacle. Some of the problems were of my own making. For example, as shown in some of the following images, spraying this kind of paint is not like spraying a car when the paint flashes surface dry very quickly and can be over-sprayed with a second coat soon after the first. This kind of paint stays wet for a long time – hours I’ve found on surfaces like the coving – and if you go back over it too soon it develops huge runs.

But the overriding problem was that the spray jet kept repeatedly blocking giving rise to two problems. Firstly, while it was in the process of blocking it created an uneven spray pattern making it impossible to get an even finish on the surface being painted. Secondly, every time the jet was removed for cleaning, which on many occasions took many attempts over several minutes, the machines delivery tube was wide open allowing paint to emerge. Every time it did so some found its way onto the floor until eventually I was almost paddling around in the stuff.

The machine blocked up so many times that eventually I think I began to lose control of the situation a bit, especially when the bucket of painty water was knocked over onto the floor. I was trying to get as much done as I could before both the paint and the light ran out and some of the run issues were due, I think, to there not being enough light for me to clearly see what was going on.

Here are some shots of the depressing sights that greeted me this morning starting with the view as I entered through the front door.

A closer look at the floor area around the paint cans. The heap of kitchen roll on the left was used to mop up the water from the overturned bucket and as I had to continue spraying for as long as I could while the jet was clear, there wasn’t enough time to clear it all up at the time.

Looking towards the corridor and the kitchen door. I eventually had to totally remove the masking around the kitchen door due to the need to constantly get to the sink during my many attempts to unblock the spray jet.

Looking back at the area around the paint cans. How could anyone work effectively in a mess like this? It was a truly awful experience.

Every time the jet needed unblocking the machine had to be de-pressurised. There’s a small diameter flexible plastic tube that allows the paint released to be returned to the can but this can happen quite violently. I didn’t notice at the time that on at least one occasion some huge splatters went onto a wall. They can’t be left like it and will have to be removed and the wall made good again later on.

But the worst things were the runs in several places at the base of the coving along the tops of the walls. This was due to paint overloading because unlike on the plaster wall surfaces, the paint remains wet on the non-absorbent polystyrene surface of the coving for much, much longer and cannot be over-sprayed once it has been given a coat of paint. This morning the paint on it was still as wet as though it had only just been painted.

I’ve had to remove all of these runs and will have to do my best to make the walls good again once the paint has dried, but I doubt that it’ll ever look any good. The problem was compounded at the corners because having already sprayed the ceiling at those points I then went back and sprayed the corners again from both directions, so with hindsight it’s not surprising that the paint build-up was so great as to cause the runs.

So a big part of the problem was my own lack of experience of the technology and in future I’ll hopefully be further along the learning curve and be able to avoid the runs problem, for example. But the main issue was jet blocking and it was that that set the series of disasters in motion. I don’t know whether the pros start with a new, clean jet on every paint job but I’ve ordered six more new ones that will be delivered on Thursday.

I’ll have to leave things be for a day or so anyway to allow the paint to dry and then I’ll have to make things good as best I can before re-sealing the affected areas. My guess is that yesterday’s experience has put me back several days but I’ve no choice but to bite the bullet and carry on 😕