The two workmen arrived at about 9.00 am and got cracking straight away on the interior walls. I went up to see them shortly after they’d started and asked how they were doing. They replied, ‘No problem’, I said that those were the words I wanted to hear and left them to it.

They had made a bit of progress by lunch time as the following shots show.

I went up again to see how they’d done at the end of the afternoon and found that they’d managed to get quite a bit more done. It isn’t just a matter of getting the dry-lining boards up. The insulation also has to be carefully measured, cut and installed before the boards are put into place.

It looks as though putting the walls up may take a little bit longer than I originally anticipated. However, I’d prefer to have a slower good job rather than a quick bad one and it looks pretty good so far. I’ll be interested to see what progress is made tomorrow 😉

No, not the 1960/70s rock group (Jim Morrison, Riders on the Storm and all that – dates me, eh…) but the ones I recently acquired to have installed inside my new house. After I’d picked them up from Leroy Merlin a week or so ago in the van I’d hired, I’d dropped them off in the barn at Malbec in which I have my aircraft where they’ve remained ever since. Here are a couple of shots of the front and back of one that I took at the time.

The doors are supplied already hung in their door frames complete with locks ready to be installed.

The workmen who are installing the interior ceilings and walls would usually install the doors at the same time but as I cancelled the ones that the builder would have supplied, installation of interior doors has been excluded from the contract. Nevertheless, as they need to make the apertures in the partition walls of the correct dimensions we agreed that I’d drop a door round as a reference for them to work to.

I’ve now come to an arrangement, as I expected I probably would, for them to install all of the doors for me. It makes sense as they’ll do a better job than I would and it will also be one less job for me to do as I’ll already have enough of a list when I move in. When they left yesterday they left me the key for the house so I could put the doors inside so this morning I went round and picked them up three at a time in my large trailer.

Getting them in and out all by myself was a hefty job and as I was lifting the last one to carry it into the house something ‘popped’ in my left elbow. It was quite painful and my arm became quite weak afterwards but here are some shots that I took anyway starting with the last two in my trailer before I lifted them out to take them indoors.

And now all of the doors inside ready to be installed, although they’ll have to be moved before they are so the interior walls can be put into place.

When I dropped the doors inside, I also noticed that as well as putting up one horizontal support bar all around the interior walls, the workmen had also marked out the floor to what I suppose will be the full width of the walls including insulation. I have no idea what the second line is for.

The weather’s still great and I’m planning on doing the second brake on my Savannah tomorrow. Until then I’m just going to be giving my elbow a bit of a rest 🙁

The two-man team working on the interior arrived at around 9.00 am and got cracking on filling the small hole in the ceiling left over from yesterday, sealing the gaps between the ceiling and the walls with foam and putting the metal framework up that will hold the insulation and support the dry-lining that will make up the interior surfaces of the external walls.

However, something must have happened, maybe a problem on another job that needed their attention or something like that, because they abruptly locked up and left for the day just before noon. They left all their tools behind and told me that they’d be back on Monday as usual so that was an early wrap for work this week.

The pictures I took show that they only put up one horizontal wall bar around the whole house before leaving for the day.

In the next shot, that’s one of my new doors leaning against the wall over on the right. They said they’d like to have one for when they start working on the interior partition walls, so they can get the doorway aperture dimensions exactly right.

Here are a couple of shots showing how they’ve sealed the ceiling edges.

I’m really pleased with their work. The quality is excellent. The whole ceiling surface is really level and there are no joint gaps as far as I can see between any of the sheets. If the partition walls are of the same standard the completed interior will be amazing 😉

It turns out I was wrong. Work on my house is to continue without delay and when I went up to check just before 9.00 am this morning to my surprise one of m+ matériaux’s large delivery trucks was already there and about to be unloaded.

As usual, it only took one man and a Hiab to do the job and it didn’t take him very long to remove all of the materials from the truck and have them stacked neatly on the ground to the front and side of the house ready for use.

The materials were for the ceilings, the inner surfaces of the main walls and the internal partitions and before the driver had finished unloading the truck a small team who were going to do the work had turned up. I had to nip out and when I got back the team had been reduced to the two men who’d put up the ceiling supports a week or so ago.

I left them to it and shortly before they left for the day as the end of the afternoon approached I took the following shots of their handiwork.

So in a bit less than a day all of the ceiling board had been put up. There was just a small area left and I think they intend to use the piece that they remove to make an access to the roofspace in the utility room to fill it, but I don’t know for sure.

So progress was pretty quick and when I asked him the elder of the two workmen told me that it would probably take eight to nine days to get the whole interior finished off. I guessed about a week in my last post so it seems that although these guys are pretty quick, I was still being a bit overoptimistic 😉

At last. The roofers returned this morning to finish off the roof by filling in the hole they’d left over bedroom 1 and adding the edge tile that was missing at the living room end where they’d run out of tiles the last time they were here. I was very pleased with the results and although the weather is fantastic at the moment and no rain is forecast within the foreseeable future, it’s nice to know that the house is fully waterproof. Here are some shots that I’ve lifted from some drone footage that I shot today.

I’m really pleased with the next shot. One of the main problems that I originally had was that the roofers had fitted the roof structure too far forward on the house’s walls and because of the way the builder had designed and cut the roof joists there was almost no roof overhang on the back of the building.

I’d designed the overhang to be the same all round and after the modifications the builder made a few days ago, the next shot shows that they’ve achieved that as near as dammit.

So the next stage is the interior. My guess is that the contractors who will be putting the walls and the interior partitions in place are busy working on another contract. If so, I hope they’ll be along shortly because it’ll be interesting to see how long it takes them to do my house’s interior. I’m guessing a week. Any bets anyone? 😉

But it’s difficult. My Savannah lost its brakes (again) last year due to the summer’s intense heat and although I got them back again by the autumn I was reluctant to fly it because they were still very poor. In fact they’ve always been poor ever since I’ve owned the aircraft. I’ve been told that they should be able to hold the aircraft on the flat at full power, but that’s never been possible and I guessed that this was because the disc pads needed changing.

I obtained a new set last November but mainly due to issues associated with my house-build, I was unable to fit them at the time. It then became too cold to do the work as I’d have had to work in the open barn, so the new pads have been in the back of my car ever since. Anyway, now that the afternoons are warming up I managed to get myself organised enough to get cracking yesterday. Due to the learning curve involved, I only managed to get half the job done and I’d have liked to have done the second wheel today.

But I haven’t been able to because I’ve had to sit in all day waiting for a delivery from DHL which, at the time of writing, still hasn’t arrived. I can tell you, I’ll be very annoyed if the Ebay Global Shipping system fails to deliver and makes me wait in for a second day.

I’m waiting for a satellite dish to arrive from the UK. I wanted an oval one and couldn’t get one here in France and in any case, even with carriage from the UK and an import surcharge of over £10, it was still cheaper to source a dish from there rather than from a local supplier.

So to fill my time while I was waiting I thought I’d go up and have a clean-up in the house. The floor was filthy, which was not unexpected given the amount of work that’s been going on and with none of the workers involved wanting to spend time wielding a broom. So I did it myself with the windows and doors all wide-open and here’s how it looked afterwards.

Since taking the picture I dumped all of the dust and rubbish into a black bag to be disposed of later and also removed all of the stickers from the glass of the windows and doors. I also took some pictures of the roof space.

First, the bottoms of the large vent that will be connected as the extractor from the septic tank system and the smaller vent beside it. I don’t know what the latter is for, possibly it’ll be a vent over the kitchen, but I don’t know for sure.

Now the house’s ventilation system. As I understand it, this will be running the whole time and circulating fresh air through every space in the whole house.

The next shot shows the bottom of what I think will be a vent over the separate WC.

And finally, I was recently contacted by Enedis who are keen to connect up the house for electricity but it can’t be done until the house is finished with it’s electrical system fully installed and the latter having been officially inspected and approved. Only the builder knows when this will be so I referred the matter to them and have since had it confirmed by both Enedis and the builder that this will be on 29th March.

This is excellent news because Enedis must have a firm commitment for the date as otherwise they will render a penalty charge for which the builder will be responsible. So whether this means that the house will look like the following image by that date I’m not sure, but I reckon it should be pretty close 😉

We were talking about the vent pipe that’s been installed in the rear of the roof and which sticks up rather obtrusively above the roof ridge line.

I have to confess that I didn’t know what it was for and thought that it was perhaps something to do with the ventilation system that is now hanging in the roof space waiting to be connected. But I realised I was wrong when I came across the following image.

So it appears that it will be used to connect the secondary, or extractor, vent of the house’s proposed ‘fosse septique’ (septic tank) waste water disposal system and one of the two smaller vents in the roof, the one below it, will be the primary inlet vent. According to the image the secondary vent has to stick up 40 cm above the roof line so although it’s a bit of an eyesore at least it’s nice to know that my house will conform to all of the latest regulations 😉

It’s official. My Trike has now gone international. Well, it has been I suppose ever since I came to live in France, but if you check out the top right-hand corner of your phone or computer screen there’s now a language flag and if you click on it there’s a drop-down that will allow my French and Dutch friends and neighbours and other visitors to the site to read My-Trike in their own language.

It’s a plug-in that uses Google Translate to automatically translate the WHOLE web site, not just the page that’s being viewed. OK, the translations are done by AI, ie by machine, but it looks to me as though they’re pretty good actually although I’m not sure that ‘Mon tricycle’ (see last image above) is the French translation of ‘My Trike’ that I’d have gone for given the chance 🙂

Isn’t technology fantastic. I’ve included French, Dutch, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese but many others are available if I activate them. Chinese or Arabic anyone?

It had been a cold night with quite a heavy frost but the roofers were back on site this morning at around 8.00 am. When I looked out of the caravan a bit later, a ladder was already up against the back wall of the house and they’d already removed the shuttering put in place by the builder’s ‘maçon’ two days before so they could get cracking on sealing the roof with the waterproof plastic membrane and fitting the tiles.

With the plastic membrane in place and fully secured by vertical laths nailed to the roof joists they could then go ahead and attach the battens on which to hang the tiles. One of the men had already replaced the front edge tiles at the living room end and they began hanging the new tiles on the back of the roof starting from the same end.

Once they’d started hanging the tiles one of the men attached the new edge tiles on the front of the roof at the bedroom end while another prepared the metal trays to be installed in the valley of the join in the angle of the roof.

The gent in the orange overall trousers seemed to be in charge providing the supervision of the other workers that I think was lacking the last time when they messed up fitting the roof too far forward, but that’s just my own opinion.

You can clearly see in the next pic how the overhang on the back of the roof at the living room end matches that on the front, which was far from the case originally.

They hung the tiles starting from the bottom and as they proceeded, one of the workers began to cut back the new tiles on the back of the ridge with an angle grinder ready for ridge capping pieces to be added later to complete the structure.

By mid-afternoon the living room end of the roof was completed all bar one edge tile and the ridge and the team had also made good progress on the bedroom end. Work had also begun on creating openings in the tiles for the house’s ventilation system.

In this shot you can see the white round polythene ventilation tube being put in place on the front of the roof over the separate WC.

In the next shot the holes for what I think are the main air inlet pipe and another vent are also visible on the rear of the roof.

And that’s about as far as they got, so they’ll probably be back tomorrow to finish off. The last few shots show the roof as at the end of today.

I’m really happy. The roof is now an enormous improvement on what was there before and I’m only glad that I was on site to make sure that the builder wasn’t able to continue will-nilly with it as it was. The house’s general appearance would have been very badly affected and it would have been much too late to do anything about it if that had happened.

I picked up the internal doors for my house today from Leroy Merlin. They have an excellent system. You arrange a time for the pickup and they have the goods ready to be brought to your vehicle. It worked perfectly the other day when I picked up the laminate for my bedroom floors.

When I arrived at the barrier at the entrance into the pickup area this morning I pressed the button and gave my name and order number and went to bay 2 as requested. Within moments a young lady arrived with my doors on a trolley and even helped me to load them into the van I’d hired.

I then drove off – but I could have been anyone taking them away really, because nobody had asked me for any form of proof of ID! So, a great system but…

Now the story about my hire van. I’d arranged just a short hire from Leclerc who I’d hired the van from for a few days when I moved out of my old house. Best price around and van in excellent condition. I only wanted the van for a couple of hours and arrived some time before my pick up time of 10.00 am in order to get all of the formalities sorted out.

Only one problem. They use a telephone dial-up card system and I swear that it took around ten minutes for it to complete the transaction after the button had been pressed. The young guy had asked me when I’d be back and I said that it’d be around midday. He then said that to make it easy for me, he’d put a return time of 2.30 pm on the paperwork.

By the time we’d completed the paperwork after the card machine delay and the agent had scraped off the windscreen for me so I could see out (didn’t think about doing it before I arrived…) it was around 10.30 am before I got away. So it was actually just after midday, about 12.10 pm when I got back, and to my surprise the office was shut up and barred – literally.

But I could see a young lady inside and tapped on the window. She told me that her colleague was not there and the office was shut. She than asked for my paperwork and on seeing the return time, that I had not asked for mind, of 2.30 pm, she said that I needed to come back then. And that was it! Her colleague hadn’t told me that the office would actually be shut until that time…

So I had no choice but to go off, grab a sandwich and a drink for lunch and sit in my car in the parking for something over two hours, suspecting all the while that the time of 2.30 pm that the original guy had put on my paperwork was not to help me at all, really, but was to help them…

But wait, it gets worse! When I returned to the now open window at just after 2.30 pm I was greeted by yet another gloomy face who told me that their computer wasn’t working and they could neither rent nor return vans at that time. He said that I’d have to hang onto the van until the system was working again (I’d actually parked it up in a return bay) but had no idea when that would be.

I went back at around 3.00 pm (having brought the van back just after midday remember) and was told that the system still wasn’t working. I suggested that maybe it might be a good idea to save time if he came out to inspect the vehicle to confirm that it was in the same condition as when I took it and take the kilometrage reading, and this he did.

When he got back about five minutes later there was a small group gathered around a boffin who was anxiously trying to reboot the computer system. He more or less managed to get it up and running and I was able to pay the additional fee for the distance driven. They then asked me if I’d like to wait a few more minutes for an invoice to be printed.

As what remains of my life flashed before my eyes I declined and fled the scene as quickly as possible. I think that they still haven’t really got the hang of using these damn computer systems here in France. That may or may not be so, but in a way it’s part of the charm of the place 🙂

It’s been over a month since I’ve been locking horns with my builder over the roof problems on my house. Work didn’t completely come to a halt during that period but things certainly slowed down to the point that I can’t now see how the target completion date of 8th March can possibly be met. The builder and I came to a bit of an impasse, although I knew that if push came to shove and the matter became legal, it could then take months if not years as things go in France to be resolved.

But I decided to stand my ground and today I feel fully justified in doing so because having shaken hands with one of the builder’s directors a week or so ago on a solution that he undertook to personally guarantee for me, today was the day when that solution at last began to be put into action.

It all started at about 8.45 am when the local manager whom I’ve been dealing with arrived on site together with two workmen from the roofing company. He instructed them on what had to be done and they set to stripping off the rear of the roof and the edge tiles that had been put on the last time they were here.

Shortly after they’d started a small truck drew in bringing the new wooden components that would be needed to extend the rear of the roof. The driver was one of the builder’s own employees who was working on the house a few weeks back and it would be his job to carry out the necessary repairs to the gable end blockwork that I’ll show later below.

This shot was taken after the living room end had been stripped and that’s Didier taking a look to see how the job was progressing.

The next shot was taken a bit later in the day when the weather had brightened up considerably and it was much warmer. By this time the extensions had been added to the joists at the living room end of the house and the roofers were busy working on the bedroom end.

It’s not that clear in the following shot because of its brightness, but the extensions were fixed to the sides of the existing joints and as they are higher, they raise the roof line a bit but extend further beyond the house walls. Initially they are pointed but the points are then cut off to give the desired width of soffit, or overhang, and a vertical face on which the fascia board that carries the gutter can be fixed.

You can also see the builder’s ‘maçon’ working on the corner of the gable end over bedroom 2.

Here’s how things ended up at the end of the day. New waterproof membrane was put partially in place but couldn’t be fully installed because the shuttering put in place by the builder’s ‘maçon’ can’t be removed until tomorrow when the mortar it contains has cured.

So what was actually achieved today? First the ‘debord’ (soffit or overhang) on the rear of the roof behind the living room. Here’s how it looked previously, with only a very small overhang, much less than on the front of the house, tapering to almost nothing at the angle end.

If it had been left ie if I hadn’t been on site and spotted it, by the time ‘Crépi’ rendering had been applied to the wall there would have been no overhang at all at the angle end. This would have been totally unacceptable for both practical and aesthetic reasons.

And here’s how it looks after today – much more acceptable, with the overhang being about the same as on the front of the house.

The builder’s ‘maçon’ did a splendid job and was here until nearly 6.00 pm finishing off. Before he left I thanked him for his efforts and he said that he could only sleep well knowing that the job was done right. Here are the rectifications that he did on the gable ends.

First the corner of the roof on the front of the house at the living room end. The following shot shows how it looked previously with the roof supported on wooden blocks and a large gap between the wall and the end of the roof that was unacceptable for two reasons. Firstly, the gap wouldn’t have been filled by the ‘Crépi’ and secondly, the ‘Crépi’ wouldn’t have stuck to the wood. As the roofers had fitted end tiles, these had to come off before the repair could be made.

Now several shots showing the huge improvement after the’maçon’ had finished his work.

Now the corner of the gable end in the front of the house over bedroom 2. This was similar to the corner on the other end of the house but not quite as bad. Even so, the wooden blocks supporting the roof can clearly be seen in the next shot.

And now the same corner after the ‘maçon’ had worked his magic. Perfect.

And the cherry on the cake was that while he was here, the ‘maçon’ also drilled new holes through the walls and raised the height of the two errant exterior lights that I preferred to be at the same height as those over the doors.

So all in all, a very satisfactory day. The roofers and the ‘maçon’ will be back to finish things off tomorrow and then it will be the turn of the contractors to come back to fit the internal walls, ceilings, partitions and insulation. But I think that today marks a turning point in the project as a whole.

There’s still a lot of work to be done but it’s mostly ‘routine’ and the most important thing is that the house’s external appearance has been safeguarded. As I said to Didier before he left today, this was the most important thing for me because how it looks will be for the rest of its life.

I didn’t have to think too much about this when I was living in my old house. I had a workshop that already had a good size bench when I moved in and that I’d fitted out with shelving and power. I also added a separate wooden garden tool store in which to keep things like my ride-on mower and other garden tools.

That’s not the case with my new place because the design doesn’t include a garage and the metal tool store that I’ve erected in front of it isn’t big enough to take all my tools, let alone function as a workshop. So, as I’ll need to empty the storage that I’m renting when the house is complete, I’ll need to have somewhere to put everything, and that’s more challenging than it sounds.

There’s already almost no spare space in the tool store. OK, I’ve got two cement mixers, one of which is in the storage and the other in my tool store, so I’ll need to get rid of one of them. That’ll be a tough decision as one is electric and in great condition and the other motorized and not in such good shape. I’ve also got a rotavator in storage that I’ve hardly used since I acquired it but which I guess I’m going to need when I start doing my garden, together with some other large items.

My barbecue is in the storage. I made a cover for it so it could stand out at Plazac so I guess it can do the same at the new house, but I’ve got lots of other smaller stuff and most of my tools still in there too. I’ll need them when I start doing the interior work in the house, the kitchen and the bedroom floors, so I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll have to move them into bedroom 3 where they’ll have to stay until it’s eventually time to do the floor in there.

But it’s obvious that I’m going to need a much more permanent arrangement. I always intended to move the existing tool store down to the bottom of my land where I’ve currently sited the caravan and I’ll be able to put my mower, rotavator and other stuff down there. But I now know from living in the caravan that it’ll be totally unsuitable for storing other types of high-value items, such as electrically powered tools, because it’ll get cold and damp down there in the winter and make things start to rust.

So what’s the solution? I’ve been musing over the idea of building a separate garage in the same style and colour as the house and I’m now thinking that like it or not, I’m going to have to do it sooner rather than later. And I mean before next winter. I have in mind a garage that’s large enough for a medium-size car with additional space at the end for a bench and at the sides for shelving.

So I’m probably talking about 6 metres long and 4.5 metres wide. I’ve been tinkering with my architectural design software today (with great difficulty I might add as it’s been so long since I’ve used it, I’ve forgotten how) and here’s what I’ve come up with.

It’ll mean extending the concrete base that I put down for the tool store and also turning it slightly to align it with the house. I haven’t yet worked out its exact position and how far it will be from the house (I’m thinking about 2 meters) so although the above image isn’t precise, it does give a very good impression of the final result. I’ll have a lot to do when the house is handed over so I’ll just have to hope the late spring, summer and autumn are kind if I have to leave things outside before it’s built.

I’d like to do the build myself if I can using what is called ‘parpaing’ (concrete blocks) that are much cheaper than the type used for the house, but I’ll have to wait and see if that’ll be possible. The other thing as well, of course, is that if/when I do go ahead with it, I’ll need to have an electrical supply that I need to arrange right now! So that’s another job, but at least I’ve now got a picture of what I’d like to think I’ll be aiming for 😉

When the electricians first came on site they told me they’d be here for two days, but it took them not much more than half that time to complete their work because they originally arrived late Thursday morning and were gone by early afternoon Friday. I don’t have a key to my house, and will not be allowed one during its construction for insurance reasons I’m told, but I grabbed some shots of the interior on Friday before they’d finished and the outside after they’d left.

So, starting with the interior, which looks like a rat’s nest with so many cables hanging down. This is mainly because I’ve specified that the house will be lit throughout by LED spotlights and there are over 40 of them!

Now the outside. Here’s a shot of the east-facing living room door showing the exterior light above it and the external plug point on the back wall on what will be the patio area. Very handy.

Another shot of the back of the house again showing the exterior light above the living room door and also the exterior light between the windows of bedrooms one and three. I haven’t quite made up my mind about the height of the latter which I’d always intended to be at the same height as the lights over the doors.

The same applies to another one on the front of the house. It wouldn’t take much to move them both higher before the interior walls are put in place – all that would be necessary would be to pull the cables back inside, drill new holes higher up and push the cables back out again, but I need to arrange for that pretty quickly if I intend to do it. I can’t understand why the electrician placed them lower – maybe he drilled one hole in the wrong place and decided to do the second in the same way 🙁

The next two shots show the exterior lights over the other two living room doors.

Now a general shot of the front of the house showing the cable for the entrance porch light, the other (low) exterior light between the bathroom and the utility room and the external plug point which will be handy for doing odd jobs in the garden or on the car that require electricity.

Here are the connections in place for the heat pump.

I was pleased to see that before leaving they’d sealed around the external plug point boxes with some mortar to secure them in the walls.

And finally, here’s the cable in place for the porch light.

So they got through a lot of work. OK, there’s an awful lot going on because I’ve specified the house’s electrical system quite highly, but it’s better to do that now during construction than to add features once the house has been completed.

One thing that’s missing though, is a connection for a generator. I’ll maybe have to add that later in an external structure, such as a workshop or garage, when I have such a thing available. It’ll mean breaking into the house’s main electrical supply but I can’t see any other way at the moment.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’d rejected the interior doors that the builder originally wanted to install in favour of some pine ones that I’ve sourced from Leroy Merlin and which I’ve just been told have arrived and are ready for me to pick up. I’ll arrange that for some time next week when the electricians have finished their initial cable installation and the guys who will be installing the interior partition walls are back.

They already asked me about the doors and said that they’ve been supplied with the dimensions of the openings that they’ll need to leave in the partitions for them to fit into that I supplied to the builder a few weeks ago (see image below). However, they said that usually they’d prefer to fit the doors as they go to ensure the best possible fit and finish.

They also said that the doors are generally fitted before the final floor screed goes down to provide the level surface on which the tiles are mounted. I suggested that in that case, maybe it would be a good idea for me to drop the doors into the house when I’ve got them and for us to come to an arrangement for them to fit them for me. This was generally seen as being a good idea so that’s what we’ll do 😉

The order I placed on Leroy Merlin was quite sizeable and was split into three deliveries. The other day I picked up the laminate for the bedroom floors that the builder doesn’t fit here in France – the bedrooms are left with just a plain concrete screed (see ‘chape’ in the image above) – and that you have to install yourself. At the same time I picked up the laminate underlay and since then the door handles and escutcheons that I ordered have also arrived.

Before I put all of that stuff into storage yesterday I took a few pictures which I’ve included below starting with the floor covering.

Now the door handles.

Instead of going for door handles with the handle and keyhole in the same plate mounted on the face of the door I’ve gone for beautifully smooth, curve shaped handles and separate round escutcheons containing the keyholes which I think are more ‘French’ (I don’t know what’s fashionable in the UK nowadays). I’ll also be having special keyless escutcheons in the bathroom and separate WC which will allow the doors to be locked by turning a knob, a nice touch I think. I already have them but I’ll need to buy two special keyless door locks to replace the ones that the doors will come with.

The electricians resumed work today and I was able to have a quick word about the cable for my planned satellite dish. The builder confirmed to me yesterday that the TV point that will be sited in one corner of the living room is intended for that purpose and that the cable will be left in the roof space ready for the dish to be connected to it.

I showed the electrician where I want to site the dish (which I’ve now ordered) and he said that rather than leave the cable in the roof space he’ll drill the wall and push it through ready for use. This will be an excellent arrangement as it will avoid having unnecessary connectors in the cable run as well as being a very tidy install, and will also ensure that I get the best possible reception 🙂

I dunno, I was told that the roofers would be along today to deal with the roof problems but by mid-morning no-one at all had arrived on site. However, by late morning a van and a small car were ‘up top’ and it turned out they were electricians who’d come to install the house’s wiring. They said they’d be here for two days.

When I went up to take some shots in the early afternoon the two younger guys who’d been here to help unload the van and set things up had left and there was only one more senior workmen who was doing the installation. Here are the pics that I took.

It’s a shame that the roofers aren’t on site because it’s turned into a nice warm, sunny day ie just the day to be doing roof work. I can’t fathom why the builder always seems to get it wrong – presumably the roofers will be along in a few days time when the weather has changed again and the electrical wiring that’s been installed has had a chance to get a good soaking 😐

My house-build is moving forward again. At last! Two workmen arrived this morning just before I was on my way out to a follow-up dental appointment. I noticed that they’d thrown out all of the wood and everything else that had been left on the floor inside and when I went up later to see what and how they were doing I found that they were sub-contractors who will be installing the ceilings and partition walls.

Here are some shots that I took in the middle of the afternoon. Their first job was to mount all of the ceiling bars that will hold the ceiling in place and when I peaked in earlier I saw that they were using a laser to make sure that the hangers are all at exactly the same height. This will ensure that the ceilings are completely level.

The boss, an elderly Portuguese gentleman, told me that they’ve been waiting for the go-ahead for some time and he’d heard that there had been some problems with the build that were only resolved on Monday. He said that the roofers will definitely be coming in tomorrow to fix the roof and make the house fully watertight as there is still water on the floor and afterwards he said that he and his partner will be there until the ceilings and interior partitions are all in place.

A couple more shots taken at end of day (so poor as light was failing). So all of the ceiling supporting bars are now in place.

The question is… is this the ‘Reawakening’ that I’ve been waiting for?

Mother Nature says ‘Yes!’

I’ve been saying for a long time that the people forecasting our weather just do so by looking out of the window and saying that what they can see out there will continue for the next two weeks.

Instead of waking up to yet another bright, dry morning as had been forecast just the day before, with the prospect of the temperature getting to 60 deg F in the next few days, we actually had rain overnight plus fog and heavy drizzle this morning and a new forecast of freezing temperatures again next week.

I went to Leroy Merlin as planned to pick up my bedroom floor laminate and my land was so wet and slippery when I got back, with it weighing down the back of my car I had to use 4-wheel drive to reverse and park up. I think the moral to the story is ‘Don’t Make Plans’ based on the weather forecast 😐

Oh, and BTW it’s wet again inside my house…

The builder and I had our follow-up meeting this afternoon to resolve my house’s roof problems and at last we’ve managed to come to an agreement. It isn’t what the builder was originally proposing or what I suggested following our last meeting.

The first positive step was when the builder finally admitted that the roof structure as it stands is mounted unacceptably too far forward on the walls of the house making the ‘balance’ of the roof all wrong when viewed from the south. Originally they suggested just adding extensions to the joists sticking out at the back for purely ‘cosmetic’ reasons and to overcome my objections. This I rejected out of hand and made a counter-proposal just to remove the tiles from the front elevation and push the structure back a few centimetres.

I knew that this might give rise to certain other problems. For example, the horizontal spacers between the joists that rest on the tops of the walls are attached to the joists and would therefore move with them. That wouldn’t matter at the rear of the house because the spacers would still be resting on the walls’ upper surfaces, but in the front the spacers would move off the walls and into the interior of the house, probably meaning that they’d have to be cut off and replaced somehow.

The builder has taken a different line and has now suggested lifting the tile support battens and waterproof plastic membrane off the rear of the roof and adding a separate new roof structure on top of and attached to the existing one. This would have the effect of raising the roof line a bit but as the additional joists will need to descend to the same level as the existing structure ie the bottom line of the roof, they will extend further, making the roof overhangs at the font and back of the house at the living room end the same.

This is almost the same as if they’d made the roof structure according to the width of the larger gable end right at the beginning, so I’ve gone along with this idea. It means that the house will end up with ‘débords’ (soffits) slightly wider than the original plan (28cm compared to 25cm) but that won’t matter. And I’ll also have to keep a close eye on the way the tops of the gable ends are finished off because the gaps that are now present in places between the tops of the blockwork at each and of the house and the underside of the roof will remain and will need to be filled and made solid with mortar.

This will be necessary in order to support the ‘Crépi’ rendering that I want to go right up to the underside of the roof. I certainly won’t allow it to be applied to the wood blocks that are currently placed on top of the blockwork to support the ends of the roof as it wouldn’t take long for it to break away as a result of differential expansion and contraction. That would give rise to all sorts of other problems in the future that I just won’t need, thank you. But now I’m just happy that work on the house can be resumed and we can start moving once again towards completion.

With my house-build? I don’t know, I really don’t know. But it’s not all negative, as I’ll go on to explain.

Our site meeting that was called in order to attempt to resolve my house’s roof problems went ahead as planned last Friday and as expected, the builder attempted to steam-roller me into accepting what I regard as their half-baked solution. But I’m not one to be either bullied or intimidated, as I made clear to them.

So I responded in kind, said that if they intended to propose any solution that did not involve removing the roof and starting again, we might as well stop talking now and turned to walk away. That got their attention.

So then we started to have a meaningful, albeit tough, dialogue. They still wanted to try to hustle me, however, to accept their solution that would involve the fabrication of a large number of extra components and said they’d be along on the following Tuesday (last Tuesday) to fit them. They said that I’d be fully satisfied with the result.

Yeah, OK, but I’m not that easy. I said no, tell you what, if you’re so convinced, come back on Tuesday with just two samples to show me, then if they’re so good and I am convinced, you can come back and fit the rest. There wasn’t much that they could do other than agree and that’s how things were left.

But I don’t think they realised that the match was far from over. On Saturday I fired over an email making a counter-proposal based on the status quo that would NOT require any additional construction or fabrication. The result was that on Monday I received an email saying that they were seriously looking into it and, of course, nobody arrived back on site on Tuesday with the aforementioned ‘samples’.

This I took as an encouraging sign. Which brings us to this afternoon when I received an unexpected phone call from Didier. To cut a long story short, they’ll be coming over on Monday afternoon to look further at my proposal and see exactly what it involves.

I’m not going to say any more other than if it goes ahead it’ll meet my requirements and I’ll be very happy with the outcome. I also think that it will be sensible for them to accept it because the current impasse is doing neither of us any good and can’t be helping them with their project planning. I’ll let you know what happens on Monday.

This morning a very special letter dropped into my postbox. It contained the certificate from the Oncology Department at Périgueux stating that five years after the end of my treatment for Lymphoma and following a final consultation last week, I have been officially declared clear of the disease and in full and complete remission.

It isn’t as though it’s been a shadow hanging over me as I’ve just been determined to get on with my life in the meantime come what may, but nevertheless it’s a nice thing to have. And I hope that it will be something that will give hope and encouragement to anyone else who has been diagnosed with Hodgkins and thinks that their life will change forever for the worse.

If you’re one of them, you need to understand that it’s up to you and it doesn’t have to if you don’t let it. Things may feel terrible right now and yes, the treatment at times is not very nice. But take my word that it’s worth it and things will work out in the end. As they have for me, thanks to the amazing team of very special people at Périgueux to whom I will be forever thankful.

It started snowing in the early evening yesterday and as it became harder at about 8.15 pm we had a power cut. It came back on a couple of times for a few moments but then went off again and whenever that happens we normally know that we’re in for a long one. Just in case I went up and checked my electricity supply box to see if there was any life in it and there wasn’t, so I decided to just make the best of things and go to bed early as I knew that the caravan would then cool down pretty quickly.

When I got up at about 7.30 am this morning the power was still off so I decided that I’d better get my generator running. I haven’t started it for at least a year, I think more, and it’s just been standing outside partially covered up with an old plastic tarpaulin. I didn’t know what to expect but in the event, it only took four or five pulls to get it going. This was a big relief, as I didn’t want to face not only having no power but also the prospect of having to fix the generator in these conditions.

Here’s a shot that I took after I’d got my generator running – the footprints are mine from when I trudged up and back a couple of times to check my electricity supply box and get some fuel that I had in my tool store to top the generator up ready for next time. This is bound to happen as, much like in the UK, we’ve got freezing temperatures forecast for the next seven days.

The electricity came back on again and went off again briefly a few minutes ago. This often happens after a longish power cut, presumably because once they’ve fixed the original problem the circuits are reverted to how they’re supposed to be, but although the sun’s out it’s still quite cold and the snow isn’t melting very rapidly.

This could complicate things slightly this afternoon if the roof of the house is still heavily covered because I’m having a site meeting with a senior director of the building company to discuss the roof problem. If there’s not much to see it won’t help very much but I guess we’ll have to see how things are looking later on.

But I’m not. A team of workmen turned up this morning at 8.00 am, before it was even light, to install the windows and doors in my new house. It rained all night and was still drizzling at the time so I knew the interior would be partially flooded and phoned Didier, the builder’s project manager.

I said that I thought it was ill-advised to go ahead and he said that he’d be right over. However, I had to leave for a medical appointment today so could not stay to discuss the matter and just told him that he should take note of our conversation.

The work went ahead in my absence and although it was still underway when I returned in the afternoon, I didn’t feel up to going up to take a look and only did so after the workers had completed the job and left. Under normal circumstances I’d have been very pleased with the results as the following shots show.

The last two shots show more clearly why I’m not at all happy. If you look through the double doors on the right into the interior you can see the large pool of rainwater that there is on the floor at the living room end.

Now if you look through the same door in this close-up towards the bedroom end of the house you can make out the large amount of water on the floor in that section also.

I have no idea when the builder will be back to continue work. What is absolutely clear, however, is that with all of the doors and windows now closed and locked, there’s absolutely no possibility that the interior will be able to dry out any time soon, especially as more water is still entering via the roof fault in the angle at the back of the house.

This is precisely why I was trying all along to avoid a winter build and in fact it’s turning out worse, much worse than I could ever have envisaged. I don’t know when I will have my meeting to discuss what is now our dispute concerning the roof but even though I wanted to still take it a bit easy tomorrow, I’m going to have to make yet another phone call to find out what’s going to be done about the appalling state of the interior because with even more rain forecast for the coming week, it can only get worse.

Well, anyone who’s been following my trials and tribulations involving my house-build project is probably thinking that since there’s been no further work for several days there are problems. And indeed they’d be right. The problems have now turned into a major dispute between me and the builder that also involves the sub-contractor that the latter used to install the roof on my house.

It started with my noticing that the roof structure was not sitting correctly on the building’s walls and that dimensions that we’d agreed when we’d signed the contract had not only not been adhered to but were totally wrong. I started with a softly-softly approach to the builder who had clearly made some fundamental errors, if not outright mistakes when they’d designed the roof structure but was met with an entrenched response and a demand that I accept compromises in my house’s roof design that were designed to get them out of the trouble that they’d created for themselves and that I did not like.

Naturally this caused me to harden my own position and we are currently in a position of stalemate where no party is willing to make any concession. As a result I have conducted a detailed analysis of the building’s roof structure and am 100% confident in having identified from where the problems have arisen and who was responsible. The builder said that they would propose a solution that would meet the conditions that I laid down, namely that it had to be (a) practical and (b) aesthetically acceptable and I had to wait a few days for it to be delivered.

When it arrived I knew immediately from my calculations that it was totally unfeasible. For a start it involved an initial dimension that does not exist and can only be achieved by removing the whole roof structure and moving it back several centimetres, which the builder refused to do right from the outset of our discussions. I don’t know if they do not realise this or are just being disingenuous in the hope that I won’t notice, so I decided not to tell them.

Instead I fired off an email asking if this is what they proposed to do as part of their ‘proposition’. If they say ‘yes’, it means having to take the roof off and if so they can strip it completely and do the job again, properly according to the contract. If not, what they propose is, as stated above, totally unfeasible.

I’m 100% confident in my calculations and also have the evidence to back them up in the form of the plan that the builder gave to the roofing contractor who has then not abided by it. I’ve given up talking to the builder’s local manager who I’m pretty sure knows where I’m coming from and is desperately trying to mount a rear-guard action. Instead, on the advice of our local mayor in Fleurac who knows about these things, I’ve demanded a meeting with the party named in the contract who is legally required to act as an intermediary to try to resolve any dispute that arises during its execution and am now awaiting their reply.

What has astonished me, and I’ve told them so, is that even though I’d already raised my objections regarding the roof structure of the house, the builder still allowed the roofing company to come on site and tile the front part of the roof. This will undoubtedly complicate matters and make whatever the ultimate solution is that we decide upon even more costly.

I told them that this was hardly what I would have expected of a company with 40 years experience and if they think that it will put more pressure on me to press on with the now much-delayed build then they could not be more wrong. I’ve told them on several occasions that a house is only built once and if mistakes occur during the build they will have to be rectified before continuing and not left to be bodged once the house is completed.

I don’t think that it’s got through, unfortunately, but it doesn’t help me to get my house built in a timely way and according to the requirements that were set out and agreed when the contract was signed. I stated in my (registered) letter that I sent to the above-mentioned intermediary, that all I am asking for is that I get the house that I ordered and was agreed when the contract was signed, no more, no less. I think that’s perfectly reasonable, don’t you?

After rain followed by more rain, this morning we’re shrouded in thick mist which is actually a heavy drizzle. And the inside of my house is still half-flooded. Nobody came to work on the house yesterday and no-one has arrived today either and I wonder what’s going on as time continues to slip by.

During our discussions about the roof problem, as I briefly mentioned in a previous post, I picked up that the roofing sub-contractor may have set the roof too far forward on the house’s walls, thus exacerbating the problem of the overhang at the back being unacceptably too narrow. If this is so I’m wondering if there is now a dispute between the builder and the roofing company about who is responsible for solving the problem?

It would be pointless my intervening. As far as I’m concerned, even though it would mean causing an even greater delay, I’d prefer the roof to be totally removed and remade. When it looked as though the builder was responsible for the problem, I was told that this would not happen. I wonder if this still applies if it’s the roofing company at fault?

But in any case, if there is such a dispute, it isn’t helping me to get my house built any quicker. And I’m just the piggy-in-the-middle with little or no influence on the matter. No wonder my frustration level is going through the roof. At least it would be, if I had one.

I was awoken this morning just after 6.00 am by rain being lashed by strong wind and pounding on the roof of my caravan. I knew that this would not bode well and when I went up to take a look at my house during a break in the almost incessant rain, my worst fears were realised. Every time it has rained, water has run inside from the roof angle at the back, presumably because they didn’t make an effective seal in the plastic membrane there, and with the wind driving rain in through the doors and windows, the inside was partially flooded again

The pictures don’t make it look as bad as it actually is. The pool at the southern end was over 2cm deep and being prevented from draining out because of the new threshold that was put into place last week.

In fact, I can’t see how the water can now be easily removed. When I did so using a stiff yard broom the last time I could brush it straight out of the door openings. That can’t be done now the thresholds are in place and moreover, I can’t see how any meaningful work can be done inside the house until it has been dried out and water prevented from entering in the future.

No wonder I’m beginning to despair that my house is ever going to be finished within a reasonable time-scale, and all because the builder wasted so much time in the summer and autumn when the conditions were perfect. I just hope that quality and finish won’t suffer as a consequence and I’m now more determined than ever to make sure that I keep a very close eye on what goes on in the build, no matter who it might upset.

Two of the builder’s workmen began working again on site this morning. I wasn’t sure what they were doing and didn’t go up to find out until after they’d left for lunch at about midday. We’d only discussed what types of window sills and door thresholds I preferred in our meeting the other day – beige round-nosed for the window sills and plain grey straight front for the door thresholds – and to my surprise I found that the two ‘maçons’ were well on the way to getting them all into place.

I had to go out later in the afternoon and by the time I’d returned the two workmen had packed up and gone leaving the site clean and tidy and their work all completed to a high standard. Here’s a shot of the back of the house showing the threshold of the rear double doors, the window sills of bedrooms one and three further away both at the same height and that of the kitchen, closer, slightly higher so the opened window will clear the mixer tap on the sink.

Here are a couple of shots showing the thresholds for the south and front-facing double doors.

Now a couple of shots showing the front door and the separate WC window and the windows of the utility room, bathroom and bedroom two.

And to finish off, several internal views.

You might be asking yourself why it is that the window sills protrude outwards beyond the walls while the door thresholds don’t. The reason is that the door thresholds won’t be seen because all of the door frames will, of course, come with their own decorative colour-matched thresholds which will be about the same colour as the window sills.

There are also a couple of other things to note. The sills and thresholds all extend some way into the house and this is an indication of how much thicker the walls will become once the internal insulation and dry lining have been added as then the sills and thresholds won’t be visible.

You can also see how high above the floor level the tops of the thresholds are. There won’t actually be steps in the openings other than the door frame thresholds mentioned above. Some of the height difference will be taken up by the floor tiling but most of it will be an additional thickness of floor screed that will be laid in the near future to bring the floor to completely level all over.

This will be especially important in the far corner of bedroom one where the rainwater that entered the building before the roof covering went on flowed to causing a deep puddle. There are several other highs and hollows that were to be expected given that the first floor screed was only quickly laid by eye, with the team having done pretty well considering. The second screed will bring those all to dead level ready for the tiling and the bedroom floor coverings to be laid, the latter by myself.

It stayed too foggy for too long yesterday to get any decent shots of the roof work that was done. I’ve now managed to process some, however, so here they are starting with some general shots of the front elevation.

Next a couple of shots of the living room gable end showing how they’ve finished the edge of the roof.

I preferred an arrangement with a roof overhang because although most ‘pavillon’ style houses here like mine have the type of edge finish shown in the above shots, due to its proximity to the surface of the wall it seems to allow rainwater to pour down onto it. This eventually washes away some of the colour of the Crépi plaster allowing the outline of the block work underneath to show through.

I’ve spotted a couple of broken tiles as shown in the next two pics and they’ll have to be replaced whatever happens. They’ve been damaged by the roof workers walking over them which it’s unwise to do when you’re dealing with any kind of tile that doesn’t have a fairly flat profile.

Now some shots taken from the rear which can’t be tiled until the changes to the structure that I’ve agreed with the builder have been completed.

Next up is a closer shot showing how the hip on the joint between the two front faces of the roof is being constructed.

And a couple more general shots to finish off with.

In general, I’m very happy with the style and appearance of the roof tiles. However, something I’ve noticed from looking around the building is that after the roofers have cut and trimmed various tiles they’ve just randomly chucked the unwanted pieces onto the ground behind the house. As a result the large heap of topsoil that was put to one side and was ready to be reused at the end of the construction is now strewn with pieces of roof tile.

I’ll have to ask for them to be removed because as I know from my old house, if they are left in the soil they eventually have a habit of working their way back to the surface and are then not only unsightly but can also damage things like lawnmowers. I don’t know, if it’s not one it’s another 😐

Happy New Year, everyone. Although I’ve been quiet since Christmas Eve, it doesn’t mean that I’ve not been busy. In fact I’ve used the time since then very productively because I’ve been able to firm up on some important decisions.

Some readers may recall that I mentioned a few posts back that I’ve cancelled the doors that the builder of my new house wanted to install in favour of a model of my own choice. They tried to confuse the issue somewhat by suggesting that I needed an arrangement that was FAR more expensive than what I was proposing but I know what I want and how to fit them. In the end they understood that all they (and their plasterer) need to do is provide openings in the walls of exactly the dimensions that I have specified and that’s what will now be done.

The model is one in pine offered by one of the largest homeware and material suppliers here, Leroy Merlin. It’s not the most expensive available – far from it – but I have to carefully control my budget as I will have a LOT to spend on when the house is finished and I eventually move in. Here’s a promo shot that I’ve taken from the Leroy Merlin web site.

I’ve considered the feedback that previous buyers have posted and it looks as though people either love it or think it’s rubbish. When I looked more closely to try to understand why this was I’ve come to the conclusion that there was possibly a batch in about the middle of last year made from bad or not properly seasoned wood as the reviews before and since then have been good.

Anyway, I’m prepared to take the risk as I like the look of it, it will go well with the colours that I’ll be having in my house and in any case, it comes with a good manufacturer’s guarantee that I’m sure Leroy Merlin would honour in the event of any quality problems.

I’ve also decided on the laminate that I’ll be laying on the floors in my bedrooms and it, coincidentally, will also be coming from Leroy Merlin. The knock-on benefit of this is that I’ll be able to claim a ‘first order’ discount on all of the doors, door furniture, laminate and laminate accessories which comes to a figure well-worth having. I also looked at their kitchen range to see if I could add a kitchen to the list to increase the saving but they’re all a bit too twee for me and not to my taste unfortunately.

Here’s a shot of the floor laminate that I’ve chosen also taken from the Leroy Merlin web site.

It looks darker in this picture with a pattern heavier than it is in reality and I think that it will go well with the light grey patterned floor tiles that I’ve chosen for the whole of the rest of the house.

Now onto the darker side of this post. After the workmen had finished the roof work before Christmas and it had stopped raining I had a chance to inspect the results of their labours. The first thing I noticed on approaching the back of the house was that the join of the roof sections was some way off the join in the walls, as the following picture shows.

So I then went and took a look at the roof overhangs in the front and back of the house. Here’s the overhang at the back on the bedroom corner.

Here’s the overhang in the front at the living room end and when I checked, this was the same along the whole of the front of the house, right down to the bedroom 2 corner.

Then when I walked towards the rear of the house and looked up, it was obvious that the roof at the living room end of the house was not positioned centrally on the peak of the gable end with the ridge having apparently been moved forward several centimetres.

And this was confirmed when I checked the roof overhang on the rear of the house and found it to not only be almost non-existent but also narrower at one of its ends than the other.

This was clearly not acceptable and I wasted no time in zapping off an email to the builder expressing my displeasure with the situation. I received a reply saying that the ‘boss’ was on holiday in the South of France but that another representative from the company would be available for a meeting on site last Saturday, which went ahead as scheduled.

This got off to a bad start because he tried to bully me into accepting what had been done and I am not someone to be bullied. I told him that while I’d been waiting I’d retrieved a soaking wet sheet of paper from the waste bin that was actually the roof fabrication plan that the roofers had been using. This showed that this almost non-existent overhang was actually pre-planned by the builder and furthermore, I’d never seen it before.

I already knew that the ‘problem’ was linked to the fact that the gable ends of my house are of slightly different widths with the living room end being 12cm wider than the bedroom end, but the implications of this still hadn’t hit me. While I was trying to work things out, the representative from the builder and a French friend who I’d invited to be there to keep an eye on my interests as he’s in the building trade started going at each other hammer and tongs and although I couldn’t follow everything, I knew that the language being used became quite appalling.

In the end I told the man from the builder to calm down as it was his job to reflect a positive image for his company and engage with me in order to find a solution that we could both live with. He said that the builder had to ‘change’ my plan because of the dimension difference and that this had been discussed between me and his boss … in October 2021! I had already established that the length of the joists had been cut to length for the whole house according to the shorter gable width but had still not taken that fact to its logical conclusion. That came slightly later.

He said that a choice had had to be made between having the shorter overhang over the kitchen/living room end or a larger overhang below the length of roof over the bedrooms in the rear of the house. I refuted that such a conversation had ever taken place and said that even if it had done, there was a more than a year between such a conversation and the date when the joists were fabricated for the plan to have been referred to me, as it should have been as both the client and the ‘chief of works’ as defined in the contract, to make such a choice.

At the end of this somewhat rambunctious meeting I agreed that the only timely and cost-effective way out would be to add extensions to the joists along the rear of the house to make the overhang the same at the front and back of the house at the living room end where the difference was most visible. This would also mean increasing the overhang along the rear at the bedroom end but I reasoned that this would matter far less as it would hardly be visible to anyone who wasn’t already aware of it.

However, it was only on thinking about the issue more afterwards and sleeping on it that I realised what a bloody awful cock-up the builder had made. If they had cut the joists according to the longer gable end the ridge and overhang issues at the wider living room end, where they are now highly visible, would not exist at all.

The ridge ‘anomaly’ would have been at the far bedroom end and towards the rear where nobody would ever have been able to see it and although the roof overhang over the bedrooms at the rear would have been greater, as it now will be anyway (a) it would be hardly noticeable and (b) it could be seen as a design feature to provide additional shade from the sun during the warmest part of the day to help keep them cooler.

That’s when I became even more annoyed than I was already, because if the builder had consulted me as they should have done it would have been possible to have totally avoided this whole crisis, as that is what it has now become. I therefore rattled off another email and left a message with the ‘boss’ saying that despite what had been agreed at the meeting on Saturday, there was to be no further work on the roof until we had met on site with his new site manager (Didier) to discuss the way forward.

I pointed out that due to his unwillingness to engage in effective communication and despite my many requests, there had been no project planning or progress meeting between us since the initial contract meeting that he’d referred to in October 2021 and now and that this was wholly unacceptable. I also added that the idea of communication was to avoid crises such as this happening in the first place and not to frantically try to deal with them once they had occurred.

In the event we had not one but two meetings on site today, the first at around 8.00 am and the second at the end of the afternoon, and we covered a number of high-profile issues. To cut a long story short, in the first I reiterated the points that I’d raised in my email but as my opposite number was preparing to lock horns, I suggested that becoming entrenched in our positions would do no favours to either side, which he understood.

By the end of the meeting we’d managed to come to a satisfactory agreement subject to certain conditions on their side and just as the meeting was coming to an end, the roofing contractors arrived to tile the roof. We’d agreed that as changes were going to have to be made to the rear roof structure, only the front of the roof could be tiled, and that’s what they did. And they made a good job of it as I think the following pics show.

They’d finished the front half of the roof by lunchtime but as time passed it became apparent that they’d been told to wait for further orders. Eventually they must have been told that there’d be no further work today because they left at somewhere around 2.00pm. I found out later that it could be a few days before work can be resumed. This was when I left the caravan for bit of fresh air and came across Didier and the builder’s ‘boss’ back on site. I was told that their measurements had thrown up that the roofing contractors may have misplaced the roof anyway and that this might have to be addressed. So yet another bomb-shell!

But as I’ve emphasised to them so many times, things have got to be done right. The ‘solution’ that we agreed earlier has also apparently got to be run past the building standards department to ensure that it conforms so that may also delay things by a bit, but not much, which won’t be the end of the world.

Didier also gave me a quick appraisal of their timing plans from Thursday onwards, when they would be back on site, which I was pleased about. I also agreed with the ‘boss’ how much latitude would be acceptable in achieving our agreed ‘solution’ in order to expedite things as far as possible, adding that if I needed to disguise the faulty overhang – by fitting a sun roller blind for example – I’d be back chasing him for a contribution to the cost which would be a cheap way out for them. Didier was highly amused – the ‘boss’ slightly less so. Especially when he realised that I was serious 😉

As my lovely Dutch friends here might say. After checking on my mailbox this morning I decided to drop into my new house and was dismayed to find that there was an enormous amount of water inside. Some of it, especially over in the far corner of bedroom one, was so deep that I didn’t think it’d stand a chance of drying out for days, if not weeks, so something had to be done about it.

Without thinking about changing into my working togs, which I should have, I decided to embark upon the unenviable task of removing it the old-fashioned way with a stiff yard broom. Anyone who has experience of this knows that getting rid of water from a horizontal surface with a broom, which I’ve had to do many times from the years from senior school through university when I worked with building and plumbing companies, is like herding cats.

Water isn’t like dust or another solid debris because you can’t sweep it neatly into a pile. Instead you have to propel it forwards across a broad front and be wary to catch the sides when it tries to flow backwards and outflank you. You also have to start from the highest point and keep shifting small enough volumes that you can control and get to somewhere like a doorway where you can dispose of them until you are left with pools with high spots between them that allow you some kind of respite from the effort involved.

I started and finished from the same spot, an area behind the front door in the outer corner of what will be the separate WC. As fast as I could remove water from there more flowed in but at least I had the compensation of knowing that it was coming from areas on the floor that were less accessible.

It took me about three hours to get to the point when only small puddles were left that will easily dry out over the coming days. The wood that the roofing men had left was unfortunately positioned right over one of the larger pools and after creating a clean, dry area I had to move it over to it. Here are the pictures that I took after I’d finished.

So much more cosy*, at least as cosy as an empty shell of a house with no windows can be and I was really pleased with the transformation. It’s left me with an aching wrist, knee and hip but it’ll be worth it and in any case, I’ll have to get used to it as I’ll have lots of work to do after the builders have finished their work – like installing the kitchen, fitting the internal doors, laying laminate floors in the bedrooms, painting the internal walls and the shutters outside… lots of stuff.

But that’s it for now. I have a sneaking feeling that the builders are going to take the whole of next week off but I don’t know for sure. If they don’t, I’ll be back. If not here’s wishing all my friends and family both in France and the UK who have been following my trials and tribulations the merriest of Christmases.

I’ll be mulling over the thought, with a glass of Armagnac in one hand, that at the end of next week I’ll have been in my caravan for 78 weeks. What a miserable prospect, you might think. No, because then I’ll have only 8 more to do – a mere nothing in comparison – and then I’ll have my life back and be able to start living properly again 😀

The two heroes from yesterday turned up on site again at 8.30am this morning and this time were joined by a third colleague. The forecast for today was not that good with dull skies and showers expected for the whole of the day and into the evening and the question was whether they’d be able to catch up on what was left over from yesterday and press on to finish making the house waterproof before the holiday.

To be honest, the conditions on site were pretty poor with the ground soft and muddy with standing water and parts of the oversite inside the house under more than an inch of rainwater. Conditions like that are not good to work in when you’re up and down ladders carrying heavy weights and the slightest slip can send you crashing down onto the ground or the concrete floor below.

Making the house waterproof wasn’t as simple as it sounds. Covering the roof with the waterproof plastic sheeting that they began to fit yesterday was only part of the job. If it was just left and not securely fixed down it would take hardly any wind at all to get under it and rip the whole lot off in seconds, so not only had they got to finish covering the roof today but they also had to get some or all of the wooden battens on that will secure the plastic and eventually support the roof tiles.

I noticed a few of the tiles that will be fitted leaning up against the wall yesterday.

Today they’d been laid out on the floor so measurements could be taken for the spacing between the battens so they obviously had in mind to start putting them in place as soon as they’d finished fitting the plastic sheeting. The question was whether they’d be able to beat the weather and as before, they got off at a cracking pace. But this time there were three of them, not just two, and this helped to speed things up even more because two could be working on the roof while the third ran the materials up that they required.

They did incredibly well. Not only did they get the whole roof finished and fully battened ready for tiling by lunchtime but they had time to do a really good clean-up job before they left. Luckily the weather was more kind to them today than yesterday, although ironically whereas yesterday it rained almost without stopping and they got soaked through, today they’d persuaded their employer to supply them with waterproofs that they didn’t need.

They did a fine a job that was very neat and tidy inside and out and I’m very pleased with it.

There are still some odds and ends to be finished off after the holiday. They’ve started on the ridges, for example, but there’s still work left to be done on them and I’ll guess they’ll be back to do that after the roof tiles have been delivered. But at least I can breath a sigh of relief as although the rain has continued on and off since they left and into the evening, at least very little of it will have found its way inside the house. And more importantly, the main trusses can now begin to slowly dry out.

And there are also signs that the builder is now thinking ahead to take the project forward as after 6.00pm this evening I received an email asking for confirmation regarding internal door dimensions. I don’t care that I’ve already provided it because I’m just happy to see that they’ve obviously now got an eye on the completion deadline and for that I must be thankful 🙂