I’ve been keeping a record and documenting the steps in my house-build project for myself, obviously, but also for anyone else who’s been following along and is interested to know what’s involved in building a new house from scratch in France. So here’s the latest news.<\/p>\n
A week or so ago I received the latest ‘appel de fonds’ (call for money), two actually because the builder had missed one a few weeks ago. Money is handed over in stages according to the point of construction that has been arrived at and these are clearly set out in the contract so the buyer, me, doesn’t get any nasty surprises. I’d already made payments up to stage 3 and the latest call was to cover stages 4 and 5, so as of last week I’ve now paid for 75% of the agreed price of my house.<\/p>\n
A down-payment of 15% had to be made on day 1 when building work started when a machine and driver turned up and a large hole was dug in the ground. 75% corresponds to the house being ‘airtight’ ie all windows and external doors fitted, and the internal walls all being in place and finished, and I think it also includes the levelling floor screed having been laid, which is still outstanding.<\/p>\n
Finishing of the internal walls was completed today with the plasterers having returned, gone over all of the walls again to ensure that they are clean and smooth and cleared all of their tools and equipment off site. The next call will be for another 20%, bringing the total at that time up to 95% of the agreed price, and that will be after the electricity, plumbing and external works have been completed. The final 5% will be handed over on completion when the buyer ie me, has signed a certificate of satisfaction.<\/p>\n
Something else that I had to arrange was house insurance which I did yesterday and today. Up to now the builder’s insurance had covered the house as a ‘construction’ but at this stage I have now had to arrange my own cover as a ‘house’. The builder only asked for minimum cover – accidents, acts of God, vandalism, that kind of thing – but to be honest, with completion only being a few weeks away I didn’t think it worth the hassle of arranging minimum cover now and extending it later when I move in, so I’ve arranged and am already paying for full cover.<\/p>\n
That brings things up to date for now. I’m just hoping that the electrician returns tomorrow or on Friday because that will push things along nicely and give the builder no excuse for not getting the plumber in and the floor screed laid. And if they really got their ducks in a row, I can’t see why the ‘Cr\u00e9pi’ (exterior wall plaster) and the floor screed shouldn’t shouldn’t go up and down on the same day \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve been keeping a record and documenting the steps in my house-build project for myself, obviously, but also for anyone else who’s been following along and is interested to know what’s involved in building a new house from scratch in France. So here’s the latest news. A week or so ago I received the latest … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20660","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20660","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20660"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20660\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20670,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20660\/revisions\/20670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20660"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20660"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.micro-trike.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20660"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}