Posts

Posted on

The Penultimate Entry (Probably)

The outside still has plenty to do.
Fencing off our garden being the biggest, with the gates, intercom etc next on the list. We’re very happy with how it’s taking shape though.
This Saturday we’ll be starting off the boundary hedges with a JCB & lots of plants. Just the right time to start. Lots of rain with some glorious days in between, like today.

After that our living & sleeping areas are also well on their way. Some pictures from the evening & then today in the sunshine.

Getting stuck into the study now but it needs lots of shelving. This week’s job.

There’s no Louise on these photos because she had a full knee replacement a week ago & is now in Gaillac for 3 weeks intensive rehabilitation.
She might get a 24 hour pass for this weekend though. Hope that she likes what I’ve been doing!

It’s amazing how many people have been watching the blog. Thanks for all your support.
Hopefully our last post on the blog will be when the fencing etc is done.

We should be open to visitors in a few weeks time!!

Posted on

Not much to report!!!!

We know that many of you eagerly await an update on the new house. Sorry for the delay!!!

Here it is:

We had our first delivery of our furniture & many boxes from storage on Thursday 18th Jan & then more on the Friday. Our new dining table & 10 chairs were also delivered that day, after being stored by the shop for nearly 2 years. Glad that we still love it.
We slept in the spare bedroom whilst we sorted out our waterbed. The following Monday we emptied the gîte with the removal company & by then the new house was getting pretty full & disorganised.
We set about getting ourselves installed but decided that after about 30 years of waterbeds (not helped by a leak!) we’d return to a more conventional bed, which has now been ordered.

We’ve tried to have our part of the house pretty well organised & the dressing room has been great. But everyday we’re finding more stuff & it gets cluttered again.

Whilst all of that was going on, the outside has progressed & we hope to have the garden fully enclosed by the w/e. We’ve found a paysagiste (gardener) who’s helping with the garden & she seems pretty clued up.

And whilst all of that has been going on, Louise has been getting ready to go into hospital next week for a new knee. Then after the op she’ll be in rehabilitation for 3 weeks!

At the same time, the snag list ( quite a big one ) is slowly, very slowly, being worked through. Hopefully tomorrow will see it shorten considerably!

The photos are just a few in reverse order. “From chaos will be ….?”

We won’t discuss the comms situation. Suffice it to say that Louise has today just written to the CEO of Orange!

WE LOVE THE HOUSE.

Posted on

Not Too Much News.

In theory the building industry closed down Thurs 21 Dec until Monday 8th Jan. In reality
it started again on Friday 12th, which leaves 3 working days for a quite lengthy snagging
list before we start moving in this Thursday. It’s going to be manic.

On top of that it has snowed & then everything froze solid. A blocked downpipe froze & overflowed & started impacting on a very busy heat pump! The ice that I hacked off was pretty impressive.

The gates have been removed, the height raised considerably & then the gates have been refitted.

The main terrace is in & looking good.

We’ve put shelving up & the garage is taking shape.

Same for the utility room.

The house is so warm that Louise is washing, drying & ironing there already.

Having resolved not to spend another winter here in the gîte, we’ll be thrilled to sleep in
our lovely new very cosy home on Thursday.

There’s still lots of things to put right but slowly we’re getting there. We can taste the champagne already.

4 SLEEPS TO MOVING!!!!

P.S.
We’re not sure what our comms situation will be over the next few weeks as Orange have failed spectacularly to get the new line in for us. The mobile network is patchy at best so any contact with us in the next few weeks could be difficult. We’ll have to rely on friends to log on from time to time.

Posted on

T’was The Week Before Christmas.

Yes, the week we were hoping to be in & established for Christmas. T’was not to be.

However on Thursday afternoon 21/12 we “accepted” the house & signed for it (with a number of exceptions which the contractors have to resolve within 15 working days). More of that later.

All the locks were changed & we have all the keys & the remotes for the garage door.

We have not accepted the exterior works, which will all be finished by the end of January.

Then on Friday to celebrate Louise’s 75th birthday we headed off to Belcastel for the night, to our favourite restaurant (with rooms) within a relatively easy drive. It was as wonderful as ever!

Some photos of what we accepted, starting with the garage door. The garage is still a bit of a workshop for the external works, but not for long.

The guest area, playroom/bar etc.

The kitchen complete with Lou’s special cupboard/sliding shelf!

Our bedroom, dressing & shower room etc.

The lounge & dining room.

The utility room.

The shutters are exterior & all controlled by remote controls. This will be fun until we work it all out!

There are some minor issues of course, but also we have some concerns.

Firstly the water pressure isn’t what it needs to be & it fluctuates. We’ve done lots of tests between our plumbers & Jeff, who’s in charge of the water for Vaour. Interrupted by Christmas but it needs resolving.

The floors are magnificent in most of the house & just what we hoped for. However, there are issues in some rooms & a solution isn’t apparent. We await the proposal from the company who installed them.

We’ve still no extractor fan in the kitchen but dates organised for January for the fitter to come & hopefully install it. I won’t believe it until I see it!!

When the guys were putting in the internal blind for the kitchen window above the sink, one of them slipped and broke the kitchen tap. Unfortunately this is a tap which gives normal hot & cold water, plus sparkling water. They’re searching for a replacement asap! You’ll notice it now in the kitchen photos!
N. B. for those Brits amongst you QUOOKER taps are not allowed in France as it is illegal to dispense boiling water in a kitchen!! There are some things that I will never understand.

The outside still looks a bit like a WWI site, with mud everywhere & the only good dry days are either weekends, Christmas Day as I write this, & of course the days when they just don’t turn up.

We’re moving in mid January & we MUST have a solid, dry & clean entrance. The pressure is on but their track record isn’t great.

In the meantime we can now start to get our shelving up in the utility & garage & start moving smaller stuff in. All the wardrobes are ready & we can move clothes & things now.
The study needs to be shelved with IKEA stuff. Oh joy oh bliss, another trip to Toulouse.

Orange are coming to connect up all our comms early Jan & then hopefully we can get the wifi, music, TV etc all installed & up & running. Again, after much battling with ORANGE I will believe it when I see it.

We are now busier than ever but we are taking Xmas day off! (Other than to write this)
Here’s to 2024. May it just be wonderful.

Posted on

And so it goes on.

Firstly the good news.

Louise had her entretien (interview) at the préfecture in Toulouse & it all went well. Our 2 dossiers will now be “harmonisés” & are en route to Paris via Albi with reviews over several stages.
We can now only wait & this seems to be the story with the house as well.

We were in Toulouse when we received the minutes of the last site meeting to discover that because our glass shower wall & door are “hors normes” there’s a delay & we’ll have a temporary fix until it comes. Strange really because it was hors norme months ago & suddenly there’s a delay. Something to do with Christmas holidays. Oh yes, of course. Didn’t think of ordering it before?
We are annoyed because we, the architects, the plumbers & the builders were all on site last Friday & it never got a mention. We read about it in the minutes & then find a shower curtain on Weds when we get back from Toulouse.

However, inside the house everything is moving quickly now.

The granite top for the kitchen has been installed, the cooker is in place & connected. The missing part for the extraction fan has arrived & the unit now needs fitting–negotiations are underway for a date in early Jan. The fridge will be plumbed in this week.

The missing part for the wood burner is on order. Who knows when this will arrive but thankfully the stove is not an essential element towards heating the house.

The TV unit is in place, all the electrical connections are done & the unit has been painted. We just need to wait for the TV to be fitted. We are hoping to receive a TV signal via our telecoms supplier but as yet they haven’t been on site to connect us to the network. Will they come before Xmas–highly unlikely I fear.

Our ensuite area is almost finished, just the mirrors to be fitted this week.

The dishwashers, washing machine & drier & another fridge are ready to be connected.

When we planned the utility room the heating/water designer commissioned by the architects said that there would be a small, low area in the utility room for the heat pump accessories and we assumed that the water softener would be small & discreet. Looking at the photos you can see that this is not the situation in reality. We’ve now lost an awful lot of storage/shelving space in the utility & it will be quite warm without any underfloor heating. Had we realised we could have put some or all of this in the garage.

The underfloor heating has been commissioned & is working very well. We’ll need to have it turned down this week.
The permanent (as opposed to provisional building site) electricity supply is up & running.

The garage door is in the process of being installed & will be finished this week.

As previously mentioned, we’re still waiting for news from Orange for the telecoms.

Outside is a different story. A lot of progress on levelling & defining areas has been made. We have another week with the builders on site & after that it will be 3 Jan 24 before we see them again.

These are our closest neighbours. Murielle, who sold us the land, comes regularly at weekends & for longer periods in the summer.

This is where our other neighbours will be building. They’re planting a boundary hedge right now & hope to start their build in January.

We are, read Louise is, thinking hard as to what to do with our north facing garden. After all the levelling it now looks very big. At the moment we’ll just try to keep it short & tidy. The front garden will take shape once the drive, paths & parking are established.

There is progress but it seems slow. It’s ironic as the weather recently has been really awful, but as you can see from the photos, this weekend is cold & frosty first thing but glorious during the day.

We know that not everyone understands the 35 hour week etc in France. The productivity rate per employee is much higher than the UK because they invest in technology & training. Even so we had a real shock on Saturday to find the front door unlocked. Our immediate thought was that we must have left it like that the previous day. Then we had an even bigger fright when we found the cleaner with the contract to clean the house before handover, working away on a Sat afternoon. Busy cleaning windows. There’s a song there for those of you old enough to remember!

In summary, hopefully we will accept the house (but not the outside) Thursday 21/12 & all work will finish Friday 22/12 for Christmas & New Year. We will be celebrating Louise’s birthday on the 22nd as well.
We will be staying put in the gîte until w/c 15th Jan (fingers crossed) & we anticipate handover of the exterior works by Friday 26th Jan. This is all the fencing, gates, terracing, paving, parking etc.

Are we happy. NO.
But at least we can have some down time just relaxing before moving in January & before Louise has her knee replacement surgery in February. Such is life!!