And the walls came tumbling down

And the walls came tumbling down 

When the builders did turn up on Wednesday 16th, there were a couple of Romanian guys and the gaffer from Plisson (the local builders merchants who were doing the work). The Romanians had a great work ethic and we were in awe of their care and thoughtfulness. Also they were genuinely interested in what we were up to and made lots of suggestions. whilst they were working downstairs we were upstairs working on creating a working shower room.

More about the work downstairs first.

We wanted to have a 2ft wide wall knocked down and a very small in height door removed. This was to a - stop people from banging their heads on the stupidly small door frame
and b - to make an entrance hallway appear large and lighter.
Another wall needed to be knocked down giving us a large kitchen / living area

It's a breakthrough

 The second wall was behind where the builder is standing (above)

Please note in photo above, precarious hanging water heater. This in fact sprang a leak from pipe below and I rushed to put my finger in it (as you do). Next thing I knew our builder had rushed to hold up water heater as it was falling off the wall. Needless to say we never got it back up again leaving us without hot water downstairs.

Waiting to be levelled

The next thing to done was to level off the old stable floor. Some of which was cobbled. It was very up and down and took a huge amount of effort. Hot work!

Then a plastic membrane was added and steel grids.

They worked so hard and left after a day and a half, due to return the following day as the concrete was being delivered. However I got a call the next morning saying the concrete wasn't coming and it would be the following Monday or Tuesday. Very disappointing as we were left with no electricity to that part of the house or outside, no hot water and just 2 power points in the whole downstairs.
Monday and Tuesday came and went and as Rich had arrived we decided to leave the key for the builders and went off to la Rochelle. On Tuesday they were still hopeful it would be that day, however we returned from La Rochelle Wednesday afternoon and nothing had changed.
Thursday we went to Plisson and they assured us it would be Friday. This was reminiscent of A Year in Provence.....

We had now been without power points, cooker etc. etc. for nearly 2 weeks.
Ironically on the Wednesday evening and all day Thursday cement lorries were convoying (almost) past the house. One even stopped for a couple of minutes, taunting us. They are building some houses a bit further up the road. It seems our small order for concrete is so small that the TGV line they are building and a small group of houses take priority.

However on Friday morning about 9am they arrived.
I was joyous to say the least. 
Preparation was also done for the courtyard where chippings were going to be laid after the messy cement job had been done and we were told the cement would arrive on a lorry after lunch. 
And lo and behold....

Cement lorry outside downloading cement into bucket on digger

Digger pours cement into makeshift slide that goes into house

Builders push and rake said cement into house to make floor

Raking cement in

Finally with aid of special levelling machine and super large squeegees cement is smoothed and levelled

Spray added to stop cement cracking

They did a great job (eventually) and the lesson is that you just can't project manage anything timewise here. The lovely Romanian guys don't understand that mentality either but for the future I will be very careful about builders and their time scales.

The Courtyard (La Cour)

This being finished and needing to be left to dry for 24-48 hours the guys started on the courtyard.

As if by magic a lorry load of chippings came through the gates. The photos tell it all.

And this was how I wanted it to look when Rich arrived. Sadly it came to pass the night before he left but I'm glad he got to see it. We are so pleased to have it prettied up a bit and with the covered terrace lights that Rich helped put up things are really coming together.



Next post will be the work we did building up to Rich's arrival.

See you soon x