Well, we all know that renovation works are not for the faint-hearted, even in a modern home.  But, not to one-up anyone, renovating an 800-year old house is something COMPLETELY different.  Take it from two who knew in theory that this would be the case, but hadn’t reckoned on the reality.

I shan’t bore you with the picayune details, as they are of less than passing interest to anyone save ourselves.  They have undoubtedly been a massive frustration to the long-suffering and very diligent leader of the project – my step-father, Robin – who has encountered more set-backs at Les Terraces than we had collectively believed possible.  For instance, the bath in the old studio bathroom wasn’t installed in a frame, or using any other conventional method.  Oh no, far from it!  The “builder” who undertook that job had, in his infinite wisdom (or was it laziness), had set the bath down on a bed of bricks!  I have to wonder whether he had some spare bricks that he couldn’t be bothered to take away from the job site and decided to stash them under the bath instead.  We’ll never know, but this made far more work for Robin.  I think that Robin has now carted some 50 huge sacks of rubble to the déchetterie, although it is probably many more.

This week’s joyful news has involved ceilings.  One has turned out to be lath & plaster and must be completely pulled down and replaced (I’m keen to see pictures of what lies above it), while another into which spots were to be inserted has proven to be too thick to accommodate the light fixtures.  Robin’s solution was to install another ceiling layer 12cm below the existing one.  Mine was to rip it out and put in a new one.  We’ve decided to do neither and settled for installing a different lighting system instead (anyone need 8 spotlights?  They’re going cheap!!).  The third ceiling (in the street-side bathroom) proved to be substantially lower than the ceiling in the adjacent space.  This, however, is much more easily remedied than the other ceiling problems.

So, what else have we learned?  Well, there are plenty of hidden (load-bearing) beams, at least one of which is located in the middle of the space that we’d set as the archway to connect the street-side bathroom with its new loo.  These are in addition to the beam that Mo and I uncovered in the bedroom during the summer, but, to be honest, this came as no surprise. We’ve uncovered an open soil-pipe (now closed off with a 1-way venting valve).  Why would anyone cut off a soil pipe?  Goodness only knows.  However, its sorted now.

Construction hasn’t been the source of all of the problems and urgent Skype calls (thank God for Skype).  The electric shutter giving onto the ground floor terrace has stuck half-way up.  The contractor who installed it came to Sainte-Foy-La-Grande to have a look and found that it requires the assistance of the manufacturer.  Fortunately it is still under warranty, so we await their arrival.  Less happily, the folks are living in a semi twilight world.  But at least it didn’t happen while we had guests in the house.  Another bed-settee mechanism has broken.  This a legacy of guests who didn’t report having problems.  This too is under warranty.  However, trying to get IKEA to exchange it has proved challenging to say the least.  We’ve made numerous phone calls and sent several emails and got nowhere – yet.  But we will.

I could go on, but I shan’t.  Promise!  But for a self-confessed control freak this past 3½ weeks has been hell.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been seriously tempted to jump on a plane and head home to France (not that I could do much once there, save make on-the-spot decisions), but we still have to pay for the project and that requires chipping way at the coal face of income-generating work instead.  Hey-ho.

Pictures to come later, when I’ve organised them (don’t get too excited, please!!)