I’m overdue for an update. You would think that with the extra downtime due to the Covid crisis, I would have time to sit down and write. Nope. I have been doing everything but writing. But I can’t procrastinate any longer, so here you go.

The new bedroom has doors and windows.

The beautiful stonework around the new doors and windows make the cement block building look similar to the old house. The color of the house will change when the entire structure is rendered, but that will be done after we’ve moved in, and it will take about two months to complete.

• 

Following the rules of the Bâtiments de France, the doors and windows on the new bedroom have to be the same traditional style as the main house, which makes total sense and we were happy to comply.

The travertine floor has arrived.

• 

I learned that Opus 4 means that the tiles come in four sizes, and there is a “French pattern” to be followed.

• 

The entire ground floor will be travertine. Fortunately, our floor guy is familiar with the pattern and soon had it moving along. I interrupted him a couple times and learned that wasn’t a good idea. He was clearly in the zone and needed to concentrate.

I’m itchin’ for my kitchen.

The kitchen floor is off to a good start.

• 

And the grey cabinets will look good with the grout color.

• 

Once the grouting is done, the floor is acid washed in two steps, then will be sealed. Next was a test run of the kitchen cabinets. It turned out we had received an extra cabinet (whether we paid for it is yet to be determined), so we are considering moving the dishwasher – that we rarely use – into the adjoining pantry to allow for the new (and hopefully free) cabinet to fit in the kitchen.

• 

We opted for no upper cabinets, not wanting to cover up the beautiful stone wall on the left side. And yes, I said the cabinets are grey – they will be when it’s all done. That big piece of cardboard is the size of the quartz countertop in that space. I had them draw the sink on it to make sure I was ordering the right size sink.

The attic bedroom and bath are coming along too.

The bedroom is pretty much finished except for paint.

• 

In the bathroom, the shower pan is in place, but one of the glass shower sides is just a tad too tall to fit under the angled ceiling, so they had to gouge into the plasterboard a tiny bit to fit them in. It all won’t show (much) once it’s all finished off. This bathroom only has one window, near the floor, so we ordered a frosted one that just opens by a small tilt.

Subcontractors and frustrations.

Once the last bit of the doors and windows were delivered, I thought it would only take a week to get them installed. No. The man who came to install them did one window on Monday and left. On Tuesday, he arrived and fit another window, then left, saying he would return on Monday. What? There’s still Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday left in the week! And his vacation was the week after next so if he continued his casual attitude the next week, we’d then have to wait until September for completion. We weren’t happy with this plan, and made it clear to our (British) builder. He explained that the French subcontractors have their own way of doing things, and unfortunately we have to allow them to go at their own pace. He said if we pissed them off, they may never show up again.

Same goes with the man doing the plastering. He came and did an excellent job on the ceilings, then announced he didn’t want to do the walls and left. Insert a colorful and very appropriate expletive here. Fortunately, our builder found a fairly new and eager-to-please plasterer to come and finish the job.

We still aren’t done with the door and window guy. Once he finished with all the installations, we noticed there was one tiny opening in the upstairs storeroom for which he didn’t have the window. He said he didn’t remember that window. We had stood in front of the window and talked about what kind of thing would fit in there! So frustrating. Also, there were several window handles missing. He said we would have to wait until they return from holiday in September to get those. Arrrgh.

The clock is ticking.

We are still planning to move into the house mid-September. Walking through the house yesterday, it seemed that date might be unrealistic, but I am being told that many things will happen at the last minute. Our plan is to move in if the master bedroom, bath, and kitchen are done – and the air conditioning is working. We can camp out in there while they finish the rest of the house.

Stay tuned!