I’m overdue for an update. You would think that with the extra downtime due to the
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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
We are still planning to move into the house mid-September. Walking through the house yesterday, it seemed that
Stay tuned!
It’s been way too long since my last post with some before and…
August 1, 2022First, in case anyone missed me, my blog was irritatingly out of order for a…
October 8, 2021
Lorri McDannold Murk | 16th Aug 20
Looks Good you are getting there!
CLAIRE OBERHAUSEN | 16th Aug 20
You’re close to the finish line, so it must be frustrating to deal with the scheduling issues and such! I’m intrigued that you don’t use your dishwasher very often! 🙂
Roger | 16th Aug 20
It’s REAL (and really frustrating at times). Looks great, you are going to be SO happy in your New Chic Traditional French Home (with traditional air conditioning ???). Hope things keep on keeping on. August in France is the WORST month to have workers. It’s vacation time, n’est-ce pas? C’est la vie.
Ann Brenner | 16th Aug 20
It all looks great, Alison!
Lucretia | 16th Aug 20
Glad to hear of the progress…know you will be sooooo ready when move-in day comes. It really looks great!
Susan Walter | 17th Aug 20
I think your move in deadline is realistic. I’ll bet there will be some stuff not finished, but it will be liveable. The plasterer and the window guy are irritating! Sounds like Hamilton is doing a great job of project managing though. I’ll tell you the story of our sink the next time we see one another (it’s a story of how having your artisan cut the wrong sink hole in your granite bench top can work in your favour :-))
Tom Bishop | 17th Aug 20
Alison, you are one heck of a project manger… keep it up! All looks good so far!! Having only gone through a little of the pain of renovations in France, I can genuinely feel for you.