Building home: Happy thoughts...

Building home: Happy thoughts...: 'Tis the season to be jolly and grateful and look back fondly over the year and draw from it the positive wadding, the soft and fluffy compo...

Happy thoughts...

'Tis the season to be jolly and grateful and look back fondly over the year and draw from it the positive wadding, the soft and fluffy components which we will use to stuff the pillow on which we will lay our heads on new years eve in anticipation of the coming year.

So I'm doing positive boot camp... especially as Karma has a way of noting where our energies lie and throwing us more of the things we obsess about... so that's me done complaining about the house for 2011 - I will turn my thoughts to positive notions - in the hope that those will multiply instead, leaving me in 24 days with the makings of one very full soft 2012 cushion on which to rest my head!

So I will not complain about the flood we had downstairs after the rain... that seeped up through the floors of our 'salle technique' and crept through the carpets and up the freshly painted walls, leaving them to bubble like the Jokers face after an acid face mask... I won't even go into the fact that it didn't turn out to be Sweet Rain Water but Dirty Waste Water instead... from our neighbors very own W.C.'s... speckled with loo paper...

or the fact that the (previously much loved) gardener stopped the garden wall 8 meters before the edge of our land because in some confusion (known and understood only by him) he had changed the measures in the budget estimate from 'linear meters' to 'square meters', reached the agreed budget about 8 meters short and decided to stop there without pointing out the 'pink elephant in the corner' of a mistake.

I will look upon the painter not protecting the floors as he waved his white paintbrush about as a blessing - allowing me to now have to do quite as much xmas decorating as it already looks like it's been snowing inside!

I will however look at my cute white fluffy cats sitting on the sexy new kitchen stools we bought and think how kittens are everything that is right with the world, how lucky I am to have them around to make me laugh when things are getting tough (as they chew on the painters socks as he asks me for the 90th time what's left to be done), to remind me that the interior furnishings are comfortable as they lay there on their backs, their eyes half open and rolling into the back of their heads in bliss... The fact that each time I see them lying on the floor I am reminded that someone did finally manage to come and turn the heating down and they are no longer suffering from singed paws. That though things go wrong - they eventually come right again (after a little graceful shouting).

I will go to bed mindful that every bump in the road is a lesson on how to handle the difficult things in life, each issue a wave you ride differently every time, taking from each trough and crest lessons on how to deal with the next one. That the most important thing is to make sure you keep your eye on the horizon.

And with that thought in mind I will keep focusing on my little cute felines and hope that karma will keep throwing tiny balls of white fluff at me, of the feline (not the toilet paper) variety...

Building home: The electrician has just left the building...

Building home: The electrician has just left the building...: The electrician has just left. He managed to come on the wrong day, put the lights up incorrectly, not manage to put one light up at all a...

The electrician has just left the building...

The electrician has just left.

He managed to come on the wrong day, put the lights up incorrectly, not manage to put one light up at all and disconnect the internet while ON the phone to the Swisscom helpline trying to sort out my internet connections issues. He then announced he had to go as it was late and left me sitting on the floor of my entrance hall - connected to the outside world by nothing but a weakly pulsing disfunctioning yellow internet cable.

Last week his boss (the chief electrician) came over and proceeded to tell me that he was in hospital the day before as his heart is about to explode due to all the stress - and that he could literally have a heart attack or stroke at any given moment.

It didn't seem like the best time to challenge him on the estimate he had sent me which had inflated 3 times the quoted amount between our telephone call and the written estimate I he had sent me by email. Despite my anticipated new years resolution for being more gracious, I defaulted to the route of lesser tact and said that actually his price quote had very nearly had the same effect on me and could he give me the name of his specialist.

He kept smiling which I put down to the great drugs his Dr. must have put him on - but as soon as I had said it I made a mental note to enter the 'Be Gracious 2012!!!' memo into my phone, once and for all...

Building home: The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire

Building home: The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire: I'm currently sitting at my dining room table (which is conveniently placed in the center of the house - like ground control to monitor work...

The roof, the roof, the roof is on fire

I'm currently sitting at my dining room table (which is conveniently placed in the center of the house - like ground control to monitor workmen) watching the painter as he walks around with a single paintbrush loaded with paint occasionally dabbing at the walls, then striding across the newly laid carpet to another spot.

Having just received an estimate of over 1000.- to protect the slate floors it's all I can do from launching myself across the room and smacking him over the head with my computer. But I love my computer too much.

So I have decided against doing that. I woke up deciding that my new years resolution would be to acquire some Grace. Lucy2012 will not only come with an infant strapped to her hip but will also 'Graciously' discuss flaws and errors with suppliers instead of barking at them. Maybe it will get me further?! It's my new years resolution but I think I may need to start this one a good few months before the new year begins to give it a chance in h*ll of sticking.

If all else fails I can always close my eyes, zen out and pretend I am in the Bahamas. I can do this quite easily as our house is of about the same temperature. This is due to the PAC (Pompe a Chaleur) (which for those not in the know) - is where they drill 150m down into the earth's bedrock and install 2 metal pipes which draw the heat from said bedrock up to heat the house through the central heating system.

However... we either live above a fault line and are accessing a bubbling magma chamber... or there is a problem with the setting. I've had it seen to once already but somehow nothing has changed and I find it impossible to even wear socks in the house without my feet steaming. I thought it might just be me and the extra insulation that comes from being pregnant but then we got the cat's in and it started to become clear that the floor was too hot even for them to lie on. I keep finding them in random places - lying on a coffee table, under the dishwashed, in the shower. I guess it's the wise choice between getting wet or having singed paws...

So my next task from 'Ground Control' is to call the heating men and ask if they could change the setting from the 'Bahamas' to 'Mallorca in Early Spring' and see how that goes. If it still fails at least we know that though the installation cost was weighty at least all our heating is free - and we never need to travel to hot and exotic places because we are permanently living in one!

Building home: Post-it's for sanity.

Building home: Post-it's for sanity.: So after doing the rounds a 5th time with the painter - showing him what was not ok - (and you'd be surprised what is ok by his standards).....

Post-it's for sanity.

So after doing the rounds a 5th time with the painter - showing him what was not ok - (and you'd be surprised what is ok by his standards)... I lost the plot. It seems like they want you to stand next to them as you point out evident issues and then stand next to them as they paint over the errors which are as clear as an orange Easyjet plane flying in the blue sky overhead (but decidedly easier because they're these paint errors arn't in transit, they simply glare back at us, unmoving from the wall).

To put an end to this I decided to liberate the frustrated art director in me with the help of bright yellow post-it notes. Resulting in the house looking like a large 3D print proof with comments and annotations scrawled all over it.

Most satisfying.

Even more satisfying to see how defeated the painter looked when he next came over! However it did lead to interesting situations such as these:

Painter: 'Why have you put a post-it up there?'
Me: 'Because the wallpaper is ripped...'
Painter: 'That was ripped by the window installer...'
I then pointed out the nearest window was 4 meters away and that the rip had been stuck down with wallpaper glue in an attempt to cover the damage... to which he replied
'Well I guess he had to rip it it's the only way to put this wallpaper up...'
Me: bang bang bang (sound of my head against the wallpapered wall...)

On the other end of the scale there is (thank goodness) the Landscape gardener. He poses his own challenges at the very other side of the spectrum. He loves to talk and draw out and ponder and suggest and confirm and reconfirm everything over and over again. At school he would have been the bespectacled boy at the back of the room with his hand permanently in the air, back arched in earnest enthusiasm 'oh I know, I know, I know, oh please ask me miss, pleeeeease aaaaaask meeeeeeee!' But what a nice change to have someone who is interested, passionate and who doesn't feign blindness when it comes to obvious issues and who wants nothing more then to stand out in the cold with you going over the finer points of garden paving for an hour at the crack of dawn.

Unpacking issues

So many boxes! So much stuff! How is it possible for 2 people to have this many possessions!? How is it possible that we have every generation of Nokia mobile phone from the day mobile phones were launched but can’t seem to find any of stu’s underpants?

After 48hours with invaluable help from family the house looked like home. As we sat down for an impromptu brunch (a table top rsting on 4 chairs) we commented on how it felt like we had always been there.


Monday dawned and our thoughts turned to how to get stu to work now that we were country bumpkins.

At 8h30 we drove to the train station (stu wearing his swimming trunks as the underpants box was still impossible to find) and I waved him off to join all the other commuters travelling to Geneva and I returned to the house to do my job - hunt for Stu's undergarments. Hoorah!

Etat des lieu round 2!

So we pulled up an hour before the etat des lieu exactly one week later. The house was still full of work men pointing fingers at each other but it looked better then the week before - probably thanks to the 47 page document of ‘things to do’ I had drawn up after last weeks disasterous meeting.

After 4 hours of going over every detail with the architect (and I realised I could really get sucked into every detail - to the point where I wonder if I will ever exit macro lense vision mode again) we signed off on the house!

The architect made us sign the 7 pages of things to finalise (better then signing 47 from the week before) and symbolically took out a box with a new lock and key. He then changed it right before our eyes and handed us the keys to our new home!

It was the end of 2 years of working together and there had been times I had gotten so angry with his lack of management that I felt I was a different person. It taught me a lot on how being nice makes you friends but it doesn’t get a good paint job done. We shook hands and he ducked out into the night leaving stu and I looking at each other and our empty grown up home.

A few minutes later the doorbell rang and the project manager re-appeared outside with a bottle of champagne. I initially ducked thinking it could be a Molotov Cocktail but then when he handed it to me instead of lobbing it over my head I realised it was his way of making amends to a relationship which had been otherwise quite strained

We exchanged a few niceties, I even told him I would build again which made his eyes roll into the back of his head in panic before offering an excuse about having left the iron on at home and just having to get back.

The door shut and stu and I jumped around like little kids in a sweet shop. Grown up on the outside, infantile on the inside.

Bare essentials...

So after leaving our flat with must gusto and not so much as a backward glance on the friday eve pre état-des-lieu a few hours later, we found ourselves back in the empty flat feeling like 2 small ships whose wind had been brutally taken from the sails. We had salvaged the bear essentials in a last minute frenzy before the movers came in (like a swarm of ants to transport everything) and kept back the bare essentials: A bed, tv, beanbag, armchair and 12 crystal champagne glasses.

The latter, not as a lifestyle standard essential, but as the only thing of value we own (other then our cats) that we didn’t want to risk the movers breaking during the move.

They really came into their own and proving most handy for watering the pot plants on the balcony and for drinking milky cornflakes out of in the morning!

Moving day!

Hi this is Lucy Axam reporting from the basement of her house, more precisely, behind the safety of about 30 cubic meters of boxes and furniture which have been stored here as an emergecy measure.

Why so glam you ask? Well a lot more has happened in the last 48 hours other than the Eurozone going into meltdown...!

Having returned to the building site on Thursday evening to make a second round of coffee and biscuits for the workers I found that one of the builders had clearly grown very fond of me and so absolutely HAD to take a talisman as a memory of me off the building site with him when he left that evening... and decided the only thing he could tangibly get hold of other than a lock of my hair was in fact this brand new brushed metal Kenwood Kettle. And so bless his low cut trousers he took it with him when he left. How could I hold that against anyone!?

Deluded moi? I kick myself over and over when I think back to the internal dispute I had with myself in the kettle aisle of the supermarket - ‘do I get a cheap plastic one in case they steal it, or do I get a nice one I will keep for ever and trust in the goodness of human nature that no one will...’ ‘I know - I’ll do the latter because I believe in Fairies and Neverland and... POP there goes my bubble!

So that horrible feeling settled in - the one when you can’t look your workers in the eye cos one of them is smugly thinking back to the cup of tea they made this morning from your kettle - or thinking about the 80.- they made from selling it on Tutti - that they spent betting on the dogs. I hope they lost - and that the dog they bet on broke free and it now living the life of Larry on a farm.

Friday the sun rose - a new dawn a new day and i was headed for a life in Suburbia! dressed up and ready to do the etat des lieux and collect the keys to our house at 4pm. However when we got to ‘our new home’  it seemed like perhaps our house was actually being used in the making of a film all about building a house... and it was only a quarter of ther way through..

There were pots of paint everywhere, muddy floors, electricians looking like they had been frazzled a couple of times over, sprinting around in chaos.

When the dust settled our project manager materialised - looking rather like father christmas sporting a mullet and a beatified expression as if he had just had a glass of sherry and was about to be offered a piece of pie. He extended his palm and asked for the remaining money we owed for the building of our house. We asked him if he was joking. He said he wasn’t. We said we couldn’t move in in a house that looked like this, ‘he said it was all relative but we didn’t have to if we didn’t feel ready to.’

So to cut a long story short, and to spare you details of quite how easy it is to access one’s long repressed inner child when it comes to throwing a tantrum through hiccups and tears we didn’t pay and we didn’t get the keys to the house.

We did have a pronblem though. Because our removal men were doing the furniture delivery at 8am the next morning...

Casting my mind back to my kettle I then multiplied the issue of having all my wordly goods in my house with all the workers - one of which had a penchant for OPP (other people’s property)...

Saturday morning came around and all our furniture was driven to the house and directed down to the basement. A 4m x 5m room.

Monday filming... (I mean finishing) resumed on set... (I mean at the house) and I took myself down to the basement as the electrician needed to access i to steal stuff (I mean to fix some wiring). Trying not to act too distrusting I set myself up on a stool and a bedside table in the midst of a citsscape of boxes... trying not to scare too many builders with ‘who goes there fee fi fo fum’ attitude as I popped out from behind a case of wine to startle them and remind them that ‘they were not alone’.

Building home: Solving problems one biscuit at a time...

Building home: Solving problems one biscuit at a time...: The house looks like wet'n'wild and we're supposed to be moving in on Saturday... there are 3 cleaners scrubbing the windows while all aroun...

Solving problems one biscuit at a time...

The house looks like wet'n'wild and we're supposed to be moving in on Saturday... there are 3 cleaners scrubbing the windows while all around them carpenters drill, painters paint, electricians fiddle... it's almost funny. Almost.

For the first day in ages it was raining... not a great day for the 'aménagements extérieurs' to start or for an army of workers to be treading over the freshly laid carpet.

Finger pointing started promptly this morning with the carpet layer extending the famous finger at a stain on the freshly laid carpet. The first unfortunate person to enter his field of vision was the electrician (the one who only speaks polish and german) and a very noisy and a rather unfair accusation ensued.

After a few minutes of 'yes you did', 'no i nie'... 'yes you did', 'nein, es war mir nicht' the frustrated electrician kicked off his muddy rubber soled shoes in defiance and said in a mix of all the languages he knew that he would just work bare foot and proceeded to angrily poke around the electrical sockets with his metal screw driver. It seemed clear that on this day there would be a death - either a blow to the head delivered by a plinth or by spectacular electrocution.

I grunted at my shoes (so as not to be seen to be taking sides) in response to the whining and decided there was only one thing to do. I jumped in the car and went and bought a kettle, coffee and biscuits.

I thought this might re-create an Nespresso moment (as seen on tv). Failing that at least I could count on a sugar and caffeine high accelerating their mutuel annihilation...

Building home: Adult (Predominantly Male) Crèche

Building home: Adult (Predominantly Male) Crèche: Before you get the wrong idea, let me immediately highlight the key word here - crèche. It seems that our house has turned into a 'pop up'...

Adult (Predominantly Male) Crèche

Before you get the wrong idea, let me immediately highlight the key word here - crèche.

It seems that our house has turned into a 'pop up' kindergarten in it's fleeting transition between 'building site' and 'home'.

As building lends a whole new meaning to the word 'mental' in the last few days leading up to the handing over of the keys... (3 to be exact) I'm starting to understand why workmen wear gloves!

It's to protect their most valued tool - their index finger!

The use of the index finger goes far beyond the teasing of freshly laid carpet, or the delicate removal of a smudge of paint or the tender smoothing of a hard edged wood flooring. Oh no... the index finger has a much more treasured role to the builder!

With the swift extension and tautening of the aforementioned digit, fault is seemlessly transfered from one builder onto another!

If builders lost their index fingers in an unfortunate accident, they would lose their ability to swiftly transfer blame onto someone else for work shoddily done and this would cost a company thousands in time spent correcting mistakes.

I wouldn't be surprised if construction companies employed workers primarily on the rapidity of their brain-finger reaction time when hiring them. Pay rises would be based on increased unfurled finger endurance.


So with a house full of painters, plasterers, carpenters, carpet layers, cupboard fitters, plumbers, tilers and electricians all crawling over each other (squeezing 365 days of work into 48 hours) it has turned into a bit of a dusty schoolyard and I happen to be the teacher doing the lunch break stint. Oh where is the project manager when you need him... 

... actually on reflection maybe his not being here today is the smartest thing he's done in the last 2 years!

I'm back after a sense of humour failure...

I'm back after a sense of humour failure... I can't quite remember the details of what lead to the moment it happened... perhaps the small flood in the tv room that no one could account for, or the bath not being as close to the wall as I'd drawn up (getting irrationally emotional over details like these are normal I'm told when you spent 5 hours drawing a plan, measuring to scale and working out details as meticuslousy as if you were making an origami swan for a blind midget only to be told by a man who spends too much time sweeping his long locks across his face with the back of his hand that he won't even try to do as you asked - because he's a stubborn numbnuts*.)

Or perhaps it was the call from my wooden floor supplier to tell me that my wood had arrived in 2 batches and they didn't look anything alike... but maybe we could mix and match!

Thinking this sounded like a sub-optimal solution for us and a great solution for him - I decided to temporarily put him out by turning his showroom floor into my bedroom floor and sort out the planks by colour differentiation - just to see if we could work with it. After 2 hours of placing and replacing we concluded that we could not work with it. He said he would call me with a new lead time for the new order of wood to be delivered but he hasn't yet and he suddenly seems very occupied elsewhere...

Anyway - today the sun shone on me and the house - the workers were all friendly (probably because in 15 days they won't have me breathing down their necks anymore). That's right! The architect confirmed that we would do the 'etat des lieu' and the 'remise des clefs' on friday 21st and then the house will be ours, all ours! I don't think I thought the day would ever come - and though the place still looks like a tip it will be 'the tip we live in'!

* Just found out that aforementioned numbnuts has been fired! Maybe he's going to get a job in a hairdressing salon.

I'm not sure how my house is still standing

I'm not sure how our house is still standing considering the number of holes there are in place for the sockets and plugs we anticipated needing! It looks like it's been machine gunned by a weapon loaded with plastic sockets!

I took the advice very much to heart about making sure you have enough plugs in your house - because 'you can always take them away but you can't always add them'!!! However, it seems we will be doing a lot of snipping and filling in the coming days. Hopefully the place won't fall down like a tower of cards when we pull out unnecessary wires!

On arriving at the house this morning, I was greeted by the electrician and his assistant. He proposed we go over the electricity plans rooms by room in either Polish or German. I guess not having spoken German for 20 years is better then not having spoken Polish for 33, so we went ahead in the latter. There was a lot of gesticulating and acting out, which really came into it's own when I tried to ask about the risk of being electrocuted by the socket in the shower...

Checking the height of your plugs is very important when building a house. Do you want your plugs just above the plinthes or half way up your wall (as is apparently the Swiss Way). Very practical - you can use it for ceiling hangings or for floor lamps... but not very aesthetic, especially if you have invested in a beautiful wall treament.

Finally if you do end up finding you were overzealous in the socket department (as I was), make sure to take picture of all the tubes and wires before filling in the holes - you never know when you may need a socket for that rotating discoball in the future!

How not to be floored by flooring.

The first few months of choosing flooring can be overwhelming. There is so much choice and at such varying prices. You see something you like and then flip through a magazine and see something you think you may well love more! How to choose what to spend all that money on!

Here is some advice from my experience from the places I have visited locally (Geneva area).

Challandes in Nyon: Good selection of tiles, dalles (exterior) and stone floors. Expensive. Staff couldn't sell humid skin to a mosquito. They open and close about the same time you get to and leave your office - so not great for the working person. Great for inspiration but I would take that inspiration and pay for the goods elsewhere.

Getaz Romang: Lovely new showroom in Etoy. They have real wood flooring and fake as well as tiles and dalles and stone for outside. Helpful staff. They have top of the range products as well as low end products on display.

Sabag: Only do tiles and stone (no wood). A good selection and some very interesting stuff if you are planning on opening a nightclub. Prices are reasonable.

Hornbach: I was scared of what I would find here - it is a bit of a DIY place - however I was nicely surprised by some of what I saw. I don't think it would be wise to buy laminate flooring there (even if it sells for 12m2) as the quality wouldn't be great (unless you wanted it laid somewhere no one could touch it - like on your ceiling). However I found white stone pebble flooring (as you would have in a shower) for 1/3 cheaper then at Getaz  - so definately worth checking out. They also have extemely cheap tiles however sometimes you have to buy when you see it as the stock can go quickly.

Leroy Merlin: The french equivalent of Hornbach. If you import into Switzerland you get the TVA back - added bonus!

Mondial Moquette (Paquis): Looks a little dodgy from the road - however it has a huge selection of carpets and the largest choice of wood (real and laminte) in Suisse Romandie. They guy that runs it - Gils, has a huge knowledge and passion for wood and get's what you want - even when you might not!

Furnishing a large expanse of floors can be expensive - so choices sometimes have ot be made. Bathrooms can be a real pleasure to do as they are small and so you can sometimes let your hair down and go a little wild with your choices without worrying too much about falling out of love with it in a couple of years time when green felt tiles are no longer 'du jour'.

For larger expanses always find a few floor types that you like in different price ranges and then weigh up the pro's and con's.

Finally - A Nasty Surprise Alert.
 The prices are USUALLY by m2 - but not always. So you could be looking at 2 similar tiles one for 50.- a m2 and another for 13.50.- and you may well think the decision is (as I did) a no brainer! Make sure you look closer as it may say 'par pièce' which may mean for example that the 13.50.- tile which may be 25cm x 25cm, would actually cost 216.-  per m2! This would be a nasty surprise for a large room and no one likes a nasty surprise.

Oh and another Nasty Surprise Alert (for good measure):
The cost of the flooring is just for the flooring - you can happily add about 1/2 the price per m2 again to the actual laying of the flooring by a specialist. :)

A piece of advice (after a couple of unfortunate personal experiences) where I thought that the eye could 'carry colour'. It can't. You can think you know a colour and that you have commited it to memory - but it never works out that way. Always get a sample or in Français 'un échantillon' (so much prettier). They will usually give you one for free. Take it with you whenever you need to colour or texture match. It saves time, money and unnecessary tears.

All this said and done - here is nothing as satisfying as walking into a freshly floored room. It can completely change the way a space feels. Floors can make a room darker or lighter, bigger or smaller - fresh or cosy. Even the direction you lay the tiles can make the room feel less or more spacious.

Most importantly - have fun - go with your gut and enjoy!

Sometimes...

Sometimes even gold shoes don't work!

As well as building the house we are doing some renovation work on our town flat in order to rent it out.

I have been waiting for 3 hours for my Kosovan workmen to arrive this morning. I really trusted these guys which makes it worse. I flit from feelings of great irritation - to worry - did the mafia come and take them out for badly laying tiles in the big bosses house!?

They often seem to need payment of large wads of cash without forewarning - to buy 'a big machine'... let's hope it's the sort of machine that evens out mosaic bathroom wall tiles and not one that makes 'rat-tat-tat' sounds...

I found them independantly to do the plasterboard ceilings in our house (the architect had planned wooden ceilings!)  The architect assured me that EVERYONE had wooden ceilings (though I have yet to see it anywhere other than in a chalet). We decided however to go and check it out in a demo house as all modifications to the original house plans cost us an extra 10%*!

The feeling when we walked into the room was one of great oppression. Like the sky was falling down. I'm not sure what feng-shui would say about the perceived weight of wood above but I can tell you it felt all wrong! The only time you want wood closing you in from above is at the very end of your life making your way down an aisle!... and even then I'd rather be turned into a diamond and be set in a tiara...

(*more on architects fee's later when I have more time to rant.)

Making luck

Your perception on your build, it's progress (or lack of) can be greatly influenced by your mood.

This is why getting into the right mindset is crucial when on the way to one's building site.

Every day I have a 30 minute drive to the fledgling house and I use this key time to manually adjust my mood using my car's stereo system. I fully harness the power to overide my current mental outlook with the simple push of any of 1 of 6 lightly dust capped buttons.

For example: Bounding through the front door with the sound of Tina Turner's 'You're Simply The Best' still vibrating in your bones can leave you feeling empowered and ready to tackle all number of trivial distasters. It can mean taking lightning speed decisions on which way the tiles should be laid, what colour joins should be used and if you'd like to spend 1250.- on something you've never even heard of, with great panache and confident vigor.  Enter however, on (pretty much any) James Blunt song and you may find yourself reaching for the nearest broken tile to put an end your misery before you've even crossed the threshold!

Along the same lines... did you know that you can attribute 94.5%* of the successful completion of a project down to having a good luck charm on you at all times? Mine currently happen to be gold ballerinas (shoes - not some Black Swan, James Bond love-child). Not the wisest choice for a building site you say? Well they make me feel bright and happy and they really come into their own when I start frantically tap dancing in order to buy some time before answering an expensive or critical question posed by the Chef de Chantier.
* Unfounded

o la la

I had the chantier meeting today. It was meant to kick off at 9 this morning with the iron monger but he called at about midnight last night to say he couldn't make it. Too many Digestifs after dinner perhaps?

After this initial let down, my mood was greatly improved by the sight of all my beautiful tiles arriving on workmens shoulders through every open window and door - like sunlight bleeding into a dark and dank void. Ok maybe a little too poetic... but I can't tell you how happy I was. I was so excited I almost fainted.

The house meeting went on for 4 hours - starting with the sanitation guy - talking about pipes and other such exotic things... then the painter - who usually complains and acts like he's had a lobotomy when ever I ask something of him - today he was flumoxed. I had printed out Sample Scheme sheets for each room with the colour printed and written so clearly he scratched his head and had to admit he understood everything that I wanted. Just seeing his crestfallen face when he saw how clear it all was, was worth the 7 hours I had put into creating the boards! It can really pay to be anal.

After having finished with The Painter (perhaps we should drop the 'ter') - the iron monger showed up. We spent a good few hours talking about iron. Windows which are lower then 1m need a safety barrier. I had in mind a nice wrought iron bar placed horizontally 20cm's up from the window sill. He whipped out a devis where each window barrier would cost 1430.-. We have 4 windows that need barriers. My turn to do some magic - I whipped out a window barrier I had found at Leroy Merlin for 15.50 euros. There was a long moment of silence as we silently mulled over the 1415.- price difference. Watch this space...

After this moment of great satisafaction I grabbed some food nearby and returned to our empty shell. There were no workers and for once I didn't mind. I opened all the boxes of tiles smiling and stroking each choice in turn like an old friend... fancy seeing you here! - it's been so long - last time I saw you, you were in a show room in Aubonne! Imagine that, now here you are gracing the floors of our dust-pit!

And then I opened my bathroom tiles. I had to sit down.

How to describe them!? They looked like Roquefort cheese - if Roquefort cheese were grey and the fungal spores red... Nothing like the glossy picture adorning the walls at Getaz! Had I really voluntarily paid quite a lot of money for something which looked like it had spent a good few years in a dark, damp cave many miles from any cleaning products!?

I can only hope that my meeting with the Tile Man tomorrow morning will bring wonderful news on how these tiles will simply transform with the application of some special finishing agent (this is where he'll pull one of those typical work-men face sand inhale deeply, shake his head in regret and say... 'but that is quite a lot of work you know and I'll have to draw you up a devis...' which may just negate the saved costs of the window barriers...!

While I wait for exciting new things to happen on my house...

...allow me take you back to day 1.

This was what we bought. A little green goblin house on a piece of land. It was sold to us by a colourful Dutch lady whose house stands in huge grounds boasting wonderful views on the lake. Our land is behind her house, so we have a great view of... her house (more on creeping up on elderly Dutch neighbour with an inflated paper bag later).

ooo ahhh!

It's all going to take off next week...

... (hold that thought - I have been saying that for the last 4 weeks after every thursday chantier meeting). I have to say August is not the time to have 'almost' finished your house. All the tradesmen hang up their tools (or leave them strewn about the place) and disappear for a good 4 weeks! And they don't all go at the same time - they stagger it - so from about June until end of August you can find yourself pulling your hair out as you stand alone in your concrete pit being greeted by nothing but your own forlorn echoes 'hello oo oo oo oo!?'

I tried to comfort myself with the thought that perhaps they would come back refreshed after 3 weeks on a beach but I was radpidly put straight that they usually fly back to Kosovo or Portugal and spend 3 weeks solidly building their own homes! Fat chance they're going to come back fresh as spring chickens!

Garden planning

It's the 18th of April and after seeing my brothers lovely fledgling garden I am greatly inspired to start planning ours...

So I asked the architect to send me the plan of the house and the surrounding land which he did (albeit 9 months later) but he said 'ATTENTION PLANS PROVISOIRE' which has left me wondering quite how provisional it is! So, armed with a retractable tape measure and a heart full of hope I am off to do some verifying of my own... please dear god of the undershrub don't let me discover everything is out of proportion!

Will report back my findings later!

I should have started this many months ago...

... however I didn't think my house would take quite this long to build... so like all people seem to be doing in order to remain sane these days - I'm letting it out into the void of the internet - and perhaps into the lives of any other frustrated house builders out there.

I think this blog may save me a few friends as there are only so many lunches you can ruin moaning about your project manager and the things he hasn't done before you stop getting invited out... I need to keep a few friends to show the finished product to anyway!