I mentioned at the end of last week’s blog that France was beginning to come out of confinement and that we would definitely be able to make progress in Priory. Thankfully, we have.
As movement restrictions were lifted Pascal, our electrician, came at 0830 on Monday morning and has been working all week. Worryingly, despite trying to contact him, we haven’t heard anything from our plumber, Lee. We exchanged emails during the confinement and tried again a couple of weeks ago but nothing. We’re getting concerned for his welfare. As he sometimes reads our blogs – Lee, if you’re reading this one, please get in touch, not least to let us know you’re OK.
Pascal has managed to wire everything in now and, while we’re not on mains power as yet, he has used the existing power from our own house to check all the circuits – and things are looking amazing. We are especially pleased that our new chandelier works as I really wouldn’t want to climb to the top of the space again!
One of his largest jobs was installing the new fuse board. We asked him to put it next to where the old board is, at the top of the stairs, so as he was doing his work a huge snakes’ wedding was being created with the huge numbers of cables required to comply with French regulations. The new board is much neater but you can see just how many circuits we have had installed to bring Priory into the 21st century.
We feel it is a big step to see all of the new lighting functioning as, having had the whole gîte rewired we have taken the opportunity to do things exactly as we want and installed a lot of lighting as we feel good lighting can create lots of character, and we have had the switches put in the ‘right’ places!
Some of these pictures show our new lighting, although you can also see how much cleaning we have to do before we paint and decorate, but hopefully you agree that, when done, Priory will look fabulous.
As a new, and separate, power supply we were expecting to be inspected by the electricity provided before they connect us to the grid. However, Pascal has already received the all-important certificate of conformity required so, with luck, we will be all connected in the next couple of weeks.
While Pascal was doing the electrics, I was focussed on installing the kitchen, something I have never done before on my own. However, I am really pleased with the result so far. We needed to get the tiling in on the ‘dry’ side of the kitchen so that, next week, Pascal can do the sockets and switches there and, finally, we have been contacted by Darty who tell us that the cooker and fridge freezer will be delivered next week – 4 months after ordering them!
With the confinement being eased, we were really grateful to be able to get haircuts, as we both desperately needed one. Also the slightly odd rule about who could visit the déchetterie I mentioned last week was rescinded so we could go and empty the trailer only to fill it up immediately with soil from our friend. This has allowed us to finish planting the loniceras I started last week which will make Stable B&B look amazing when grown.
Of course, having planted 63 new hedging plants in the last week, we haven’t had any rain for days and there isn’t any forecast for the next week! Even the lawn is starting to suffer although we did enjoy an afternoon of sunbathing today!
Next week is a bit up in the air and depends on hearing from Lee (call us!!) but we’ll find something to do …
Á beintôt.