Painting

Yup, it's a three pronged attack on the house.  Taking no prisoners. This time we are leaving the house complete!  One of the things that wasn't completed last year was the painting.  We got one side of the house done with two coats and it looks great.  Around the side was a bit of a different matter, as the painter ran out of paint so it only had one coat and the top part was not done at all.

We managed to get in touch with the Dutch company that made the original paint and were able to order the exact same colour.  I suggested to Michelle that the side bit wouldn't matter so much, but from the look she gave me it obviously does.

Sometimes we forget the sorry appearance the house had when we first bought it....what were we thinking!!!

...there was no way I was going up there!

Electrics!

When we planned for Michelle to go back to France for a month in April we thought it would be a simple job of doing a bit of plastering in the kitchen and fixing a couple of sockets.  Enough time for her to check on our house, see her parents and maybe get an internet connection sorted.

Well on the plus side we did get all the internet sorted, but it did come with quite an effort of drilling through stone walls and rewiring the inside.  Old houses again.

For the past 12 months we had been waiting for our builder to reconnect one side of our downstairs electrics, install a new light and switch  and fix a hole in the wall that he had previously created in trying to install said new light switch. As we were only visiting once a year it wasn't a big deal but it was quite a pain not having one side of the downstairs having power, especially with a small kitchen.

Finally able to use the old sockets again!

Eventually we realised we would have to engage a professional electrician to do the work.
Michelle asked around and found a reliable electrician who was available.  He was able to reconnect the non functioning plugs downstairs, create a new switch for a hall light and put in some new electric sockets upstairs.  He was even able to fill in the hole in the wall downstairs.

When we bought the house in 2015 we were told it had all been rewired. I suppose in the fine print it didn’t say rewired correctly, but when ever you hear a French sparky suck his teeth, shake his head  or go 'merde' under his breath you know that your wallet is going to take another hammering!

The new fuses

..and these were the old ones which are apparently not very good. Yeah I'm none the wiser either.

It turns outside that all the fuses were basically crap and noone had bothered to set our massive hot water boiler ( I’m still at a loss why it’s so big) to only heat during off peak times. So they are now replaced and we on ‘heures creuses.  Hopefully the bills will reduce.

Ok so that's plumbing and electrics sorted, just one more thing to sort out before Michelle has to lock up and join me back in Perth.

Plumbing!

I think most old properties in France have idiosyncratic plumbing and ours is no different. There are still noises and gurgling sounds in the house I choose to ignore, but some have to be addressed.  When we bought the house there was a pump under the sink. There was some sort of gravity issue, so after the sink emptied the pump kicked in, and moved the water under the lounge floor and into the waste water pipe in the laundry.   When we had the kitchen remodelled our builder took a different approach and connected the waste water to run straight outside the house along the gutter into the drain halfway across the square and down the road!  Très rustique non?  Well apparently not. We were advised this was ok by our builder. Anyway, the Marie asked us to get it running underground.  I thought it went very well with the medieval history of the village. Ah well.

Michelle found a contact on the Ariège network Facebook group who was available and able to do the job. Sighh....more money!  The local tradesmen must rub their hands in glee every time we arrive!  This house is getting more like a financial tardis each time we visit!!!