Day 9

So you may be noticing that in all my (over) excitement at having carpenters & plumbers on site I overlooked telling you what they did.

The carpenters installed heavier, new timbers to reinforce the existing joists. [I suspect that the original woodwork is now redundant, apart from attaching the plasterboard's metal rails to; not that I'd get M. Mazij to admit that, I'm sure.] There will be five on each side of the big beam that's to remain visible, but it must be all new timbers under the corridor at the back.

Sidenote: either JDK [sorry John if I'm stealing your concept; it's so long ago I have forgotten] or I had (what I thought was) a brilliant idea - why don't we lower the corridor at the back of upstairs & have a step (or two) up into the two bedrooms over the stable. This would give us adequate head room below the beams in the roof, and as the walls of the rooms follow the beams [planned so that no-one could brain themselves & sue us!], there would be no problem as long as the mezzanine floor above is high enough. Nobody dies from head injuries, we don't have to have padded beams with 'amusing' "duck or grouse" signs, bedroom ceilings will be high enough so that it doesn't feel like living in a cellar.

It was proving so difficult to get the idea through to T+B that I gave up in the end, reasoning that the corridor will only be used to access summer guest bedrooms, and no-one need wander round [outside their bedroom] in the night as there will be en-suite bath/shower rooms attached.

Well, then somebody at T+B [my money's on Nicholas; he's the only person to whom I hadn't tried to explain how it could work] had a brainwave: why don't we lower the corridor at the back of upstairs, so nobody needs to brain themselves on the beams and we can have a step or two up into the bedrooms which won't cause a problem as no-one need wander round the rest of the house in the night, as there are en-suite 'facilities'!

Obviously, by this time I'd got an eye on the already inadequate budget and said "no, that would be far too complicated/expensive", but it turns out not to cost very much more or be even remotely difficult. Now why couldn't I think of that?! [NB: those who don't know me might not spot the irony (sarcasm?) in my tone!]

/End sidenote.

So anyway, big new beefy joists were hoiked into position by blokes that didn't look big or strong enough for that sort of thing, and bolted into place. Said chaps can't see why we would want to keep the floor following the line of the original timber ["but that would be wonky"], and this is not a 'hill to die on', so we get a lovely new [flat] floor upstairs.

And downstairs I watch like a hawk until I'm sure the plasterer has got the concept of "yes, I DO want the ceiling wonky; I want to see the beam, and you must follow the joists EVEN IF THAT MAKES THE CEILING WONKY; no, we don't want it flat - we want to see as much of the beam as possible."... [Repeat as necessary]

I think that one could run and run. It's not a language discrepancy, it's a respect-for-old-buildings discrepancy. Even now in France old buildings are not seen as part of a cultural heritage that ought to be preserved in an original state, or renovated/restored "sympathetically", but just something you own that's inconvenient to fix & probably better left to rot. We've seen so many properties that are allowed to fall into decay: once the dilapidation process becomes too far advanced and it seems the building MUST fall down [certainly it would no longer be economically viable to repair], then the owner finally decides to let someone else have a chance and puts it up for sale!

Enough of how I wish they would value their buildings as assets before it's too late! [Just being thankful Troyes became a relatively poor town & couldn't afford to "improve" the medieval quarter in the 50s/60s, and now someone in charge is making them do it in the old style.]

Anyway, seven of the ten long timbers went in, and Friday would see the process finished.

Plumbers: lots of discussion; floor waste pipes laid.

All will be hidden and as long as it works, I'm not getting involved. Nothing I saw to worry me, so I'm not going to worry!