Day 14/"Friday" meeting

OK, so it's Tuesday, but we had Friday's meeting today! Oh, goody, one more this afternoon, and then another one on Friday.

The day started really well: I asked M. Mazij jnr if he hated me, he said he did. But thankfully he didn't manage to hold the straight face long enough for me to be completely convinced! He was smiling as though he's OK with it, and the young lad I think just happily gets on with what he's told.

The carpenters are therefore being inconvenienced by everyone else, getting in everyone's way and getting on with it. I do like working with these guys!

Jean-Marie & M. Petipas were "upstairs" looking at the joists when I noticed the builders were laying down too many courses of stone at the bottom of the bathroom window. They'd laid three courses of biggish stones, and the brick were still to come.

I went and fetched the back view architect's drawing and spoke with M. Alain. He said they were doing what Jean-Marie had said to do in a drawing of his. I "remember" this drawing - it's one I never saw, and J-M was asking me if I had it because someone had got it and he didn't have a copy. I said I'd not seen it, but wanted to.

I didn't realise that I should have pushed harder as it showed the window sill being 315mm above the finished floor level - far too high for a step. We had a discussion: I insisted that I hadn't been told that we could no longer have what we wanted, and that I hadn't seen any changed drawings; the builders haven't seen the original drawings so didn't realise that J-M's sketch was wrong.

He said we'd been there when he did it - maybe, but I never watch over his shoulder; perhaps I should! Either way, with that raised sill it was not possible to have the correct height window with the outside lintel being in line with the other openings in the back wall. We agreed to lower the stonework and have a single step in the bathroom [at the point where I'm reminding J-M of the conversation where we asked to have a floor tile on the base of the window embrasure so we could use it like a door I think it all came flooding back to him], with a floor tile, and the outside will be one brick depth above the gravel.

I'm so glad I'm here - if we were coming for fortnightly meetings, we'd have ended up with a much less usable window, as well as a not-lowered corridor.

M. Torelli and M. Jimmy are finishing off placing the waste pipes for upstairs [I know it's a long way off, but so much cheaper/easier to prepare for it now than do that when we are ready].

The missing plaquiste is causing a hold-up now, but quite honestly I don't think there's any room for him to fit in the stable even were he here! He's coming this afternoon [well, M. Jalel is coming; M. Kadir is on holiday], but I think that's just for a discussion of where the partition wall is going.