Day 22/Friday meeting

Today's meeting seemed a lot less painful, yet it felt as though we got more discussed...

I think Nicolas is less stressful than I'm currently finding Jean-Marie!

The problem with the bath waste is one of understanding: we needed to specify an exact model, and didn't realise there was no option for changing it later. The waste can't be central with a centre draining bath (?) although it did seem later that we could have the drain further back at the centre to allow for the siphon (u-bend, I think). So if we want the option of a cast iron claw foot bath later, we have to make that decision now.

Hmm! I like having the possibility, and am fairly sure if we could get the waste at the back of a cast iron freestanding bath, that would work for a built-in bath later? Will have to chat with David about that.

Have to admit I did say that being English I didn't know it wasn't possible to change a bath in France. They were talking about "normes", and how you couldn't have a waste dropping straight down because of the smell... Lucky I couldn't summon up the French for: "well that's a big change, the French no longer wanting their plumbing to have the usual odour of drains". I don't think that would have helped my cause!

I think M. Torelli backed down a little about that [being unable to have a different bath]... I do know their normes are different than British Standard, but I didn't realise we couldn't change our minds.

We've got till Wednesday to decide on a bath, and then it will literally be cast in concrete. In that case, I'm tempted to say "go for the cast iron one", and if we later need an ugly modification about floor level to choose a built-in one, that can be hidden by the bath panel...

Similarly the fact that we aren't 100% happy with the taps seems to cause a problem; not sure why, because if we're leaving the bath question open, the tap height can't be decided until the bath is chosen... They're going to leave the pipes "en attente" in the partition wall, and not plaster over the joints in the place. Similarly for the washbasins/shower.

I've passed on M. Baty's question/sketch, and now have sent various scans to everyone who wanted one. The main issue now seems to be [again, probably one of my/our understanding?] that M. Baty needs the openings finished to take his exact measurements; the builders want M. Baty's sizes before they finish the openings.

M. Mekki seems a bit stressed by trying to fit in laying the stone slabs in the french window opening before the builders break for August, so David is emailing M. Baty to see if he is happy about taking his measurements from a blue line on the wall, and adding on 1.00m - if he's OK with that, the slabs can arrive early September without pushing our dates back at all.

Apart from the 'comedy moment' when the electrician's foot came through the ceiling, everything seemed to go much more smoothly; I'm liking Nicolas more and more each time I see him, as well.

Final news: our very kind friend John Knighton [let me know if you want the name check removing!] is helping out with the design for the french windows. His CAD skills are way superior to how my brain is currently coping with number crunching, and his .pdf sketches look infinitely nicer than my best attempts on graph paper to visualise how a "nice" doorway might look. [We've turned our noses up at plain patio-style doors.]

With John's permission I might mangle the format of one of his drawings so I can upload it into Blogger so you can see the results!