Meeting on Friday

We went to France on Wednesday evening, and had a MUCH better journey down there - no snow/snow ploughs/gritters and the Shuttle was working fine [unlike for the poor people who got stuck last night!].

First thing Thursday morning M. Antoni fixed the télécommande on the boiler - we now can phone it up and get it to heat the house before we get there! It was 7°C in the kitchen when we arrived; not warm enough, but thankfully the poêle soon got it up to a bearable temperature.

On Friday we had a meeting with Messrs Torelli, Mekki & Luparello; sadly, J-M either lied to us [again] or got his facts wrong [again], and what he promised would be done with the housing for the loo cistern is not possible.

Unfortunately, now we can't go back to the less-preferred (but still better than what we have now) option; if he'd been honest, we would have have made the room a little smaller to avoid having a bulky housing sticking out.

So now we have to do what Jean-Marie wanted; instead of having an elegant room, we will have one with a "feature" shelf niche. Project manager 1, client's wishes 0.

I'm fairly certain I know why he has clients [to give him money and manage all the tedious project managing he can't be bothered doing], but I'm racking my brains as to why we have a project manager [we do all the project managing and give away money that would be useful for more building work]...

WHY?

NOT happy, but am getting pretty good at not stressing the sh!t that guy has been shovelling our way. Apparently, M. Torelli told him that there was no way we could have the smaller housing, and suggested exactly what I'd said about moving the wall in about 1½". J-M insisted that he do what we didn't want, and refused to countenance the second-best option.

It's too late to do that now as the shower base is done.

I know that's all hearsay, but I've seen his previous drawings/him instructing other workmen to do the "wrong" thing, so I'm inclined to believe M. Torelli over J-M.

Everyone is much more content to continue working without him.

We feel a bit happier about everything else - M. Torelli seems much more amenable now that we have seen him without J-M there, and Messrs Mekki and Luparello are as accommodating as usual!

A little later we saw M. Waeber - how lucky to see him before he used battleship grey grout on the shower tray [that wasn't going to dry any lighter!].

He's now done it in the same beige colour as the grout between the tiles, the tiles and the dry pebbles in the shower.

I think it's not the right sort, but at this stage I don't care; if it "goes wrong" very quickly it will be really easy to rake out & replace, and it if lasts a decade I'm not going to worry!

I have to admit to a mini-meltdown, but my excuse is that since mid-October 2004 I have been working to get this house to a liveable state/finished and it's not going to happen before Easter [if we're lucky]. It's NOT been a massive drama all of the time [or even most of the time] but it HAS been going on for far too long!

Not to mention costing a lot more money than it should have done!

On a final note: we mentioned to one of the artisans that we have only received one bill from any of the firms working on the project since June, and that was three months late because it had got "stuck" at St Mesmin. Another set we know was sent in July/Aug/Sept, but we received a copy direct from Schwartz when we chased them [still haven't received the original bills from T+B], neither have we received a promised credit note...

This unnamed artisan reckons that J-M is deliberately withholding the bills from us in order to make us look like bad payers - I think he's wanting us to come across as "nightmare" clients. If that's not the case, he's just being massively incompetent; I'm not sure which is the "better" scenario?

David has written a really nice letter to all the artisans asking them to send any communication to us direct, as we risk looking like bad payers because J-M is not handing on invoices... I wonder how many more bills his letter will flush out!

Oh, I forgot to mention: in the fourteen months that this job has been going on, the tiles we chose for the bathroom have been discontinued; another little irritation!

Fingers crossed: a very helpful lady at CVS showed us a very similar-looking example in a catalogue and rang up and ordered a sample of both colourways while we were there. She says they should arrive next week, so as I say fingers crossed!