Saturday, May 14, 2011

Bastille Day: a day to celebrate?

David spoke to M. Waeber (with whom I am currently NOT impressed), and he says he can (probably) start our tiling on the 14th of July...

Hmmm!

As I say, I'm severely underwhelmed with him at the moment.

On the positive side, I think I will have no problem persuading David that we should ask someone else to finish off our terrace, when we get around to thinking about it; he's been doing the Bogés' terrace since early April [that we know about], and that's about 50% bigger than ours, so at that rate of progress we'd have two months worth of work ahead of us.

[ETA: After a TWO YEAR DELAY! Apparently, that's how long Caroline and her husband have been waiting.]

I suspect M. Hamid would do it in just over a week?

Friday, May 06, 2011

COMPLETE nightmare

Seriously!

I'm hoping it's just my subconscious worrying about M. Waeber doing our tiling unsupervised, but I had a horrible dream last night: M. Baty had had to alter some of the tiles to accommodate some woodwork, and we were left with chevrons of dull green/red tiles across the floor. He'd also made a "feature" of a blocked up doorway [I think that's an echo of Leander Road; we don't have a blocked up doorway in the bedroom in France, and the one in the study is long since dealt with], building it out, putting architrave around it and there was a full sized professional photograph of me in the middle!

Someone had tiled out the kitchen in two different types of very fancy tiles, and installed one of those elaborate cooker hoods. There were different colours/styles of tiles everywhere.

I'd left my brother in charge, and I was asking him why on earth he'd let them do it.

In the end I was stomping around refusing to accept it, and insisting that it was ALL taken out and they start from scratch again. I was in a right mood, but wasn't going to put up with that mess!

I think the sooner I can get back to France and oversee M. Waeber, the sooner my dreams will be untroubled again...

I don't want to see results like that again in a hurry.

Having stayed in various gîtes over the years, we've formed the impression that there's an unwritten 'law' about French flooring... Never have fewer than five different styles/shapes/patterns/colours of tiles/parquet/whatever!

We've already (despite our best efforts) achieved the "French style" in our home: two different types of tiles [the delay meant the original choice was discontinued by the time we were ready to order more of them], two different types of stone [tiles (that look like slabs) and original slabs, but that would be three types if you include that we used some original slabs and have since bought some more from Burgundy], and there will be a wooden floor in the entrance hall when we can afford it [and there are already wooden fillets in the doorways from the boo-boo about laying the stone tiles].

Not mentioning upstairs where we've got three different patterns of floorboards (so far).

Going French in the flooring department does NOT mean I'm going to have a (two-tone) brown kitchen, though!

Right, I'm back off to hibernate again.

Thursday, May 05, 2011

In limbo, AGAIN

We're waiting for M. Waeber to schedule our tiling job...

I'm not terribly impressed with him agreeing to do it last month and then turning around and letting us down, but that's been par for the course!

[As I side note: it really emphasises how wonderful Messrs Mekki/Luparello & Baty have been, so makes us even more thankful for their contributions.]

It's dragged on for too long now [a bit like the constant problems the interminable Microsoft updates keep causing for my computer!!! At least one update a day for the last 17 days, and many more IE crashes]: we were due to start early April, and finish late May...

2010!

Once more, I've lost all enthusiasm, at the moment, so I'm probably going to "hibernate" my blogs for a while; at least until I have something positive to report (or a sudden surge of energy). The return to cold weather (although entirely seasonal) hasn't helped my mood, either.

So, until I have some more progress to report: enjoy my hiatus, and I hope life is running more smoothly for you guys out there!