Renovation project - Lights, electrics and deliveries in France

Renovation project - Lights, electrics and deliveries in France

Today we are waiting for the joists but we have no idea what time they are arriving, so John makes a start on the electrics, they were all in place and ready to have sockets and light switches added to them, but because we have changed the layout of the house we now have to put the leads in different places.

The light in the living room is fine as we have the big old chandelier that we bought from the TROC, but the kitchen lights now have to be moved, the switch was originally next to the door opening by the living room, but as this is no longer going to be a door we move it. The most obvious place is by the back door so it can be switched on when you enter the house, but if you come in through the living room the kitchen will be dark!

As we are going to rebuild the stair wall John puts a light in this space, which will give enough light to enter the kitchen. Our next problem is what sort of lights will we use? We have been looking in shops and on line and found an amazing site Mail Order Lighting, I spend the next hour looking at the different lights and dreaming about what the house will look like when it is finally finished, which hopefully won’t be too long now!!!!!!

Back to reality and off the internet, the joists still haven’t arrived, we have had to block the road outside the house to ensure the lorry can park when it arrives, this is not a popular move with the neighbours, we have been having some parking problems lately as there are a lot more people here, all the holiday home owners seem to have arrived at the same time and parking is at a premium, it isn’t helped by the new people who take up 3 places with their car, trailer and space they use to load the trailer, we have a chat with one of the holiday home owners and explain that the delivery will be coming today, and this is why we have blocked the spaces, her English improves suddenly when she realises it isn’t us who are normally taking up all of the spaces.

Late afternoon we get a call from Theresa who tells us that the delivery will now be coming tomorrow. This is something that you do have to get used to in France, the delivery details are not set in stone, there is no point getting upset (did you hear that John!!!!!) the delivery will arrive and usually with a pleasant French delivery driver who sees no problem in the fact that it has changed date a number of times, so if you are moving to France from a country where deliveries arrive on time, be prepared!!!!