Renovation project - Buying wood in France

Renovation project - Buying wood in France

The decision has finally been made on the stairs; we will have a straight flight on the opposite wall. This will mean making another hole in the floor and boarded the current opening up. There are also 2 large concrete steps that will require removing.

But first is the big job of ordering the wood.

We have spent the last couple of days measuring up trying to get the angles correct and the size of the stairs is not the easiest of tasks, but we think we have it (if we don’t this will be a very costly mistake!)

We head of to the wood yard Reseau Pro, this is a large national company, but they have what wee want, I now know many French words for the different parts of the stairs, but I am still hoping the guy that spoke a few words of English will serve us, he doesn’t!

We go into the wood yard and say what we require, unfortunately the wood is not the correct size and no two pieces are exactly the same.

The pieces that will be used for the rakes (sides) are chosen, there is a ten millimetre difference, but this should not cause a major problem. The pieces are too big to be cut in the wood yard, which really surprises us, due to the fact that it is a wood yard, but never mind

We choose the pieces for our steps and pick pieces slightly bigger than we need. These pieces can be cut so we ask for them to be cut to the size we need, but to make sure the off cuts are added to the delivery as these can be used as supports for the steps.

Delivery is arranged and there is no mention of cost, I have to ask how much and can we pay, the total bill is actually paid to the driver once it is delivered.

We have a delivery date of the following Wednesday, we ask if there is any chance of getting it earlier and they say no, but if anything changes they will call us and arrange an earlier delivery date.

Once back home, John removes the floorboards for where the stairs will go and uses these (and a few from the boarded loft of the main house) to cover the hole from the old stairs.