Lots of progress!

It’s finally the year the house will be finished! There have been a lot of changes since my last visit in September, and the house is looking less like a building site and more like a home. I'm really pleased with how it's coming along and love how it's now looking from the outside.

The roof has been an ongoing work in progress for many months and has caused quite a big delay to the project. The new structural beams are all sorted now but as soon as we arrived at the house we noticed one of the skylights was in the wrong place, which means it was in the utility room instead of the kitchen (the whole purpose of the skylight was to create extra light in the kitchen). The wall between the kitchen and utility room hasn’t been constructed yet so the error is not as obvious as it sounds, but still … I’m not sure how it wasn’t clear on the plans!

This caused a whole spiral of discussions with the builders because while we were talking about the skylight needing to be moved, Anthony did some measurements and realised the back door would touch the worktop in the utility room when it opens (because of the way the hinges add about 5cm). This means the wall between the kitchen and utility room needs to be moved about 10cm to allow for this and the skylight would no longer fit in that new space!

So the decision was between ordering a new, smaller skylight or just removing it completely - which then caused further discussions about the height of the ceilings in the kitchen and utility room as the plan was to keep them high and sloped against the roof to avoid the need for a tunnel from the skylight down to the ceiling, but without the skylight there would be no need for these high ceilings.

After looking again at the kitchen plans I decided to go with removing the skylight completely and lowering the ceilings. When the original house plans were designed I didn’t know exactly what the kitchen would look like so having this now finalised really helped with the decision as I can now visualise how the kitchen will look and having high ceilings means lots of space above the cupboards and a very long flume for the extractor fan, which I don’t think would look good. Having more spotlights in this area will have to make up for the natural light that would have been created from the skylight. Phew, that was an intense discussion with a decision needing to be made on the spot about something that would change the whole look of the house!

There is another skylight in the corridor to bedrooms 2,3 & 4 and the ceilings will remain full height there to maximise the light. I did consider keeping the ceilings high in bedroom 4 but have decided against this and all bedrooms will be normal height.

The partitions in all the bedrooms are now up (with the exception of the dressing area in bedroom 1) and the insulation and plaster board has started going up throughout the house. Anthony has installed some internal cameras so I’m now able to watch the work progress inside the house. It will be great to see the wall go up between the kitchen and utility room as this will make a big difference to how the main living space looks.

The windows and sliding doors are now all in place. The new sliding doors in the salon really make the most of the view and fill the house with so much more light. I’m still not fully convinced about the shade of green on the windows (although it is growing on me each time I visit) so I’m going to reserve judgement until the house is finished and make a decision then. It will be possible to change the colour later on if I really want to.

The mairie was very strict about which colours I could have for the windows, and also the exterior (render) colour of the house. They stipulated a choice of 12 colours for the exterior colour, none of which I particularly like as they're all orange! We went to Point P (a company specialising in building materials) and were shown the huge variety of colour choice - I decided to go for the lightest possible version that has a slight orange tinge and hope it's close(ish) enough to one of the 12 orange colours stipulated. I like the house the colour it is at the moment, but it's too light for the regulations.

During our visit we met with the electrician and the plumber on site, who plan to start their work in the next few weeks. Anthony and Christopher put together a comprehensive plan for the electrics, so that meeting was quick as everything was very clear.

The other decision I had to make during this visit was which tiles to go for on the terrace, outside stairs and pool area. After deliberating between travertine tiles and a more modern tile I decided to go for travertine. The exterior of the house is still quite rustic so I think these will tie in more naturally, and they are the tiles I envisaged right from the start of the project. Concrete has now been poured on the terrace which has created an amazing expanse and I can’t wait to see what this looks like once the travertine tiles are placed on top.

The builders have filled all the old holes in the swimming pool and created some new concrete stairs, ready for the swimming pool company to put the new resin layer on top. We had to order the margelle (edging on the swimming pool) during the visit and the builder managed to find us a much better deal than the swimming pool company, which I was grateful for.

I love how the house is progressing and the quality of the work is still at a really high standard. The only disappointment is that the completion date is now May/June which is much later than I expected. In my excitement I have already planned a holiday to the house with some friends in May so we may need to rearrange our flights. I’ve planned another trip to the house in March so I will see how it looks then and make a decision as to whether it will be near enough finished or not.

I’m really enjoying the whole journey through the renovation and as I plan to have the house long-term, I’d rather the time was taken now to get it right rather than it being rushed.