New Build - Diary Of A French New Build (Iss 185)
Our only previous experience of having a new house built – in England in 1995 – was with a team of men who came and worked five days a week, almost continuously, for the whole eight months of the build. But this time in France, with the building company’s site manager arranging men and materials, the presence of the builders was erratic and progress was frustratingly slow at times.
After the first flurry of activity when three rows of blocks were laid in one day to outline our new house, 11 days passed before we saw any more action. But we learned to be patient and in the first week of June 2005 the walls doubled in height, bringing them up to just above floor level of our one-storey building.
Two days later a massive amount of roadstone was delivered and dumped in great mounds, half inside and half outside the outline of the house. The next day just one of the men came, along with the smallest digger I’ve ever seen. His task was to move the roadstone to fill the blocked outline, levelling the stones to form the sub-floor.
The day was baking hot and this miniature machine chugged about; the engine stalling frequently, accompanied by foreign cursing. He had to demolish a few blocks on one side and then build a ramp with the roadstone just so he could drive the machine into the house. He got stuck on the ramp. He almost rolled it over. He was not a happy chappie and after a stoic solo effort he gave up for the day.
Early on 21 June a huge lorry arrived, loaded with wood. Was it the roof trusses? The house was only knee-high… Since there’d been no builders on site for two weeks, we thought we’d better help the driver unload the timbers. He couldn’t get his low-loader onto our site, so the wood was stacked either side of our access drive as far as his hydraulic crane could reach.
Ceiling level
A few days later six merry maçons arrived and in just three days the walls rose dramatically to ceiling level. Using timber posts and string as a guide, the curved wall by the front door took shape. We discovered they don’t use pre-cast lintels over windows and doorways in France, instead they rig up poles, planks and cramps to make a mould and pour in concrete to cast them in-situ. The same method was used to cast a supporting post between the living room and garage, and then to make a long lintel above it on which a gable wall was built with blocks. The staggered tops of the gable ends were also filled with cast concrete, to make a smooth roof-line.
We were impressed by the Turkish team of maçons. They were always polite, hardworking and skilful and got on with the job; stopping only for a picnic lunch and not even that during Ramadan. At the end of one long, hot day we offered them all a beer from the fridge, but the boss made the other men give them back when he realised they contained alcohol, forbidden to muslims – a faux-pas we did not repeat! Tony was then faced with the problem of what to do with six opened beers…
Their last task on our site was to fix two of the roof trusses flat against the gable end walls, then they cleared away their tools and kit and moved on to their next job. The shell of the house, now empty of builders’ stuff, looked huge inside.
After another wait of many days, two men arrived to install the rest of the roof trusses, beams and assorted timber. It took them only three days to put up the bones of the roof structure, following a detailed diagram.
We’d requested a vaulted ceiling in the living room/kitchen, so instead of triangular trusses, they fitted five heavy beams across that central part of the house, with lengths of timber nailed across on top to support the roof. From underneath, the framework of wood looked intricate and strong. Standing back we could really see it was no longer a rectangle of blocks but a recognisable house in the making.