New Build - Diary Of A French New Build (Iss 186)

It’s August. Nothing happens in August. We’d been warned that the entire French building industry closes down for this month, but even so it was frustrating to see no progress on the shell of our new house. We tried to ignore the muddy mounds and piles of pallets surrounding the grey block structure and blond wood bones of the roof, and found other ways to enjoy the summer while we waited.

Then, on the last day of the month, the roofers arrived. First, up went green lathes in horizontal lines across the trusses and beams on all three parts of the split-level roof. Then they fixed boards on edge along the three ridges and set up a neat device to carry tiles up in a hod on rails from the ground, up to the roof’s bottom edge, then up the slope to the ridge.

Local planning regulations gave us no choice about the terracotta roof tiles – fortunately we’d have chosen these anyway. A delivery arrived just in time and within the hour the first tiles were travelling up in the motorised hod to one roofer who then threw them one at a time to his mate to lay in place.

They inserted six special tiles with cute peephole vents and four larger ones as outlets for the ventilation fans. Any moisture in the space between ceiling and roof can escape through these vents. However, above the vaulted ceiling there would be no space so in that section they laid a breathable waterproof membrane under the tiles. A row of tiles curled around the roof edges and ridge tiles were cemented in place.

In this three-day burst of activity the roof was finished, or so we thought…

A few days later, two lads brought our guttering – pre-painted aluminium, colour co-ordinated with the roof tiles and render. Instead of using preformed fittings, the cheery lads measured and bent the straight down-pipes to fit, using a crimping machine in the back of their van, making a very neat job. Of all the jobs we expected to happen next, this one was not even in the running!

Roof problem

Then, while wallowing in the pool gazing at the house, we noticed a problem. The roof did not completely cover the curved bathroom wall. We compared actual measurements against the plans and discovered that the roof truss over the left-hand side of this section of roof was placed too far to the right, leaving a few centimetres of the top of the wall exposed. So we wrote to the building company and called in the site manager to inspect the problem and organise a solution. He came, he saw, and we waited for it to be rectified.

Pouring the floor

At the end of September the Turkish builders returned to prepare for the concrete floor slab being poured. They laid pipes in the sub-floor hardcore, for waste water and the integral vacuum cleaner, and inserted conduits to take electricity and phone cables later. They tidied up the edges of doorways and installed the pre-cast sills. They levelled the hardcore by laser and shovel, then spread out plastic sheeting and iron grids over the whole floor area. Two lorry-loads of ready-mix concrete were then poured along a conveyor belt into the studio, the garage and the house, while the men shovelled and barrowed it into the corners. The garage floor was trowelled to a smooth finish, the rest would later receive a layer of screed on top. They left a sea of wet concrete and instructions to keep off it for a week.

Windows and Doors

Three pallets holding our windows, shutters and external doors had been sitting on site for a month then within one day in mid-October they were all fitted into place. They came already glazed, hinged and bracketed, complete with door knocker and handles. Unlike British windows, these are fitted to the inside edge and open inwards, leaving sills on the outside just wide enough for a window-box full of geraniums.

The garage doors were still undercoat-orange, the windows still had blue protective film, and the shutters waited patiently to be fitted, but the house was now watertight so, apart from the roof problem, which was still to be rectified, we felt we had made a major step forward.