Well throw the books away. There is no easy simple, painless way to renovate unless you are skilled enough to do it yourselves.
We bought our walls and roof with a view and very little else. We were ready for retirement from bookselling, travelling around the world, but wanted a project not wanting to slip in to the life many opt for here of eating, drinking and socialising.
We lived down the road in a beautiful old Presbytere but lacking land and the idea of having a gite up the road with lots of land seemed a good idea.
We bought and started finding artisans to help us with the rebuilding.We now have lists of people you can use and others not to ... but our joiner was a mistake that gave us nightmares. Too many mistakes to be put right , too many experts opinions paid for to prove nothing worked or met the norms. We had 3 experts who all had mounds of paperwork to prove all the mistakes made over the 3 years it took for the joiner to say he had finished. When the joiner said he had finished and wanted his final payment, we refused till he made things safe or worked, the list would be too long to tell you. So he took us to a small claims court.
Everyone warned us that Brits never win in the French courts and we said " well there has got to be a first" and off we went to court with a barrister and high hopes. I even had the party lined up and the champagne on ice, a clearer cut case of wrong doing you could not get, I thought.
Come the day the joiner who represented himself admitted all the errors and even took along diagrams to show the judge how he was going to put things right. He needed paying he said, as he was in financial difficulty, which he was. We knew if we gave him the money we would never see him again. It was a week before Christmas when we received the judgement. Malc was out and I gleefully opened the letter with the courts decision ... at first I thought my French was letting me down. Did it say " pay the man and he will then come and put all the work right " It blinkin did.
Guess what happened, we paid him and his workshop closed and he disappeared off the face of the earth. We heard he had gone to South America.
Can I please ask you to tick interesting rather than enjoyed!
Val says On telling more, the lawyers said they were amazed we had lost and we needed to take it to appeal. Now to go to appeal would take at least two years and as they said although an expensive procedure we could claim it back from the joiner when we won. I hope you all agree that we did the sensible thing and said No. The joiner had disappeared, he had no money anyway. So we put it behind us and now we can treat it as a " bad life experience" which we all have in our lives at some point. .. and when I am out with my donkeys on a morning with birds singing, it all fades into insignificance.
Comments to taglines82@gmail.com
