We bought our house in France and enjoyed it enormously. However, there was one big drawback...the kitchen was the size of a shoebox, complete with 2 doors, which limited what you could do with it to.............not much. So, when we moved to France (in a different area) for 19 months, I got a job at the local university teaching English and we decided to save almost all my salary for a new kitchen.
The kitchen has a door through to the garage, but the garage has a stud wall cutting it in half. In addition there is a flower bed directly outside the garage's up and over door so it is clear that the garage has never been used as such. We use the back part of the garage for the freezer and some kitchen storage.
Our plan is to knock down the stud wall, the wall between the kitchen and garage, put a wall and window where the garage door is and to knock in a side door so we can access the house from the car after shopping. If funds allow we also want a carport on the side.
So we need a builder.....easier said than done when you don't live in your house for most of the year. We found a Portuguese chap who had lived in France for 30+ years and who had done work for the local mairie as well as a neighbour's daughter so we ask him for an estimate. He is most agreeable and co-operative. He comes round, talks things through and takes away the details to draw up the estimate. He says we will need to get a plumber and electrician as he doesn't do that but he will get the tiler. He recommends tradesmen. We also want to sort tiles, units, heaters etc ourselves so he doesn't need to do that. In order to minimise possible confusions we have detailed lists of everything which needs doing, down to where we want sockets to go.
My husband draws up plans and submit them to the mairie for planning permission and this comes through in due course. We have to enclose before and after photos, which take a bit of fiddling, but we manage. You don't pay any fees until the work is done, when you inform the mairie you have finished. We actually haven't finished because we got planning permission for a roof light in the big upstairs room but haven't got round to fitting it yet. No-one seems to mind as long it eventually gets done.
When the estimate arrives it is by no means cheap but we expect to get what we pay for and since we haven't been able to find another builder we go with it, specifying that we don't want the car port which is horrendously expensive. Next visit to the house we meet up, finalise start dates (September 1st) and how long it will take (8 days) so then we go off to Hygena to choose the units. We hved lots of fun and arranged for our kitchen to be fitted 2 weeks after the builder's start date, which should have been fine. Everyone seems most professional.
By the September we had returned to the UK and I didn't have a job so I went back to France for the building work. Our daughter and her children are living in the house at the time, although 2 are weekly boarders, which leaves me, my daughter and her 2 year old foster daughter during the week. We expect some disruption and move everything portable out of the kitchen and into the dining room. We have a plug-in hot plate, an electric grill, a kettle etc so it should be fine.
Day 1
The builder arrives with 2 helpers; he sets them to taking down the stud wall and removing the garage door, which he takes away although that was not part of the agreement and which we had been expecting to sell. We never saw it again. Once that's gone he sets them to building the wall and fitting the window frame. By evening he has been gone all afternoon, leaving the 2 lads to work unsupervised. They cover the hole which is the window and leave. They return the following day and cut the new door in the side wall. This they 'seal' with a tarpaulin and an old door propped against it, not really very secure is it?
During the next couple of days the electrician comes to disconnect wires and the internal wall comes down. The freezer by now is in the hall and we are washing up in the bath but it's OK. Then everything stops. We see no-one. There is no door in the side wall. I am very worried. Phone calls to the UK are costing a fortune. I spend a sleepless night with a dictionary working out how to call the builder and demand he returns to work. He obviously has another job and I understand that he needs to keep everyone working but the 8 days time span is certainly going out of the window, which is now in place with glass but without shutters.
The builder returns to work after the phone call and fits the side door. He asks my daughter which way round I want it to go!!!! There is only one way to fit the door.....ie with the metal grill on the window light on the outside so the bit of wood at the bottom of the door that the rain runs off is also on the outside. He waits till she has taken the little one to nursery and then he asks me which way I want the door. I say 'The right way' and he talks about the car port. I remind him that we are not having a car port and I want the door to open into the kitchen not out.
He fits the door the wrong way round.
Another sleepless night with a dictionary while I work out what to say to him and the next day I phone him. He is furious, adamant that I wanted the door opening out into the non-existent car port. My husband rings him from UK. He rants to both of us that it will cost us for him to rehang the door.
Days later the door is rehung and he asks for the door furniture so he can fit it. We give him the box and he says he can't fit it because there is a screw missing. There isn't, but what can you do? We go and buy another which he grudgingly fits, keeping a key for himself. This key becomes a bone of contention. It takes us days to get it back and he is furious that we won't let him keep a key to our house. To make his point that he needs access he arrives at 8am the following day, ringing the door bell as if it's the end of the world.
During this time electricians and plumbers have come, worked and gone. The 8 days are long gone. I have no idea when I'll be able to return to home and husband...I can hardly leave my daughter and a 2 year old with him. Throughout his attitude to us is aggressive and uncooperative. He is charm and compliance itself on the phone to my husband. He is the epitome of a male chauvinist pig with us and we don't trust him an inch, or rather a centimetre.
We have bought the tiles, taking a floor plan to the shop and letting the shop assistant do the calculations. There are no where near enough tiles so we need to get more. For once the builder is helpful and lets us buy them through his account to save us a bit of money. The tiler does a great job and the builder proudly shows me the strip of something which has been laid where the 2 different floors meet so there will be no shift in the tiles.
Eventually the work is finished, although there are still no shutters on the window and he refuses to make good a large hole where the skirting board was removed. We have decided to fit the new skirting boards ourselves....... anything to get him out of our house. We are still washing up in the bath because Hygiena can't fit the units, including the sink unit, for another few weeks. I can come home at last.
The units are eventually fitted so all we will need to do is skirting boards and tiling splashbacks behind the units, or my husband can.
The end of October finds us back in our house, really pleased with the units. My kitchen is how huge, light and airy. The builder suddenly appears one morning with the shutters for the window. They are unfinished wood and he hangs them rather badly. My husband asks if he can make good the hole in the skirting board and he is all smiles, Of course, no trouble. We are sure that if my husband had been in France for the build we would not have had all the difficulties. He has no respect for women. Perhaps it's the Mediterranean blood in him.
We choose tiles for the walls and my husband fits the skirting boards.
Eventually the bills come in. We pay the plumber and electrician. Then the builder's bill arrives. He has charged us for rehanging the door and even for the strip of whatever it is on the floor where the underneath changes. Naturally we don't pay for these last 2 items but send a cheque for all the rest.
Some weeks later we are amazed to get a summons from the court ... he is suing for the rest of the money. Our daughter goes to see the court officials and they explain that she can represent me so we don't have to go back to France when the case comes to court. We prepare detailed photos (I took lots during the build) and our side of the case. In the end he doesn't show and we get the verdict by default. All that for what? It later transpires that he has been fined for breaches of health and safety rules, sending his apprentice up ladders without a hard hat etc.
Looking back I suppose we should have had 2 or 3 estimates but it's really difficult to find builders. Still, we hadn't bargained for his appalling attitude. I don't think a British builder would have treated us in the way he did, but then he isn't French, he's Portuguese. Perhaps they do things differently there.
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