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Painting the Balustrade (Again!) and a Relaxing Day. 7 - 9 Sept.

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Tuesday - First job of the day was booking a train and hotel - we've decided to spend the weekend in Bordeaux. We have visited the city once before, a couple of years back, but saw nothing but the Ikea store. Its a 5 hour round trip so, with time in Ikea, not really a day-trip. Hence booking the weekend away - and this time we're going by train - an 8-9 hour round trip - but, hopefully, stress free. The rest of the day was spent painting the balustrade and rubbing down the study window sill (like the balustrade, only painted last year). The issue with the window sill appears to have been the French filler we'd used - wherever I'd filled, the paint was lifting/flaking. This time I'll be using Wilko's wood filler - a filler I really like. Before I fill, however, I'm also going to apply some wood hardener - but that requires a trip to Leroy Merlin. Once those jobs were taken as far as we could, Sally returned to stripping the 'future' bathroom - she...
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Receipt of Compromise & Diagnostics Reports (Feb 2018)

I'm still building this blog, setting up the 'Retrospective' pages which describe our activities between first embarking on this adventure  and finally deciding to create this blog. However, I've decided to create the first blog post as we've hit the first major milestone to occur since I started blogging - the receipt of the Compromise and the Diagnostic Reports. The Compromise is the first of two contractual documents and commits both parties to the sale of the property. The other contract is the main contract at the end of the process. Rather than travel to France we had decided to give the notaire (similar to a solicitor but working for the State rather than the two parties) power of attorney  to sign the Compromise on our behalf. This seemed seemed sensible as it involved no additional fees and saved us the journey. We would still have a 10-day cooling off period and, even if we had traveled there, the chances of understanding even a small part of what we w...
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The Rewiring Commences in Earnest - 06 July

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Today started with Isaac, the plumber, arriving on schedule (08:30) unlike his first visit and repairing the boiler. An hour later we had the main event - the arrival of Alex, the electrician who'll be rewiring the house. You may remember the original intention had been to rewire it myself (guided by Tim, our neighbour (and a UK electrician) back in England). That had proven to be over optimistic and so, about 18 months ago, we had Alex quote for the rewire and had asked him to start this Spring. Covid scuppered that schedule and it was only today that the work could commence - and this is the primary reason we're out here for these two months. Alex arrived on schedule (almost unheard of for a British tradesman - long may it continue. Today he got the GTL (hoses the RCDs etc - basically the consumer unit) fitted and the earth rods driven in. Whilst Alex got on with the electrics we refilled and bled the central heating, rubbed down (and refilled) the balustrade that was showing...
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