Building a house in Provence: Part 5

  Months later the walls went up on our house, and, finally, the roof. Now the constuction could really start to pick up speed, as the weather wouldn’t be a factor. I hadn’t seen any of the progress on the house since the foundation and was looking forward to seeing what it looked like, which turned out to be smaller that I had expected. And it was all cinder block: the stucco plaster finish would be one of the last things done. When I walked around the back of the house I noticed that there was a four-foot drop off out of our back door and back porch. The house had been built up on a foundation due to heavy rains experienced in the area, and the law required that there be an area under the house for water run-off. Because of my lack of understanding of the technical French, I didn’t comprehend much of what our supervisor said to Maurice during many meetings that went on: I could pick up quite a bit if the conversation was about general things but once it entered the technical stage my comprehension plummeted to zero. I wasn’t expecting our back door to be floating almost at my eye level, and I could see right away that we would have to have some extensive work done to make the back of our house accessible. We made a special trip with family to show them the house, but it was locked up tighter than a drum. There were no workers on the site, and Stephane wasn’t answering his cell phone. So we all got a good look at the outside. When I asked Maurice if there was some way to get a key to the house so we could get in when no one was there, he told me that it wasn’t allowed–if we had the key then the building company couldn’t guarantee the work or items in the house. I couldn’t believe it. I found out that we wouldn’t get the key at all until the house was completely finished, when there would be what they called a “reception” and we did a walk-through of the house. On one visit, however, we actually were able to get into the house. We were looking at the kitchen area talking about counters and cabinets when we realized that the kitchen counter would stick out about 6 inches or so into the doorway because the door had been placed over too far. At first we were told that it couldn’t be fixed, but in the end it was moved over. Then Maurice called one day and asked if we had to have a sink in the little room holding the toilet. (Most homes here have a separate room for the toilet, with the bathtub and/or shower in another room.) I thought for a minute and said, “You know what? I’m no going to budge. I want the sink. What are they, a bunch of amateurs?” I thought we would get the sink, but in the end we didn’t. The work began to go more quickly and it was looking as though the house would be finished before September. We got our hopes up, forgetting about August in France. It seems that almost everyone in France takes off for vacation for the whole of that month; work starts to taper off in July, and it is well into September before everything is back to normal again. At that point, Stephane, the building supervisor, started demanding 95% of the money owed on the house when only 75% or so of the work was done. He was offended that we didn’t trust the company to finish everything as we expected it to be done. The compressor for the air conditioner hadn’t been installed, nor had the plumbing fixtures. We were told that the installation was delayed because there was a possibility they would be stolen. At this point Maurice and Stephane got into horrible arguments, and I was afraid blows would be exchanged. The French often do this. You will hear two French people really arguing and sounding extremely angry. Later, when you ask what the problem was, they are puzzled. Nothing was wrong, they were just having a discussion! This exchange, however, was a little different. I know Maurice was very angry, and I was guessing Stephane was, too. We were at the house about three weeks before our so-called reception when I noticed there was no light fixtures and I realized that we had never picked any out–we had only selected the location of light fixtures. There were bare wires hanging from the ceilings where, at least, we could screw in light bulbs so we wouldn’t be sitting in the dark. I noticed that there wasn’t a light of any kind in the entry way; so I asked Stephane where it was and was told there wasn’t one. He pointed to the electrical outlet on the wall: this was where we would plug in our lamp. I blew up and said it was ridiculous. How can you have a dark entryway without any light? Both he and Maurice looked at me as though I were crazy and over reacting–this after their many arguments. I found other things to be missing: no heating vents in the “water closets” holding the toilets, making for freezing toilet seats in the winter. I assume the builders think that because you won’t (hopefully) be in the room for very long, no heating or cooling is required. There is a little window in these rooms, which makes it even colder in the winter. The bathrooms with the shower and bathtubs only had wall heaters as well. They work effectively, taking just a short time to warm up the room. The laundry room didn’t have a vent either, but I was to find that the dryer made it a very warm room. The closets were empty of any shelves or poles to hang clothes on. The cabinets under the sink weren’t really cabinets–they were just door fronts, made of the cheapest wood possible, and the inside was empty, with no shelves and old cement left on the floor from the tile installation. There was also no kick board under the bathroom cabinet, just an empty space which Stephane informed me was so there was a place for your feet to go when you were…