It's Our Two Year Anniversary

Next week we’ll have been in our new house for 2 years. The time has literally flown by. It only seems like yesterday when we were moving in, 1 week before Tan And Angie moved into our old house. Indeed, thanks to Tan and Angie we moved in probably a couple of months before we were due to. The builders had taken their time in making sure everything was perfect before they handed it over but one day we had to tell them, finished or not, we had to move in, so for the first couple of months in the house, we lived upstairs whilst the builders finished downstairs.

Going back a few years, we’d actually started the process in November 2001 by hiring an architect, who on the face of it, would provide everything we wanted which was a Provencal style house on the outside with modern space and facilities inside. We also hired him to build a pool at our existing house which turned into a contractual and financial nightmare. We had no option but to continue with the pool, but when he doubled the price of the new house before a sod was dug, that was it. We fired him which started a 3 year legal dispute but luckily I had taken loads of pictures with all the things which he hadn’t finished and our lawyer reckoned we had a stone wall case against him if he sued us and eventually it all petered out.

Around about the same time, just as I was working out the best way to exterminate this little weasel of a man, we were invited to a ‘housewarming’ by people at the end of our lane who had just built a new house. We were impressed by the house and even more impressed by the fact that we met their builder that night, Antonio, the Italian stallion, who agreed to give us a quote for building our new place. His quote was half the old architect’s (or equivalent to his original quote) and we signed the papers and we were off. The bulldozer arrived towards the end of October 2003 (things don’t move fast in France !) and thereafter there was constant activity on the site for the next 3 years.

As we sit in our house now in front of the roaring log fire with wonderful views down to the sea, we often think about the trials and tribulations of a 3 year build, nothing to do with Antonio, I hasten to add, but with the authorities and the occasional lack of money.

One day in June 2005, just as the roof was about to go on, the local policeman arrived. He told me to get the builders off the site and then proceeded to take pictures of the house in its unfinished state. Just before he left he said J and I had to be in the mayor’s office the next day at 10am. We knew there had been some problems with the foundations and that the levels of the house had had to be altered, making the overall height of the house slightly outside the planning limits but this was ridiculous.

The next day we duly arrived in Mr Bertaina’s office to be read the riot act. It appeared that many of the ex-pats, particularly the English, were building houses which did not conform with the approved plans and we had been caught up in this ‘purge’. Building could not restart until new plans were submitted and approved. Panic stations all round!

I rang a friend of mine who built and restored villas in the area and he put us in touch with a new architect who, quite conveniently was good friends with the people in the planning department in the village. He drew up some new plans, reduced the height of the house and luckily for us, actually extended the internal space, almost doubling it. The new plans were approved and we recalled Antonio to restart work. Six months had passed but fortunately that delay had allowed me to top up my funds which had been dwindling - the Mayor had unknowingly done me a huge  favour by stopping the build. After that, progress was really quick and we moved in, in November 2006.

We are delighted with our home. There have been no major problems, indeed very few problems at all. 2 years on we haven’t had to recall Antonio to fix anything. Any problems have been cosmetic like doors moving on their hinges etc, which I have been able to fix. Now we sit here on chilly Provence evenings, looking at Antonio’s work which everybody comments on as being of the highest quality. We were very lucky indeed to be asked to, and to accept the invitation to our friend’s housewarming. Had we not gone that night who knows what would have happened?

If anybody wishes to see what a house construction looks like from the first trench, the pictures can be viewed at the following web address.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/tom.cupples/NewHouse