It turns out that the external work was probably the quickest part of the housebuild to achieve! The interior is proving trickier than we anticipated. The steel frames are now in place for all the internal walls but this has meant we needed to buy the kitchen and bathrooms to make absolutely sure we had the walls where we wanted them (6 hours in IKEA trying to order the kitchen when their computer crashed has not been a highlight of the build!)
On the ground floor we have insulated the walls with polystyrene cladding and rockwool, on the first floor we have used a layer of multi-foil insulation to help keep the heat out of the roofspace in the summer months with another wadge of rockwool.
Sometimes having a fairly blank canvas is not always an advantage as we have spent many hours intricately planning layouts only to change it the following day when we realise something that means it won't work!
Definately the most challenging part of the build so far has been the electrics...trust us when we say the French are just as good as the English at writing regulations that are incomprehendable! Trouble is, as we are fitting our own electrics, we are going to be inspected so not o
nly for our own safety but to avoid a hefty second inspection cost we have to get it right first time. We have a number of books detailing every regulation, however, some are not clear whether they are advisory or compulsory and, trying to maintain our budget, we clearly need to try and avoid as many non compulsary costs as possible. Even trawling through the French electricians forums do not prove conclusive as they cannot agree on the regs, so hey ho we are just hoping for the best. We have ordered all the electric components off the net which are due to arrive tomorrow (a little concerned that the company normally use the postal service to deliver orders but have informed us that our order will be delivered by lorry!!!)
nly for our own safety but to avoid a hefty second inspection cost we have to get it right first time. We have a number of books detailing every regulation, however, some are not clear whether they are advisory or compulsory and, trying to maintain our budget, we clearly need to try and avoid as many non compulsary costs as possible. Even trawling through the French electricians forums do not prove conclusive as they cannot agree on the regs, so hey ho we are just hoping for the best. We have ordered all the electric components off the net which are due to arrive tomorrow (a little concerned that the company normally use the postal service to deliver orders but have informed us that our order will be delivered by lorry!!!) 