And now the House: Plastering Progress

Monsieur C and his team have finished and the plastering looks great. Really sharp. And he worked so fast. He had a large machine that squeezed the plaster like toothpaste on to the wall and then giant-sized floats to smooth it out.

The kitchen, especially, is a joy. The walls were pitted and uneven, full of left-over bits of building, old nails, redundant electric sockets, cracked render, all covered in a fine and impossible to remove layer of grease and dirt. Everything has been covered with insulation, then thin red bricks and finally a smooth sleek layer of plaster.

The insulation is so thick, we've reduced the width of the kitchen by some twenty-seven centimetres and we've had to modify the design of the units along the wall under the new window.

In our budget I'd forgotten that all the new surfaces - walls and ceilings - would need painting. Or maybe I'd naively hoped we needn't bother and just the plaster would be enough. But no. Also the untouched walls in the dining room now look very sad compared with the new. So we're getting a quote for painting the lot.

There may be a problem with when the painting can be done. French artisan builders like to plan their clients' work well in advance. It's not unusual to have to wait months for a job to start. I hope Monsieur B can be very persuasive.

Kitchen - before work started, being dismantled