Firestarter

(The Prodigy, 1996)

This last week was the Great Freeze, one of the little one's snufflings has escalated to pneumonia and flu, and the rest of us are trying to shake off horrid colds.

What better time for the heating to go off? 

It went off following a rather improbabe chain of events that started with the wet cement in the cellar, that short-circuited the wires in the walls, that blew the fuse, that confused the heater's electrics, that displayed an error message saying the pressure was low, that caused someone to add more water, that flooded the heater's electrics, that destroyed the "coeur de chauffe"  (did you know that central heating systems had hearts?). 

And now, a new heart for the fire-breather in our attic has to be found from that far-away land, Germany. (You didn't think the people at Bulex would keep a stock these things close at hand, did you?  Oh how little you know Belgium.)

So we are hoping that sometime very soon, somewhere in a warehouse in Germany, Fritz will heave sigh, put down his newspaper and haul himself off his arse to wander down the shelves, pick up a box containing the right thingy, put it in a bigger box, which will then sit around for another few days? weeks? until Hans decides he has enough boxes piled up to warrant packing up the van and driving to Belgium. 

And then no doubt it will sit around a bit longer until the Bulex computer tells the Bulex technician that he has the necessary to come and repair our heater, and then another few days before he finds a free date to come and fit it. 

And then, maybe, it might all work?

Move any Mountain

(The Shaman, 1991)

Still there?   I wouldn't blame you for tuning out. 

So yes, we moved.  And it was enough of an ordeal for me not to want to re-live the whole thing any time soon, but I will try and record some of the highlights here so that, in years to come, we can look back fondly at these happy days of dust, boxes and bugs...  

Behold the bathroom, the day of the 'move': 28 November.

... and the staircase. A fairly major obstacle to moving in, since the 1st and 2nd floors would have to be out of bounds while this was sanded and painted. 

So the Plan D, agreed while the movers were navigating their way round the Schaerbeek one-way system, was that we would be allowed to occupy two rooms on the first floor, where we could pile up our belongings, while the workmen scurried around finishing what they could. 

And what about our little family?  After calling around various B&Bs to see whether they would house two downtrodden adults, two coughing babies and their double buggy, we took up the generous offer of friends who live on the next street to stay with them until the house was ready.  An offer they may have since regretted, as it became clear that we were not talking a few days, but a good week and a half....

Missing

The honeymoon is over.

With the arrival of two new contractors on site to take on the inside of the house, we were braced for problems of coordination and delay.  However, we were not ready to find parts of the house missing.

At the site meeting today, C noticed that the original brass door handles have been swiped.  

It's not so much their value (although they are not cheap to replace), or the inconvenience of not being able to open the doors any more.  What really makes my blood boil is the abuse of trust.  Since there was no break-in, it can only have been someone with access to the house, through one of the contractors.  Unfortunately there is no knowing who, and of course all the contractors denied that their men could have done this.

The best chance we have of seeing the doorhandles again is to say that we will not pursue inquiries or declare the theft to police, as long as they are returned.  But in the end we have to accept that we'll be spending a few rainy sundays in flea markets on the hunt for doorhandles. Who knows, we may even come accross our own...

Intermission

No posts in the last two weeks – you may think that things have been pretty quiet here.  In fact, we have been rather distracted by these two little people, who joined our family on 6 April.

Happily, work has been continuing at the house without us.  I’ll be updating posts with the latest news, and backdating them so as to keep them in the right order.

Unfinished Sympathy

(Massive Attack, 1991)



There were always going to have to be compromises.

We started the process of getting quotes from builders who could manage the whole project ("entreprise général") back in May/June. We had rather optimistically hoped to get these in before we went on holiday in July (but we did get one in - definite points for them).

So in August we do more house visits with contractors, hoping to have a few offers to chose from by the end of the month.

It was only at the end of August that we had enough offers to compare. And the prices we got back were fairly eye watering. So we decided to go back for another round, and also ask separate contractors to see if that made a difference (knowing that this makes the project much harder to coordinate and means the whole thing can take longer).

We have now, after months of hassling, finally got those offers in - all except one (which has been delaying and delaying for the last two months).

It's still not looking brilliant: if we do everything we wanted to do, it would almost double the cost.

So we have been painstakingly going through individual items, deciding what we need to do now (or never will) and what we can do later, and seeing what this does to the total budget.

Staying in are the under-floor heating in the kitchen, the rain-water circuit for the downstairs loo and utility room, the top-grade insulation needed to be 'low energy', the roof, windows, and the necessary water/electrics/heating etc.

The 'to do later list' is rather longer: re-plastering, all the painting, the green roof, anything in the garden, the second bathroom, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, sanding and oiling the wooden floorboards and stairs. Depending on how brave we feel, we might have a go at doing some of this ourselves.

Needless to say, we'll not be splashing out on any new furniture and fittings for a while.

But frankly, I don't care if we're dining off tea chests, as long as we're there...

Old House Renovation Surprise # 1

It was just a matter of time really.

Actually this one should not have been such a surprise – it was evident from the first picture we took of the façade. Can you spot it?

Well we missed it (I’m rather ashamed to say, given the number of Spot the Difference puzzles I did as a child with Granny). Instead, it was not until our neighbour on the right pointed out, first by a registered letter (hidden amidst the christmas cards, which was nice), and then in a more amicable meeting, that the cornice was leaking like a sponge and water was seeping through to the brickwork underneath, and into the neighbours’ house. Apparently it’s been doing it for years, as he had asked the old man who lived in the house before to fix it (though judging from the house’s state of neglect, the old man was beyond caring).

Take another look at right of the corniche (cornice, the white bit where the roof sticks out). Notice how there is a support missing on the right?

On closer investigation (thanks to some extreme photography) it does indeed look pretty, erm, wet. The modillon (wooden block under the cornice) seems to be hanging on a thread.

And that would of course explain the wetness in the room in that corner (the guest bathroom to-be). (See the hole in the wall, known as a "trou de boulin", which was intended for scaffolding. You can see the four of them in the photo of the facade above).

In a sense it's no big deal, as we’d figured we’d have to repair the corniche anyway and deal with all the damp problems. But shouldn't we also take some immediate measures to prevent chunks of rotten wood falling on to passers-by below? And to stem the tide of wetness into the neighbour’s (and our own) walls?

Time to consult the experts.