There were plenty of warnings from locals, expats, internet forums etc.
Always make sure you employ local craftsmen to work on the house if you want to
be accepted by the French speaking community, they told us. This turned
out to be true but not for reasons you might expect.
Late last year I spent a few weeks at the house (yes, totally ignoring warnings
but a 3 month waiting list for an outrageously expensive artisan wasn't an
option) with a friend/builder who was to help me build a bathroom at the
house. Building rather than fitting is the correct term here as we had to
knock through to the barn and construct the walls, floor, ceiling etc.
All well and good, although knocking doorways through 3 foot thick stone
walls was never going to be straightforward and so it proved. The walls
are held together with a combination of mud, gravity and light footsteps and
comprise of two outer layers of meaty boulders filled with vast quantities of
little stones, chaff and walnut shells. An interesting take on cavity wall
insulation I presume.
During the course of these few weeks my builder managed to upset or offend
pretty much every contact or friend we made since we bought the house. I have
now heard 5 or 6 different plans of how the local residents plan to dispose of
him from burial under patios to magic tricks gone horribly wrong. It seems no
fate is bad enough and frankly, given that half of what he did is falling
apart, I'm considering joining the queue!
Ultimately some good has come from the whole thing because the community
seem to be pulling together in their mutual dislike of our Rhinestone Builder
and no blame has been attached to us.
Hard to pick the moral out of that one but the cliché is easy, all's well
that ends well.
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