Strange Money ?

I have been trying to work out exactly how much money I have left in the mortgage after the latest bills are paid. I get about 17000 Euros. IF this is true then this is very good news indeed. Thats a lot of work. A lot of timber. A kitchen. Heating. Floors.
Cool. I thought I had run out and would have to stump up the balance for these latest bills.

Now all I have to do is confirm that really is the sum available and figure out the best way to spend it!

Weekend in Morzine

I went this weekend, primarily to try and get as much "paint" on the chalet as possible. Rob was going to be there and he had offered his help in painting. I knew I only had a very limited time, about one day of actual working so I would have to be quick. For this reason I bought a spray gun. Its a big hair drier really.



I need to paint the entire chalet in three coats. First a wood preservative against termites and fungus, then two coats (at least) of varnish. All the wood. Even the hard to reach bits up under the eaves of the roof.

I went down to Viourons, intending to buy 25liters of fungicide/pesticide to put on the timber of the chalet before varnishing. They only had 5 litres. OK no idea how long it will take to put 5lt on so lets have that and see what happens.
According to the can, 1 lt of preservative should cover 5 square meters. OK so I load up the spry gun with 1lt and mentally work out an area of timber that’s about 5 square meters and spray. About a minute later the area is covered and I have a bit left so I continue on. Great this 5lt Can is going to last about 20 minutes including refills!
This was not the main problem however, by spraying the stuff on I was creating a cloud of noxious vapour (with me in the middle of it) I had a dust mask on but that was useless and by the time I had finished the 5 litres I was really quite ill, nose and eyes streaming, coughing and spluttering. Horrible.

OK so I am not going to get much more of this stuff on the chalet this weekend, not without a vapour mask.
Something like this:

Any how with that out of the picture Rob and I decided to try and get the electricity cable in, maybe the two of us could achieve what I had failed on my own. No luck, we pushed and pulled but got no further than I had before. We even employed the kids to reach down the pipe the cable was going to appear from to see if they could touch it. No luck.






I decided to try and chase back the gaine under the floor in order to determine where the problem was. So with a huge breaker I start smashing up my garage floor! Only to find to my dismay that the gaine is actually leading in almost completely the wrong direction! It must do a huge loop and come back round out the front. No wonder the cable gets stuck. Garage door and electric post are on the left, cable duct is going right!



That evening we went out to a restaurant for dinner and met up with Leon from next door. We all got talking to the proprietor of the restaurant. Leon announced that he had just the tool for getting cable through gaine. Great we will try tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow morning and Leon is up and about holding a very thin length of wire which has no chance of helping at all. Never mind he quickly decided what we need is lubricant and as we all know "there is always time for lubricant!" Vigorous sprays of lube all over the cable and down into the gaine it goes, a bit of fishing around and up it comes!!





Hurray! Fantastic. The weekend is worth it just for this. I quickly wire up the distribution box and include the earth cable and like magic I have a plug socket in my Chalet! Electricity. Power. Finally.
I am very happy.

Other good news is that we have water as well. Who every it was has attached a tap and meter and water comes out. Wow.



And even more good news, the town has been busy and they have brought a sewage pipe all the way up the road to just outside my chalet. All that remains is to connect from the septic tank to the sewer and we all have mains sewerage.



Good weekend, marred only by the fact that I have no money left and some huge bills to pay.
The final (I hope it the final) bills from the carpenters and the concrete, earthwork guys. and the planning permission bill and another tax bill that I find out Rob has been paying for me up to now.
Lots of bills.

Mind you the inside of the chalet looks nice now that they have put all the timber on the walls. I suppose all that will need varnishing too!