Now it's getting fun...

After yet another hiatus the plumbing lads have been in. Their first job was to put down the floor insulation. This was all done yesterday, and the pictures below show this and one of the valve sets for the underfloor heating.














Today they have put down just under 1000m of piping, and have filled and pressure tested it.

On the left, the kitchen and above the living room.

Quite what part the dustpan plays in this modern technology is tricky to work out.

Now it starts to get serious.

So we take a few days away. Barcelona, ruined by genuine, bed-limited, full-body-ache, flu.
On our return, they had seriously got on with things. Downstairs the tiling was almost complete. It would have been finished but for tiles being a mixture of 240mm square, and 238mm. Not much you might think, but over 10 tiles one row is an inch shorter than the other. All the other codes were the same and they were on the same palette. Fortunately for us, they decided to sort them and found they had enough for the bedroom in one size and the others would do the rest. Bonus points for the floor tilers. So, in a week, downstairs, screed to cover all the pipes and conduit; insulation, second leveling screed, and tiles. Whoop, whoopee!!! They will finish and grout on Monday, then we can start doing our things. The picture below looks from the kitchen area of the apartment  towards the front door. The box of tricks is the wiring for the whole flat and will contain its own fuse box and controls for the VMC.
VMC, ventilation mécanique contrôlée, is a requirement in France with a fan driven system stopping problems associated with humidity. We have a double system, recuperating any heat that may be lost. 

Upstairs, the first layer of screed has gone down. We are now waiting (again) for the plumber so that he can get on with the underfloor heating. He should have started last Wednesday, but plumbers work to a different timescale from everyone else.
To give an idea of what stage we are at the picture below shows the kitchen upstairs with the first screed down. No more pipes, no more conduits. As I think I mentioned before, the sticky-uppy things in the middle of the floor are the utilities for the island unit.

Seriously grumpy.

One artisan finishes. The next one...
Well, he knew that he was due to start but bearing in mind that he was running a bit late, and perhaps the other guy would be finishing a bit late, just time to fit in another job. Now that's running late. Multiply that by more than ten different trades and you can see the problem.
NOBODY worked on site from the last Tuesday in March till last Thursday and then, oops, it's Easter.
The electric wiring is practically all finished now, and the main plumbing work is also done. the next thing is the screed that goes over all that and then it's the underfloor insulation. However, both the plumber, who's putting the underfloor heating and the floor tiler quoted to do the screeding. So one's waiting for the other...
 A few pictures of pipes just keep you happy. Click on them to enlarge them if you have a considerable interest in pipes.

The one on the left is looking into our en-suite. The one on the right is inside the en-suite looking at the wet-room bit. The niches on the right are for bits and pieces for the shower and there will be a bench at the bottom of that for sitting down and doing sitting-downy things.

The other two are the kitchen lookin through to the hall and the living room beyond. The sticky-up bits are services to the kitchen island unit. The other one is the living room downstairs with the radiators now in.