We’d booked the heating people for the beginning of November, but as is the way around here, after several phone calls, they finally turned up today. At least the chape has had plenty of time to dry thoroughly. I hope they come back tomorrow to continue the work.

In the meantime, we’d ordered the kitchen for mid-November, foolishly thinking the heating would have been done by then. We’ve bought the kitchen from an English neighbor who’s had a kitchen business here for some years, he had full of closeupcheck equipment that we really wanted and is now moving back to the UK, so we need to take delivery as soon as possible. But where to store it? We still have loads of stuff boxed up from the move, so we’ve shuffled boxes around in the storage space behind the house and managed to make space; there are kitchen units and appliances all over the place now and I think the work surfaces and other long stuff will have to go in the arrière cuisine.

Nick’s built the window to go in the front wall and is ready to fit it, but it needed varnishing first; so he put it on trestles in the arrière cuisine, I varnished it and we waited for it to dry. 36 hours passed, but it’s so cold out there that it was still tacky, so it’s now sitting in state in the sitting room, with a fire gently burning to keep the chill off, and hopefully allowing it to dry!