Euro trash is quite right (as usual!) - as often in France things operate in water tight compartments. There's no real equivalent of the "jobbing builder" in France who will take on a piece of work and then get in the tradesmen as necessary. Here, it's either an architect to manage it, or get in the individual tradesmen yourself.
DejW
I beg to differ - sorry. "My" bloke here, a chippy & roofer, acted as "clerk of works" to a major job of ripping out two bathrooms, replacing one in situ, adding another one in a former bedroom, breaking through from the bedroom behind. I and the animals went down to Corsica for the 6 or 7 weeks he could schedule it all. He did all the works he could, brought in a plumber and sparks he knew and had worked with before, and used my local boys for labour.
But ... I knew him previously and he'd done other work for me, my sprog, and friends so I felt I could trust him. I'd drawn up all the plans to scale, marked in lights, electrical points, finishings, etc etc and we went through them all meticulously a few times in advance - ie what I wanted the finished job to look like, how he achieved it was up to him and the budget was a +/- thing 'cos we couldn't anticipate what horrors would be revealed ripping the old stuff out, but he kept me informed by phone. (He also dealt with my post, fed a cat that had absented itself the morning I left so was still here, and fielded random phone calls!)
Extraordinary perhaps, but based on trust in a small-ish community. So it is possible, but you do need time to get to know what's what and to do the ground work. It helped perhaps that my French ain't too bad either (& I brought him back cheap(er) cigs from Corsica in part-payment of his bill
).
h
