Tuesday, May 11, 2021

French apartment renovations, Day 141: Pulling wires

9,210 steps

Okay, today the rain came in earnest! I brought the girls to school this morning. We walk up a long, shallow staircase going up the side of the chateau hill. There was so much water that we were essentially fording our way up a river! Several gutters were overflowing, creating waterfalls that we had to duck under.

Free waterpark!

I'm sure Inga and Ivy had wet feet the rest of the day. I thought ahead and wore my beach sandals because I knew I'd get wet just from the short walk to & from school.

Zari left early for her first day of big exams, the brevet blanc (basically, a practice version of the big tests they take at the end of the school year). Oh the stress. But it was better once she got started. She came home at lunch having done the French part and said they had used the 2019 brevet, which she had read and practiced!

We did some math practice during lunch, specifically sine-cosine-tangent (sohcahtoa!) and formulas for the volume of spheres, cylinders, cones, and triangles.

Dio has no school the rest of the week, since the entire middle school is taken over by exams today and tomorrow. And Thursday and Friday are holidays so everyone is off school. I'm not even sure what the holiday is!

Eric and I ran more circuits and cut holes for the ceiling lights in the upper ceiling. We couldn't line them up exactly because the old joists are offset, interlocking a bit where they rest on top of the central beam. We have to drill into the plaster between each joist to not weaken the structure of the ceiling.

We also cut channels along the ceiling for the electrical conduit. In a building that's 400-500+ years old, nothing is simple!

Today was a 2-shower day for sure.


I took a quick walk to the hardware store to buy flexible plastic conduit (une gaine), which is how most of the wiring is done here. I usually buy it pre-filled, but we needed a special color combination that isn't sold pre-made. However, we had all of the wires already, so I just bought the conduit and pulled our own wires through!

We first tried it inside our apartment, but it was nearly impossible, even just doing 10 meters at a time. We finally brought the rest out and pulled 40 meters quite easily, with help from all of the kids.
 


We were technically breaking curfew and Ivy was so concerned that we would get in trouble. I don't think the police would care if we're just outside our front door. Plus we didn't see any police; they have more important things to do than stop young electricians-in-training.

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