A Fisherman's House

A sort of hiatus

2007-03-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

Well it's obvious I'm doing a lousy job at keeping up on this little blog. It's not due to lack of work being done on the house and having nothing to write about, trust me. It's quite the contrary.

I have another blog that I write in on a nearly daily basis and for now I have decided to put the house updates over there, (soon to be categorized for easy searching). I eventually hope to reupdate everything over here and move the relevent posts back to here but that probably won't happen for several months since we have so much going on right now. Until then please join us for weekly house blog adventures over at my family blog, A Pretty How Town.

A warm place to shower

2006-12-21T13:49:00.000-08:00

Sorry there are still no pictures. If I have my camera then the cable is missing. It's murphy's law lately.

Things are moving along smoothly here at The Fisherman's House though. Our contracter has done all of the drywall upstairs in the bathroom and in Little S's room. Everything looks great.

Right now were just waiting on our tile for the bathroom. We had to order the tile and the wait is two to three weeks. I'm sorry to say that my metro tile did not make the cut. We chose this pretty tile from Lapeyre which we had admired for a long time but hesitated on due to the price. We decided we'd sacrifice something. Instead of having the exposed pipes on the bathtub we'd go for the tile. The price difference was the same. The tub faucets will be wall mounted instead.

After the tile then the fixtures and faucets will be installed. Lastly the tub will go in, our clawfoot beauty bought almost four years ago to the day. We still have to paint the outside of it white and paint the feet in bronze. We plan on doing that over the holidays.

We're really excited because the finish line for the bathroom is in sight. Soon we'll be boarding up the wall after the bathroom and taking advantage of using our indoor plumbing. Finally a heated room for all to enjoy. It will be divine not to have to step outside and shower in the toolshed.

Just so you can appreciate how cold it gets out there, here's a photo from last January. Frozen shower? No problem. You just have to wait until the afternoon when the pipes get warm. It will be nice to say goodbye to that!

Métro tiles

2006-11-28T00:10:00.000-08:00

Okay first of let me just say that this is not our shower. It's just a picture snagged off the internet. It's an inspiration picture. I bet you have a lot of those right?

I've been absent a lot lately. I keep losing my internet connection and hey if you saw what the wiring looked like upstairs you'd understand. Our contractor who I still love keeps knocking it out and then reconnecting it wrong leaving me stranded and computerless for days on end. He then insists it's right and I say very gently "oh dear are you sure because last time...blah blah blah?" Then I end up calling the phone company again. The phone company comes out, clips and snips and changes out the wires he's crossed and then threatens me with a bill because of it. They've been very nice and patient so far but that won't last long. It's a delicate situation because I don't want to step on his toes but it costs 70 euros for a visit from the phone company!

All of the pipes are in for the bathroom. It looks fabulous to see our little shower stall and toilet stall and everything coming together. Now we just have to choose fixtures and tile.

The fixtures are difficult because money is an issue. The DIY stores in France tend to have a really low end product and then maybe one really high end product completely overpriced. For our shower it was either something at 69 euros, partially constructed out of plastic, total crap, or a product at 450 euros which was nice but more or less average in quality. So the search continues.

We are in a huge debate about whether to use subway tile or beadboard. I like them both but have recently decided that maybe it's best to do tile because it's more durable and because it's included in our price quote. Seb doesn't care for subway tile. He likes tile but can't get past the idea that normally it's in a subway or métro! "Yes" I say because it's original! Most people tore out their bathroom subway tile long ago. The metro is one of the few places where it still exists. Anyway, suffice to say that it's not very popular in France and we had a hard time finding it except at the "cool" DIY store outside of town. I think it's going to grow on him but so far he's just been staring at it scratching his head and saying "I don't know...it's so...errr"

The subway tile in here France has raised geometric edges. Take a look at the picture above. It's a little different than it's American counterpart but it's actually very pretty. It's funny because it's an exact replica of all the subway or métro tiles that you see in Paris' underground. It's also fairly cheap at 23 euros the square meter. I thought that wasn't too bad. I expected much worse.

I hope to post pictures soon. I just got my camera back after a two week searching stint. Turns out Little S had stuck it under the sofa in our apartment in Lyon. The little devil!

The electricity on the second floor

2006-11-13T13:58:00.000-08:00

We made lunch for our builder on Sunday to thank him for all of his hard work so far. We made a point not to talk about the work at all and just talked about family things and enjoyed his company. We really like Mssr. G and we appreciate that he's detailed and dedicated and treats our house with respect. He also works fast and efficiently and he's neat, always taking twenty minutes to clean the workspace and arrange his tools at the end of the day. It shows how much he respect his work.

This week Mssr. G is hard at work doing the wiring for the electricity on the second floor and some of the first floor. It's a thankless task in such an old house, crumbly walls and all the hodgepodge that needs undoing from the previous owner's messes. I don't envy him having to wade through all that and I'm hearing plenty of cursing and "oh merde!" and whatnots coming from the workspace on the second floor.

I shot some movies of the second floor because pictures were just making it look like a prison war camp and you couldn't tell what was what, not that the movies are any better! I'm just going to have to try to figure out how to upload from something other than my web camera. I know there are some cables around here somewhere that correspond to that. Um, yeah okay.

Meanwhile I think the workspace looks pretty much the same as it did a few posts ago. There are no walls yet but they should be coming soon.

I chose the light and mirror

2006-11-01T10:26:00.000-08:00

I visited Ikea the other day and felt like all my lighting choices were very bad. Everything in person seemed too big and bulky for our quaint little bathroom. In the end I've chosen a mirror, still from Ikea but rather plain and simple and kind of victorian, and a simple, single light that was actually on display with the mirror and looks nondescript and nice. I'm so happy one choice is done and over with. We have so many things to choose and it's impossible for me to make choices in regular life, so in renovation life I constantly get stumped and change my mind.

People keep asking me if the elevated back terrace is done and the answer is YES followed by IT's AWESOME and followed by a description of the very ugly temporary barrier my father in law and Seb constructed so that Little S wouldn't go skating off the edge in his baby motor car. We have the new barrier/railings on order from a local artisan and they should be finished in the next two months. It's going to be beautiful, all black wrought iron and matching wroght iron stairs going down to the ground level. I can't wait to see it finished. I'll post some lovely photos here soon of the project so far.

You guyses are the best...tanks

2006-10-23T14:38:00.000-07:00

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Input is always good when you've been staring at light fixtures for four freaking days. Add to that the enormous PRESSURE to decide imposed on you by an eager contracter and an annoyed husband and you'll see why I cried out for oh-pin-yuns.

I don't know if you've helped me. I'm feeling a bit like the people on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" when they ask for the audience's opinion and then they kind of say to themselves, "hmmm, what if they're all WRONG man, then what? Where am I then?!" So you see I'm clearly a bad decision maker and I have an awful lot of black in my wardrobe too.

The general consensus it seems is mirror one and light four. It's a nice ensemble. Here's a mockup of it I did on paintbox. Excuse the funny angle.It's sort of similar to the picture from Rejuvenation (if you have a very large imagination that is...which I do).

Here's another mockup. I kind of liked this one too. Of course like I said we'd paint the little medicine cupboard white. The extra storage caché would be nice. It sort of fulfills my fantasy of having a vintage 1920's built-in cupboard.

I can't believe no one chose this ensemble! Have you no taste people!!?

Choosing a mirror and lights, wanna help?

2006-10-22T03:28:00.000-07:00

It's time to choose the mirror and lights for our bathroom. Since we don't have a really large budget we unfortunately have to cut some corners. We're shopping at cost effective stores like Ikea and some other local stores in our area. It's not easy attempting to piece together a brilliant retro bathroom with what's available, but I think we can do it.

Because our exact style hasn't been pinpointed there's still some room to play around with the decor. The style of the bathroom is obviously vintage with our pedestal sink, matching toilet & claw-foot bathtub purchased eons ago when we thought we'd install the bathroom "right away". It all more or less corresponds to the 1920-1940 eras. We haven't chosen the faucets or any accessories like towel racks or toilet paper holders.

Here are some photos of my low budget finds for the sink's mirror and lights. Any input would be greatly appreciated. Even if you don't know why you like it, please vote for the ensemble you like the most.

First here are the MIRROR choices:

1
2we'd add a mirror to the door and paint it white

3

4we'd probably paint it white or bronze

And here are the LIGHTING choices (we'd buy a pair and they would be placed on either side of the mirror):

1We might-could lose the dangly beads. I'm not sure how I feel about them. The green globe alone is very pretty.
2
3

4

5

6

Taking form

2006-10-17T05:10:00.000-07:00

The rooms upstairs, meaning the bathroom, the hallway and my son's bedroom are really taking their form quickly. Very soon we'll be finalizing the layout and the electricity outlets, and after that the walls will begin to go up.

Pictured above is the hallway leading to the bathroom (on the left) and my son's room (straight ahead).

Here pictured above I am taking the picture while standing in the bathroom. That's my father-in-law stumbling around in there going in to what will be my son's bedroom.

And finally this picture is inside what will be our son's bedroom. He has a door in his bedroom which goes out onto a small upstairs porch that has a view of the lake. He'll also have a second floor loft in his room which will double the size of it and allow us to put his bed upstairs, giving him more space. It's a really fun kids bedroom!

Framing

2006-10-09T15:29:00.000-07:00

They're starting to frame the rooms upstairs. It's at this point where you can begin to see what your project is going to look like. It's also the point where you start saying "oh crap we forgot to put any closets in the bathroom" and things like that.

It's probably not exciting to the layman's eyes but for us it's over three years of scribbled drawings finally laid out for us in 3D. We are so happy to be getting this done. Words do not describe.

Beam me up Solatube!

2006-10-04T14:30:00.000-07:00

We have an old house from near the 17th century and reading about how houses like this were built and laid out is very interesting. They were generally narrow with just two rooms and a central fireplace which served both rooms. They were often a certain width and length which was fairly standard and if you read about it in this well documented Dartford archive you can learn quite a bit. Our house is like this, narrow, very long and sandwiched between two neighbors. This makes for a very dark house.
Our biggest problem has always been lack of light here. We've already torn down some walls, installed glass paned doors in the front and back (and soon will replace a back window with a glass door), but we're still pretty much in the dark when we're in the middle of the house.

Last week Seb installed our Solatube in the central part of the house (in the dining room/kitchen) and boy let me just say, "and then there was light!" What holy, celestial light from above brought three floors down! We were really surprised that it could be so effective from so far away. That sucker is beamin down the equivelent of a 300 watt light collected from two stories up!

We will definitely put one of these in the next floor's bathroom as soon as we can work it into the budget. How cool is it to be able to finally see?

Less dust now

2006-10-03T00:54:00.000-07:00

They've finished the layer of concrete on the second floor. There is still some dust but at least it's new dust and at least it's not like the tropical deluge of a few days ago.

These guys work very fast. We refuse to compliment them though. The last people we complimented were the roofers. So far they still haven't come back and our roof sits suspended, half finished and gutterless.

Nope, no compliments.

No more dust here

2006-09-29T01:35:00.000-07:00

Yesterday to my delight and relief the contractors finished pouring the slab for the second floor. This means the end of the dust raining down into the kitchen, dining room and bathroom/wc on the first floor below. I've had way too much of that in the last few days, and if you add a toddler into the equation you'll understand why I am currently on the brink of going outside and screaming ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (my mother actually did this once when I was five years old and my brother and I were fighting. I understand now mom!)

The contractors are hard workers and fast. What I thought was "nothing" a few days ago was just invisible prep work I suppose because they laid the entire slab in one day and it looks gorgeous and smooth. They did a really nice job from what I can see. I haven't been able to take a picture of the completed slab yet because they took the heavy door off the entryway, a near 100lb wood door, and it's precariously propped with a weeny little stick holding it in place. There is no way I'm getting near that thing. Here's the lunch time photo from yesterday, partially completed.

One minor tragedy is the porch. This is little porch I spent an entire week refinishing, sanding, tinting and coating with marine varnish. This is where we often eat our meals and it's my little oasis where I have a lot of my plants. Contractor two helpfully decided to sweep it at the end of the day yesterday because of the teensy, little pile of dust on the table and near one chair. Unfortunately he used the broom from all the other cleanup he'd been doing, the wet, concrete-laden straw broom. I saw him doing it and wanted to yell "stop!" but I knew that would strain relations because after all he was being helpful, right? I thought he'd think I was this anal retentive wench who freaks whenever he gets near her stuff (because I wouldn't let him come in and clean up my bathroom a few days ago either and he was like 'uh, okay madame, whatever') I am absolutely horrified by the results though. I don't think the wood will ever be the same because the whole porch is completely covered in a white, chalky haze. He also swept all the dust into the cracks of the porch and with the water it's now all solidified into concrete! I know full well that you aren't supposed to do any finish work before the big work is completely done but this porch is far enough from the zone of construction that I thought it would be safe. Maybe some wood soap with an oil base will help bring the wood back? Maybe that's all it needs but concrete dust dulls everything it touches so I'm afraid it won't.

Otherwise I'm really happy about the work upstairs. It's going really well and the guys are great.

Surprise! it's all a big joke honey

2006-09-27T16:09:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what's been going on up yonder over my head for the last three days, but it doesn't look much different upstairs at all. I wouldn't be surprised if I wasn't the target of one of those practical jokes with the hidden camera. You know send a bunch of pretend workers with funny accents, pour dust on her head when she's in the kitchen, capture all those curses she mutters on a hidden mic, fill up her little bathroom with dust again right after she cleans it. Watch as she scratches her head each time she goes upstairs and sees that no progress has been made.

Head Honcho contractor seem obsessed with this one wall. He's been hacking at it for two days now. He has deemed it unsafe and unstable. So, this is where a lot of the kitchen dust is coming from as he attempts to dig out the old stones one floor above my stove. I'd wager a bet that this wasn't in the estimate either. Three extra days of digging out a wall? Probably not. Let's just hope he considers that part of the territory when you renovate these old houses, otherwise we're going to be in for lots of financial surprises.

Um oh yeah and there's going to be a lot of dust

2006-09-25T23:52:00.000-07:00

...and rocks! Little cement rocks, and rather big cement rocks are raining down on the liveable first floor at very regular intervals here through the cracks in our ceiling boards. I am certainly no stranger to dust trust me, but usually I can at least complain about it because you know it's Seb doing it. Besides he knows all the "holey" zones and he usually covers them. In this case I just have to deal with it and I can't complain at all because I get the distinct feeling the contractors would rather I weren't here at all. This is the most dust ever too and it just doesn't stop. After yesterday's cleanup my tiny little bathroom/wc is again piled up with rocks and dust this morning (see pics) and I haven't even been able to brush my teeth yet.

The contractors arrived this morning at 6:30...argh! I can't complain because hey they are timely and of course hard working and who in their right mind would complain about that, I mean honestly I ask you! Well, I suppose probably someone whose baby fell asleep at midnight after a three hour on-again off-again crying jag. And maybe the same person who had to clean her entire house afterwards when the baby finally fell asleep. And then she had to carefully sweep the bathroom with a whisk broom not a vacuum (don't want to wake up baby after all), and mop and pick little cement rocks out of her toothbrush holder. And then the person didn't fall asleep until nearly two because of all that bustling about. Yawn.

After they get the slab upstairs laid it should all be much better and we can finally be dust free down here on the first floor but until then, land-sakes we are in a dusty prison and there's not a nary we can do about it!

Work! Oh my god it's work people

2006-09-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

We have contractors, here! I am positively giddy with excitement. Well, I was giddy until the dust started raining down. You have never seen such dust my friends. But hey who cares because the are working. I love these guys.

I am right under them and only some very thin ceiling planks separate me so I can eavesdrop on their conversation and since I'm pretty quiet here they don't know it. There is an awful lot of what the hell we're they thinking? and they're going to put a what there? and what on earth is that thing? This makes me proud though because I know they've seen a lot but it ain't nothing like our place baby.

Today they are laying the concrete slab for the second floor. The awful, horrid second floor where no one has lived in over 55 years. The second floor which was closed off from humanity for an entire generation. Eek the horror that is the second floor.

The plans for the second floor? Well, a bedroom for Little S with a funny loft he can climb up to for his bed, and this is no doubt the reason for at least one of the comments by the contracters, and then we'll also have a bathroom lordy, lordy yes a bathroom! Just the idea that there are two men in this house right now talking about building my bathroom has put a skip in my step all day long.

Updates to come with pictures when I can get up there to bug them to take the pictures, and of course when I can find my cable that some little midget man in a Lucky Luke t-shirt has stashed in a unknown spot.

The terrace boards have arrived

2006-09-07T09:58:00.000-07:00

We got the boards for the back terrace this past weekend, yes a sort of plastic wood material not unlike those made popular by Trex. Not exactly in keeping with the restoration theme I know. The back deck terrace will get a ton of snow cover, not to mention the increasing rains we've been having here each year, so we thought something easier to upkeep would be a smarter choice.

We searched and searched for the weathered version I'd seen a lot in Florida recently. It's lovely and looks like something that might have been more in the style of our house. Instead of this we have a sleeker styled board which we hope doesn't look too modern against the backdrop of the house. We're usually pretty careful about stuff like that. It didn't help that one of our neighbors came by as we were unloading it all, a fellow renovater, and made a comment to the effect of "you know that's not real wood right because it's plastic that stuff." And then he just wrinkled his nose and strolled off not saying anything else! I was a little miffed because he was being self rightous about it but Seb rightly pointed out that he's on the board of a local committee that protects the village patrimoine and I suppose and he could make the project difficult for us if he felt like delving into it.

We didn't get the clips yet to attach the boards so we just laid them out to see what it looked like. The effect was marvelous and it seems the perfect place for Little S to romp and for us to have a few drinks with friends and uh, er neighbors.

Here's the view from the back. Squint and I guarantee you will see the lake, the mountains and Switzerland, even if you are standing on plastic when you do it.

Front porch redux

2006-09-06T09:51:00.000-07:00

I've been working a lot on the front of our house this summer and one project has been the porch just off of the kitchen. We often eat there and the floor was starting to show the wear and tear of mislaid french fries and pasta pieces, not to mention all those "baby is learning the fine art of eating" skills being carried out since springtime.

Since the old rotting boards had been replaced last year with new ones we'd never been rushed to tint or varnish them. The porch isn't exposed to the elements so we couldn't see the point. Then there was just a lazy streak kind of looming right after our trip to the States last year and it kept getting shoved into the TO DO bin instead of the TO DID bin.

So the porch has a new dark tint and a few coats of marine varnish on the wood. It took me three days and caused a lot of headaches because of the incessant rain. Add to that an inquisitive toddler & you'll see why the simplest projects can sometimes become the most maddening of all.

Here is a before with sleeping baby resting peacefully. Ignore his cuteness if you can and focus on those dirty, naked floor boards:

Some after shots:

The painted mailbox

2006-09-03T05:23:00.000-07:00

When I started stenciling my mailbox I thought my neighbors were going to go blind from straining their eyes through half parted curtains. "What is she doing!" "I have no idea, must be some American thing!" My neighbor Marcel kept commenting to my husband that I'd probably gone mad.

The truth is I hate the fact that french mailboxes are all green. I've always wanted to paint my mailbox. When I ruined the finish on ours washing it with a powerful soap, I used this as an excuse to "fix the finish" and spruce it up.

The best laid plans

2006-08-29T13:28:00.000-07:00

A few post back in FEBRUARY, yes that long ago!! I posted some sort of list of what we had in our IN tray. These were all the dangling projects that needed our immediate attention. Some got done. Some got diverted. Some were completely forgotten! Here's a recap and an update:

Said back in February: "The wood floors in the living room. Right now the wood planks are sitting in the room ready to be laid. The floor is not ready though and needs to be prepared. We're walking on concrete for now. Ouch."

Well okay, this is a sore spot between me and Seb ...and my feet. I'd like to have some baby-proof floors. Seb says it's a week long project and very time consuming to prep. He also used my mother's visit as an excuse, and now there's the terrace project. Meanwhile we're still living on bumpy concrete with no leveling compound on it. Ouch.

Said back in February: "The roof apparently very soon. Our guy is scheduled to start this month. We have to buy all of the materials including the Velux windows and the bay window for our bedroom. This is a "builder guy" and not a "roof guy" who actually works with his 19 year old daughter. She's really pretty and not the roofing guy's daughter type you might be imagining. I'll try and sneak some pictures so we can imagine why she would want to swing roofing hammers in February and not want to have a career as an esthetician."

The roof project. Don't get me started! A sordid story that is still ongoing. Our neighbor The Dragon Lady attacked our roofer threatening to sue him if he didn't immediately stop our project. She called his boss and said "your roofer is moonlighting on weekends blah, blah blah" For the record the boss knew our roofer guy was moonlighting weekends actually and he'd encouraged him to find extra work, even loaning him the necessary tools. Anyway, Dragon Lady is just that way, mean as a skillet full of rattlesnakes. We had to stop the roof job because she threatened us with legal action too for working with uh err, regular:people. Touché, she had us there and because of this we've stopped for three months. Three month of talks while we negotiate her leetledemand that we pay her for a new roof for the coproperty we share in the back so she doesn't feel obliged to discuss our business with her friend The Mayor. Meanwhile we have 3/4 of a roof and a very shaky promise that Mr. Moonlight Roofer will return to finish the work ... someday. By the way his daughter bailed after just two weeks. She did work hard her first few weekends though but she seemed a little high maintenance, brooding and whining and it turned out that she ran out on daddy before the job was done claiming she was depressed.

Said back in February: "The arch in the kitchen/dining room. This isn't anything major but it's very pretty. We've decided to put arches through much of the house. With our crooked walls Seb is having a time with it. He also isn't here very much so that makes it hard. Pictures forthcoming because it's a great little project."

This project came out wonderfully and Seb did such a beautiful job. He also redid a corner wall and some stone in another corner. Everything looks fab in the living room wall-wise. I'll be posting pictures of this soon.

Said back in February: "Removing the paint off the stone on the front of the house. The heat gun doesn't do very well in below freezing temps so I've been lazy about finishing it. The front of our house looks like a ghetto right now so I'd really like to get it done. I think we're the pathetic scab on the face of the village. The snooty lady down the street doesn't even say hi to Seb anymore (she never said hi to me btw). The place really looks condemned. Pictures forthcoming so you can all vote on whether we should open a crack house or a heroin flop house."

Ever have a project that you can't quite get finished? This is one of them. I'm just not happy with the results so far. I'm mulling over a new method for taking the paint off without so much scraping damage. The young stonemason in our village suggested I use wallpaper paste mixed with caustic "soap" which I might try. I'm worried about having a huge mess on my hands though. If only I could take the stones off the wall and not have to do this work upside down! Meanwhile I did clean up the front of the house a little but frankly it still looks like a crack shack, no voting necessary on that.

Terrace with a view

2006-08-27T07:03:00.000-07:00

One of our most recent projects is installing a terrace on the back of the house, a brilliant idea Seb came up with last year. Well, the idea actually sort of evolved. The terrace started off as a replacement for the sagging balcony, then it grew into an idea for an expanded balcony and eventually it pretty much become the concept for a sprawling toddler play area and elevated garden.

Here's the work in progress as Seb digs holes in the neighbor's shared wall for beam placement and Little S does his part to help out.

The terrace leads out from the living room and we love the idea that in the summer we can leave the back doors to the house open and feel like we have a whole other room. There's also the stunning view of the lake we'll gain when you walk out near the end of the terrace, something we've always wanted to take advantage of but didn't know how to do it.

In a few weeks we should have our special ordered plastic-wood planks for the decking to place across the beams and then it's just a question of installing the barrier railings. It's just too bad that Summer is nearly finished. I guess we'll be doing some Fall grilling to celebrate.

Blip

2006-08-27T06:37:00.000-07:00

A little blip has prevented me from properly keeping up this blog. The blip is well, laziness actually and also the fact that we haven't done jack on the house in over six months so there was nothing much to blog about. As I stated in earlier posts we have zero motivation to work. It's been too hard keeping track of baby and Seb's career decisions and then there was the two months without a computer. But here we stand again poised with tool belt in hand. Well kind of. We've hired a contractor to do the major renovations. Our contractor starts soon, like in a couple of weeks. We're eager to get the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom done. It's major renovation time!

That February slump thing

2006-01-31T01:42:00.000-08:00

Life is pretty lonely at the house right now. There really isn't much to write about because we just have not been working. That's right progress has gone from snail's pace to nil. This is directly related to the fact that Seb changed jobs and is now in Lyon working late hours all week. On the weekend's he's pretty beat and he just needs time with us to recuperate. This whole sorted story is on my other blog of course and you can follow it better over there. In fact I've been writing a lot more in my blog over there and so, well if you're hungry for news about us then it may be a better idea to click on that link during this whole slump period.

But the work on the house will get finished. Suddenly very soon we hope that things will take off like striking a match to a bale of hay and voila, wildfire! Progress! And in all of that "pouf" we'll have our new floors, the clean walls and well why not, a bathroom with a gilded toilet on a bronze pedestal. Hey why not? Anything is possible if you have the means. We are hoping that we will, have the means that is. All of this work has nothing to do with us and a whole lot to do with the bank. We're borrowing the money and hiring out the work. Well, if they'll let us and if we can find the workers.

Here's what's sitting in the "very soon to be" tray. These projects will sail with or without the bank:

The wood floors in the living room. Right now the wood planks are sitting in the room ready to be laid. The floor is not ready though and needs to be prepared. We're walking on concrete for now. Ouch.

The roof apparently very soon. Our guy is scheduled to start this month. We have to buy all of the materials including the Velux windows and the bay window for our bedroom. This is a "builder guy" and not a "roof guy" who actually works with his 19 year old daughter. She's really pretty and not the roofing guy's daughter type you might be imagining. I'll try and sneak some pictures so we can imagine why she would want to swing roofing hammers in February and not want to have a career as an esthetician.

The arch in the kitchen/dining room. This isn't anything major but it's very pretty. We've decided to put arches through much of the house. With our crooked walls Seb is having a time with it. He also isn't here very much so that makes it hard. Pictures forthcoming because it's a great little project.

Removing the paint off the stone on the front of the house. The heat gun doesn't do very well in below freezing temps so I've been lazy about finishing it. The front of our house looks like a ghetto right now so I'd really like to get it done. I think we're the pathetic scab on the face of the village. The snooty lady down the street doesn't even say hi to Seb anymore (she never said hi to me btw). The place really looks condemned. Pictures forthcoming so you can all vote on whether we should open a crack house or a heroin flop house.

So yes, work is puttering about on our heads and on paper. It's cold here right now and life is busy and so we find it hard to get much done. We have zero motivation so I guess that's why. I'm optimistic that things will pick up soon though. As usual stay tuned!

Not dead just taking things in

2006-01-17T02:21:00.000-08:00

The house is on a break. We're in the middle of deciding whether or not to move and so the work has really been suffering as a result. Anyway, we definitely won't be selling the house but the question of whether we will live here is still out. We have actually thought about finishing it before June and renting it at the end of summer. This isn't something we want to do but life is definitely stepping on our toes right now and it may not be our choice.

Anyway, there's lots going on right now in our personal life and almost too much to write about in a single post. It's all going to be tidied up in the next few months and hopefully we'll be back in the dust again with hammers poised.

The newly installed fireplace

2005-12-28T00:02:00.000-08:00

Here's the before and after presentation. We think it's really changed this house. It really is the focal point now when you enter the house. You'll have to excuse the clutter. This photo was taken Christmas morning and toys and bottles of wine are all about.

Ready, aim, and fire ...

2005-12-20T00:05:00.000-08:00

We finally have the fireplace installed and I'm speechless. It's beyond wonderful. We have been delighted for days. The installers were five burly men who made my life very difficult over 5 days, but I have to digress because they made it possible to start using the chimney right away! Yep, we've been enjoying relaxing in front of the fire all weekend long. This quickly made up for all those nasty cigarettes butts left on my floors (they smoked in my house), doors left open to the cold and the trudging of dirt and grime through my kitchen. And I'd do it all over again if I had to; no problem.

Thanks to a ventilation system we also had installed, the heat gets distributed throughout the entire house. No more radiators! No more huge gas bills! It really does heat the entire house too. We were finding ourselves almost overwhelmed by the heat and had to regulate the blower several times to compensate for the heatwave. As it was we were stripped down to our t-shirts and whatnots. The only downside is that you really have to keep an eye on things and keep a good fire going all the time, otherwise it gets cold in the house quickly.

I'm eager to post pictures. I have to find my damn battery charger though and baby S is not telling where he put it. I probably won't get them posted until after Christmas since were off on an in-law expedition over the weekend.

Happy holidays everyone!

Clearing out the room

2005-12-11T23:21:00.000-08:00

We completely cleaned out our living room in preparation for the arrival of the fireplace. The room looked so lovely without all of our things cluttering the space. The installers are starting their work on the fireplace this week.

We were pleased to the finally be able to throw away the ugly carpet that was put down as a temporary measure. That carpet served us well in "the baby is coming, quick cover the floor!" emergency of Summer 2003.

The fireplace will be installed on this wall, which is just opposite the stairs. Look how we have to hold up the entire second floor with that brace. Scary huh?

Under the stairs we have a lovely little niche that used to be a closet. For the past year it's made a nice place to stash all our tools. Someday it will become a closet again. Alas, we hope.

Shuffling from room to room

2005-11-28T00:51:00.000-08:00

First of all I'll just say that the unofficial decision is that we're staying here, of course pending the appearance of the contract from Seb's company. They aren't exactly known for keeping promises of this sort without lots of teeth pulling so it's more of a "I'll believe it when I see it," sort of staying. If there's no contract by the end of this week we have decided to go to Lyon. We both hope they come through. We finally came to the conclusion that we love our home too much to bail out on it and we'd really prefer to stay here. Besides we have the fireplace coming and the roofing contractor lined up for February. So much to look forward to.

Speaking of the roofing contractor, we finally found someone to do it for a reasonable price...ummm lets just say he doesn't exactly advertise in the local phonebook if you know what I mean. I know that's a risk but you should have seen the alternatives..CHA-ching! We really had no choice. Let's just hope he lives up to his reputation.

The roof is in decent shape, the problem is there's NOTHING under it. It was never tarped or insulated. Think alpine winter and lakeside winds. Brrrrr. The tiles are in pretty good shape but covered in moss. Besides, add to that the fact that we're installing three or four Velux windows in the roof and doing a new chimney. We decided it was better to just start fresh with a whole new roof.

The fireplace is being installed in a few weeks! I was very excited about that until Seb crushed me by reminding me that the roof has to be finished before we can do the chimney, and crank up fireplace.
It's always something! Grrrrrr a gutteral growl of malcontent... excuse me. The good thing is that we get to pick out our floor, or that well we already did. We decided on walnut, medium sized planks. You can see in the samples here how it might look with the marble on our fireplace. We chose the the walnut because it was less expensive than the oak and more elegant than the pine we'd originally chose. With the now posh fireplace we had to change our entire vision of the living room. Funny how one small piece can change everything, isn't it. We we're so ready to have that rustic pine floor but it looked terrible with the marble.

Here's a picture of the fireplace as seen in the store. Isn't it gorgeous? The foyer is polished marble and provides lots of places to sit. Since it was a floor model at the end of the season we got it at half price. It's a Jotul, which apparently is a really high performance Norwegian brand. We're really excited to have a Christmas in front of the fire, ... uh, next year that is....if we're uh, here you know.

The difficult part of all of this is that we can no longer sleep in the living room, but now must sleep in the DINING ROOM. Since our dining room became our living room when we moved our bed into the living room, ...following me?, we will be sleeping in the living/dining room on an air mattress FOR ONE MONTH. We have to completely empty out our living room so that we can lay the floor so that means packing away all books, videos, lamps and stereo equipment. We already have the bare minimum in the living room anyway because almost everything we own is packed away in the unheated, drafty basement. This is all getting very tiring. I'm very attached to my bed I'll have you know and swapping it out for a month for a camp bed has me with a sour case of the holiday blues. I'm a woman who'll spend more on sheets and towels than on meaningless vacations. I'm a 300 thread count kinda gal. Losing my bed is DIFFICULT. I'm trying to be a trooper but this is getting near impossible. Add to this the fact that the shower is usually frozen each morning and you'll understand how tempting Lyon really was.

It's like the Clash song

2005-11-23T01:55:00.000-08:00

"if I stay there may be trouble...but if I go there may be double,
so you've got to let me know, should I stay or should I go?"

Link on over here to my personal blog to read about our big decision that has us stuck in the mud. This will probably explain the lack of motivation to work on the house.

Heat gun romance

2005-11-16T06:53:00.000-08:00

We are busy, busy bees traveling lately in preparation for trying to make some potentially life altering decisions. There's a BIG PLAN afoot and it's temporarily disrupted our lives, so the work on the house has really suffered. More on that as things unfold. The news definitely affects the house and our lives. Lots of scary/exciting stuff that may or may not ever even manifest but MIGHT. It all has to do with Seb and his career. You can tell there's a cloud of confusion surrounding the situation.

I've been working on the front windows that face the street. I've been chipping away at that paint, revealing the lovely, old stone beneath. We love these windows. This is the reason we bought the house. Here's the work as viewed at the end of the week. Almost finished! I still have the doorway and another window to do but it's going surprisingly fast.

My technique is a combination of a chisel/hammer and heat gun. Sometimes the heat gun works better and sometimes the chisel is what you need for undersided spots. I've got a heat gun addiction. I'll admit it. That thing rocks!

Meanwhile Seb is cranking away upstairs whenever possible. He's doing more reinforcement work for the upstairs bathroom floor and he's running plumbing lines. Slow going and not very picture worthy.

It feels like we'll never get the bathroom finished. Boo-hoo! Our shower is still outdoors in the PIT. We took the door off the cabin with the hopes to at least put a proper door on the shower room so we could close it and heat it. We also bought a snazzy glass shower door that we thought we could use in the PIT and then transfer upstairs later when we permanently eliminate the PIT. Warning: never prop glass shower door in front of balcony shutters that you open every morning. Enough said. We lost 150 euros in about 10 seconds! Stupidity is expensive. Meanwhile the PIT is worse and worse. I'd post pictures but people would think it was all a joke. Maybe I will post pictures so someone will come and rescue us from our misery because they feel sorry for us!

Christmas by the Fire

2005-10-21T00:55:00.000-07:00

We have this fantasy that by Christmas we will have a cozy nook to curl up next to, enjoying the glow of the light dancing on the walls. We've chosen the fireplace and talked to the installer about when he can come. He says "November, no problem," but we haven't had a return phone call in over a week. We have our fingers crossed which is about all we can do. Well we can do that and continue to hound him (but not enough to make him angry with us, thus having the opposite effect). Meanwhile I've got a whole cupboard full of chestnuts waiting.

Progress is a dusty word

2005-09-29T23:45:00.000-07:00

Looking at old photos of the house I found these pictures of what the upstairs bedroom used to look like. The work went quickly once we dug our heels in. The hardest part was the removal of old plaster and concrete with a chisel and hammer. Lots of smashed fingers! I only hope that the rest of the upstairs will go this well. Right now it looks about as bad as this.

before the work of sanding beams and cleaning up

And here is the same exact spot as it looks today. That's another temporary wall there, papered in blue. Look closely and you'll see that we even have a temporary door in the wall, nifty!

And the window; an awful lot of smashed fingers for both of us while removing plaster

More temporary walls

2005-09-28T00:45:00.000-07:00

Seb has become very good at putting up drywall...oh yeah and ripping it down too. This is what we call 'round these parts "the temporary wall." Allow me to translate: homeowners...wait I mean homeowner's wife find that it's cold, or she need privacy, or she finds a crumbly stone wall creates far too much dust and voila! suddenly we have an instant wall. Kind of magic like.

Well, a new problem created the need for a temporary wall. He's known to be very noisy himself but won't tolerate even so much as a peep from the rest of the family. Baby S now has a temporary-walled bedroom. It's our first "walled" bedroom in this house and we're mighty proud even though its life span is going to prove to be quite short.

We aren't very wall happy people. We're always the ones nudging each other at other people's houses and whispering "if only they'd tear out that kitchen wall and join it to that family room..." or "that bathroom could be bigger you know." After all, we tore out part of a bearing wall in a 500 year old house, so yes we're quite serious about open spaces. The placement of baby S's bedroom in our coveted mezzanine office is merely temporary. This solution, ever so painful to our renovation hearts, has saved our sanity. Point blank.

Of course now we are sleeping in the living room under the stairs. Maybe it's not very glamourous but we'll have a fireplace in our bedroom this winter. Can you you say that?

Sure you can see the husband's feet but can you spot the cat tail?

Some more cherished unfinished drywall memories for baby S.

Elmo seems cool about it all.

Here is the room before we put the wall up. Our bed is sticking out there you see. Now we have a hallway in front of the staircase, ... uh temporarily of course.

Home sweet ...

2005-09-19T04:53:00.000-07:00

Well it's been a few weeks now since our return home to France. Excuse the absence but there was vacation and then a return to my faithful computer which had a very sad dramatic and stubborn crash. I was long overdue for a new system anyway. As Seb said one too many times "there are only so many baby pictures this computer can hold!" What can I say but I love my baby!

We're back to projects, projects, projects. The house is full of them. As winter approaches most of the projects involve the usual rolling out of insulation in the attic and the stuffing of drafty corners. We're seriously considering the installation of the fireplace this Fall.

The house looks better than ever though. The kitchen works and we're really happy with the opening and the feeling of space we got from it. We aren't so pleased with the placement of the w.c. It's really compromised our dining area which isn't so big to begin with. We are thinking about relocating the w.c. yet again, or at the very least relocating it's entrance to the other side. All of this is best explained in pictures which I will add soon.

Shopping together

2005-08-03T20:41:00.000-07:00

We visited Lowe's together today. Seb was just as smitten as I was by this charming little slice of paradise. We gazed at faucets and held hands in the paint aisle where they actually give you paint samples, "yes, those are free honey," I excitedly explained. We were smitten by the double wide, stainless fridge selections and I caressed several brand new, reasonably priced dishwashers, thinking back to the news from Seb that our highly overpriced used dishwasher at home doesn't even work now that we are actually able to install it. We will just have to pitch it and chalk up that one to experience. Buy new next time.

I think we will be buying some faucets for our bath while here. We also think we may like to buy an oversized shower head for our bathroom. It's all more reasonable and we find the selection is better. Those suitcases are really going to be heavy!

The husband arrives

2005-08-03T20:25:00.000-07:00

Seb is finally here in Florida with us and trying hard to relax. He may find his way to achieving it somewhere into the third week. He's pretty exhausted from the last bits of work he did before leaving. Apparently things look pretty good.

We aren't thinking about the house much. In the last two and a half years this is our first and only vacation away from the place and to be honest we're enjoying every dust free second of it. This is what they mean by regrouping.

Please excuse us while we recharge our batteries. Soon we'll be mucking away with the rest of you but for now it's time to meditate on the sunshine and fresh air and forget about all that other stuff.

The clincher

2005-07-19T19:53:00.000-07:00

While casually sipping my iced teas porchside at my mother and stepfather's Florida home this summer, baby S has suddenly discovered that he's mobile. I haven't talked much to Seb about this, but baby S is off in a direction we never could have imagined before having children. He's crawling. I didn't bother explaining over the telephone because frankly he wouldn't be able to comprehend what I'm seeing until he gets here to see for himself. Baby S is into EVERYTHING.

Let me define everything: televisions, cupboards, the dishwasher, the bathroom toilet seat, electric cords, outlets, plugs, muck in the corners, dust, cat food bowl, the wine fridge, the crystal glassware, the mirrored wall, the litterbox, under the bed, the laundry basket and the sewing box . . .for starters. And this is only when I've turned my back to answer the phone or god forbid, take a bite of food.

Yes you can put the little tyke in a playpen which we sometimes do, but he howls like a banshee "llleeeemmmmmmeeeeeee- ouuuuuuuuuutttttttttt," until there is no sane option left but to plop him on the floor and follow him with watchful, hawk mother eyes. Watchful eyes get very tired. Watchful eyes get very lazy.

I think Seb will see that when we go home we have some work to do. I think it may be more work than we have the energy to do and this is frightening. If my parent's house is hard to babyproof than ours will be impossible. We have so many more hazards at home than we have here at their plushly carpeted Florida ranch. Our house is a haven for stray nails and screws, constant dust, drippy leaks and shaky, sharp stairs, grimy splinters and greasy radiator pipes. The list is just overwhelming. I don't know how we'll rewire the lower floor so that we can eliminate the extension cord mess, replace the living room's now grungy carpet, smooth the stucco we started but changed our minds on, secure the balconies, and block off the thousands of pitfalls he could potentially encounter. How?

Starting renovations we were childless at first and then I became pregnant after the first year. The pregnancy in itself was an eye opener about what kind of home we were bringing this baby into. Bringing the baby home was another eye opener. Suddenly a little bit more aware, we quickly scrambled to fine tune the older projects and warp speed some others. But now here we are at a point where nothing could have prepared us. This last week where the awkward, wobbly baby has suddenly become a person exploring his world, completely depending on us for his safety and happiness, has been shocking. I realize that we'll have a busy Fall hurrying up an already rushed list of new projects that a couple of young and free spirited, bohemian thirty-somethings thought they'd finish at their leisure.

Oh dear what were we thinking?

Lost in Lowes

2005-07-14T20:25:00.000-07:00

I got to go to Lowes for the first time today. That may seem strange to some, and it definitely seemed strange to my mom who kept asking me if I was sure I hadn't been there before, but it's truly the case. You see, seven long years ago when I left the U.S. for France these DIY stores were much more rustic in nature and smelled of lumber. You couldn't really buy appliances, ceiling fans and pretty whatnots in them. These places existed to satisfy the burning desire of the mortal (male) to purchase power tools and other weapons of mass 'construction' such as glue and putty knives. Period.

Today was my first visit to the new and improved (for me that is) land of DIY, and all I can say is a hearty, "wow." I was really impressed! I suddenly wanted to be here renovating our home. I had no idea how much of a struggle I really had. All of our DIY stores in France stores are like the old throwback stores from seven years ago. You know, lumber glue, and NO pretty whatnots.

I actually contemplated rewiring and shipping back a ceiling fan I saw. But then I turned the corner and saw a double wide fridge that I'd fantasized about all my life (okay maybe I've lead a rather sheltered life...). And Ditto for a whole bunch of other amazing, stylish, other stuff. In short, I think I went a little out of my head, loony-mad for about 20 minutes, processing the frightful reality that we pay so much for EVERYTHING in these type of stores in France and if we lived here we could renovate for so much less. We'd actually be able to use that extra money to do so much more than what we can do now. We'd have so much more selection.

We payed 25 Euros for a hammer at a DIY store in France not too long ago. A hammer. A HAMMER. And hold on. It was not a 25 euro hammer either, it was about a $5.95 hammer. Can I hear a chorus of sympathy here? This really stinks.

So my trip to Lowes was fun and a little, I don't know, depressing. How can I ever go back to shopping at Bricorama, La Boite d'Outil, or Castorama , sanely tolerating the gross lack of any free paint samples, stylish interior lighting that doesn't look like it came off of a Dynasty set, and the ability to stare longingly at a red Kitchen-Aid bowl mixer in an aisle just over from the dreaded electricity aisle where I often lose my husband for hours on end.

This is a revolting calamity!

A steamy hot number

2005-07-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

I was watching The Money Pit on TMC today and I laughed out loud several times in the recognition I'm sure lots of us home renovation chumps do. I really laughed at the scene where Shelly Long's character gets an enticing invitation to her ex boyfriend's house for the evening after living up with her own house's renovation quirks for way too many months. She naturally accepts, mainly because she hears the word BATH. I completely identified with her.

Here at my parents finished house I'm basking in the pampering offered up the mundane, everyday features of a normal house. All the luxuries I used to have many, many, many moons ago, but have since learned to live without, like mirrors, carpeting, closets, tile floors, extra bedrooms with doors, a laundry room and of course a completely equipped and dust free kitchen. And I finally have the luxury of not only a bath, but a jacuzzi bathtub that I've been taking liberties with almost every evening since arriving. Long, hot and bubbly little cauldrons, stewing me into a vaporized bliss...ahhh. Just talking about it makes me immediately relax. It also makes me nostalgic.

The hardest thing I've been forced to do without in the two years we've been renovating has been my bath. I used to take a bath every single night. It was always my strict criteria before renting anywhere, "yes the garden is lovely ... but how's the bath?" In one fabulous, cheap rental in Blois I actually asked Seb to reconsider with me because the bathtub was a deep, short little thingy unlike anything I'd ever seen. "The bathtub is horrid, we can't take the house!" These type of short, high rimmed bathtubs seem to be unique to Europe. You actually have to fold your knees up like a frog to bathe. We took the rental anyway and I ended up really liking the bath because it filled so fast I could have a really deep soak in mere minutes. I didn't mind having to fold my legs up in front of me. It was yoga and bath all rolled into one.

The best apartment bath right before the 'froggy' one was a tub with a large opaque window to the rear of it. The tub also had lots of oversized ledges suitable for plants, particularly near the window. I decided to stuff the area as full as possible with plants. Spider plants, philodendron and violets all grew like wildfire. I bathed nightly in my little jungle, pulling out my stock of sensual armory--vanilla bath salts, Caswell Massey sandalwood soap, pillar candles, a large, swirlable glass of bordeaux, and finally some music, usually an opera cd. Seb turned into a real bath junkie too thanks to my evening ritual, and there were times when we'd be in the tub talking and laughing for so long that the water would turn tepid and the dinner hour would just turn into a long aperatif in the kitchen in our bathrobes. I miss those baths. I don't really miss going up those three flights of stairs to that apartment but the bath is something I often think about when the house renovating gets really exhausting like it has been lately.

Coping with away-ness

2005-07-06T20:52:00.000-07:00

Although I'm an ocean away from France I haven't thought about the house ... well not much. Well actually not so much at all. Well actually let me be frank, not really at all. It's kind of like that bad relationship guy syndrome. I'll try to forget him, I mean IT. I'll get over him...uh, IT (long distance always helps), and then something will suddenly remind me of him ...eek I mean IT. Then my heart will flutter with the anticipation about what's happening with IT while I'm not there. Yesterday for example I saw a built in bookshelf in a magazine and there it was again. I was smitten. I got all pulled in again and my thoughts wandered back to the house.

Never fear, I do spend an awful lot of time complimenting people's doorknobs, trim work, and kitchen faucets on this side of the Atlantic. They often just sort of turn to me with a vacant look and say something like, "oh yeah, uh that came standard when we bought the house." And then it suddenly occurs to me that not everyone who owns a home has an obsessive fixation with every single minute detail of their house's interior.

Poor slobs. They have no idea what they're missing.

Stonework

2005-06-22T04:38:00.000-07:00

After I posted the picture in the previous post, I thought I'd share some more pictures of what we unearthed when we removed the "chaux" (old stucco) from the house's exterior.

The giant stones around the doors and windows are not concrete but are actually a stone called mollasse. I haven't found a translation for mollasse but it resembles a sort of sandstone. It's a very local type of stone that has long since been mined-out in the region so there's no more to be had other than what already exists. Since we have quite a few repairs to make throughout our house, we always scout out local work sites to see if there is any that they want to give away. We have a small stock that will allow our workers to repair some broken parts on the house's exterior. It's good that we planned ahead for this.

On the upper part of the house we decided that we will show about 75 percent of the wall's stonework, including of course the mollasse around the door. The rest will be covered by cement. On the lower level of the house we'll be showing no stones, except the mollasse around the door and window frames. The old, ugly stones on the lower level will simply be cemented over. The stones on the lower level aren't very pretty so it was either a case of redoing them or covering them. We chose option two in the interest of time and money.

The stones on the very front of the house are being left as is for now, simply because we ran out of money. We'll repoint them later, maybe doing the work ourselves.

Here is this silly, squiggly brick arch above the door that we're keeping apparent. I actually thought it was pretty but everyone else (ie Seb and our little work team) hate it. Naturally I won (pouting helps tremendously) and so we're keeping it.

The verdict is still out as to if we should keep the large, stoney parts that you see jutting out showing on the sides of the door here. Its actually one whole jaggedy piece if that makes any sense. The side pieces we're not meant to be apparent and were simply cut that way originally for the ease of transport and placement. We kind of like them and want to show them. The boys working think we're crazy and they really think they should be covered. They said we should "reconsider" it and that they'll gladly do it at the end if we change our minds. Translation: "fools what are you thinking with your redneck taste!...do you know nothing about style!?" Hmm, I s'pose we don't... but we sure do know what we like!

That woman's touch

2005-06-22T00:26:00.000-07:00

The boys came to begin work on the facade of our house yesterday, and surprise, surprise there is a pipsqueak of a girl who works with them too. She's a dark haired little thing with grungy, cropped hair, lots of piercings and a pretty face. She's got the unshaven thing going, you know bohemian, hairy legs and unplucked brows and so forth. This is something I could never do, but yet strangely I admire those women brave enough to go au natural. She's an alternative-hippy type so of course I liked her immediately. I think they're going to do a great job on the house. They all seem to have an artistic flair, evident in their flamboyant personal styles. Unfortunately I won't be here to see the final results of their work because baby S and I are leaving tomorrow for the USA.

The house's exterior is really taking shape. Seb talked about climbing up in roof the rafters to sand the exposed beams next week. I'm sure I had steam coming out of my ears when I screamed "you'll fall!" He will fall too because he's very clumsy. Add to that the fact that he always seems to have some dramatic accident just before we go on vacation, usually involving complex prescription ointments and weekly visits to a local clinic, and you'll understand my anger. I also reminded him of the work he already has to finish in the next six weeks inside the house. His plate is really full: pouring concrete in the kitchen and dining room, installing a new kitchen sink, installing a bathroom sink, drywalling the dining room, finding and installing temporary flooring for the concrete, and cleaning and arranging the entire house before leaving the keys with our retired, American house sitters.

The home I come back to won't be the same one I'm leaving. It never really is. The husband won't be the same either. Seb will eat taboulé, tuna and reconstituted carrots in vinegar for six weeks and unwittingly lose several kilos. He won't iron his clothes and he'll walk around in his underwear all night, not minding the lack of curtains and not caring that he's putting on a fabulous show for the elderly woman who lives behind us. Both the house and Seb will lack the woman's touch and be the worse for it, and yet neither will ever admit it or care.

The bouncing ball

2005-06-20T23:25:00.000-07:00

Well here I am answering my own meme questions as instructed by maitress Jeannie at A House in Progress. She threw the ball back in everyone's court, and since they were such good questions ::smiles smugly:: who could resist. I certainly couldn't.

1) What has been the most challenging aspect of your house project?

I think it's living in our house while we're doing it. We have a very difficult situation because the original bathroom setup was and still is just a powder room with a shower installed seperately, outdoors off of the rear balcony in a sort of closeted area. It's not really a house that was meant to be lived in beyond summer. It was originally just a little vacation home visited one month out of the year by its elderly owners. The upper floors hadn't been inhabited in at least 50 years or more, and yet we foolishly moved right in.

2) Regrets? We all have regrets about certain projects in our renovation files. Do you have any regrets about anything like "I wish we'd done this first" or "not bought that" or something?

We didn't really plan well at all. We did a lot of picking and then left projects by the wayside. We started stuff we had no desire or ability to finish. Seb regrets us not waiting three months to move in and then gutting the place, taking out ceilings and walls. He's right. It would have saved us lots of time and energy.

As for purchases we only regret our house's front windows. We bought solid oak widows for the front of the house and it cost us a fortune. However, we had a special finish done that completely hides the wood. Also we let the salesman high pressure us into believing that this was the only product worthy of our windows and that there were only three colors to choose from. The windows are tinted MAHOGANY and we had no desire to have this whatsoever. We spent an awful lot of money on oak and you can't even tell it's oak. They all have to be stripped and redone one day.

3) What's the most common statement people make when they see the house for the first time? What part tend to impress them most? Least?

I have to agree with what Jeannie said in her interview that there are the types who think it has potential and others who think it's an eyesore. In the beginning everyone thought it was an eyesore! Slowly the walls came down and the ceilings came out. Soon people started seeing the beauty underneath the condemned house.

People are most impressed by the stone walls in the living room. They comment a lot on the wood beams and the metal stairs and how it combines well. The mix: stone, wood and metal gets impressive nods (we just need water and fire now to complete the five elements!) They are certainly least impressed with our lack of a proper bathroom. Normally when you live in a nice resort area you get lots of visitors. We get very few visitors because they think, "yeah it's nice .... but damn it's cold and dusty there!" Now that baby S is here we'll probably get those who think, "now that they have the kid it'll have to be nicer!" But, baby S was born here so to him it's perfectly normal, "mommy showers outside and daddy wears holey pants all weekend!"

The boys are coming

2005-06-19T00:27:00.000-07:00

Two timid young men aged mid 20 something knocked on my door yesterday and said they would be starting work next week on the house's exterior. In my enthusiasm I rattled on for about five minutes about nothing and everything, until finally they interrupted me to ask if we'd chosen a color from their three color palette. "Hmm, yes we have!" I lied. Actually we're stuck between a sort of buttercup yellow and natural for the color of the product. I admitted we were sort of between colors and I told them we'd let them know for sure by Monday. They left shaking their heads.

We are very lucky to have found these young men who work using old materials and are keenly interested in techniques d'antan. Work in the region is notoriously outrageously expensive, unavailable and sloppy. All of the 'real' workers work in Switzerland where they get paid enormous sums of money for doing very little work in a very drawn out, detailed manner. Why would anyone want to stay in France and scrounge for mere peanuts when they could be stocking away gold bars in various numbered Genevoise accounts and work at snails pace all the while? Case in point is a measly local electrician whose house I've often passed while out walking. He has a small brass plaque on his ornate mailbox stating what he does, which is how I know his métier. And yet his five bedroom villa with swimming pool overlooks the lake on one side and the mountains on the other. I doubt he'd come out and rewire our porch lights.

Our boys are university students studying stone masonry for now but their destiny is much greater than you may think. In a few short years they'll be living in houses much larger than ours and doing their commute over the border with a whole lot of other up and coming local artisans. It's been this way for years.

Like I said we were lucky to get them before their star rises.

L'exterieur

2005-06-14T04:32:00.000-07:00

Seb has been diligently tapping the outside of the house uncovering all of the original stonework in preparation for the local 'boy' who'll be doing the finish work on the facade. As the old concrete falls away we're amazed at how pretty the old wall is. Over the upstair's exterior doorway we've discoved that there is a small arch made of brick with pieces of wood underneath. I find it very charming but Seb isn't sure if he feels the same way. He's pleased with the results overall. He's been getting lots of encouragement from passers-by. "Nice work" and "Wow!" We've met more neighbors this week than we've ever met in our whole time here.

We're a bit nuts to be doing the outside of our house when we don't even have a proper bathroom in our house. I think it's just the need to escape a bit and rediscover the outside world. Breathe. Ironically we call working on the exterior of the house "escaping."

the upper exterior as of Saturday afternoon with arch over door

911 kitty

2005-06-09T06:09:00.000-07:00

She's quirky and cute. She was the last born of a litter of a rescued mother cat and kitten mission, born slate gray and rather ugly with her broken tail. We knew she wouldn't get adopted. We decided that she would be the one we'd keep. We named her "Mégot"* which in French means cigarette butt. Her tail resembles a stubbed out butt and she keeps it high and proud without much other choice. It's permanently stuck in this position.

It'd been two days and no sign of my little butt. We'd shaken the food box all up and down the streets to no avail. We did a roadside search (cringe) and by yesterday evening I was really worried. After baby S fell asleep last night I did a late evening tour of the neighborhood "here girl...c'mon tsk-tsk-tsk" and then I heard it. The response. A distant but urgent "mrrrooooooowwwww." I searched under cellar doorways, inside drainpipes and finally desperately pressed my ear to the closed doorway of the vacant house two doors down. Maybe? I wasn't really sure where the sound was coming from though. It sounded somehow to be coming from the rooftops. It was too dark to go that route. I decided I'd continue the search the next morning.

This morning armed with a ladder and a pair of sneakers I climbed up to our vacant attic, through the old skylight and up to our rooftop. Seb and I sometimes go up there to enjoy the view and drink a glass of wine. Someday we hope to build our bedroom there and enjoy a small rooftop balcony. I'm getting off track here though. This time I was up there for a rescue mission. The cries became louder and more desperate as I approached the pitch of the roof. My worst fears confirmed I peered down the chimney where it seem to be eminating louder and saw a pair of glistening, yellow eyes. My poor little "butt" had fallen 5 meters down into one of the many old chimney flues on our roof. It was a narrow rectangle about 7 x 15 inches. I had no idea how I'd get her out. There was no longer any exit. It was just a vast hole. "mrrrooooow" and then encore "mrrroooooooow" and then another gutteral "mrrroooooooow" for good measure in case I'd missed the first 3 thousand. She sounded very hoarse.

I called the pompiers.** This is the first time in all my time in France that I have composed "le 18."*** Well, maybe I did it accidently once or twice when stupidly trying to compose a U.S. 1-800 number, forgetting that they don't work in France. But this was my first real emergency. The classic "cat up a tree."

The pompier were very polite, arriving with as much promptness and cerimony as if it were a human trapped inside a burning building. They spent over two hours trying to extract Mégot from her little cinder prison. First they tried the cat in the bag technique, attempting to entice her to slip into it for some smelly treats. They then tried a variety of baskets eagerly provided by curious neighbors, "here try this one," "no this one," "how about this one!" Everyone it seems had a solution. Finally when the young fire crew had tried everything in their and everyone else's repetoire they decided to call the fire chief. I stepped away to drink a jus d'orange with my neighbor. Mégot was in good hands. There were now five pompier on the scene.

She was finally rescued using one of those special metal animal lassos and lifted to safety, wherein she promptly bolted in gratitude. I think everyone was relieved not to have to break the 2 foot thick walls in order to get her out. They told me they would have done it, but only as a last resort. I thought this might have been a good idea actually since we could have made a nice closet out of the hole in the future. That's me you know, always thinking of renovation. I know Seb would have thought the same thing.

The pompiers all had a jus d'orange with us at my neighbors house (we'd used her attic to get on the rooftop since it was easier). The chief drank his jus then shook his head dramatically sighing, "ai yai yai les chats!"****

* pronounced may-go
**the fire department
***the national number for the fire department (sort of like the US version of 911)
****good grief, cats!

Lest you think we are liberated

2005-06-08T12:42:00.000-07:00

My sister Jane is a paintaholic. She's transformed several reasonably priced apartments she's rented over the years into vast salons worthy of Architectual Digest spreads. She's got a special flair for the art of transforming trash to treasure, lowly to lofty and and mediocre to magical. She was my guest for ten days and let's just say we painted.

First the little metal railing on the porch. I'd had the dark brown paint for a year but never painted it. I'm not sure why. Jane attacked it at the first available moment. I finished it off adding hammered copper accents. Fun and easy.

While sipping our mineral water one afternoon we stared long and hard at the front of the house. Seb had chipped off several layers of concrete in an attempt to see what was underneath. Like a giant scab, he'd been picking at it mercilessly for two years. The dingy yellow, painted parts which were left were so dusty and crumbly that it was impossible to clean. Who would want the job? Who could sanely handle the mess? No one in this house has enough sanity left to handle any task like this.

Jane and I mused about painting fresh paint over the old painted parts one afternoon while Seb was at work. I had a gallon of white paint sitting just in our workroom. "Where are the gloves?" Jane is a fussy painter always wearing gloves and whatnot unlike me who grabs and goes. She is fast though. In a matter of a morning the lower exterior of the house was painted. We were careful not to paint anywhere near the already exposed stones. We only painted the leftover scabby parts and we painted it a fresh, pretty white.

Seb didn't talk to me for the next 12 hours except in shouts.

-"How could you just paint the house without telling me!"

-"Well, it's not like it was..."

-"And just grab a brush and say...

(Jane slipped out to the local café for beer)
-"Umm guys I'll be back uh later ...okay"

-(Seb not missing a beat) "...that you were going to PAINT THE HOUSE!"

-"Hey it looks better...it looks cleaner...!"

-"That's not the point!"

before we moved in it was already looking bad

so we just added a little coat of white...nothing drastic

Over the next few days our neighbors started commenting, "pretty railing!," "It's so much cleaner!," "nice job!" My 83 year old neighbor Marcel walked up to Seb, "your wife is nutty painting everything. Why don't you put a stop to that, heh?" I asked Seb what his response was. He didn't answer. I had the feeling he didn't come to my defense. The next day I purposely went over to Marcel's house and asked if he had any old paint I could have. He gave me three quarts of leftover colors and snickered at me. I pretended to be very excited at the prospect of painting something else. "Oh dear this is super! vraiment super!." I said, merrily carting the paint off in a cardboard box.

After all this Seb decided to contact the boy who talked about redoing our facade for a good price. In a matter of just a week the deal was done and the house is to be refaced at this month's end. So all in all it was a great idea to paint the house. It motivated us to go ahead with a project we weren't too certain about. And poor Seb. I had to save him from being the laughingstock of our neighborhood. After all who would "let" their wife paint their house without asking! Oh dear!**

**In France women were not allowed to vote until 1944. Up until the mid 1960's I've heard tell that legislation existed which said women had to have their husband's permission to work. Obviously you wouldn't dream of painting the house without asking your husband.

Sometimes needy needs a break

2005-06-06T00:50:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there's just so much work going on it's difficult to know where to begin a blog entry. The baptism luncheon is finished and the guests have all retired to their respective corners of the globe. The house sits here looking at us with needy eyes. "Poor me...you haven't worked on me for three whole days!" or some such overly needy statement.

We've all had friends, lovers or family members like this. The more we give the more they need. They take and take and take until someone, (usually your mother because that's her job right) steps in and says with a bit too much drama "this person is draining you...please realize that they are killing you slowly!" Well, if houses were people, and sometimes they seem that way, we'd be dealing with the "life sucker" The one who dominates all of your time, calls you all the time, complains about relationships, "my previous owners never really loved me and that's what gave me my low self esteem to begin with," and forces you to put in a kitchen sink only to replace it by another two weeks later.

Needy and greedy but well loved nonetheless.

Plastering around kitchen beams

2005-05-24T00:00:00.000-07:00

before, concrete around the beams and the old, yellow walls

after, a little plaster and paint for a temporary quick fix!

The miracle of white paint

2005-05-23T23:51:00.000-07:00

I have a friend coming over to help with the food prepations on Saturday. My built in cupboard is definitely the thorn in my kitchen. It's ugly, yellow, grimey and virtually uncleanable. I'd be embarrassed to have her searching in it for necessary spices. It's amazing what a little white semi-gloss enamel and a determined woman can do.

before the very dirty mucky, interior

with partially removed contact paper and 20 year old grime

after, an improvement "n'est pas?"

Stoney sink

2005-05-18T22:56:00.000-07:00

I've always wanted a limestone sink. I've seen them in the South of France and have always said if I have a house one day I want one in my kitchen. Well, the price tag has always deterred us from getting one. That and the fact that they weigh a ton.

Two weeks ago we saw a replica of an 18th century limestone sink in Gédimat's garden promotion catalogue. Although designed for a garden it was sold with a cute bronze faucet and sat on two limestone legs. We decided that the price was reasonable enough considering it came with the faucet, so we got very excited and bought it. Very spur of the moment thing. It weighs 1/2 ton. Well maybe I'm exaggerating a teeny bit, but it's a bear to lift.

Seb installed it all on Sunday and guess what. We hate it. It's so heavy that the kitchen floor is almost caving in. Yikes. Besides there's no place to set dishes as you wash up. And its basin is very shallow. Even though we thought it would be okay because the basin is large, it isn't and you get splashed with water as you wash dishes. It's pretty but not very practical. So, I suppose we're going to install a practical sink and put this lovely monster in the garden after all. More money down the drain!

* note picture is not my kitchen, it's from catalogue...dream on!

Hectic!

2005-05-18T22:41:00.000-07:00

There's lots going and no time to blog. Hey though it's lots of fun being in the pressure cooker.

This weekend it was Seb's turn to have a meltdown. I've rarely seen him so defeated. He just sat on the sofa for about ten minutes, head in hands and said nothing. It's awful to see someone you love upset like that. I think he's just completely overwhelmed. He recovered and muttered something, then went outside and started tearing out our front porch. Well, if you've seen our front porch you wouldn't be shocked. The whole thing is caving in. It's very scary and makes our house look like its condemened. He needed to change projects I suppose and be outside a little. He's been in this kitchen for waaaay too long. How could I complain. I've always wanted the porch redone!

I'm busy painting and patching. Our beams were placed with concrete and left the walls looking like hell. Besides the fact that Seb and his dad wrote notes on the old walls as if they were a giant whiteboard! "get milk Tuesday...," "buy nails," "ask Chris not to cook steamed food anymore!" etc. So, I set out with a gallon of white semigloss enamel and repainted the kitchen. I plastered over the cement between the beams as best as I could and then painted those sections too. This isn't anything forever but it works for now. It actually looks good if you stand back far enough.

Otherwise we have the old toilet out. We also have the new one installed but unfortunately we're still brushing our teeth in the shower. We haven't got a bathroom sink yet. Coming soon I hope!

Party centerpiece

2005-05-13T01:31:00.000-07:00

Duchamp's "Fountain," 1917

I probably shouldn't be wasting valuable time blogging. In fact I should be in the kitchen filling holes and prepping for a rapid fire paint job. Or perhaps finding ways to cover up wildly mismatched floors, or even wantonly putting the finishing touches on my Tuscan Green shutters so I can rehang them. After all, the christening luncheon of Baby S is here in our house in two weeks and of course every single invitee has accepted, much to our...uh, err delight.

When most people slap their hands to their face and exclaim just before such an event "Oh dear, there's sooo much to do! " they usually mean buying a dress, preparing the food, dusting the furniture and making those little last minute phone calls. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't imagine they have a fully functioning toilet à la Marcel Duchamp in the middle of their calico colored dining room. I bet they don't have to empty their dishwater into said toilet, why did my father-in-law disconnect the sink drain and what did he do with the damn pipes I continually ask to dumbfounded, blank stares..., and above all I bet they don't have to deal with a grumpy Gallic husband who has to hang drywall, install a new toilet, a new sink and drain pipes all in record time on his highly coveted, three day Pentecôte weekend. I'm surely in the minority here, right?

Somehow we'll get it all done. We always manage to make our deadlines, especially when placed in the pressure cooker. I may be frantically fanning freshly painted walls dry minutes before the guests arrive, and they may look quizzically at this place we dare call home, but we'll survive it all as long as we have the essentials: lovely candles burning, good wine, fine music, the aroma of great food and a circle friends and family to share it all with.

Right??

He had a dream

2005-05-11T23:43:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time there was a wall and a man with a dream. His dream persisted in spite of ...

... all of the obstacles which lay before him.

And over a year later his dream was realized. His entire house was open from front to back.**

*note that in the first picture where Seb is ~~goofing off~~ working on the computer, he is in the exact same spot as the last picture's opening. The living room now opens majestically into the kitchen and dining area whereas before it was connected by a dimly lit, narrow hallway to the exteme right (not pictured).

**...and he could pee while keeping an eye on the his dinner table.

The evolution of a ceiling

2005-05-11T06:17:00.000-07:00

the horror ...

the delivery ...

the installation ...

the unveiling ...

The show must go on

2005-05-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

While happy that the work is finished I have the "I thought we we're replacing beams, why did you have to tear out my kitchen sink and backsplash" phenomenon. Okay maybe not everyone understands this phenomenon. It always seems that in old houses work creates more work, creates more work, creates more work, creates...well chaos.

But the show goes on. The woman rises at dawn, does dishes awkwardly without pouring water down the drain (no drain yet), changes her baby from a, "wait where did I put those diapers...okay which sac...hmmmm ummm", and above all keeps a clear head even when she finds that she can't get the damn packing tape residue off of her built-in cupboard that she may or may not end up keeping but didn't want packing tape residue on anyway thank you very much.

Behold:

Oh merde, the faucet broke so we replaced it...by a garden faucet. Can we call it shabby chic? Huh, huh can we? Oh good.

living out of sacs I carted from "camp in-laws" all week...gotta unpack those eventually

this packing tape residue is a bitch to get off of wood

Bastard of a job finished..."yo, clean-up crew over here guys"

2005-05-09T05:22:00.000-07:00

We said goodbye to my in-laws on Saturday night after cooking them their last meal. No it wasn't steamed but it was of the ready-made variety. I think it was quiche. My cooking memory chip has been a little fuzzy lately--a system overload no doubt.

I have to hand it to my father-in-law, the man got a lot of work done in a week! It was very noble of him to come and lend a hand. He is quite handy for a pencil- pusher type, although he often admits that he doesn't understand our taste and is basically following orders. It's true that we have different taste.

I think my mother-in-law was pleased to leave yesterday and I can understand. She had her bags packed and sitting by the door since Saturday morning, haha I think she has a very hard time understanding why we bought this house when we could have easily bought a new apartment for the same price. Well, a very small new apartment that is. I understand because we have the same problem sometimes. She rarely steps foot inside our house if she can help it and hasn't said anything at all about anything since we've started the whole renovation. Some of the results have been damn impressive but I think that either it just simply isn't her taste (she's mentioned this before) or else she can't see the whole picture until it's completely done.

Yesterday Seb and I spent the day cleaning and arranging. I don't even think we made a minor dent in things. We just pieced back together a semblance of our kitchen. There's still so much work to do!

But...:

* The beams got replaced and the ceiling is back in

* The old w.c. got knocked out (the toilet stands completely alone now!)

* The walls got built for the new w.c. and the door is hung (the toilet/sink are not installed yet)

* The wall between the living room and kitchen got knocked out! We now have a 5 foot opening between the rooms and more light

I really want to clean a little more before offering up some pictures. I'd like to show befores and afters anyway. That's always more fun when you can see how hideous it was before....and then how hideous it still is (but in a different new and changed way) after. So, until I get some extra blog time you'll just have to use your imagination.

Morale sinking like a brick ship

2005-05-07T02:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is the part in renovation where we get to the edge. Nothing seems amusing and tears are starting to brim in the little ducts at the corner of the eyes. Tempers are short and energy is low. We're at that point now. At least I am.

I'm going to break down here so if you hate those type of people then leave now and come back in one week. Things will probably have righted themselves as they somehow miraculously do.

Things I'm tired of this week:

announcing I have to pee and asking everyone to leave the worksite so I can in privacy

cooking out of an electric steamer in my bedroom for five people

having my kitchen cupboards piled in my living room

shuttling between "camp in laws" and "camp us" 5 times a day--I´m so tired!

not being able to find anything!!

brushing my teeth in the shower in the dark

changing diapers on the bed

living out of a disorganized suitcase

steamed food

not getting our baby in bed until 10pm because we're shuttling between camps cooking and doing dishes

having my cats give me dirty looks because they are cooped up in the back of the house

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGH! Okay the cat just stepped on the keyboard and all my print is appearing microscopically small suddenly. What the hell happened. Hello! This day reeks of conspiracy.

Ladies and gentlemen I give you, 'les poutres'

2005-05-04T02:37:00.000-07:00

The new beams are in! Well, okay they're placed but not completely secured. Today the 'boys, aka Seb and my father-in-law, are mixing concrete to secure their placement. Exciting!! The next step will be to put the ceiling boards back. So, that's where we are on the workfront.

We were very ambitious thinking we'd install the new toilet in this same week. Meanwhile, the 'boys' tore out the other toilet stall, graciously leaving the lone toilet and no sink. See the trouble is that's the ONLY toilet in the house. It's just temporary of course, (common phrase 'round these parts) but it will be fun brushing our teeth in the shower and cowering behind that one tiny wall for privacy. So yes, camping with a mortgage but in this case camping is probably better.

And as for the real camping this week, we ended up back home on Monday night. The little mobile homes in the campground are cute, clean and well equipped but we decided we missed our bed so we came home. My mother-in-law wasn't very happy about our decision, but we're sleeping in a very quartered off portion of our house, completely protected from dust. Best of all we're in our own bed where we all can sleep better. We're especially doing this for Baby S, whose new name is 'Travelin Baby S' because the little guy has been on the road for over a week now traveling between Annecy, the campground and home. He nearly earned the Grumpy Baby of the Year Award at the GB Awards, but was beat out at the last minute by another even grumpier baby who obviously travels much more often and lives in an even dustier house. Our poor lamb is long overdue for the baby version of a tropical vacation.

So, baby S's routine during the day this week is that we let him sleep as long as he can in the morning, and miraculously he somehow does. He sleeps through buzzing saws and crashing rocks and above all my father-in-law's animated voice (perpetually enthusiastic, the man is incapable of talking in a tone any lower than a shout). At a lazy 10 o'clock he's shuttled off with his very concerned grandmother to the mobile home in the campground where she spoils him all morning with cuddles and strolls in the park. We should be so lucky to have such a routine!

Pompeii or chez nous?

2005-05-04T02:28:00.000-07:00

Everything including the kitchen sink covered in dust

'the boys'remove some more concrete and crappy tile from the walls...hey at this point why not

'umm, hey yeah, love the new kitchen honey!'

Au travail!

2005-05-02T01:00:00.000-07:00

the kitchen and the upstairs bedroom & bathroom...dismantled!

My in-laws arrived on Saturday and we spent the day lounging by the lake. We really wanted to dive in and work, but they had just arrived so we figured we had better start slowly and not drag my father-in-law into the house project too rapidly. So, we eagerly began the work on Sunday morning.

We had already collected our new beams from the sawmill on Wednesday and so Sunday was spent removing the old beams from the kitchen. We sawed off the ends as close to the wall as we could. They came out with lots of tugging and pulling, but eventually came out nonetheless. After all, I think they've been in there for a few hundred years. I don't think I'd want to come out after that long either!

Now there are no ceilings on the two floors. How funny to look upwards from the first floor of the kitchen and see nothing but empty space all the way to the roof. Our minds are spinning with ideas for raising the ceilings, building skylights, and multi-leveled passageways. Empty spaces can do that to a couple of crazed renovators full of ideas from the various issues of Maison et Travail.

In the end we're just putting it all back together just like it was, only newer. And it's a very good thing too. The poor old beams were a mess!

the old beams weren't exactly what you'd want holding up your bathroom

What we did

2005-04-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

"Hey, what did you guys do this weekend?"

"We worked on the house."

After awhile they stop asking. The response is so predictable.

So, yes we worked on the house today. We cleaned the upstairs so that the work will go smoothly the week that Seb's dad is here. We moved our armoire again, the ONLY PLACE we have for our clothes. Now we'll be living out of suitcases. That's fine because we'll be gone. Tropical vacation? Spa visit? Four star hotel?

Actually, next weekend we're moving out of house for a week into a lakeside chalet . Sounds really romantic, huh? It's really just a mobile home in the local campground by the lake. We're sharing it with Seb's parents who are visiting to see baby S and help on the house. It's Seb's dad who will help him place the second floor support beams which are apparent in the kitchen.

the uninhabited, future upstairs bedroom, and the armoire we had to move...yet again

This is the first time we've ever abandoned our house during a work project, and believe me several times we probably should have! With baby S now in our lives we had to consider him and his little lungs, and of course a potentially screwed up nap schedule, (every parent's worst nightmare). In all of this chaos we have forgotten to think our adorable but sadly neglected cats Mégot and Milly. I'm sure my mother- in-law won't agree to sharing the chalet with them, and they can't stay here with the dust, noise and open doorways. The poor dears will have to be quartered off somewhere, but where? We have no doors in our entire house. ::racking brain trying to think of how to create cat hotel out of scraps of wood:: hmmm, let's see.

Meanwhile, au travail in preparation for the onslaught of progress!

New Doors!

2005-04-23T20:09:00.000-07:00

We spent the day in Annemasse in our favorite DIY store, La Boite à Outils (The Toolbox)where they were having this big rebate day. You could earn 25 percent store credit on all of your purchases made today. We had been admiring these pre-hung, 4 panel, pine doors in their stock for some time now, and we needed to buy a door for our new downstairs w.c. (coming soon...). The price was right and there was the rebate, so we grabbed it.

It looked so good in the house when we got home, that Seb hurried up and drove all the way back to the store to buy all six doors for our entire house while the rebate was still on! Fortunately they have store credit. Now we have all the interior doors for the house and they all match. And with the rebate system we earned about 130 euros (170 dollars) on the purchase.

We're probably a little overexcited but you see, now we can really begin to envision our future bedrooms and bathrooms. Nothing like tangible objects to nourish a dream!

Beams not quite ready

2005-04-22T19:58:00.000-07:00

Okay well, our wood guy Mr. Mumble has said our beams aren't quite ready. We have to wait until next week. I guess we'll be busy making trips to the very scenic village of Bon during the week. We really had hoped to start picking them up this weekend. ::whine whine::

I can't wait to get them because this means closure on that whole mess upstairs. This means the kitchen will look better. This means we can finally start on our bathroom and Baby S's bedroom. More importantly this means NO MORE DUST falling through the cracks of our kitchen ceiling.

And, most importantly no more gritty omelets! (my new campaign slogan...chant with me now)

the old beams viewed from the second floor, above the uh err, kitchen stove

The Living Room Wall Fight

2005-04-20T00:32:00.000-07:00

the wall as seen from the living room side in May 2003 before the project

This time last year Seb began to tear out the wall between the living room and the dining room. We had a very big fight about it and I cried a lot. Not that I was particularly attached to that wall, but there was an enormous amount of dust. And, lets not fail to mention that I was 5 months pregnant and my hormones were raging. You just don't want to f*ck with the nesting instinct of a woman in this state of mind.

Seb had originally called up a contractor/mason in January 2004 to come out and evaluate his idea to open up the living room to the dining room. No small task, this would involve relocating the little downstairs w.c. and resupporting major bearing walls on two levels in the process. The guy said yes, he could certainly do it with some integrated concrete support beams and gave us an estimate for 5,000 euros (add 1,500 dollars for USD conversion). After he'd left I told Seb it was a lovely idea but that we should definitely invest that money in something else in the house. Oh, in I don't know, modern electricity maybe? radiators for the second floor? or, perhaps in a convenient INDOOR SHOWER! I was starting to get heated up already so Seb calmed me down and said, "fine, fine I'll just do it myself." At which point I just ignored him because we always say stuff like that in this house. I mean last Fall we actually talked about installing glass floors in the library and hallways upstairs. So you see I just systematically ignored him.

Fast forward a few months later to April 2004. Seb has decided he will "do a test" on the wall "just to see." Well, knowing how way leads on to way, I KNEW he was going to continue his "test" and start tearing out the wall. He did. He spent three weeks removing various sized rocks in the wall and got 1/4 of the way through the project. Finally he conceded that he'd better stop since the second floor was wavering a bit and rocks were falling like tropical rain at nervous intervals. Meanwhile we had our "I can't take it anymore--what kind of place are we bringing a child into--I told you not to start this project!!?" fight, so he boarded up the wall, leaving enough space inside to work on the project with the help of a ladder.

a view from the inside of his boarded-up "faux" wall last month

Well I digress. Seb has almost finished the project. He has brilliantly re-supported the walls on both levels, allowing for soon-to-come, final stage of the removal of the living room wall. He has come up with a plan to move the w.c. to the adjacent corner, and he has lived up to all of his promises. He has even talked about completing this in two weeks when his father visits to help replace the kitchen beams.

seb pouring the cross beam on the second floor

and the beam reinforcing the vertical support on the same floor

So it seems that the house is really going to look different in the next month. One year later and here we will be baptizing the seven month old baby S in May with the wall all gone. Renovation progress is a funny thing. It can seem painfully slow and then suddenly take off at light speed.

(Wow. I just used the phrase "light speed" in conjunction with work on the house. Now that's a first...)

Beams from Bon

2005-04-17T01:08:00.000-07:00

the old kitchen beams

We spent our Saturday shopping. Our main stop besides the obligatory Bricorama trip, was to go to the mountain village of Bon-en-Chablais to visit our wood guy, Messier Mumble. Messier Mumble is the raspy voiced sawmill owner, thin and very bent over for his 60 something years. We really aren't quite sure what he's saying half the time because he "talks into his mustache" as the French expression goes (love that expression... so colorful), and so we just go along with him nodding our heads up and down like dashboard doggies. We always lean in and bend our ears really hard for the PRICE QUOTE, which is usually surprisingly good, although we can never be sure if we've heard the mumble correctly. But, he has always supplied us with wood in the past at decent prices, so we often imagine the price is what we thought we heard. Usually it is.

It's not a real professional operation. He employs perhaps three guys, maybe four. There's always some species of cross breed dog running around in the mud, ready to play. And, the mill is cluttered with rusted tractor parts, huge tree trunks, and a mysterious, bright yellow machine which I presume does obscene things to innocent trees, it's very menacing. It's a scary little place actually which might make for a good crime scene in a murder mystery story. There are lots of large trap-door style holes all over the place covered in sawdust and leading to a sort of mysterious underground sawmill sub-pit. On our first visit to the sawmill last year, I almost fell into one of these traps. Messier Mumble seeing me stumble, turned quickly and said with a concerned look "GrumMMmm MummBReer Muunnnh Grummba" and pointed vaguely to the floors. I took this to mean "Oh madame do watch out for the randomly placed GIANT HOLES in the floors covered in sawdust. That particular one there is a doozie!" Or something like that. So now I'm a bit paranoid when we go there. I forbid Seb to walk around there with Baby S and I usually stay in the car myself when visiting now. I just have to look at Messier Mumble's posture to confirm my suspicion that even he himself has fallen into those traps a few times. Is it really so difficult to put a board over those things!

Sadly, we went to Bon to order the new beams for our kitchen. They are so lovely and old, but as you an see in the above photo they will require hours of sanding to remove the lead paint and grime. We normally don't mind doing this for the preservation of the house, but in this case they are structurally unstable in parts (see bumpy holes) and a little too "soft" when doing the screwdriver test (it goes pretty much through over half of the beams). So we decided on 10 new pine beams which we will somehow try to age a bit. This is a rather urgent project so we haven't got time to conduct a real elaborate aging technique. We aren't out to fool anyone anyway. We'd just like them to blend in with the house better than they will if they are newly milled. Since the kitchen will be open to the living area in the future, we want them to match the beams in the living room (pictured below) as much as possible.

We pick up our new beams next Saturday. Big progress is on the horizon! It's electrifying the air!!

seb did such a nice a nice job on these living room beams

Caustic soda for "les volet-deux"

2005-04-15T04:54:00.000-07:00

The shutters are coming along well. I'm holding out for a giant voila picture when they are all rehung. Until then you just have to be patient for the unveiling ceremony because things move slow with a baby underfoot.

The second set of shutters I decided to work on were red! These shutters are most likely older than the 1969 door shutters. In fact I think they're really old. The hardware won't even come off because there are no screws!! Holding the barnstraps (isn't that what you call them) in place are really old, irregular, square sort of nails. There are lots of old square nails and whatnots on these shutters. Very pretty and I'm thinking OLD!

Because the red paint was severely cracked, I decided to remove the majority of it with a plain old caustic soda paste. Caustic soda mixed in water is great for taking off paint or varnish. It's my old staple and available at almost DIY stores. You just mix it with water.

The process is pretty easy. To remove paint from something you simply work the caustic soda mixture into the wood using medium grade steel wool. For stubborn old paint layers, you can really get good results; especially if you leave the 'product' on your surface for 5-10 minutes, reworking it periodically with the steel wool. Then using a hose, you rinse the paint right off. You may have to repeat this all few times to get all of the paint off. I often just drop any hardware into my caustic mixing bucket and let the soda eat the paint off of everything while I'm busying myself with the wood.

Some tips! Wear heavy duty rubber gloves, goggles (or sunglasses), and be sure your arms legs and feet are protected with clothing when working with caustic soda. You can get a nasty chemical burn if you get splashed with this stuff. It splatters easily too because you'll get really involved in working the nooks and crannies with your steel wool.

For brightening and cleaning very old wood I use this formula which a local antique dealer shared with me and it works well: 1 part caustic soda, 2 parts water, 1 part ammonia, 1 part hydrogeon peroxide (the full strength version...sold in DIY stores with industrial strength household cleaning supplies or perhaps in beauty supply stores. I think it's the same). Mix this OUTSIDE! Mix this away from pets, children and anything you love! Be prepared to mix this and run and hide in the garage for several minutes yourself. This often bubbles over and gives off very noxious fumes for several minutes. Very bad stuff! BUT, it works like a charm and really makes an old piece of blackened wood look new and clean, yet still old. The peroxide will brighten the wood and the ammonia will remove the grime. And the caustic soda will remove the paint layers all at the same time.

Back to my shutters. There's just a little sanding left to do and then they go into my paint lab for a bit of Tuscan Transformation

Installing our stairway to heaven

2005-04-13T04:55:00.000-07:00

Another wacky aspect of our house is that we originally had no interior staircase. The original house was actually two separate houses, where the previous owner's parents always occupied the first floor and the aunt and her husband occupied the second floor. This was in the 1930/1940's. I know this because when taking up the linoleum upstairs, well everywhere in fact, there were lots of magazines and newspapers sandwiched underneath as quasi-insulation. Did you know that you could buy a can of peas for only .02 francs? If only we'd invested in lakefront property back then, ::sigh:: .

Anyway, we only had the exterior staircase for the longest time. Last year we finally chose the spot for the inside staircase, cut a hole in the ceiling, took a hatchet to the built-in armoire, chiseled the plaster off the adjacent wall and ordered a beautiful forged metal staircase from a company in Lyon. It all got installed when I was 7 months pregnant. Finally we could go upstairs! The trouble was that upstairs was just a dusty disaster zone. So, you see where fulfilled dreams lead you. Into even bigger projects! More on that another time.

Here, behold the before & after photos:

before...the armoire was uglier in person, believe me

after...still need to paint the stairs but they'll be gorgeous

Les volets

2005-04-13T00:22:00.000-07:00

In France nearly every house has shutters. Where you and I would call it charming, many of the French just see them as "always-been-there-but-really-wish-we-had-some-of-those-nifty-electric-PVC-ones--maybe-when-we-win-LOTO-Paulette" thingys. Example: I adore them but my recently retired in-laws have just replaced all of theirs with the electric PVC variety. They seem very proud of this but psst...their house was much more adorable before with its quaint, wooden shutters.

I have been mulling over what color or tint to redo ours in for some time. After all, the color I choose will certainly define the entire house as in: "You turn left in front of the house with the (insert color) shutters and then continue..." So you see it's not a decision to be taken lightly.

Finally after two years of studying good and bad color choices I have, on a whim, decided on Tuscan Green. I'm very excited! Actually Cora had this paint at a great price so I was doubly pleased. I know, not exactly five star paint but work with me here on the making progress aspect. That ugly, tan shutter has been on our house since 1969!*

I've started with the front door volet, washing it, lightly sanding off the old paint and removing all of the hardware. I used a concotion of caustic soda to remove the grime and paint from the painted hardware and then repainted it all black. Black is the default color for hardware by the way, or anything metal for that matter. If you aren't sure then paint it black (kind of like the Rolling Stones song). Black always looks elegant and best of all blends well.

I will reassemble this first shutter tonight and evaluate its placement on the front of the house. It will hopefully evoke an "oh wow..." rather than an "errr, uh no,no,no,no..." In which case we will consider the other colors in the Cora gamme.

*see..., last painted in "l'anneé érotique"

Neighbors II: Madame Grise

2005-04-11T00:37:00.000-07:00

la maison de Madame Grise

I find the subject of my neighbors so fascinating I just have to go on and tell you about all of them. I know that you read with great interest my post about our ~~evil nemesis & arch enemy~~ neighbor TDL. I told you we had other nice neighbors. We do. I told you I'd tell you about them and as promised I will, little by little and one by one.

Well, let's see. The next neighbor I'll tell you about is Madame Grise. Madame Grise lives at the top of our street in a house she just bought last year. This house was on the market alongside ours. We briefly considered touring this completely renovated house but fools that we were we changed our minds. There was just something about it, I don't know how to say it other than it lacked charm. For awhile we lamented not seeing it. I mean it had an indoor shower! But it does lack charm and it can't really be recaptured. First of all someone obviously tore out the classic old, wood steps and replaced them with concrete. The craggly, wood steps are an important part of the region and only two houses on the street still have theirs. The exterior stone was eventually neatly spray stuccoed and painted gray and the wood rails going upstairs were certainly replaced by the stock manufactured variety. Unfortunately the house, like so many others on the street lost nearly all of its charm in the process.

But back to Madame Grise. I really admire and like her. In a country where women age quickly and willingly, Madame Grise is not the profile of the rapidly aging French woman. Where her 60 year old hair should normally be cropped and permed, Madame Grise wears it in a long, gray ponytail. Where she should have sensible pointy-toed, black or brown Mephistoes, she often wears sneakers or Birkenstocks. And where she should be donning a practical, flowered housecoat, she is usually zipped into a polar fleece sweater and comfortable jeans. But what really sets her apart from her contemporaries is that she smiles. Every time I pass her on the street she smiles and says "bonjour." Now that's something.

We are quite lucky to have Madame Grise and her litte dog too (err uh he's rather big actually). Oh yes, yes her dog. She has almost the only dog on the street. He's one of those sort of irradiated schnauzers. You know the oversized variety, nearly as big as a great dane. Madame Grise apparently gets dog food samples for him in the mail from Science Diet. Last summer though they sent her some cat food by mistake. She stopped by and gave the samples to me. That's how I met her. "I know you have two cats" she said. "I thought they'd like this." I was in shock. She'd noticed me and my indoor cats somehow. In France this doesn't happen very often you know.

Quite impressive indeed this Madame Grise.

Results are in

2005-04-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

It's the dishwasher door. Not too shabby, eh?

Stripper geeks unite!

2005-04-06T09:30:00.000-07:00

We bought a kitchen from the newspaper. All of the cupboards and whatnots. It's very ugly.

I am trying to passively strip it all. Passively is a strange word choice, I realize, but if you had this daunting task ahead of you you'd be passively doing it too. We have about 6 upper cabinets, 4 lower cabinets, a dishwasher cover and about 10 drawers. The idea of doing all this at one time is just too overwhelming. I've decided to do it in acceptable, little stages.

Stage one is this little collection you see in the picture. I've had alot of success getting down to the natural color of the oak. But as with any stripping project the real work is the final detail work. This sneaks up on the piece when it's dried. You really thought you were getting somewhere and then there's a whole corner section still needing work. Hate the damn corners! So, I'm just working to get all the big stuff off before I go back and do the finish work.

Stripping varnish is not one of my favorite wordworking projects. I must admit I do like the feeling of accomplishment when you see the beautiful bare wood emerging. That part keeps me going. But it is right up there with, I dunno,defrosting the freezer. Mundane as it gets.

I'm sure there are those who like stripping cabinets. If that's the case please drop my place in the next month. I will serve you yummy strawberry muffins and jasmine tea. Or maybe hot, fresh croissants with jam and a nutty, Italian expresso. But bring a dental pick with you. Yes, I've heard tell it's the ony way to really get the varnish out from between the wood grain. Oh uh, wait, wait. Where are you going? Come back! Was it something I said? No, really...hold on!

Geez, some people.

The Dragon Lady

2005-04-04T09:36:00.000-07:00

We have pretty nice neighbors. Just as French as in all the neighborhoods I've lived in over the last few years. You know, an occasional "bonjour" . . . or not. A sidelong glance, peut-être. Never an invitation to dinner or a need to borrow a monkey wrench or an egg like my American neighbors. Cakes must just get baked without those extra ingredients and everyone has full tool sheds of their own I suppose.

We do have a few out of the ordinary neighbors here though. Maybe it's because we own our home now. I'll talk about the worst one first.

The Dragon Lady.

TDL owns the house which is mitoyen with ours. Mitoyen in French sort of denotes "next to" as in the style American's refer to as a townhouse. Mitoyen homes are common in France because in the old days if you built your home next to another home you two or three could all share your cozy warm walls. This was obviously before standard heating systems turned us all into obnoxiously independent voisin's. Anyway, homes that are mitoyen nowadays have property deeds and in the deeds they usually outline little sectors deemed as copropriétées. Often the copropriétée is just a shared doorstep or part of a roof or a doorway. Our house has a copropréietée with TDL. We own some grungy little workrooms in our courtyard and she owns the upper floor of the grungy workrooms where she has yet another apartment that she rents. The bathroom window of this apartment looks down into our courtyard, and we can look up. We don't but they often do.

TDL apparently decided shortly after we moved in that this particular aparment needs a new roof. Apparently the one covering this apartment is destroyed. Apparently she wants us to pay for half of it because of the fact that our grungy workrooms "share" the benefit of this roof. Apparently this is all legal and apparently she won't bother with the new roof if we'll just give her the workrooms which aren't really much use anyway and were loaned to the former owner's grandmother by TDL's grandmother back at the turn of the century and apparently accidentally taken over by the former owners (are ya with me?) SO, we are being blackmailed by TDL who sends us lettres récommandées (registered letters) nearly every other month which we simply file in our household books in a special section labeled TDL.

We had a roofer inspect the roof without telling her. In fact we called a roofer that was on the list of roofers she had given us in one lettre récommandeé. He said the roof was fine. In fact he said "this roof is fine and that's what I told this woman!" (he seemed annoyed...Apparently TDL is annoying to everyone!). He continued "I told her it was just that her chimney leaks!" Well, laaaa-deee! We had her trapped, the big fat liar. We confronted her. She said the man was sorely mistaken. She promptly sent us another estimate from YET ANOTHER roofer (meanwhile she's slowly running out of contractors) with an even more inflated price.

We will never sell or give TDL those grungy workrooms. She is so obnoxious that if we sell them to her she will build yet another apartment looking directly into our courtyard. The people will smoke like all of her tenants do and the cigarette butts will land in my flower pots like they already do from her little bathroom window tenants.

We have other nice neighbors. I'll talk about them in another post. They don't even belong on the same page with TDL.

Agenda full

2005-03-24T00:29:00.000-08:00

Our renovation agenda is suddenly unusually & uncomfortably packed full. Well, it's always bursting at the seams, but nowadays it's as if there's urgency to it. It's what I now call the "little S syndrome" Before it was just us and who gives a hooty if your shower is outside off the courtyard in an decidedly unheated, boxy little niche? After all, there's too many other VIP projects looming to worry about the act of showering. Well, now with "little S" around (born in Fall for those not in the know) it's not just about us, it's about him too. We still have all our VIP projects right there at the top, but add the little tyke into the mix and you have a whole slew of OTHER projects elbowing their way to the top too, like:

The metal stairs
Need to be painted and screwed down better. Need wood treads made and attached. Need to search out and protect sharp edges. PBDT (potential baby death trap)

The rear balcony
Took the whole thing apart and refinished the wood while pregnant. Needs to be re attached soon. Will the new floor boards fit? Hmmm. Very big PBDT!

The stucco walls
Stopped halfway through this froo-froo decorating project due to other VIP matters. Now the stucco is creating dust (more dust...as if...) and it's rough on little unwary hands. It needs painted!

The unsalvageable kitchen & dining room wood floors
We aren't keeping these floors but in the meantime they are grungy, splintery and full of sharp, broken nailheads. Could make for a particularly memorable first crawling experience.

And the list goes on.

However, rudely barking in a "me first" voice is the agenda's front page project: the need to do structural work upstairs VERY SOON so that S can have his own bedroom. And the need for the completed bathroom has also become a higher priority lately too for sanity reasons. Not sani-TAR-y reasons but san-I-ty. We can still shower just fine in the niche don't worry. It's just that S is outgrowing his baby tub and stuffing him inside it is getting to be an amusing task.

But life goes on and babies grow. So, unfortunately do home improvement project lists.

And the WALL came a tumblin' down

2005-03-15T00:57:00.000-08:00

Rather than spend the weekend scratching our heads we decided to do something. Often in renovation there is a phenomenon whereby you need to have a progress fix. Things are muttering along just fine and all of your energy is being put into something like cleaning cracks in between tile behind the toilet with a toothbrush, sweat dripping from your brow, when suddenly you need a "progress fix!!" Something to show for your toil. Quick!

Our progress fix this weekend involved tearing out the glass beee-yute of a wall which seperate our kitchen from our future dining room (we have a lot of futures here) This is a pretty wall, a strange wall, a yellow wall, a wall that evokes comment: "hmm interesting"..."amazing"..."I love that little wall"..."why is that wall thingy there?" ..."didn't ya'll tear that thing out yet?" You get the idea. Some loved the wall & some (most) hated it. We were of the mindset of the latter group. Hated it. It's gone.

The dust that rained out from between the cracks was black. The usual black with a mix of powdery mortar. It's still in the air. Cough. Cough. Cough.

We left the attached ceiling part intact for the week because we we're too tired to do the whole project. And besides it would have possibly killed us to have that much dust escaping into our environment. S did brazenly saw a hole in the ceiling "just to see" what we'd be up against. Now we have a plastic skylight of sorts in our future dining room. Humor...argh.

Alas, we cancelled the dinner invitees for this coming Saturday night. We're eager to finish the mess. It would have been difficult, ...uhhh crazy...no wait try IMPOSSIBLE to entertain the witty P and his charming wife C in the aftermath of what will rain down on Saturday when we tear out the ceiling.

This is one of the last of our tear outs!!! A wave of nostalgia is creeping over me as I think back to our first tap-tap of the old attic wall. What a long, strange trip it's been, sledgehammer poised in blistered hand.

Dust clouds on the oasis

2005-02-28T06:17:00.000-08:00

I found the event of this weekend so typical that I just have to mention it for the benefit of all old house owners the world over. Here's what was discussed after a very messy afternoon of digging old concrete out of the stone wall joints in the living room:

- Uh, gee honey there's an awful alot of dust in here. I'm really worried about the baby inhaling all of this (runs one of her fingers across television screen and leaves clear black path)

- You wanted an old house. (feeling smug because he just trumped her with his favorite 'you made your bed...' statement)

- Okay, okay but I'm just complaining a little. I can do that right? I mean I have a right to complain, right? (insert mental "arrrrgggh" here)

- Well, I'm going to take care of it mumble mumble mumble mumble FAN mumble BLOWING mumble. Tomorrow, you'll take baby S for a stroll and mumble mumble mumble I'll take care of it.

- Okay, wow honey thanks. (impressed with his take charge attitude)

- Anytime.

It wasn't really a clear conversation. More or less like an old radio transmission. I didn't understand everything. A common phenomenon between the male and female species. So, imagine my surprise when baby S and I come back from the stroll and there is a veritable dust storm swirling in the living room. Seb is blowing a 'reverse' vaccuum thingy at all of the dusty stone and beams. The cloud is vaguely churning towards our huge, old industrial fan so that it all can eventually fly out the windows and out of our lives forever, to be followed by new replacement dust of course. I question it all but say nothing. I gasp for air. He's left the stereo, computer, digital camera, PDF, speakers and (insert blank for items costing more than 300 dollars and being highly sensitive to dust HERE) and all of the baby's toy out in the dust!

We're changing the name of this house: "Mohave Haven," "Death Valley Chalet," "Sahara by the Lake"... something more fitting.

Bejesus! The man has a degree in engineering.

Absolutely old as the hills

2005-02-20T08:51:00.000-08:00

We're always trying to date our house. Yes, we love this place...not ahem that kind of date. Although, ... we might as well be dating it because often we seem to worry more about it than we do about each other... (shameless renovators whine)

So, what I mean is like stamping a date on the constuction of this pile of rubble. You know, circa, B.C.- somethin'- somethin'. Hey, we're pretty sure mastodons were around when the first stone was laid. We remembered seeing some unidentifiable hides in the attic.

We started out pretty clueless about the date. "It's ummm ...reeeeeal old looking" was what we were inclined to say. Then we found some postcards from a time when "ladies wore long black dresses and little boys wore funny sailor suits" That seemed to us to be about 1900. The house looks old in the photo. Really old.

Then we started noticing that some of the neighbors had signs on their doors. Some even carved in wood and fixed permanently to the uh, door. Yeah, gotta get one of those soon, um right. A house for sale on our street actually had 1563 burnished into a cheesy plaque which hung over the door. It's since been discreetly removed by the yuppies who are now renovating the place. Our next door neighbor has one of these signs carved into her door. It brandishes 1653 as her houses birthday. We thought she was just trying to lure tourists to rent her apartments. Turns out damned if she ain't telling the truth with her fancy, little woodcarving. We did some passive investigating. (you can tell we're really dedicated to finding the answers, huh?)

I have a very boisterous, 86 year old American friend who lives around the corner from me. He's sort of a collectioner of lots of things. He has alot of interesting stuff in his house...you know , everywhere. Okay, okay I'll just say very nicely that he's a hoarder of bric-a-brac, nick nacks and well ...junk. He does have a few treasures in his junk though. One treasure is a copy of map of the area in the 16th century drawn by a famous French cartographer. If you squint real hard you can see a village. And, if this map is accurate you can see a street (ours), with a house where ours currently is. It's unmistakably our street. The chateau is sitting just at the end of the street just as it sits today. The picture above shows the area close up. See! Look there. You can see a very old version of us making trips to the dump with our horse and wagon.

When we bought this house the vieille madame who sold it to us said that her family always claimed that our house was the oldest on the street. At the time we were still thinking along the lines of the house being 100 years old. To us that seemed like an ancient house.

And yet, the house may be celebrating her 500 year birthday. Now that's some old dust!

Getting help

2005-02-20T06:27:00.000-08:00

It seems that when you are working on a project this immense, alone and without the benefit of hired help, friends don't drop by often. That's normal, we never expected our friends to get too involved in our crazy scheme here. Our friends are too smart for that.

This my friends is the beauty of the father-in-law.

Take one newly retired 56 year old man, leave him at home alone with his newly retired wife for 6 months...wait for February....agitate...and you'll soon see him donning a funny hat & taking the next train to his son & daughter-in-law's wacked-out house.

This week, all week, we have the pleasure of a hired helper who works for food and the pleasure of seeing his grandson's house improved. And no, he is not for hire! He's ours...all ours...

so go away you, you...DIY Hyenas!

History Pt II : The Linoleum Blues

2005-02-15T08:51:00.000-08:00

Without much luck, just when we we're scheduled to have our bid reviewed, one of the owners died. This unfortunate mishap delayed all bids on the house for at least 2 weeks. When our bid was finally accepted, well counter-offered & then accepted, we had to wait another 2 months for the notary to conduct the necessary research for potential rights of succession. Meanwhile our stuff sat in storage. Meanwhile we paid rent in a hotel. Meanwhile we borrowed the key a lot and worried about what kind of project we'd gotten ourselves into.

On one sunny May afternoon I visited the partially emptied house (*note: partially) and decided to do something constructive, or this actual case de-structive. The linoleum had to go. With no sense of how you actually get rid of piles of dirty, heavy, stinky linoleum I dove head first into the first of many dirty, heavy, stinky projects (did I mention dusty...because dusty is an important word in renovation projects). The linoleum was everywhere; faded speckled greens, mauvey roses, a few daring, checked, 1950's motifs. It was layered in some parts three levels deep. It cracked from age and as you tore it loose from nails it's backing crumbled into a foreboding cloud of black, toxic dust. Beneath it all & in all the corners lie layers of dirt measurable with a ruler. I piled it all into manageble, squares & swept the floors free. All of this I hauled unceremoniously to the local dumpster two blocks away.

In the future we'd become savvy. We'd use a trailer for hauling, we'd use huge metal buckets found in the basement for ease of transport, & we'd go to the dump with everything. Our good friend ... the public dump. We we're so naive we didn't know that a free place to dump our kilos of debris even existed. At this point though, full of ambition & motivation or whatever you call it, I was more than willing to make 15 trips two blocks away to the dumpster. Ah, youth.

* The owners did not completely empty the house. Although it was discussed that they would leave a few pre selected pieces behind, they took it upon themselves to leave these pieces & so much more. It took us several months to haul away the broken refridgerators, ancient fishing nets, broken lawn chairs and collections of scrap copper, mirrors, tiles & glass.

*image courtesy of subtext.info

History Pt I: For Sale ..."Maison de Pêcheur"

2005-02-14T06:34:00.000-08:00

We saw the ad in the window of a real estate agent in town. There we're pictures. It looked interesting enough. The price seemed reasonable for the region. "Needs Work." Hmmm...how bad could it be? We decided to take a walk down to the village and see if we could find it based on the pictures. We found it right away. Its craggly wood steps, elevated front porch, sculptured stone windows.

Love at first sight.

We walked back to the agent's office and camped by their door, impatient for them to open up for the afternoon so we could go and tour the house.

-Okay, it has no electricity.

-Yes, okay (us smiling)

-And it has no bathroom,

-Okay (us still smiling)

- ... and look there's no heat.

-Okay, yeah.

-and its a real wreck...it needs ALOT of work.

-Okay, that's fine.

-So you still want to see it?

-Yes, we'd like to see it now. I mean today. I mean now, really.

-Oh, well that's impossible because we're technically closed until after Christmas. I'm just here today straightening up. I'm just the secretary and I could give you an appointment for next ...

-No! we have to see it today... we have to (frantically) we leave tomorrow!

And so we dragged the poor secretary, six months pregnant out to look at a ramshackle house that she had no right to show and no desire to show. It was everything she said it was and more. We had our renovation glasses on. Where she saw disaster we saw potential. We told her we'd call in our bid.

-There's really no rush. No one has even looked at this place in like six months.

-We'll call tomorrow.

-You'll have to call after the holidays. No one will even be back until next week.

-Umm, okay we'll call Tuesday then...first thing.

-Uh ...Oh... Okay, but like talk it over okay. Think about it. You have time.

A house for sale that the agency doesn't really want to sell. Hmmm, it must be a goldmine. Why else would they divert people from buying it!

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the quarter. The lake was right across the street. All of the houses were historic and full of character. There was a lavoir at the end of the street. There was a black cat sitting on an old stone wall. There was a fresh breeze and the smell of the sea.

And the price was right.

The Kitchen

2004-08-28T02:39:00.000-07:00

The kitchen is actually the front entry of our house and is the first thing people see as they walk in. That's fine with us because we love cooking and entertaining and we hope to have a smashing kitchen one day that will make everyone "ohhh" and "ahhh."

The dining room is integrated into the kitchen. The two rooms combined are about 25 square meters.

Before we took over the house: crappy mismatched tile, uneven floors, a sagging beadboard ceiling.

We exposed all the stonework and replaced the windows and the front door, note our crude attempts at insulating large, gaping holes over top of windows and door!

And here is a photo looking the opposite direction where there was a weird glass wall cutting off the kitchen from the dining room.

We tore out the glass wall out to combine the two rooms into one open space.

Eventually we tore out the beadboard ceiling. When we did we exposed some pretty beams that were unfortunately not sound enough to salvage.

We ended up replacing them with the help of my father-in-law. This was a very messy project and totally disrupted our lives for about a month or more. If you read through my archives you'll see that I nearly lost my mind during this time...

...because of the dust, very old dust.

But the new beams made everything worthwhile

Stay tuned ...

The Living Room

2004-01-03T04:40:00.000-08:00

Our living room is 25 square meters. When we first bought the house it had plastered walls and various types of flowered wallpaper which I immediately painted white, so not many photos of how ugly it really was have survived. The previous owners had a built in armoire made out of plywood and faux finished to look like wood grain. It was horrid and smelled like must.

We took sledghammers to the walls and ceilings and dug out stones and old pine beams. We replaced all the single pane windows and put in a metal staircase where the "lovely" armoire was so we could connect the living room to the second floors future library/office. We also decided to open up the area between the kitchen and the living room a by carefully bashing out another wall. This turned out to be a huge structural project for my husband Seb, but it paid off, really opening up the house in the end.

before with ugly built in armoire, old plastered walls and old windows

...after with new stairs and windows and the stonework exposed

Seb sits in front of the wall we tore out to open up the living rooom to the kitchen

...and here it is just after the tear out, looking into the kitchen. Notice we also had to tear out the old first floor w.c. You can see the toilet sitting there all alone.