The boys are coming
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.
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.
posted by christine at 12:27 AM
3 Comments:
So, what is the big draw in Switzerland? I mena, obviously it is the money, but is there some large, very wealthy metor area just over the boarder? Why is the pay so low in France?
Grex it's just that Switzerland has one of the highest salary bases in the world. It's a very rich country to say the least. The pay isn't low in France so much that the pay 'over the border' in this region is too interesting to stay here and work. Here's a link which talks a little about the notorious Swiss salaries: http://www.justlanded.com/english/switzerland/tools/just_landed_guide/jobs/working
Very interesting. One of the coolest things about houseblogs is finding out what is the same and different in other parts of the world. :)
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