Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Wake up and get to work! It's Paradise!

A "Day Off" around these parts means travelling across the French countryside to either Bourges or Chateauroux and buying yards and yards of cloth OR/AND walking miles (literally) in a HUGE Hardware, Lighting, Painting Supply, Tile, Lumberyard Superstore (Hyper-Magazine here) to find something for this huge old house of ours.
All of which means MORE work (of course) doing something (painting, tiling, wallpapering, climbing up and down and LOOKING, sweeping, cleaning) with whatever was purchased. It is the same for both of us, our travels are about our work, our purchases are about our work, our existance is about our work and our WORK is this lovely old pile of rocks.
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There is no summer this year, no canicule (hot days), just clouds, wind, rain and the occassional ray of sun to remind us that our nearest star is still out there beaming along with it's magical warm light. Temps above 75 degrees (24 Centigrade)
are rare, infact MOST days are in the 60's and nights in the 50's this Summer. Brrrrr. But we are Californians, where the price of electricity is TWICE that of France (13.5 cents/kilowatt hr. vs 7) that to air-condition our home there costs about 10 dollars (7 Euros) per DAY! And summer there can include (and DOES) DAYS OVER 90 or 100 degrees. Here we put on sweatshirts and sweaters and go back to painting or tiling or whatever else is on the menu for the day's activities. Oh progress is being made, remember back to the old GE (General Electric) ads when Ronald Reagan said "Progress is our most important project!" That's how we feel, little is completed BUT we are working all the time towards that common goal...thus we are Progressing. Amen. Summer or not we are having a good time with all of this, wheres my sweatshirt? In the laundry no doubt.

Sunday, July 01, 2007

The Examination Room Transformed

We have been working since last Sunday on the exam room. In a previous life it was a bedroom for a child whom we now know as a fellow 60+ yr old ex-teacher in Lignieres.
She came to the house and explained the layout for us. Her father had died when she was but 6 yrs old outside on the street somehow. She had her bedroom in the later day examination room. It was blue wallpaper then as well...along with the two doors to nowhere on either side of the central doorway. We removed all traces of the blue nightmare. In it's place a much lighter treatment of trois wallpaper (covering earlier damage and uneven character of the horsehair plaster wall). Kelly said "We'll knock this out in a few hours Monday...as we were stripping the wallpaper last Sunday). Not exactly. The pipes for the radiator and the 10 cm for the upstairs potty and cold water pipe for the sink interviened. It took hours to do each corner of the room what with the damnable pipes and the doors to nowhere, we didn't finish the papering until this morning...Sunday morning, a week later. We finished by papering each door panel, matching the pattern side to side and top to bottom. It looks good but boy, what a bunch of work it was! Now we get to tile the remaining areas around the sink with fine Italian 5X5 (inch) beige tile. It'll be pretty and a damned sight better than the awful, depressing blue mess we started with.
Goodbye for now,
H