This (Really) Old House

Lovely, lovely

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 09:27:00 +0000

Why do I do this to myself? I stop blogging for months at a time, then I have no idea how to cover everything that has happened in the interim. And so much has happened over the past few months!

People, we have a house. A wonderful, warm, beautiful, fully functional house that we’ve waited more than four years for. And, best of all, we made a certain addition to the house that really makes it particularly homey. Here,I'll call him Pup.

But back to the house itself. After all those troubles with picking a color, we finally went ahead and ahd it painted. We kind of didn’t have a choice. The painters (well, the masons, who did the paintwork) were insisting that they needed their scaffolding, so we had a make a decision or leave the house unpainted. So, here….drum roll, please….is our house:

It looks pretty good, no? But honestly? It’s not the color that we wanted. It’s too yellow, too light. But the good thing about restoring a ruin is that everything looks good compared to what you started out with. So, we look at our too yellow, too light house, and are happy. Admittedly, sometimes we contemplate it with puzzled expressions on our faces – exactly why couldn’t we get the color we wanted? Why did the painters/masons keep giving us every color except the ones we asked for? – but then, we stop thinking about it because it is just too baffling.

But look at this:

We can't really complain.

The outside of the house being basically done (except for the shutters and the iron window protector thingys, which will come later), we have turned out attention to furnishings, decorations and interior painting. Since we spent all our money getting the house in habitable condition, we’re moving really slow on the interior and spending lots of time at IKEA. Here, for example, is our living room:

Functional. Comfortable. Again, can't complain.

The one thing that we didn’t buy at IKEA was our bed. We wanted something really big and special, and we couldn’t at all find what we were looking for at any store. Then Dawg found a lovely wrought-iron bed of Italian design on the web, and it could be all ours for the low, low price of 2,000 euros! (In case you’re confused, I’m being facetious). So, what we did was take a picture of the bed to a blacksmith (gotta love France for still having artisans like blacksmiths!), and he agreed to make it for us for a fraction of the price. It was delivered in June and we love it:

We bought the mattress at IKEA (or somewhere) but it tickled us that the blacksmith offered to introduce us to a mattress-maker. Can you believe it? A mattress-maker! I love it!

Pregnancy/post-partum hormones made me declare with a great deal of vitriol that Pup would never see the inside of the house until the house was professionally cleaned and the bathroom painted. Our very, very kind and generous friends, Skip and Tollie, gave up a weekend to paint the bathroom with Dawg, and the results were amazing:

We also had an industrial cleaner come in to scrub the house from top to bottom. While someone not so familiar with the house might not notice – I did. No longer do I have to change Lil’Dawg’s clothes twice a day because he’s covered with dust from running around the house. The tiles in the front hallway gleam like they probably have never before. The glass in the windows is bright and clear. And the smell! Our house actually smells fresh and clean! The pigeon-shit smell has been long gone, but it never smelled truly clean until now. I can’t wait until it takes on other scents –like the smell of baking bread, or freshly-cut flowers.

Our last big outdoor project (besides the barn, which still remains an eyesore and hazard - oh, and repairing the wall...and replacing the gate...)is the garden. The future garden, that is. We just spent the weekend with, once again, our very kind and generous friends, doing the back-breaking work that is necessary when you’re preparing the soil to sow grass. But you can read about (and see pictures) of that experience at my gardening blog.

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Sat, 16 May 2009 07:42:00 +0000

Anybody out there? Help! We still can't decide on the colors for the house! We have to make a decision this weekend! I'm so nervous! We don't want to do the wrong thing! All the colors seem to change depending on the brightness of the day, or the angle at which you look at them, or whether you look at the house individually, or as part of the neighborhood. Oh yikes.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here are the final choices. I know, I know...it's impossible to decide anything from these pics. But please try anyway.

New Gardening Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:14:00 +0000

By the way, I've started a new blog just for our yard/future garden. It's called Totally Green: Tales of a Beginner Gardener. It goes into more detail about the mechanics of gardening than this blog does house restoration, but that's mainly so that I actually absorb what I'm learning about gardening. So, if you have an interest in gardening or are curious to know what we're going to do with our yard, drop by!

The Color of A House

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:13:00 +0000

Sometimes it seems like everything associated with this house is complicated. The latest issue is the question of the color we should paint the house -- not the rooms, but the house's facade.

We have been thinking about this ever since we bought the house, and for years thought we'd have a very, very pale blue house. It seemed that this was the original color of the house and we wanted to restore it to it's original state. But now we realize that the house wasn't blue, as none of the houses in the village (or surrounding area) are blue, and the houses that we thought were blue are actually light gray with pale blue shutters -- the color of the shutters gives the houses their bluish tint.

Our neighbors, having had 4 years to get used to us, now actually speak to us on the street, and lately have been dropping hints about what color we should paint the house. They appear worried that we're going to paint it an odd city-folk color, like hot pink or electric purple. They don't have to worry -- we are actually limited by local law to a certain range colors that are typical of the region.

We have a palette produced by the department (which I guess would be the 'county' in the U.S.) and have been going over and over these colors for months now without resolution. Dawg has become fixated upon a sort of muted orangish-yellow color (peach?), and my obsession remains with having a bluish house, which translates into light gray. In the end, we decided to ask for four samples: (i) Dawg's peach color, (ii) my light gray, (iii) beige, (iv) a very pale pinkish-beige. The painter - who is actually part of the same outfit that did all our stonework - agree to paint a square foot of each these samples on the side of the house by the time we visited next.

We arrived last Thursday, curious to see what our four choices would look like. The painter/macon proudly informed us that he gave us six options instead of four. Here they are:

What's that you say? The image is too small? You can't tell the difference? Okay, here are some close-ups:

Still can't tell the difference? We couldn't either. Which one is peach? Beige? Gray? And why'd he even bother throwing in two "extra colors"? To me, they're all cement-colored with a smidgen of red mixed in.

The painter/macon gave us a long explanation about why he could only get these colors, something about the paint looking different in small samples rather than large. I don't know. What I do know is that if we paint the house the wrong color, it will ruin all our efforts to maintain the original character of the house. There have been missteps with the house, yes, but all on the interior; stuff most people wouldn't notice. If the exterior of the house is the wrong color, though...(shuddering) it will be VERY upsetting.

Seeing that we were completely baffled, the painter/macon brought us a different palette, and told us he could reproduce these colors with more accuracy. Not sure why -- I think he's using a different kind of paint. Anyway, we selected colors similar to the ones we chose before.

I'm really afraid to see what he comes up with this time.

Anyway, I'll leave you with pictures of some other houses in our village. If you have an opinion about a particular color, don't hesitate to let me know!

Deserving A Post All Its Own

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 14:58:00 +0000

I think the most beloved object in the house, other than its occupants, is our lovely Lacanche range-cooker. Remember when we were trying to decide on a color and were leaning towards something vibrant like or tangerine or lemon yellow? Well, happily, in we decided in the end that a neutral color would be best and went with “Frangipane,” which is a fancy way of saying beige.

We abandoned all thoughts of a bright stove while having lunch with friends who had just remodeled their kitchen in tasteful ecru-and-white tones. And as we admired their kitchen, our friend K said, “So glad to be rid of the old one. Don’t you remember? It was hideous. It was orange. Orange!” And I said slowly, “Yes, it was hideous. Yes, it was orange!” At that moment, I knew that we would never have “fiesta-colored” oven. And now, seeing it gleaming in our kitchen, (grâce à Dawg’s parents for his 40th birthday – thank you so much!), we feel as though we dodged a bullet. Even now, every so often one of us will glance over at it and say, “I love this stove." And the other will fervently agree, avowing that no other color would have been right.

Cooking on this thing is such a pleasure. We went with the six-burners and haven’t looked back. On our second weekend at the house, Dawg made a boeuf bourguignon. We only had two burners going at the same time, but we reveled in the knowledge that if we wanted to make another dish, like, say, scrambled eggs and bacon for twenty, we could. There was room for all.

And now, here are a couple of pics of our beauty shortly after it arrived.

Now, I know I'm notorious for abandoning this blog for months at a time, but do stay tuned. Everyone was so helpful with their suggestions for the color for the stove that we were thinking maybe you could help us with another color problem, a major one: what color should we paint the house?

It's not over

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:43:00 +0000

So, in my last post I made it sound as if our house was all finished and wrapped up with a shiny, red bow...but that wasn't case. We didn't spend another night there for 3 months. We couldn't, really. The week after we stayed there in November, the place became a filthy, unliveable worksite again. We had the roof redone, the kitchen workspace installed, the old crepi scraped off the house's facade and replaced with plaster, the front stairs replaced, and certain rooms painted white. But now, except for the painting of the exterior and the garden, all major works are finished. And so two weeks ago, we crept back to the house, laden with a new bed from IKEA and a new slide from Lil'Dawg, to see how everything turned out.

It looks great.

The roof went from this:

To this:

The facade went from this:

To this:

To this:

(Okay, not a great picture, but you get the idea - they replastered it)

The kitchen went from this:

To this:

Not bad, eh?

We did it!

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 08:23:00 +0000

It felt something like a dream walking into our house with our bags and baby, knowing that we were coming home for the first time. But after that, it was surprisingly normal. It was our house - the house we fell in love with almost 4 years ago; the house of which we know every square inch. No ghosts popped out at us. No fretful memories of the years of grime disturbed us. Everything seemed the same as it had always been, except much, much better. And that's when I realized that we had done it. Even though we restored the house from top to bottom, we managed to keep house's original character perfectly intact, while eliminating the creepiness.

This was a major goal of ours from the very beginning. During our house-search, we saw many beautiful old places with horrible modern "improvements." Plastic window frames, glass-enclosed terraces, exposed stone where there should have been paint, eye-watering paint jobs where there should have been stone. We decided that we wanted a house that would look almost exactly as it might have in whatever era it was built. Of course, we modernized it with things like double-glazed windows and insulation, but we tried hard to impress upon the workers that we did not want anything that would change the house's inherent character. (And believe me, it was a struggle. You wouldn't believe some of the things that they wanted to do in the name of modernity and convenience.)

So, walking into the house, it felt great to realize that even with all its shiny new doors, windows and walls, it still was a Really Old House.

That said, it was also a Really Dusty House. We hadn't been in the door five minutes before Lil'Dawg was covered from head to toe in dust. Seriously. Just like we'd rolled him in it. I didn't even bother to take off my coat (though I could have! The house was warm!) before picked up a broom and got to work. All that day, we swept, mopped and scrubbed, but when we left the house the next day it was still dusty. I guess it will take a couple of months of repeated scrubbings for the house to realize that it is, finally, clean.

When we weren't cleaning, we were shopping. We didn't have any chairs and after a full day of cleaning, the idea of flopping on the hard floor didn't seem appealing. So we went to a store to find a table and chair set. We were envisioning buying a lovely wrought-iron set; one we could put in the garden when the weather turned nice, and upon which a simple white table cloth and wine glasses would look appropriate. What we ended up with was a ungodly plastic set in dark green. We threw a colorful tablecloth over it, but it didn't help much. The contrast between our beautiful handmade wood floors and the unnaturally-colored, mass-produced, green plastic chairs was just too striking. They will have a short tenure.

That night, we dined on the same meal we have eaten in our little village for the past 3+years: avocado, tomato and Boursin cheese on baguettes. (If you've never had Boursin cheese, you must, as it is more addictive than crack. It is ridiculous that with all the wonderful cheeses that exist in France we always turn to Boursin in times of need, but we do. I don't know what they put in it...it's possible it's not even cheese. But man, it's tasty!) We had wanted to have something more memorable, seeing as it was the first time we'd eaten inside the house, but in the end it was appropriate: our fabulous Lacanche stove will arrive in early December so we won't be needing to eat cold sandwiches any more. Bring on the boeuf bourguignon!

Sleeping there that night was... interesting. We were on an air mattress that was not too comfortable and reeked of plastic. But the thing that took us most aback about sleeping there was the noise. Not from passing motorcycles or drunken revelers, which we're accustomed to from living in Paris, but from the village church . Church bells! Church bells! Every hour on the hour! We go from dead silence...silence so heavy it weighs on your ears...to bong! bong! bong! bong!

Now, I specifically recall asking someone about this before we bought the house. Maybe it was the agent. Maybe it was our neighbor, Red. And we were told that the bonging stops around 10pm, starting again around 7 am. But no, it does not! Why doesn't anyone stop this?? I can understand how one might need the clock to ring in times gone past, before clocks stopped being luxury items, but come on! Even the oldest, gnarliest farmer must have a ditigal clock now! That the bell keeps ringing, even though there's no need for it, seems very French to me. The bell rings all night because it has always rang all night, and even if no one likes it, no one can - or should - stop it either. Dawg now wants to be a member of our village's council to campaign against the all-night ringing of the bell.

To be honest, though, the bell didn't wake Lil'Dawg, and the only reason I noticed it was because: 1) I was tossing and turning on the uncomfortable air mattress and so was awake anyway, and 2) I was annoyed that we had been Lied To!

Okay - enough chitchat. I know you want to see pix. But first, I want to shout out to architects #1 and #2 , who are getting married this Friday. Herzlichen Gluckwunsch zur Hochzeit, my dear friends! And thank you for helping to make our house such a pleasurable place to be!

And on to the pictures.... (These are just a taste; I'm putting together a full set on shutterfly).

Living Room

Library

Kitchen

Guest Room

Guest bathroom

Lil'Dawg's room

Master Bathroom

Master Bedroom

Ready to go home....

Outdoor Shots:

Our beautiful View

The Yard

Our Wonderful, Really Old House

Full Circle

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 08:58:00 +0000

I remember when we first signed the papers for the house 3 years, 9 months ago. We were so excited. We didn’t care that the house was dilapidated, filthy and smelled strongly of pigeon shit. We loved it and couldn’t wait to get our hands on it.

A day or two after signing, I went to the local department store to poke around their hardware department. It tickled me silly to buy a rake and a pair of wellies, and I must have spent a good hour mulling over which canvas gloves to buy. Heavy-duty polythene sacs, dust masks, secateurs, and industrial-strength disinfectants all went into my shopping cart, and when I returned home, my fingers were cramping beneath the weight of all the bags I carried. But I was so thrilled – these products marked the start of a great adventure. Cleaning our house would be our first act of love towards it; the first step toward making the place our own.

Today I found myself in that department store once again. Like last time, I contemplated the best cleaning supplies for the house. But this time, I bought ordinary stuff – rubber gloves. Brooms. Sponges. A dustpan. Mr. Clean (or as it’s called here, Monsieur Propre). Yes, people: the rumors are true. Three years and nine months after buying the place, our house is finally habitable. This weekend we will stay overnight there for the first time.

I must admit, I’m a little nervous. I have only seen the house at night twice. The first time was when we just happened to drive past it in on our way to a local chambre d’hôte. The second time was when a meeting with the workers ran late, and we ended up racing against the sun, like anti-vampires, trying to lock up the house before darkness fell. We didn’t quite make it but we tore out of the village as if zombies were on our tail. The house, with its grimy cobwebs and crumbling walls and missing floors, was just too creepy to be in after dark.

Now, all that’s changed, of course. The walls are all white and gleaming. The new floors smell wonderfully of freshly cut wood. And there’s nary a cobweb to be seen, let alone one black with dirt.

But I’m still the tiniest bit weirded out by staying overnight there. The house has been creepy a lot longer than it’s been nice. I feel oddly shy and apprehensive, as if I’m about to go on a date with an old friend, who used to live out of his car and eat from garbage cans, but has since cleaned up really, really nicely.

What shades of the old house will remain, I wonder? It’ll be so familiar and yet unfamiliar, too. I imagine, like any really old house, it makes lots of weird, creepy, settling noises. But it’ll take us awhile before we know the sounds of the stairs creaking is normal, and not some 19th century ghost coming to reclaim the house, or the village axe murderer creeping upstairs to chop us to bits.

Yikes.

Still, I can’t wait. We’re on the brink of a whole new adventure.

I’ll let ya’ll know how it goes.

Getting my Goat

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 08:44:00 +0000

Architects (or lack thereof) aside, we are doggedly moving forward. Soon we will actually be able to spend a night in our house, possibly as soon as mid-October. Originally, we thought it would happen by the end of September. At the last meeting in late August, the carreleur (tile layer) swore that he would be finished tiling the bathrooms by Friday, September 19th, so that the plumber could connect the toilet, bathtub, etc. and we would finally have a functional bathroom.

Well. We made an impromptu visit to the house on Wednesday, September 17th – two days before the carreleur was supposed to have finished. And guess what?....

Come on, you’ll never guess....

The bathrooms weren’t finished.

Steady now - I know you’re shocked. But actually, so were we. We bounded in, full of hope – but the bathrooms looked exactly the same as when we had visited weeks earlier. Dust-covered boxes of tiles lay on the floor. A half-empty bottle of mineral water was perched on our useless sink. Some tumbleweed rolled by. Our bathroom was a ghost town.

Enraged, Dawg fired off phone calls to both the carreleur and the stone mason (who had subcontracted the work) and threatened to institute penalties if the bathrooms were not finished by the agreed upon date. (Mind you, they told us in May that the bathrooms would be finished by the end of June…which became mid-July…which became the end of July…which then became the end of September.) The carreleur called Dawg back hours later, bumbling with apologies, swearing that he had been planning to finish up that very weekend! He swore that he would be finished by Monday, Sept.22nd at the very latest.

But the very next day, he calls to inform us that a big box of tiles had gone missing, and that he had to order more, which would take 10 days. Now, does someone smell a rat? Of course, it is possible that the tiles were really stolen. Once some wooden floorboards that were waiting to be installed were stolen. But isn’t that just so convenient? We now have to wait 10 days for the new tiles to be delivered.

And to top it off, the stone mason – who has been extremely reliable for the past three years – has become increasingly unreliable. For the past few months we have been waiting for the delivery and installation of stone so that the mason can finish the floors near the fireplaces. The mason, M. Carbourdin, said that there were delays with the quarry. Fed up, Dawg again threatened to institute penalties on the stone mason. A few days later, M. Carbourdin called to say the problems with the quarry had miraculous cleared and said the stones would be delivered within the week.

That was last week.

Today* Carbourdin calls to say that “the stones fell off the truck” en route to delivery and he’d have to order more. Can you believe this? Neither do we. It’s the builder’s equivalent of ‘the dog ate my homework.’ Dawg simply told the mason that what happened to the stones was not his problem, and that Carbourdin had been find a solution by next week or else we were going to find someone else to do the job. Sigh.

I mean, can you imagine making such excuses at your job if you fail to deliver to a client? Having worked on construction law cases for 2.5 years, I do know that delays are to be expected, especially from suppliers. But I also know that you need to make reasonable efforts to circumvent delays – like having a going to an alternate supplier if one fails you. It is just. So. FRUSTRATING.

But.

The house, though still uninhabitable, is looking good.

No longer scary. Almost warm.

In July, we invited our friends (whom I’ll call Tollie and Skip) to see the house. And for the very first time, we had guests that looked impressed with the house instead of shocked. Skip who studied landscaping was very excited about our garden (well, potential garden) and we had fun chatting about where raspberry or blueberry bushes should be planted, whether a cherry blossom tree would thrive there, and how to get rid of the many, many, many, many weeds without using industrial strength pesticides. Half-jokingly, I said that we should get a goat. It really was a half-joke, but now each time we think about it, we get more serious. But we have so many questions – like…is it really possible to rent a goat? Would we have to feed it more than grass and weeds? Does a goat require a lot of care? Would it really eat everything in our yard? How long would it take for a goat to eat a 1500 sq meter yard? What if we rented several goats for a week – would that be enough time for them to clean out our yard? If there’s anyone out who knows a thing or two about goats, please feel free to chime in.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with some pictures of the house as of Skip and Tollie's July visit. Feel free to ooh and ahhh.

Living Room:

View of Living Room from Kitchen:

View from Living Room of doors to library (left) and doors leading to hall. (Aren't the doors goregous? The person who made the doors also made the windows. By hand. Just wonderful.)

Library:

Kitchen:

Master Bedroom (note the beautiful view!):

Close-up of beautifully restored fireplace in master bedroom (I have to do before and after's of this fireplace, the difference is amazing):

Guest bathrooms in-progess!

Guest Room:

And just for fun... Skip and Tollie pushing Lil'Dawg around our lovely village:

*Note: Although I'm posting this on Oct. 11, this post was originally written on Sept. 24th.

Architecturally Speaking

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 15:45:00 +0000

Very wisely, I once advised other potential house-restorers to avoid hiring architects that do not live in the same country as your house, and who do not speak the language of the people who will be working on your house. I stand by this advice. To do otherwise is crazy. But oh how I miss our former architects.

You see, they were very good. And thorough. And they truly cared about our house. Almost too much, really. Toward the end our professional relationship, we were having serious arguments with them over stylistic matters, like how to tile the bathrooms. We wanted about 75% of it tiled, and they wanted about 10% of it tiled. Distressed by our poor taste, they told us repeatedly that tiled bathrooms weren't the thing to do, and said that the bathroom we envisioned would look like “a bathroom out of the 80’s.” (I don’t remember how bathrooms looked during that particular decade, but I’m guessing that tile-wise, they were equivalent of wearing acid wash jeans, ruffled shirts and big hair.) Architect #1, perhaps fearing that my gaudy American tastes were influencing Dawg's sensible German aesthetics, even called Dawg for a quiet heart-to-heart about it. I tihnk he was surprised to learn that Dawg, too, supported a tiled bathroom. Despite quite a bit of bickering, we finally convinced them to overcome their disgust, and draw the plans for the bathroom as we wanted it, which Architect #2 did – a bit grudgingly but perfectly.

Our professional relationship finally ended when, one warm April day in 2007, we went out to the house and saw that all the upstairs walls had been knocked down, on Dawg’s order. Architect #1 pitched a right fit. He thought that the old crumbling walls should have been stabilized instead of replaced. But earlier that year, the workers had told Dawg that stabilizing them wasn’t worth the effort and that we should just build new ones. Dawg had to make a decision on the spot, and as he was standing there staring at walls that trembled when you tapped on them and that were filled with long, spidery-looking cracks, he decided to go with new walls. Architect #1, who is not known for his light touch in sensitive situations, thoroughly berated poor Dawg for this decision. “You should have called me first!” he cried. “I would have told you that this was the wrong thing to do! You should have told the workers to wait until you’d spoken with us!” And at that moment, we realized we needed an architect in the same country, who could visit the house regularly, and speak to the workers directly.

I mean – can you imagine how it was for Dawg? On a huge project like this, having calling the architects every time something came up and having to translate technical architectural issues from German to French while simultaneously trying to account for cultural differences in working styles and approaches? It was just impossible for Dawg to continue being the mouthpiece for the architects. We expressed realization this to our architect friends, and I think there was relief all around when we went back to just being friends. (And no, our relationship suffered no lasting damage or awkwardness. In fact, Architect #1 is Godfather (along with my brother) to our son.)

A few months later, we hired another architect who seemed perfect. She was German but had lived and practiced in France for many years. She seemed as if she could whip the workers into shape – keep them on schedule, parry their bullshit, and organize monthly meetings with them. We also thought she could/would provide architectural advice about remaining issues like how to best insulate the roof, or explain the French building codes in relation to the construction chimneys. And for the first few months, she was okay. The works were progressing. The workers seemed to respond to her well. But after awhile, her work became sloppily and she became increasingly inattentive. She took her sweet time returning phone calls, and even when Dawg set up a time to talk on a weekly basis, she would sometimes forget to call or call an hour late. At first, we were forgiving because she had a baby six weeks younger than Lil’Dawg, plus two older kids, plus – as she told us at one point – she was having a personal crisis: a husband that was openly running around on her.

But soon it became clear that personal problems or not, something was going to have to change. She would forget to confirm meetings with the workers, so that sometimes not all of them would show up for meetings. She was very lazy about checking over the worker’s completed work, and didn’t notice if something was missing. (For example, once we were visiting the house shortly after the lights were installed and noticed that the hallway leading to the downstairs WC was very dark. ‘That was stupid of us not to put a light here,’ we said to ourselves. But after we consulted the electrical plan, we saw that we did indeed have a light there. The electrician had forgotten to put it in – and she, who had supposedly proofed the work, hadn’t even noticed.) She didn’t keep track of costs, and the one time she did, had another client’s name on the report and added up the figures wrong….like, way wrong, like tens of thousands of euros, wrong. And when that issue about the French building codes came up, she simply shrugged and said she didn’t know anything about it. Dawg ended up doing the research himself. Oh, I could go on.

Dawg tried talking nicely with her – asking her to take ownership of the project, to be more attentive, to refer to the checklists that he made for her, to respond to phone calls faster, etc. She would always agree, and then behave in exactly the same way. Eventually, he got fed up and would send her harsh emails or voicemail messages – to which she wouldn’t respond for days and then tell him that she didn’t respond because she “didn’t like [his] tone.” For this treatment, we were paying thousands of euros.

In July we finally decided that she added so little value to the project that we might as well fire her. But before we could, she told Dawg that she didn’t have time to work on our house anymore and was quitting. Dawg was infuriated that she beat him to the punch and we were astounded that she had the gall to quit so breezily. A few days later she sent us her bill.

Yeah.

She must have forgotten that we were lawyers. We sent her a most legal letter citing her grievous and brutal termination of our contract, our fears about how her departure would slow the continued renovation of the house, the damages we suspected that we’d incur. We would, we said, think about what kind of compensation, if any, she deserved. She had already been paid thousands of dollars for doing almost nothing. She should count her blessings that we weren’t suing her.

She responded by threatening to call all the other workers to tell them that we were refusing to pay her final bill. Dawg replied that at least then she’d be calling the workers, which was more than she did when she worked for us. She didn’t have much to say after that. A few weeks later, she suggested that we sit down and talk it over. We told her that we were on vacation, and to call us after we returned. She didn’t, and we haven’t called her. So that’s that.

We really are close to completion now, but – sigh – it would be really nice to have an architect around for these final touches. Like for our kitchen. We spent part of our holidays with our German architect-friends and discussed our dream kitchen with Architect #2. She made a quick but useful sketch of a kitchen plan (which we’ve been carrying around to various stores and showing to the workers) and gave us lots of ideas and tips. Architect #1 did a back-of-the-envelope sketch for the type of insulation we should use for the roof, and explained in detail why would should insulate in the manner he suggested.

Sitting around chatting and laughing and dreaming with them about our house over good food and bottles of wine was just like the old days. It felt wonderful to discuss the house with people who responded to our enthusiasm with equal interest and professional zeal. It made me wonder.…would it really be so crazy to rehire non-French speaking, Berlin-dwelling architects finish up our house at this point?

Maybe. But maybe not.

Three Bathrooms and a Range-Cooker

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:44:00 +0000

OK - forget about the "what-happened-in-the-past-year-and-a-half" stuff for awhile. As of today, we are finally on our way to the one thing that, in my mind, will make this house habitable: a bathroom.

For months, M. Carbourdin, the mason, has been promising us that the tiles in our bathrooms will be finished by the end of July. And yet, July inched closer and closer with nary a tile laid. In fact, for the past several weeks we stopped hearing from M. Carbourdin altogether, despite numerous phone calls from Dawg.

Although Dawg was getting anxious, I wasn't worried because Carbourdin, though on the whole extremely reliable, gets like that sometimes. If he doesn't have a positive answer for you, he will simply not return your phone call until he has one. (This strikes me as a very french way of dealing with something. I'm generalizing wildly here, but, in my experience, the french are not big on saying "I don't know." They will go through all kinds of convolutions and sometimes even make up crazy, clearly untrue stories to avoid saying, "I don't know." On the whole, I admire Carbourdin's approach. Clearly he thinks it is more honorable to ignore clients than to lie to them!)

Anyway, yesterday he sent an email, full of apologies, informing us that the tile guy would be starting that very day. And as far as we know, he has.

I am so excited about this. This is the dream. A house with a brand-new bathroom. No, no -- a house with three new bathrooms! Do you remember what the old one looked like? Well, take a gander:

Yeah. You understand why I'm so excited. It will be so nice when this toilet is a distant memory.

Not that we ever used it. I would have happily let myself explode first.

The Range Cooker

But the bathroom isn't the only exciting thing going on. We're buying an oven. And not just any old oven - a Lacanche

Nice, huh? This is a serious stove. We're pretty sure we want the Saulieu model, but we still have a few other decisions to make. For example, how many burners to have. We will definitely opt for the classic four burner hob, but we could have as many as six. Six burners! The very thought of it makes me grin like an idiot. I can just see me now, whirling around the oven in a white chef's hat, manning a half-dozen copper pots and pans filled with complicated sauces and tender vegetables (from our own garden, of course), while checking on the huge golden turkey that is roasting below. Mmm. Six burners sounds nice.

But - is that just me being swept up in another house fantasy again? Will I really use six burners outside of big events like Thanksgiving and Christmas? Will I miss not having six burners if I don't get them? I don't know. I will say that both Dawg and I like to cook, and like to cook big. Anybody out there with (or missing) a six-burner stove have an opinion?

Now, if we don't get the six-burners, we could get a "short order cook." No, not a big-bellied man in a grimy white apron wielding a spatula, but a long cast-iron plate on which we could fry hamburgers, flip pancakes, sling hash, etc. Oh yeah. That sounds good too.

We could also get - a healthier version of the short order cook - a "plancha". This is a long, flat stainless steel sheet on which we could sear fish, cook vegetables, etc. The Lacanche salesman really tried to push this option, openly mocking our interest in the six-burners ("What are you, cooks?). With the plancha, said he, we'd hardly have to use any oil on our food. We'd be super healthy! Naturally, the plancha costs an additional 1,000 euros or so.

We have one more important thing to decide about the oven: the color. These beauties come in a dizzying array of shades, from "provence yellow" to "terracotta" to "tangerine" to "black." Making these kinds of decisions are fun but tough. At first we were thinking yellow, but the saleman told us that a yellow stove is very five years ago. (The horror!) Now we're thinking "tangerine" or just plain old black. The tangerine is gorgeous and fun, but will it still be so 15 years from now? Black seems classic and cozy, but is it too boring?

Readers with an opinion - please weigh in. I'd love to know how other people make decisions like this!

HEAT

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 20:08:00 +0000

Okay, I lied. I promised four New Things with each post until you all were fully updated. But seeing how long it takes me to write about a single New Thing, if I keep my promise, you might end up waiting another year and a half for another post. So this post will be dedicated to just one New Thing. And let me tell you my friends, this is a big one: we finally have heat.

Because it is June, I know that this statement doesn’t pack much of a wallop. But I tell you, in wintertime it was cold in there. You know how Dante’s vision of the 9th circle of Hell was a giant lake of ice in which the very worst sinners were encased alive? Well, Dante could have stuck his sinners in our house for a night. Or, say, for the month of January. Judas and co. would have considered themselves well and duly punished.

But I digress... Sorry, I’m just excited. For three winters, I have bravely endured (stop snorting Dawg) glacial temperatures inside the house, but this winter I won’t have to. It will finally be warmer inside the house than out.

We decided to go with gas to heat the house, which was an obvious choice to me, but not so for everyone else. Why was gas an obvious choice for me? Read a draft of a post I wrote over a year ago when we were still considering which fuel to use. And try not to call me an idiot:

I can't get over how much there is to learn about home restoration. The questions about heating alone are enough to boggle the mind: what type of heating do we want? What kind is most efficient? What kind is typical for the region? Where will we put the heater? Should we combine and water and space heater? How well insulated is the house? What kind of insulation do we need to add? Does our insulation affect the type of heater we should get? How much will it cost? and so forth.

I am completely clueless when it comes to stuff like this. I've had gas heating in almost every apartment I've lived in, so in considering what kind of heating we should have for the house, I've been automatically reaching for 'gas' since that's the only type of energy with which I'm familiar. What kind of heating? Gas, of course!

But our little village does not have gas.

News like that makes me realize how unprepared I am for this project. I swear it never occurred to this city girl that gas might not be available in every town or village in a civilized country. In fact, it has never truly occurred to me that gas actually comes from somewhere. It doesn't just magically appear in one's oven or radiator -- it must be piped into town and distributed, and is done only so at the behest of the local government. I know this is not a huge revelation for most people, but it makes me wonder what other simple facts I don't know.

I’m an idiot right?

Don’t answer that.

Anyway, as I mentioned, we did finally choose gas. And since the village doesn’t have gas, a big shiny gas truck came – the kind you speed pass on the highway, praying that it doesn’t explode or overturn – and buried a huge tank of gas in our yard.

Kind of strange and scary thought, isn’t it? Something so dangerous sitting there on your property? I know it’s not like an unexploded mine, but it was a big deal to figure out where to put the gas tank so that no car or truck would drive over it.

That’s sort of like an unexploded mine, isn’t it?

Ugh. Don’t answer that.

Four new things

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Sat, 31 May 2008 14:04:00 +0000

Dear readers - I'm trying so hard to get you something. Really, I am. But I'm finding it surprisingly tough to summarize 1-1/2 years worth of info. So much drama to explain...so many pictures to sort though... Yet everyday that I don't post I get further behind in the story. So, here's the deal: for now, I'll just tell you four new things about the house and throw up lots of before and afts pics. Then next time, I can tell you four more new things. Eventually, I'll get all caught up.

How's that sound? Good?

Okay. Let's get started.

***

Seems impossible to believe that we’ve owned this house for 2.5 years, have been staring at it for over 3 years, have pour untold thousands into it, and yet we have not spent one single night there. We haven’t even had lunch inside it (I refuse). Our friends are still quietly shocked when they see its rubble-strewn interior for the first time. And its resale value would still be far less we’ve invested in it.

But. We are so close.

When you last saw photos of the house back in July 2006 (see Gutted Like a Fish, parts I, II and III), the house had basically four walls and a leaky roof. Remember? Well now, we have:

1) FABULOUS NEW WINDOWS, each of them lovingly handmade by our menuisier, M. Durand. The windows are exact copies of the originals, right down to the beautiful iron espagnolettes (window latches), which he took from the originals. The only difference is that these are double-glazed.

Here are a couple of "before" shots:

And now after!

Better, no?

I can’t tell you how delighted we are with them. You really need to get windows exactly right because if they're screwed up, the character of the entire house can change. M. Durand came through like a champ. They look great.

He also did our gorgeous new doors. Look:

Old Ugly Door:

New Lovely Door:

2) NEW FLOORS. Well, sort of. When last I posted, the house was completely gutted and had no floors. Now we have the beam-work that will support a floor, and insulation that will keep us from freezing in the winter. What we do not have is the actual, hardwood floor that makes a room pretty. But it should be laid by the end of June. Or so the the workers tell us. Anyway, in case you're interested, here is a picture of the insulation. I can't remember what it's called - and I 've never seen it before - but we're told that it's very ecologically-friendly:

Looks like rabbit poo, doesn't it? Maybe it is. Maybe that's why it's eco-friendly. Hmmm.

Moving on, we also now have:

3) WALLS Now this is a big one. At one point, we tore down all the walls on the upstairs floor, so that it looked like this:

instead of this:

Our decision to tear down the old walls and have new ones built resulted in a spit-and-fur-flying argument with our dear architect friends and led us to getting the shiftless architect we have now (details of that confusing time will be in a separate post).

Anyway, I present to you a series of our new plastered walls!

Upstairs hall:

Master Bedroom:

Master Bath:

Before:

Today:

Staircase:

Downstairs Hall:

Before:

Today:

(Don't worry, we kept the lovely old tiles in the hall. They're just covered up in this picture.)

Kitchen:

Before:

And now, same angles, today!

And finally, we also now have:

4) PLUMBING. All-new, lovely pipes and hoses.

There was such drama around the plumbing. We had one of those nasty surprises more experienced home-restorers warn you about:

Sometime in late 2006, it occurred to someone – can’t remember who anymore – that maybe the old pipes in our house were never connected to the village mains. We had this checked out and yes, that’s exactly had happened. The pipes of this really old house weren’t connected to anything. This meant that all the crap that had come swirling down the pipes over the last several decades had simply drained into a big hole under the garden. While this might explain why everything grows so ferociously well there, it did not make us happy.

This news took pretty much everyone by surprise. We were surprised because the former owner attested in our deed that the house was connected to the mains. We also had a statement or something from the mayor of the village affirming that it was connected. So, the mayor was surprised too. And, like us, not happy. Because laying the pipe that would connect our house to the village mains would require tearing up our garden, digging a huge, long hole under the stone wall that surrounds the house, and digging up in the street in front of the house. An expensive endeavor. Our little village is not so rich. And, as we huffed indignantly, we certainly weren't going to pay for it.

Luckily, because of the attestations in the deed, we did not have to pay for it. The mayor (or someone - can't remember who...Dawg? A local lawyer?) spoke to the crusty old former owner of the house, and told him he'd be responsible for the cost. At first, the COFO balked, but after receiving a sharp letter from a lawyer in Paris threatening to sue, he immediately sent us a check for the full amount. He could have sued our village for reimbursement, but it has never occurred to him. Just as well, as he really made a killing off of this house.

But anyway, we got connnected to the mains and now we have plumbing! Finally!

Now, if only we had a toilet.

Coming up next: HEAT!

A New Beginning

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Sat, 31 May 2008 07:45:00 +0000

You think restoring an old house is difficult? Try writing the first line of a blog that you've abandoned for a year and a half. Over the past few months, I've tried several different opening lines but none of them captured what I wanted to say. How do you sum up all the things that have happened in year and a half?

Should I begin with the end and say - "We STILL can't live in this frickin' house?"

Should I explain my absence by discussing the other major project we've been occupied with?

Should I begin by offering the most fundamental piece of advice I've learned about house restoration, which is: "hire architects that live in the same country as your house and speak the same language as the workers"?

Or should I start with the second most important piece of advice, which (as we recently learned) is: “Don’t hire a lazy local architect with a newborn and a cheating husband?”

Should I describe the way our faithful neighbor Red inexplicably abandoned us?

Should I say that we're positively hemorrhaging money?

Should I just throw up a few before and after pictures of the house? (Can't tell the diff? Hint: Look at the doors and windows)

Or should I give you the bottom line: that despite everything we are still madly in love with the house and can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel?

Aw screw it – I’ll use all of ‘em. You can go to whichever topic that interests you the most.

Oops...

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 10:08:00 +0000

...has it really been so long since I posted? Well, things have been moving along and I promise to get it all down in writing soon. Keep watching this space!

You Oughta Know

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 13:28:00 +0000

If there's anyone out there considering restoring a ruin, allow me to offer you three tips that might -- just might -- save your sanity:

1. Don't visit your ruin when it is raining.

When in the midst of restoring a ruin, always remember that grey and rainy skies can be far more illuminating than sunshine. On these dismal days, every flaw in your house -- the cracked walls, the sunken roof, the dangling wires, the sad, straggly garden -- will seem larger than life, as if someone has placed a giant magnifying glass in front of them. You will see everything, everything, that is wrong and you will be gripped with the terrible knowledge that you could not rid yourself of the house even if you wanted to at this point, because who would want this heap of junk? You will feel trapped and horrified. You will wonder if the villagers who think you crazy are right.

You can skip all this angst-making stuff by not going to your house when it rains. Or, if you're very sensitive, even when it's overcast. However, if a rainy day sojourn is unavoidable, just keep reminding yourself that any rising desire to flee is just the weather talking. The feeling WILL pass. When the sun comes out, you WILL love your house again. Maybe it's only because the sun is blinding you, but who cares?

2. Don't believe your worker when he says he's coming "next week."

While it's true that he very well might come "next week", there's no point in believing him until it actually happens. Trust me: a big dose of cynicism here is a healthy thing. It'll save you from feeling the sharp claws of betrayal when "next week" arrives and he's nowhere in sight. This way, you can just shake your head, laugh, and say, "Oh that crazy worker...I just knew he wouldn't show!"

That said, this doesn't mean that you can't get back at your truant worker by harassing him with a barage of annoying telephone calls and faxes. Dawg, correctly not trusting the "next week" response, has been bedeviling our carpenter in this manner for the past 3 weeks. We knew we were getting to him because by the end of last week, he stopped taking Dawg's calls. And, sure enough, today, he showed up at the house. Turns out, he wasn't able to get in because the mason put a new lock on the front gate and no one had the key, but that's another story.

3. Don't tear down old telephone/electrical wires without protective goggles.

Two weekends ago, while working downstairs with Red, I hear a crash and then a yelp from upstairs. I call out to Dawg, who has been yanking down old telephone cables, to see if he's okay. He answers: "I don't know." This response is mildly worrying -- it wouldn't be difficult to get injured here -- so I dash upstairs. Dawg is standing there on the 1st floor landing, a wire cable dangling from his hand, a smattering of blood on his t-shirt. "Is it bad?" he asks me, hopefully. It isn't. It's just a scratch on his cheek. No worse than a shaving cut, I tell him. Dawg feels somewhat robbed of his moment of high drama until he realizes that it could have been bad. "It could have scratched out my eye!" he declares, "I should have been wearing protective goggles!" I agree, it certainly could have been bad, and he definitely should have been wearing protective goggles. I offer to get the camera to document his narrow escape. Dawg agrees that this is the right move. So, here is Dawg, taking one on the cheek for the house.

Don't let this happen to you.

Moving so fast looks like we're standing still

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 06:38:00 +0000

Oh wait - we are we standing still.

Okay, yes, we knew that nothing was going to happen in August. But still, it was so, so sad to come back, refreshed and optimistic, and see our poor house looking as pitiful as ever. There's really no point in me posting more pictures. The interior looks the same as it did in July -- jacked up. The exterior is a bit better: one attic window that was protruding has been fixed. And the grey, crumbling stone around some of the lower windows have been replaced with sparkling white stone. And we hear that a supporting pillar has been installed in our cellar. Tiny steps. Itsy-bitsy movement. We're crawling, ovah heah.

Don't mind my moaning. It's our own fault that we forgot what the house looked like during vacation. We got waaaay ahead of ourselves. When the architects visited us in July, they brought us electrical and heating plans of the house. Unlike the discussion of The Best Way to Replace Rotting Beams, talk about electrical and heating plans is fun. When you're building your own house or doing extensive renovations, you, the owner, get to decide where you'd like each electrical outlet, off/on switch, and heater in every room. This is no simple task, since that means you must also be able to envision what each room will look like, furniture and all, even when the room doesn't yet exist.

Take the bedroom for example. Naturally, we want electrical outlets on either side of our bed for reading lamps, clocks and the like. But where will the bed go? The bedroom is big enough to have a few options. We want to make sure we make the right choice because once the electrical outlets are in place, we're pretty much committed. (I mean, think about it: when you rent an apartment or buy a house, you set up your bedroom according to the space and the location of the outlets, don’t you? Yes, you do.) We don’t want to have extension cords trailing across the room, or wake up one day and say – damn! Why did we put the bed so close to the door/near the fireplace/far away from the radiator? So, it deserves quite a bit of thought. And that’s what we did on our vacation: we looked at our plans, tried to envision each of our rooms with basic furniture, and plot our sockets and heaters accordingly. (That said, we were not working from scratch. The electrical and heating plans from the architects gave their recommendations – we modified the plans to fit our vision.)

It was so exciting to envision our house as it could be. We imagined it clean, dust-free, with actual floors. A bed here, a closet there, overhead lights everywhere. We contemplated the configuration of our bathrooms (where should the stand-alone tub go? The walk-in shower? The heated towel racks?), whether the hallway needed an extra radiator (yes), and the best place to put the boiler (the front part of the cave). All this was reasonable and fun, but then we got carried away. We started visualizing the tiles for the bathroom floor… the style of faucets we’d have…the type of material for the double sink….the huge, stainless steel refrigerator in the kitchen….parties in the garden…cozy fires in the library…. friends in guests room….In other words, by the time the vacation was over, in our minds, the house was already built.

So, it was shocking, nay, horrifying, to return from vacation to find the house the derelict heap of rubble that it is. We immediately got on the phone to the workers. They won’t be able to start again until mid-September. At the earliest.

Well, at least we’re ready.

Inching forward

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Tue, 18 Jul 2006 10:32:00 +0000

Now that we're making forward progess on the house instead of backward, I'll be keeping better record of the goings-on there. (Though don't look for any posts in August since all of France, including us, will be on vacation.)

We went to examine our little maison abandonee last weekend and it's looking much less abandoned these days. Scaffolding has sprouted like vines all over its exterior, and if you know where to look, you'll see that repairs have been made. For example, a large stone in the wall on the north side of the house was protruding several inches from the rest of the house, due to an attic beam that had been slowly pushing it out of place for several decades. That beam was repaired in January and now the wall has magically been repaired as well. A bright new white stone shines down on us from in between the scaffolding.

We also noticed that the horrible, non-breathable concrete that someone slathered into the exposed stone on the south side of the house in the hopes of delaying decay has been chiseled away.

The interior is also changing. Slowly. The majority of the work has been done in the attic, where all the old rotten beams have been removed and replaced with lovely new pine beams. The new beams have been covered with large, flat wooden boards (can't remember what you call them), but now we can walk around up there without fear of falling into the the downstairs guest bathroom. Or rather, "guest bathroom."

We also were pleased to see that our work chipping away the plaster from the beams around the perimeter of the house was not in vain. We discovered several decaying beams on that freezing day and now most of those beams have been removed. New oak beams lie on the floor in the library, waiting to do their duty for the house.

While these works were going on, Reliable Red, our fabulous English neigbor, did a bang-up job cleaning out the cave (cellar) in our barn. Like the house and the yard before it, the cave was filled with decades of junk and dirt -- but unlike the house and the yard, it is pitch-black down in that cellar and thus not so easy to clean.

So there it is. And now we're off for vacation.

Dusty work

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 14:04:00 +0000

Taking up those walls/floors creates a tremendous amount of dirt and dust. Here are a few pictures of the dust created as Dawg and Red shovel it out of the house.

Gutted like a fish, part III - Look Ma! No floors!

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 12:24:00 +0000

This is our bedroom as viewed from the kitchen. Pretty wild, huh? It's hard to see in these pictures, but the staircase and fireplace are being held up with metal stabilizers. Also you can see in the 3rd picture that (most of) the wall with the hideous wallpaper has been torn down (compare with "gutted like a fish, part II, 1 & 2nd pix). Having difficulty orienting yourself? Look at the 4th picture: the master bathroom is to the right of the staircase.

Are we rebuilding this house or what?

Gutted like a fish - part II

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 11:33:00 +0000

Here, the first picture is a "before" and the rest are "afters". As you (might be able to) see, the walls between the hallway and the master bedroom and master bathroom have been torn down. The walls with the hideous wallpaper you see in the "before" pictures have since also been torn down. Again, all this was done in order to replace the beams on which those walls rested. See the beams and joists on the floor? Those are the same ones as in the earlier "kitchen" pictures. All of them are gone now. In other words, there is no floor/ceiling between this half of the ground and first floor. Just a huge open space. Let me see if I can find pictures....

Gutted like a fish - part I

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Thu, 13 Jul 2006 10:17:00 +0000

Here's a before and after of the "kitchen" (or rather, an "after," "before," and "after). Well, it's not so much pictures of the kitchen, as pictures of the room behind the wall of the kitchen. We knocked down the wall between the kitchen and what was, and will be again, the downstairs bathroom/laundry room. We had to do this because the main beam running through the kitchen/bathroom and several of the smaller beams need to be replaced due to years of neglect and water damage.

Once we knocked the wall down, we were tempted to figure out how to leave the space open because, as you can see, a wonderful light comes in through the large bathroom window, and the kitchen could use a little more light. But as we don't want to change the character of the house too much, we'll probably rebuild it as it was before. In our 9-month house search, we have seen some really dreadful attempts to modernize/improve the structure and space of otherwise beautiful old homes, and it would be very embarrassing to wake up one day to realize that we've become the very assholes we've mocked.

Hello?

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 08:30:00 +0000

Anyone still there? It's me...the really old house owner....hello? HELLO?

I'm very sorry for my absence. I have no real excuse except to say not much has changed since I last wrote. In March, we took up more floors, knocked away the plaster covering the beams on the house's perimeter, discovered more rotting beams. In April, we tore down some walls. These days, in some parts of the house, you can see straight up to the roof from the ground floor. That's how much stuff we've torn down; how many gaping holes we've made. I know that all this destruction is considered progress -- there's no way to get a stable, secure house without doing this -- but at times it sure don't feel like it.

The worst was in February and March, where not only were we constantly tearing down everything, watching our beautiful house turn to dust and rubble, but we were doing all this dirty, tiring work in the freezing cold. Sometimes, I would have to sit in the car with the heat blasting, waiting until my fingers unfroze enough for me to continue. And sometimes, if we needed to warm-up but didn't want to go to the car, we would simply step outside the house for a minute or two. Yep, that's right. In the winter, it's warmer outside the house than inside.

Okay, I bet now you're picturing me and Dawg as proficient and knowledgeable craftsmen, rubbing our dust-streaked chins as we stare thoughtfully at blueprints; wielding our crowbars and sledgehammers with inimitable skill, grimly continuing to labor until the job is done, despite artic-like conditions.

It's not like that.

To tell the truth, Red, our neighbor, does most of the work during the week. By the time we get there on Saturday, there's very little left to do. We spend maybe two or three hours working, and then spend another two or three hours eating lunch and guzzling wine at Red's family's chateau. Or sometimes we work for an hour or two, then go to the nearest bed and breakfast, rent a room for the afternoon, take a hot shower, take a two-hour nap, and return to Paris. We're the laziest house-restorers you'd ever want to meet.

Anyway, I suppose it's not entirely true that nothing has changed since I last posted. To keep things simple, here are the top 5 things that have occurred since I last wrote:

1. The house is warmer. And not just because it's now June. No doubt tired of my incessant whining about the cold, Dawg and Red finally cleaned out and opened the fireplace on the ground floor. Now, we can have a lovely, huge blaze going while we work. It doesn't warm the whole house, so, to get warm you have to keep returning to the fireplace (at times I actually sit in the fireplace), but it's really nice to have something in the house that not only keeps your warm, but actually works! Other than the roof, the front doors, a few beams and the stairs, this fireplace is the only thing in the house that currently serves a purpose.

2. We got electricity. Despite my insistence that this house has nothing, it does have electrical wires (some of them appearing in frighteningly random places) and a circuit box. To our surprise, we learned that all we needed to do to get power in the house is call EDF and have them flip a switch. Red made the call for us, and now our house has more juice than a smoothie bar. But fat lot of good it does us - because the wires are scarily dangling all over the house, we are only keeping one outlet live. How we do this, I don't know, but Dawg and Red assure me that all other wires in the house are currently (or current-less, ha!) harmless. Better hope so.

3. We have flowers. Or rather, we had flowers. Last November, Dawg's sister very kindly, though naively (she had yet to see the yard), gave us Daffodil bulbs to plant in our junk-filled wilderness. And we gamely did, one very cold December day. I remember that we looked doubtfully at the little mounds we created amid the rubble and weeds, and wished them luck. But apparently, they didn't need luck -- daffodils can grow just about anywhere. For, one day when we went to the house in late March, there they were, rising up beside rusted metal and old ceramic sinks, or pushing through the stony ground at the back wall, bright and pretty as anything. Yes, their loveliness was a bit incongruous what with all the other havoc occuring in the yard, but it was still a very pleasing sight and happy reminder of what our garden will one day be. Pictures to come.

4. We got a mailbox. Okay, I'm stretching for stuff here, but it was very exciting to get the key and see our name (well, Dawg's name) on the box. And yes, we do get mail. Flyers for local events, store circulars, and - only days after EDF turned on our electricity - our first electricity bill. For 259 euros. Which seemed awfully high, considering that we've never actually used any electricity. Luckily, the person Dawg spoke to at EDF was very understanding (this is not something one can assume 'round these parts) and we got a 259 credit on the next bill.

..and last, but far from least.....

5. We got some state money to restore the house! Incredible, but true. For my birthday, a friend gave me an amazing book called, "Fermes & Maisons Villageoises: 30 exemples de rehabilitation" which details 30 house/farm restoration projects in various villages around France. If you're restoring a near-ruin in France for the first time, it really is a must-have. For each project, the book shows before and after pictures, miniature blueprints or floor plans, detailed descriptions of the works undertaken, the cost of the entire project and the length of time it took to complete it. It also has a glossary of construction terms, listings for architects, artisans and other workers, and -- best of all -- a bunch of public organizations that deal with the safeguarding and restoration of old houses. One of these organizations is called Fondation du Patrimoine (www.fondation-patrimoine.com). Clever Dawg realized that, under certain conditions, this outfit actually gives money toward the restoration of old homes. And not only that -- if you are awarded a grant from them, you are entitled to deduct up to 100% of certain building costs from your taxes!

Basically, to get a grant from them, your home must be:

-- old (how old was never really clear - we think our house was built around 1850, give or take 20 years, and that was old enough);

-- in close proximity to a landmark, in an protected area or in a natural park (our house is next to a landmark church dating from the 16th century);

-- be visible from the public space (this is key because they only pay for works that will be visible to the public eye. If we had needed a new roof, this really would have been a godsend!)

We figured we met all the requirements, so we put together a really slamming dossier, which included estimates from all the workers with regard to works visible to the public eye, photographs of the exterior of the house from every possible angle (including a reprint of an old postcard of the house from the turn of the 20th century), and a rockin description (prepared by our architects) of all the works, both exterior and interior, that will be done on the house.

We submitted the dossier in May and found out in June that it was accepted. We were granted 8% of the total costs of our exterior works. It's less cash than we'd hoped for but we're thrilled anyway since it means that we can deduct 50% of the cost of the exterior works from our 2006 taxes. That's some 30,000 euros!

Naturally, we're taking the friend who gave me the book out to a fabulous dinner. That book was the most expensive birthday gift I've ever received.

My First Rant

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Mon, 27 Feb 2006 08:20:00 +0000

When Dawg and I first began looking for a house to restore, lots of people (mostly those that had already restored old houses) gave us frantic warnings about how tough it is. But when I tried to pin them down about what exactly was so difficult about it, nothing anybody said scary enough to make me rethink our decision. They said things like:

"It takes a long, long time."
"You have to watch the workers to make sure they don't cheat you."
"You have to make a lot of important decisions, like about where you want the sink and what color tiles you want."
"It costs a lot of money."

None of these reasons really fazed me. We're not living in the house as it gets restored. We've got Red there to look out for cheating workers. Worrying about where to put the sink are the least of our troubles. And as for money, well, even if we fully renovated the house with all the latest gadgets and installed a gigantic swimming pool with a waterfall and swim-up bar, the house would still be cheaper than a 100 sq. meter apartment in the center of Paris. Basically.

Anyway, I decided to keep this blog, not just to keep family and friends informed, but so that I could remember exactly what I would find so hard about house restoration. So far, it has had nothing to do with any of the items above, only this: dealing with multiple foreign languages.

Last weekend, our architect friends came from Berlin to see the latest developments on the house and talk to the workers we want to hire. This is always something that I look forward to, but then I remember: there is no single common language between the 6 of us -- only poor Dawg speaks English, French and German -- which inevitiably means that someone is left out. Usually, that someone is me.

I understand this. I am not the E.F. Hutton of construction. I have no gems to offer when it comes to the best way to replace a rotten beam, or whether a sagging wall needs extra support. (Dawg somehow does.) But, I still like to know what's going on. I mean, if the carpenter says that a concrete beam is appropriate, and the architects say only wood will do, I want to know why. How will each material affect the house? How will each affect the cost? I may not recognize a sagging wall when I see it, but I sure can recognize a dwindling bank account. Anything that affects it is something I need to know about. Plus, I'm interested.

But, alas, for me, being clued in is a transient thing. Listening to what goes on is like listening to a staticky radio. Here's how most conversations go:

Carpenter (in french): This main beam here really needs to be replaced in its entirety. I think we should use a kiosier and lieontion on the sidonsiet to make sure that it all belomoier l'amoastion, and won't fall down.

Architect #1 (in German): What'd he say?

Dawg (in German): He thinks the Klunonen needs to sozost ondopasohen zwodofacht die Koasidzt. Moewr gesdior mozoieren an.

Architect #1 (in German): Ask him reithins einen Noprecht bufeten zumil like a T?

Dawg (in French, to the carpenter): Don't you think that you should use a moeifier, you know, in a T-shape?

Carpenter (in French, gesturing): We could do that but it weighs 100 kilos and costs 2.45 euros per kilo which would be muchmoreexpensivethanusingtheamiser. I recommend glitre movier drissment l'opier. Plus, if you broiter it's going to be too heavy. So, you see that thisismoreefficient and quierier lache du meseret than what you might expect.

Architect #2 (nodding, understanding): I see. Okay. That's fine. So, hat mekozzien Motktcher miwkkoil getremosen?

Dawg (in French): Would the miovoir be more tuvriers afterward?

Carpenter (in French): Yes. Absolutely.

Architect #2 (in French): Good.

Dawg (in German): How can poiwelk the wall aiseft Moazzsocht Libmsser in that wall pirffketen an?

Architect #1 (in German): Wittag tizetes seitks the wall misoep gehtti mi asmieom camiotiosech in the wall msuss nur hat maiklpriwen wall Soimoro the wall stukizmeot Asoeimottzwieomicht in the wall getrummen einem Jemsttmsen the wall zeoptlsoweoioewrien the wall gleibe Nositammoack amsieoame the wall miwopaeprem stablized.

Dawg (in English to me): We're talking about walls, honey. I wanted to know if -- (in German) Hey what about taisocht gekospsmeop geospmemmen?

Architect #2 (in German): Just kospomap selsiten.

Dawg (in English): Okay. (In French) What we've been saying is if the wall is misateur maopu l'amiosi preais de mapempqe verior, then how can we use a aspoge oamque to stablize it?

Carpenter: Of course, for a crack like that we'd use an asopge mapoier that would lerastre d'umnier!

Dawg (in French): Okay, that's what the architects say too. (In English): How do you feel about that sweetie? Did you get all that?

Lola (pointing at a wall): Uh. Are you talking about whether that crack in the wall is going to --

Architect #1 (impatiently, in English): We're not talking about that wall yet, Lola. One thing at a time.

Carpenter (in French, moving on): We still need to discuss the kasois de parcitupent ossoir larostee.

Dawg (in French): Right. What I was thinking was --

Lola: Wait, Dawg. What just was just said here?

Dawg: Where's your french today?

Now imagine this type of conversation going on for 2 hours in a freezing cold, cobwebby house that has no bathroom. I was Not Happy. I don't like cold. And if I must be in a situation where I am forced to see my own breath for hours on end, there had better be a damn good reason for it.

Luckily, just as I was about to slip into a hypothermic-and-boredom-induced rage, Dawg and I came to an agreement that we would not leave a particular room without me knowing exactly what the issues are, and without me getting my questions out. He was very, very good about sticking to it, even when the others were impatient to move on. Thanks, sweetie. We can stay married.

Okay, rant over. Architects, if you're reading you know I love you both. But cut a sistah some slack, huh? Especially you, Architect # 1. You know what I'm talking about.

Real developments on the house, coming soon.

Before and after

noreply@blogger.com (Lola) — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 16:26:00 +0000

I know it's hard to tell some of the "befores" from the "afters" so let me explain. The first two pictures are of fireplace in the future library. The picture doesn't accurately convey how truly disgusting it was to clean that fireplace out. But it looks pretty good now.

The second second set of pictures are of the front hall. The nice clean-looking picture is the "before." The one with the red stabilizing rods and piles of plaster is how it looks now.

The next two pictures are duplicates -- sorry, I couldn't erase them without having to start this whole post from scratch. Anyway, the picture is the "before" shot of the future kitchen. The ones of the bare brick walls (below) was taken after we knocked the plaster off the walls.