Work continues at a good pace on the house. Now that the walls and beams have been sandblasted and exposed, the focus has turned to the floors. As none of the floor tiles were worth saving, they were removed, plus about 10″ more to prepare for new floors. The orange marks on the back wall is where the kitchen entrance to the cave will be made.

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In the cave (pronounced “kahve” in France), the floor level was three big steps up from the level of the living room. In order to get through the bedrock in the cave, they brought in a digger, which barely fit through the door.

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The digger magically squeezes through narrow spaces, so the guys went to work inside the cave and, amazingly, managed to get the floor level down by more than 3 feet. I would have been happy to have the cave one step up from the kitchen and living room, but they were able to get the level all the way down to the match the adjoining rooms. This does two good things: it gives us more headroom in the lower level of the cave, and it allows us to lower the floor level on the upper space in the cave, which was needed as the roof there is slanted.

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The photo above shows how much the floor level has been lowered in the cave. You can also see the arched doorway on the upper floor. When we put back the flooring on that level, we will then have a step down into the upper cave. That room will be used as a storage closet.

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Just when we thought we were done with surprises being uncovered in the house, we got a message from our builder saying we should come by to see what they found. We went over immediately, of course. What could it be? A buried treasure?

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They were digging in our living room area and found what appeared to be remnants of some old steps, so they kept at it and found an ancient cave, measuring about 9 ft wide and 6 ft high. It was definitely man made, with marks on the ceiling from being formed. It was in a precarious spot, going under an exterior wall of the house, and also an interior wall of the living room and the back room.

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There were a couple hours of excitement about the discovery, but there was nothing we could do with it but fill it in. By the next day, it looked like this:

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I’m having “pinch me” moments just about every day. It is thrilling to watch this house being transformed.

Meanwhile, after waiting more than three months past the day when our new car was supposed to be ready for us, we finally received it. We bought a Peugeot, of course. What else but a French car?

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And on the weather front, we’ve been experiencing a “canicule,” which is the French word for HOT AS HELL. The last two weeks have been nearly unbearable. OK, so I’m a California girl, what can I say. I’m used to warm weather, even hot weather, but I’m also used to air conditioning. Of course, there is no AC in the rental house, or most any house here. We now have fans strategically placed all over the house. We also have adopted the French way of using the metal shutters to keep the cool overnight air inside as much as possible. At night, we open the windows and the shutters, but close the curtains, in a feeble attempt to keep the bugs out. It works pretty well. Or maybe that’s because we have a commercial-grade fan blowing over us all night. No fly or mosquito would survive that gale-force wind. During the day, windows and shutters are closed, and we stay inside as much as possible.

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We found a wonderful fruit and vegetable store in nearby Descartes. Yay!

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I don’t know why I am still fascinated by the flavors of chips available here, but here you go. Burger flavor?

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