On May 20 it will be two years since work began on renovating this old house. The interior is pretty much finished, we’re just waiting for some curtains to arrive and a few other odds and ends to be done. The house is gorgeous and we couldn’t be happier with the way it’s turned out. I hope to post a few before-and-after pics soon.

It’s been raining for 10 days, which is great for our garden, but not such a good thing when you’re laying tile outside. Somehow they’ve managed to get some of it down, but it’s a soggy job. The travertine cobblestones are beautiful and they work well bridging the exposed old stones on the front of the house with the new walls and stones on the bedroom addition.

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Once the tile work is finished, a pergola will be built over the patio (the space in the photo in front of the double doors). Hopefully, soon we’ll have wisteria growing over that pergola. We’re also planning on having a small wood covering built over our front door. The photo below is the kind of thing we’ll have – it just seems practical to have a protected place to stand when you are fumbling with your keys, or to leave a package.

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Making a garage.

Once all that work is finished, the crew will move on to the final project: creating a one-car garage out of a small storage room. This little room is under what we call “Outbuilding 1” (because we have 3 outbuildings) and is attached to our neighbor’s house. The work will involve some excavating, some demolition and reconstruction of the building in order to support a new slate roof, and making interior steps from the new garage up to the courtyard. This means we will not be rid of the construction site view out our front windows for a couple more months.

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As I type this, a crew from the power company is in our street digging a big hole because they have to move the power line that is to the left of that little door. It must be moved in order for us to enlarge that space to make the garage. It has taken many months to go through the process of getting the power company to agree to do this work, and then to get it on their schedule, so we were very pleased when they showed up yesterday and started digging. I’m not sure the neighbors are quite as happy as we are, but they must be used to our noise and street disruptions by now.

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Finding the right spot for things.

We moved a lot of stuff from California to France. A lot of stuff. As the house was nearing completion, we started thinking about exactly where we were going to put all that stuff, especially our art. My father-in-law was a prolific artist and we have enough of his paintings to fill a small gallery. Fortunately, we both love his art and knew it would work well in a 300 yr. old French house. I have always felt that the best way to find a place for a painting is to walk around the house with it and let it tell you where it should be. We did just that with our art, and I think they found perfect spots.

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Another treasure we wanted to find a place for is this beautiful old Alpine walking stick that belonged to my husband’s grandfather in Austria. These walking sticks were treasured by hikers and were proudly adorned with small badges called “stocknagels” collected from the various regions trekked. We have it on the wall in our entry, and it’s resting on a couple of ancient handmade nails taken from the house during the renovation.

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The Situation Room.

We wanted to make the large room upstairs into a multi-purpose room, serving as a TV room, a workout space, and an office. This had been a bedroom for most of the 11 children who lived here and was divided by a thin wall. We removed the dividing wall and returned the room to its original size. Our crew built a short wall to separate the office space from the TV area. It’s now a comfortable room and we are happy with the way it turned out. We’re calling it our Situation Room, which is described as “an intelligence management center” at the White House.

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Meanwhile, out back…

Things are looking good out there and I love wandering through the garden every day to see what’s new. One thing I hoped to do was reuse many of the things left from the demolition of the old chicken coops, so this old gate will soon be covered with Lablab vines that a friend gave us (it’s actually called Lablab purpureus or Hyacinth bean, which has gorgeous purple flowers and bean pods, but I just like saying lablab).

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At the moment, we have lots of allium and red poppies happening. The honeysuckle vines and climbing roses are making their way up to the wires that will support them, and the vegetable garden is coming along. Spring is definitely here in the Loire Valley, and later this week we will be able to enjoy eating at restaurants with outside terraces for the first time since September.