Our ship has come in.
Yesterday was a big day. After eight weeks in transit, our shipment arrived by truck in Le Grand-Pressigny. As we watched all of our things being unloaded from the container, I realized how big a milestone it was.
In the span of just one year, we visited France a few times, decided to move, bought a house, started wading through the bureaucracy to get French visas, sold our California house and cars and many of our things, and took a one-way flight to France. Once here, we found an architect and builder and began the waiting process for the approval for the renovations on the exterior of our house, which we still have not received. In a way, our possessions being taken out of that shipping container marked the start of our life here. We can now blend our California life with our French life, and the carefully curated inventory of possessions will be adapted for use here. Well, some things weren’t so carefully curated. In our exhaustion, we got to the point in our packing-up process when we said, “let’s just take that thing and see how it goes,” rather than having to deal with getting rid of it. So, our giant Weber barbecue now sits in the yard of our rental house, waiting for us to figure out how to adapt the gas line to work with the French tanks. And our silly fake Christmas tree with remote-controlled lights will be put up to mark our first French Christmas. Tonight, we will happily be sleeping in our own big bed because we found the box containing our sheets. (We like our big California bed so we decided to bring our beds and enough sets of sheets to last us for years.)
It all went very well, with only one little casualty during transit, a small plastic bin of papers was crushed. Of course, almost everything is yet to be unpacked and examined, but none of the boxes showed any damage. The unloading crew was young, friendly and efficient, and we hope to be able to use the same guys in a year to move our things into the house when it’s ready. We also had two French-speaking friends there to help with the translations and that is always a good idea.
We found a great storage facility recently built in an old furniture factory. 
The container was only about 2/3 full.
The little van used to bring a few things from storage to the house wasn’t big enough for the mattress, so they just put it on top and drove v-e-r-y slowly.
And work continues at the house.
A gorgeous fireplace was uncovered in our kitchen. 
I like seeing snippets of the old wallpaper uncovered here and there. This one had been put on upside-down.
Bye bye plaster. 
Love the stone walls but only some will be kept that way.
This is the bedroom that had been divided into two (with 11 children, probably a good idea). We are making it into a multi-purpose room and hope to use that old cupboard opening as an entry into the upper level of the cave (storeroom) that runs along the backside of the house.
Ann | 30th May 19
I love seeing pictures of the excavation and all the discoveries. Who knows what you’ll find next!. My friend and I are in Heathrow waiting to fly home from our Irish Scottish cruise. It was wonderful.
Susan Walter | 30th May 19
I *love* the mattress transport story! The wallpaper being upside down probably means that it once went up the opposite wall, across the ceiling and down the wall you’ve photographed. You haven’t properly house hunted in France until you’ve seen at least one room decorated like that.