We’ve been busy! This life in France is way more hectic than we’d anticipated. We had envisioned a slower pace, lots of time to relax, read books, and enjoy the process of getting to know our new country. But we hit the ground running, and it hasn’t slowed much since we arrived.
Work continues on the house, with the construction of the annex moving along at a good pace. They will be pouring the cement foundation this week.
The picture above shows the cement block walls going up for our bedroom. On the left is the hallway coming from the house. The dirt in the foreground will become a patio, shaded by a pergola (and hopefully some wisteria growing over that). The doorway and two windows from the bedroom are starting to emerge as the blocks go up.
the doorway from the house to the annex was cut through 3 feet of rock
So here’s some big news. We have been struggling to figure out how to fit the living room and kitchen into the spaces we had decided they would go. Allowing for the various doors and windows and fireplaces in each space, the rooms were just not coming together….and suddenly, it hit me. Why not switch the rooms? Bingo. Once we looked at it with that in mind, it all started to work. So now, the smaller room, instead of being a small living room, will be the kitchen (and, surprisingly, it will be a larger kitchen than it would have been in the other space), and the larger room will become the living room. The dining area will remain where it was, and will now share the space with the living room instead of the kitchen. These rooms are just across the small entryway from each other.
this will now be our kitchen
and this will now be our dining/living room
We are very happy with this new arrangement. Fortunately, our decision did not cause any problems for the workers – we made the change just before it would have caused some things to be redone.
Upstairs update.
The guest room on the 1st floor (still having a hard time with that, it’s the 2nd floor to Americans), has an interesting fireplace. I mentioned this in an earlier post, but here it is fully exposed. See those large stones on the left, under the blackened wall stones? It seems the fireplace was much larger in the past, and for some reason, it was made smaller. The stones were blackened by soot.
And in that bedroom, an old doorway was restored. We will use this doorway, after the header is raised (it’s so low now that even I have to duck), to access the bathroom.
The walls in that room were old “wattle and daub” construction, in which a woven lattice of wooden strips called wattle is daubed with a sticky material made of a combination of wet soil, clay, sand, animal dung, and straw. It’s the only wall in the house like this. We plan to plaster between the vertical boards, so they remain
An old house viewed with new technology.
the new dormers and the annex with pergola look great
A friend who is into CAD work has made us a fantastic rendering of our house and annex. When we open the file on our computers or iPads, we can go into each room and see how things fit together. We are so grateful to have such a nice new friend who has been generous with his time to create this for us.
Flooring decisions.
This is what we have chosen for the ground floor. It’s gorgeous limestone from Burgundy.
For a while, we considered having a patterned tile in the entry. But the limestone is so pretty, we decided to keep it throughout. We may use a patterned tile in the bathrooms. Stay tuned.
the tile store wouldn’t give me samples – or even sell me a few tiles –
so I had to print several of my photos and tape them together
And in the “why didn’t I buy this?” department:
I wanted this adorable cow bell for our front door. Why didn’t I buy it? I don’t know.