House Update

 In less than a week, we will have nine people staying in our little house in the south of France. Yep, it's going to be close quarters, but we're trying to make sure everything is as comfortable as possible. The only guest from outside France we've had come to stay with us was Tucker who arrived in October 2019 when the house was still a construction area. And Grace and Jack who stayed for five months last year during Covid as we continued to work on the house. 

Now, most of the rooms are not just livable, but comfortable. 

The kitchen has been our favorite room since it was initially finished. We gather here with guests most of the time, the scene of much delicious food and camaraderie. One thing that changes in the kitchen is the artwork as it gets updated based on items we find in France or in the States. 

Our homey kitchen

From the other corner, looking into the living room, with Louis Catorze featured in the center

The living room is getting more comfortable with two leather couches, a bookshelf, and the television attached to the wall now. 

View from beyond the stair case. Louis again!

Our downstairs half bath, that's what we call a bathroom that has a toilet and sink, but no shower or bathtub, is completed. There's no getting around the electrical box in there, but it looks 100 percent better than it did now that it has shiny gray and white tiles on the floor, a corner sink and a niche for decorative items. 

Don't put on too much weight to fit in this toilet!

The tiny sink and the table with hand towels. The electrical box in the way. 

The bedrooms and guest bathroom have been finished for quite awhile, but they both were missing artwork. As we moved art around in the kitchen, we relegated some items to the upstairs bedrooms. We also found some French-type art in the Troc in Carcassonne. One painting reminded me of the book Madeline "In an old house in Paris that was covered in vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines...”

The guest bedroom ready for our guests, now with artwork. 

The guest bathroom from the vantage point of the shower!

Looking the opposite direction. That's not Louis rolled up by the shower, that's a rug. 

Our bedroom with French doors that lead to the office

The office where I teach and the French doors that lead out to the terrace. 

The terrace is perfect for breakfast for two. 

With the artwork hung in the bedrooms, Earl spent a few days cleaning the room at the end of the house that we call the cozy room. It ended up with a lot of the construction debris, myriad paint cans, tools, copper pipe, frames for dry wall and one unused radiator. He emptied it out and we plan to put a curtain over the fireplace so the things we're storing inside won't be so obvious.  

The cozy room has a futon, but it also houses our washer, dryer and water heater. 

So two bedrooms and a futon, that's 2, 4, 6 places to sleep, a double mattress on the floor in the office, there's 8 and someone can sleep on the infinitely comfortable couch in the living room. 

The stays only overlap by three nights as Tucker and a friend arrive July 6 and leave July 11. Grace, Jack and friends arrive July 8 and leave in shifts in the coming weeks. But they'll all be here for the Tour de France as it ends in Quillan on July 10. 

I try not to picture people uncomfortable sleeping on mattresses on the floor, but instead think of us gathered in the garden around the table with raucous conversation as we introduce our kids and their friends to our life in France. 

The garden

The gladiolas are blooming in coral, orange, purple and white. 

The wisteria has begun its second bloom

I must remember to breath and enjoy it all. 

Coming Together

Hope springs eternal...
And slowly, like the progress of an glacier inching across the plains of America thousands of years ago, our house is getting closer to becoming a home.

The soon-to-be kitchen

Today, the electrician put in the lights and connected the dedicated plugs for the refrigerator, dishwater and stove. Earl is hard at work in the picture above deciphering the directions from Ikea.

The table will be cleared off and centered under the light eventually. 

Earl chose the light fixture to go over the table. It has Edison bulbs which are a bit hard to photograph.

These light fixtures will eventually shine on the upper cabinets and the counter top below. 

The other night, after painting two mist coats of pain on the drywall then two base coats of matte paint followed by a coat of satin, Earl decided to tackle a small cabinet. We've never purchased Ikea before so had not idea how to begin, but eventually, we (mostly Earl) figured it out. I would wander through the room to hold something in place and say something like "I think this is backward."

Starting with the smallest cabinet

This lower cabinet had three drawers, but it took awhile to figure out each drawer face came in its own box.
We haven't put the hardware on yet. We chose stainless steel drawer pulls and knobs for the cabinets, but now I'm considering switching to crystal. I would just need to convince Earl.

The completed cabinet standing on the newly tiled floor. 

It took a bit of figuring before Earl looked at the picture to see that the large drawer is in the middle, the middle-sized drawer at the bottom. Seems counter intuitive.
The gas is not hooked up to the stovetop yet, but the over is electric, so I can roast some vegetables and barbecue some pork chops in the oven. It's almost like a real, home-cooked meal in our new house.

Meanwhile, in other parts of the house, lights have sprung up in formally dark places.
The kitchen had a fluorescent light that wouldn't flicker on anymore.
Earl removed it and replaced it with this fixture.

We still need to encase the wires, as the French do, but at least we have light in what has served as our kitchen while we've been redoing the new kitchen.
Earl put up this light on Saturday while I was in Perpignan with a friend. I dropped some groceries off at the house Saturday evening, working by the light of my cell phone, before I went to meet Earl.
He asked if I had stopped by the house. I told him I had. He asked how I liked the new light.
What new light? I asked.
I hadn't thought to try the light switch because the light had never worked. It's quite bright when turned on.
He also replaced the bare bulb hanging in the stairwell.

This was a look I was anxious to get rid of. 

I found two light sconces at the Troc in Carcassonne for 8 euros each. I later saw them at Brico Depot (think Home Depot) for 19.99 euros each, so I got a bargain.

Not the best picture, but you get the idea. 

So parts of our house are getting to feel downright civilized. Before you know it, we'll be hosting people in our kitchen while we figure out what to do with the living room.

Renovation in France

Our life

This picture of Earl and me standing in our reno zone house pretty much sums up my life, except I look way too happy.

We’ve had some small accomplishments. 

Thanks to our friend Jules, the floor in one room is tiled. 

Don't you love the electrical wires hanging in the middle of this picture?

A few special tiles which some people are still complaining about.

We have a working bathroom with a new sink and toilet in the upstairs. 

I have a place to teach and Internet. 

The bedroom is unpainted but the bed is put together. 

And yesterday we received our bed from Amazon and got it out together.
Earl has done a lot of tearing up. Hopefully now we’re at the building back stage. 

Watch for updates as swiftly as a builder renovates... JK. 

I’ll try to post more frequently than that. 

A Toast

A toast to us -- two French homeowners. 

The email arrived Wednesday afternoon (so evening for the French) from the notaire congratulating us on the successful purchase of our new home.

I am pleased to inform you that I have now received your bank transfer and that your purchase has been completed and the deed signed this afternoon.

It was not the easiest purchase he has overseen, and in the end, as the closing day came and went on Monday, he had to step in with the banker to get the money sent. The French banker again had no urgency in sending the money.
We had wired the money July 30 from the French bank to the notaire. The banker sent us an email on Thursday, August 1st, saying only "I'm trying to reach you." No phone number, no identification of which bank he was at.
We responded immediately and did not hear from him until Tuesday, five days later.
Our French friend Cedric offered to help, and we forwarded him the email. He recognized the banker's name and knew which bank he was at. I will not share with you the names Cedric called the banker.
The banker finally responded to us with an email on Tuesday that said please sign this form. Neither Earl nor I could open the form. We forwarded it to our real estate agent in France. She couldn't open the form. We asked the banker to send us a form that could be opened but we heard nothing.
We sent a plea to the notaire to help. And he shot off an email to the banker, copying us on it.
The next morning, my only morning off teaching when I could have slept in, I prised my eyes open at 6 a.m. and thought I should check our emails to see if we needed to send anything to the banker. After all, it was already noon in France.
We did have an email. The banker had responded to the notaire. The banker said he needed us to sign something, or he needed the notaire to send a copy of the bill.
The notaire had responded with a copy of the bill -- coincidentally, the exact same amount I had attempted to transfer. It felt kind of like the two men needed to assure each other that I had done the right thing.
Earl and I froze in indecision. Did we need to do anything else?
I pulled up our bank account again and saw a minus sign in front of the amount we needed to pay on the house. The money was being withdrawn from our account. Hooray! It was happening.
That afternoon, finally, came an email from the notaire that he had received the money and the house was officially ours.

Celebratory kiss -- okay it was last year in Marseille

Luckily, we got to celebrate with some old friends who were visiting for the night.
So we're homeowners again.
Except for the past 18 months, and the first 18 months of our marriage, we have always lived in our own home. And it feels good.
But this is the first time that we have owned a home outright with no mortgage.
Now we can't wait to get back to France to get to work on it.
Just a little more than a month before we fly back.

Not French Homeowners Yet

This isn't our house. It's just a scenic picture of Quillan to remind me of the place where we are moving. 

When last I informed you of our home-buying challenges, I told you that our American bank had started an inquiry into our money transfer to France.
Luckily, after I answered the questions about whether the money was going to a business and whether it was connected to Cuba, the bank sent the money on. And that's lucky for us because if our bank had tried to call us, they wouldn't have been able to reach us. We are staying in place without cell service so the bank could not have reached us on our listed phone numbers.
Next, the money landed in our French bank at an exchange rate of about $1.115 per euro, so that wasn't bad.
I figured the French bank would not have a problem with our payment because I had sent a sizable deposit from our French bank to the notaire when we first started the purchase of the house. The notaire was already listed as one of our beneficiaries.
As soon as the money landed, on July 30, I started a "virement" or wire transfer. We received a message right away that the transfer would require an examination that might take up to 4 days.
I still had hope.
Then on Thursday afternoon, Earl found an email from our French bank. It said only, in French, I am trying to reach you, signed with the banker's name. It did not include a phone number.
We don't have a local branch of our bank in our hometown of Quillan, so we had no idea where the man might be writing from.
I immediately responded in French, telling the banker that we are in the States. That means we are not reachable on our French phones, which is the only number the bank has for us. I gave him our US cell numbers and the home number of the place we are staying.
I explained that the money was for the purchase of a house. I gave him the name and phone number of the real estate agent and the notaire.
I offered to call him if he would send us a number.
By the time I sent the email, it was close to 8 p.m. in France.
We still haven't heard from him and the money remains in our bank account, not in the account of the notaire.
That means that the notaire and the sellers will not gather in a room tomorrow to sign papers and hand over the keys to our new house. We wouldn't have been there anyway, but we were excited to have the keys given to our friends who are going to start renovations.
I kind of feel like the examples on sports shows where they say: "You had one job..."

Like this one from Memecenter.com

We had one job, to get the money to the notaire. He was taking care of everything else.
And we failed in that one job.
I couldn't have foreseen that it would take more than 11 days to transfer money when money moves at the speed of light these days, but I still feel a bit guilty.
It's not like anyone is anxious to start working on the house. It is August in France, which means everyone is on vacation.
Still, we're hopeful that Kris, our builder, may get bored not working and decide to go ahead and put a new toilet in the master bathroom and start working on a level floor in the kitchen.
Even as we speak, Earl is in the other room, adding up the cost of each item for our kitchen and making sure that the Ikea in Toulouse carries everything that we want.

The latest iteration of our kitchen on paper

We have not given up. We still plan to be French homeowners.
And I'm glad we don't have to be there to face the French sellers who no doubt have arranged work schedules and maybe even vacation schedules around the signing that was planned for Monday.
So maybe not tomorrow, and maybe not the next day, but someday soon, we will be French homeowners.

Banking Challenges

Anyone who considers moving to France has heard of the challenge getting a French bank account. We felt pretty proud when our friend Delana ushered us into the French banking world, but it hasn't really gotten easier since then.

Last week, I was struggling to figure out how to transfer money from our American account to the notaire in France. The account numbers didn't match. I couldn't get anyone from our bank to help by phone or email.
I needed to transfer money for the purchase of our house, and it has to be there by August 5 when the deal goes through. I wasn't worried, we still had more than a week and everything happens instantly online, right?
(I should point out that many people use a transfer service, like Transferwise, but our bank does not charge a fee and has always given us a good rate so we just use it. If you have fees, you should definitely look into the companies that do it.)

I finally decided to transfer the money to our French bank account. I had transferred money there before in a large-ish amount.
So on Friday I sent the money.
The next day, I got a secure email from our bank with 4 questions that I must answer because they had started an "inquiry" about the money transfer.
I had written the word "maison" in the notes to myself. Maison is the French word for house.
The questions from the bank were

• What did "maison" refer to and was it a business?
• Where was this business?
• What kind of activity took place at this "maison."
• And finally, was any of it connected to Cuba?

Ok, I laughed a bit and answered the questions.
By Monday afternoon, the money had been released and the inquiry closed.
So I turned to my French bank. I had sent money to the notaire from my French bank previously, so it should have been easy. His account was already one of my beneficiaries.
On Tuesday, as soon as I made the "virement" or wire transfer, I received a message from my bank. They were investigating. It might take four days.
I counted the days on my fingers. Four business days? Did they count Saturday since they were technically open then? 
Will the money arrive in time for the closing on Monday, August 5th?
It's all up to the French bank now. Fingers crossed.

Meanwhile, Back in France...

As we are whiling away our hours in the Berkshires, the wheels of justice are still grinding in France as our house gets closer to becoming our home.

I love our turny staircase

The closing is August 5th. We won't be there. Instead, the notaire will sign for us. We got lucky (or skillfully informed) with our notaire who speaks excellent English and laid out all the paperwork the first day we signed the papers, projecting them up onto the wall. He explained to the French sellers that since we were the ones buying the house, we needed to understand our commitment, so he spent a lot of time speaking in English.
Our only job is to send the rest of the money.
That sounds so simple, but it can be tricky.
Our real estate agent told us we could send the money from our American account. Perfect. We don't have a fee if we send from our bank. We do have a fee if we transfer money to or from our French account.
So, as the time drew near this week, I started the process. First, I would add the notaire as a "recipient."
My first challenge was the security at the bank. They wanted to send me a text as a security measure. I definitely understand the need for security, but unfortunately, I'm in the Berkshires. I don't have cell service so I couldn't get a text.
There was a longer option that required the bank to do some investigation and get back to me. I chose that option.
Once I had moved past that stage, I looked at the paper the  notaire had given me with their numbers, which did not match the numbers our American bank was asking for -- basically the routing number, but it looks totally different.
I tried various numbers on the paper, nervous about getting them wrong and sending a big chunk of cash to the wrong account.
I emailed our real estate agent. She was no help. She just said she could resend the paper if we needed it.
I emailed the assistant to the notaire who has been emailing regularly. She was no help. She, too, sent a copy of the information with the notaire's bank account for deposits. I already knew that! I had it in my hand.
I was starting to get frustrated.
If there was a branch of our bank in Massachusetts, I would have driven there with the paper in hand. It was one of those situations where talking to someone was going to be better than trying to explain it by email or even by phone. I could point to the paper with the numbers: "Voilá!" and they could say, "Oh, obviously, these numbers go here where it says routing number and these numbers go here where it says account number."
Instead, I called our investment guy who works at the bank. I explained the situation and he said I should send a copy of the paper to Bob. Bob is our "private" banker, but he came to our bank after we had left for France. We're not a high-falutin bank customer, so generally don't get a lot of his time.
I emailed the paper from the notaire to Bob.
Bob responded, an hour or so later, with an email that included Chase's routing number in France.
I didn't need that. I needed him to read  and interpret the paper I had sent him. e exchanged a few other emails, but basically he was no help either.
Finally, I decided to send the money to our French bank account. I had already paid the notaire the deposit from our French account and I had already transferred money from the States to our French account. All the scaffolding was in place.
So the money is somewhere in the air between the States and France. Fingers crossed that the strength of the dollar doesn't go down while the money is making its way to France.

But it's not all monetary stress. Since the house will be ours on August 5th, some friends will get the keys, go into the house and pull up the linoleum that covers the tile floor. Then we will know if the tile is in good shape throughout the room.

I hope the tile is in good shape

If it is, what on earth color will we paint it, we wondered.

We seem to be drawn to a pale gray for the main floor. The mauve marble fireplace will look good with gray. The bright red floor will look good with gray.

Fireplace in the living room, or as the Brits call it, lounge. 

We even picked out gray kitchen cabinets to contrast with the white tile floor and the white granite counter top. We've done a mock up of the kitchen, smartly choosing a French Ikea to plan it, since we will need to buy the items in France.

The kitchen has undergone some modification since this picture. No more peninsula with stools

The color on the walls may be a pale yellow with a backsplash that includes blue so we can feel Provencal.

We haven't chosen a tile for the backsplash, but something like this.

I can't wait until it's done.
What needs to be done before we move in?
The floor in the new kitchen needs to be evened out  and tiled. The water heater and central oil heater need to be removed from the kitchen. A toilet needs to be added to the master bathroom. A new water heater (hopefully an on-demand water heater) needs to be installed.
The rest we can live with as we make it ours, and buy furniture. Snooping in old secondhand shops, going to estate sales and moving sales, visiting again and again the Troc in Carcassonne, the one with the gorgeous tables and dressers. We'll need beds and armoires and a couple of new couches. We'll have to get a wood-burning stove installed in the living room and the cosy room which will hopefully help heat the house, along with the electric heaters.
And that doesn't even include the outside chorses that need to be completed, liking painting the sand-colored walls that have a giraffe pattern, or scraping and repainting the railings on the balcony as they loom over like the prow on a ship.

Our poor house definitely needs some loving. 

But our friend Rod plans to sit up there and watch the world go by, so we better get it fixed up. Plus, we're excited to put some TLC into the house.
If I start thinking about the pile of tasks that lay before us, I might get overwhelmed.
And how soon does it need to get finished?
Well, our youngest son is coming to visit on Oct. 5. So I sure hope it's livable by then.
I'm excited for you to come along on the journey.

A June Whirlwind

I can't believe it's July already.
June was a blur of activity.
We hiked in Spain,

Me with Earl and Maurice as we crossed the Pyrenees

 bought a house in France,

It needs a little love, but it has a garden

 said goodbye to all of our friends in France before we left for the summer and spent a night in Paris,

Always love the dramatic sky in Paris

flew home to the States,

Always love spending time with Mom and Dad.

At the Gulf of Mexico with Earl

drove from Florida to Ohio

Dinner with two of our three kids

 then Ohio to Massachusetts.

This is actually a view in Vermont, I think. Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire are all very close together here.

And here we are for most of the summer.
It's rural and I am sure to have lots of time to write, but less to write about.