House Work

 We're creeping along on improving the house. Some of the work that has to be done isn't really visible, not as visible as repainting the door and the shutters.

I started sanding these shutters because they were low and easy for me to reach.
Earl finished them, of course. 

I'm so glad we finally choose a color. 

Our "front" door with a yellow rosebush that will be trained to curl across the top.

Before, the doors were brown. I hated the doors and I sat and looked at them a lot in the kitchen. They were brown inside and out. 

You may be thinking, there's a lot that needs to be fixed. Yep, but we're getting there step by step. 

My husband is meticulous, of course. The doors and shutters must be taken down and sanded smooth, then painted. The doors need the window panes to be re-glazed. That all takes a long time. 

Black trim on the blue shutters. 

So we have one door and two shutters completed. 

Then, the electrician came in last week to do some of that hidden work. The office I use is between our bedroom and the terrace. It has a concrete floor and walls that we haven't touched yet. But what it didn't have was a heater. We had some colds days in the past month, so we knew a heater was necessary. 

Our heating source is the cast-iron radiators that were here in the house but were connected to an oil tank. We didn't want oil heating, so removed the giant tank. Now each radiator is filled with water and has its own heating unit, so we can turn each one on individually. 

The "office" has only one outlet and that outlet is busy with my computer and the printer and the light I use for teaching. Plus, as Jay the electrician pointed out, a heater needs a line directly to the fuse box. So he had to drill a trench to run a line to where the heater will be. 

Jay framed in the doorway, kicked up a lot of dust last week. 

Knowing that the room would be filled with dust, Earl and I cleared out nearly everything. Once the dust settled two days later and the electrical outlet was in place, we decided we might as well paint the room and lay tile on the floor. But the floor takes a distinct dip from one end to the other and there is no way we'll be able to tile it. We're debating carpet (something you don't really see in France) or maybe just a big rug. 

What color will we paint the walls? Some variation of white that we have in big tubs. One of our many good friends gave us a tub of "magnolia" paint. I think it came from some friends who are moving and clearing out their home. Magnolia sounds good for the office. It will make the walls look fresh and remove one of the many construction materials we are currently trying to store in what will one-day be the media room, but that we currently call the "cozy" room. 

It may be a long winter, but we can hope that we'll get more work done and be warm in our first full year in our new home. 

What a Day

You know the old saying, when it rains, it pours.
I've had one of those days.
First, I wore myself out getting the basement ready for carpet yesterday.

According to my Fitbit, I walked the equivalent of more than 12 miles and 36 staircases.

When I got home from work, I started by sweeping the entire basement with a broom.
Then I vacuumed it with a shop vac. That entailed either bending over from the waist or squatting. Both were excellent exercises if I weren't so exhausted.
After that, I swept it with a broom again to remove any remaining pebbles or dust. .
Next, I taped off the baseboard and painted the walls of the stairwell a pale blue gray.
And finally, I painted the walls of the basement, leaving them a  grayish-green, which feels fairly neutral.
My husband painted all the ceilings, in the stairwell and the basement, plus the baseboards.
He finished up this morning before heading to work.

We had taken the old rugs that were downstairs and thrown them in the garage. I wanted the carpet guys to take them away today. As I opened the garage door, they kind of collapsed out onto the driveway.
I pulled forward and back to avoid them and then headed on my way.
As I drove, I noticed a strange sound, like pebbles hitting the bottom of the car, the sound you hear when you drive over freshly paved asphalt.
A couple of people beeped, but it was rush hour.
My drive is only about four miles, but as I continued, I wondered if I might have driven over the padding that went under the rugs.

This is one of the rugs and the padding before we moved them to the garage. 

As I pulled into the parking lot, a young man pulled up beside me.
"You have something stuck under your car," he said.
He pointed at the front of the car and I saw that an entire room-sized rug was wedged under the front of the car. Not the padding as I had suspected. A fat tan rug.
"Do you smell that it is getting hot?" he asked, and I agreed that the rug was doing some sort of damage to the car.
He squatted down and tugged at the carpet. "Reverse," he suggested. So I did and he tugged it free.
"What should we do with it?" he asked. He assumed that I had run over it on the road, and I did not tell him the truth.
"I'll call Public Safety," I told him. And I did, telling them where in the parking lot to find it. Again, not admitting that it had come from my house.
Shaken from my experience, I taught for an hour and then my wrist started buzzing. I have a Fitbit that buzzes when I get a phone call.
I didn't recognize the number so didn't worry about it too much. Then a text came.
"Mom, it's Spencer. I was in an accident. I'm okay but I need our insurance information."
His phone was dead so he was using the phone of the woman he rear-ended.
His Volkswagen Passat hydroplaned as he tried to stop, and he hit the back of her car. He might have been fine physically, but he was pretty upset.
Car accidents are emotionally devastating. I tried to reassure him that it was just an accident and we had insurance. Everything would be okay.
I skipped my next class and drove through the rain to the accident scene where Spence sat in the car with the crumpled front end, the airbags hanging like deflated balloons. A police officer sat behind him with his lights flashing as cars whizzed past moving at 70 or 80 miles per hour.

We were lucky he wasn't hurt. He banged his knee against the console and his ears rang for hours from the impact of the airbags.
The tow truck arrived shortly after I got there and I took Spence home. He didn't think he could face work today.
I went back to teach, but ended my last class early because I was too muddled to continue.
Now the carpet guys are here making a comfortable walking surface over that dust free floor downstairs.
I just have to wait for my husband to check my car to make sure I didn't permanently damage anything when I drove the carpet to work. Then he is headed up to the auto body shop to remove all of our belongings from Spencer's totaled car.
Tomorrow is enough time to begin the process of looking for a replacement car for Spencer.
What a day. :(