All in a Day's Work

Our local SuperU supermarket is all decked out in Easter colors and decorations. We dont follow this calendar event in particular, but it was amusing to see the decorations and food/chocolate (oh yes, Chocolate has it's own designation!!) for sale inside.

These things are huge!

We were about to do a large 'pantry fill' shop here for basics that dont require refrigeration. Basics that we could ostensibly live off for about three days before craving fresh food! I think we did rather well for about 80 euros.

We have had a few days off from working at our house, which were most necessary as we stare down the next week full of busy days before we fly back to Florida and the super busy following 5 weeks.

Today we were back at the coal face with a long list of projects to be completed. I find myself half finishing things, then having to come back to complete them, but complete I did, and Waz had his own long list that started really well, in my opinion.
We had stopped (Wednesday? or was it Thursday?) off at Leroy Merlin  Hardware to find lighting for sever rooms. We have also bought bulbs to replace burned our ones here and there. Those done, Waz set about replacing  the pretty but useless wall sconces in the green bedroom, which will be our master bedroom for the foreseeable future.  These new ones are flexible and individual reading lights.

 Dont worry about the holes in the wallpaper...those will be prettied up later. The previous sconce lighting was so poor you could barely see. These ones are only for reading in bed, as there has to be a central room light installed, when we return to France. Currently the only way to turn on the lights is by walking into the room and reaching over the headboard to turn on that central switch. I wonder who thought that one up?

As lighting was one of the orders of the day for Waz, he took to the 'skies' in the 'pink room', to install lighting for both task and general ambience. This room was previously poorly served by a low watt strip light. These new ones are amazing....LIGHT!!!


Waz is removing the old strip light. I had asked him not to climb on tall ladders without me there to steady them. He agreed, thankfully...known to be VERY independent, but we need to watch each other's backs these days. No more injuries...especially this close to leaving the country!

 Voila! LIGHT! It is amazing the difference it makes to this formerly dark and dingy room. There is only one natural light source in this room...for now...which doesn't please us, but we will address this issue when we change all the current windows from single pane to double pane, some time in the not too distant future. A small patch of beam to re-stain, methinx.

While he was traipsing up and down the back stairs from the basement and workshop, with various tools, I was cleaning out the room around us. It had rather been the repository for all things we didnt want in the rest of the Rez de Chaussee (ray de show say), or ground floor. The existing furniture was cleaned and rearranged, the floor vacuumed and mopped by hand to get all the spider poop off the tiles and clean out the corners of livestock. This spider body was a bit large for my liking...I didnt have a comparison to put there at the time.
The walls also needed wiping...dust and mold!!! the tiling has been poorly done, and in a hurry. Much tidy-up work to be done. Like I have said before...we wanted a 'project' house! lol.

All finished and the lights about to be turned off for the day. These were taken without flash, so the new lights are providing plenty of light. That wall where the blue sofa thing is would look out to a lovely view. We are contemplating what kind of window we would put there. As it is also a sunny side, it would have to have shutters for the mid-summer sun.

 The only natural source of light are the double glass doors. Waz had already closed up the shutters, as we were about to lock up.

 I also 'attacked' the small room now known as the Pantry. With the big fridge out of there and just the little fridge remaining, I could now get in there and remove some of the black mold off the wall behind the small fridge. Again, scrubbing the tile floor by hand (and foot!) was essential, as there was much to get off the surface. I put a fan in there for a good hour to help dry out the wall that I had sprayed mold retardant onto, and damp wiped all the surfaces. With the central heating having been on all day, the house was starting to feel warmer. This pink room has no source of heat, so we are thinking of how we will install that. Simple enough, as the basement is just below here, and the boiler not far away. A few more pipes will connect to  the boiler and Voila! Heat! We will probably install a tall wall heater on the wall behind the white door, above.
This room will be our office and 'family room', as it were. It opens onto the lovely large roof terrace, and is just down that bright green hallway from the kitchen.

There is a little bit of artwork on the walls in here, that I haven't shown, and I didnt want to take it down yet as it gives a little more 'color' to the walls that otherwise are a bit overwhelming. Once we lighten the color of the room it will give it a much more open feeling. Pretty oppressive right now.

I also want to change the steps to the Terrace. The ones just below the doors there are not even a foot- step deep, and as such are a bit dangerous. The white door still has to open, so we will do some creative thinking on that one, because it opens onto the wall where the heater most likely will be installed. A sliding door of some kind might be a better idea and to the left behind that small shelf unit? Those walls are Breeze block, under that green paint..(concrete).

Also, while Waz was doing his thing, he found me some razor blades and I set about scraping windows with paint and stain on them. Nothing says 'amateur' quite like paint on windows.
It appears that much of the 'renovation' and decoration in this house has been done by those who really dont know what they are doing. Some of the tile work leaves a lot to be desired!

On a more positive note, the hardwood floors that I damp mopped at the beginning of the week are looking lovely. They natural golden glow is showing, and I am encouraged to do the same on the upstairs floors.
Look what we found in the hall cupboard, upstairs!! This is a vacuum/polisher, which badly needs me to take it all apart and clean it!  I took this photo AFTER I had wiped it down and de-cobwebbed it.

All the hardwood floors are in reasonable condition. Downstairs in the living room, people have obviously spilt drink/water on the floor and there will be no getting that out without a good sanding, unfortunately. This is what happens when you rent your house out to those who pay! People just aren't careful enough for my liking.
Baseboards: I have a 'thing' about dirty baseboards.  I have had much delight (and exercise, I might add!!) cleaning all the baseboards upstairs...well, maybe not ALL of them, but most. Lots of elbow grease required in some places, I might add. In particular, I like to see an Hotel room with clean baseboards....this shows that cleaning staff have been well trained and pay attention to details. Can you see how clean the baseboards in the photo above are? :) Makes such a difference to the 'feel' of a place.

We left the house about 6pm, and as we headed down the main road towards the house sit, we decided to go via Barbezieux, which is just 8 kms away. Our direction was dictated by the need for a comprehensive Map/s of France book to have in the car. We stopped at E.Leclerc and the Espace Culturel, where there is a good book store, and Waz found what he was looking for. We thought there might have been some food on offer in the Bistrot, but the floors were being mopped and no smells of cooking emanated. I had rather run out of energy by now, and we sat in the car and waited while I inhaled an individual sized bag of potato chips...the only food we had on hand. The house was warm inside, today, so I may also have been a bit dehydrated. It is easy to forget to drink water when you are busy. A long drink helped for the hour's drive home.

We had left overs for dinner, followed by a tea and coffee, but it was 8.30pm by the time we had finished. A bit late for us. We have plenty of food to take with us today, so that we might avoid being over-hungry.

We are ready to go, so I will finish this now. 9am, Saturday! How quickly the days are going. This time next week we will have cleaned everything up at the house sit, and be on our way to Bordeaux to pick up the rental car for the drive to Paris. I will avoid commenting on the Rail Strike, just now....suffice to say we are not impressed!

A plutard! (See you later)