Heavenly stairwell

It was just over a year ago that I wrote my first blog about the stairwell. I mused about how lovely it would be once decorated. There was no sense in painting it while big works were on-going, but we finally got there.

Surprisingly this has turned into one of my favourite little corners of the house. The understairs cupboard was once wider, but the wall was moved to enlarge the bathroom. The cupboard area we lost is now a nice roomy shower and we gained some interesting angles.

Before:

It was messy along the way.

But it was worth it. This is Henny's favourite angle. Handrails temporarily removed for decorating.

Different perspectives

This picture was taken from the walled garden in autumn. The vines were just given a radical cut-back. When leaves are green you don't see half as much from this angle. The aluminium shutter on the left is the kitchen, the completely new structure. The window next to it is in the living room, as is the blue door you can see leading to the terrace.


This is the back of the house. Both open-shuttered doors lead out from the living room. The third door is the bedroom.

And here we see the house from next door's plot. We begin where the evergreens end. You can just see the covered terrace and the tower when it still had the scaffolding up. Right now our only neighbours are an ever-increasing number of chickens and ducks, but you can understand why we want to grow a green barrier.

Bedroom

On the day I signed the compromis for the house in December '06, Lizzie and I went into Béziers to buy supplies for the garden. On the way we stopped at a brocante where I spied these beautiful brackets which I bought as an offering for the new house. Thank you L & A for storing them for at least a year before I figured out how to use them.

Henny decided to strip them. Pou helped. We fixed them underneath the newly exposed beams in the bedroom.

Formerly a small room, walls and ceiling covered in pine...

it was enlarged by taking out a corridor, moving a big wall, tearing down the ceiling and re-siting a water tank that lived in the crawl space above, making good various floor levels, re-tiling the lot, and turning a window into a full-length door. The door profits from having the grille we lost from the 1st floor tower window repositioned here. The before bed is a tiny double. To give an idea of scale, the bed below is 6' x 6'6". The ceiling is 4 metres at its highest point before sloping down. The room isn't quite finished, but it's certainly different. It's a joy to wake up looking out to the garden.

Belated Birthday

Sorry, this report is only 3 months overdue. My birthday fell on a Saturday last year. What better excuse for lunch at le Bistro d'Alex in Florensac? The restaurant is in a modern facility at the cave coopérative. Here the local winegrowers have ample room to display their wares, which of course you walk through to get to the bistro at the back. The ambiance is sort of workers' canteen meets Ikea, but the food is delish. Best of all, these savvy vignerons sell their wines without the usual restaurant mark-up. What you enjoy during the meal, you can buy on the way out, at very keen prices. Here I am with my best girls taking full advantage.

And here we are loading Alex's van. I wanted you to see the big vats.

Later on, Henny and I took a walk through the vines, carefully avoiding the volleys of hunters who were far too close to the village limits. That's me, about 2 minutes from Henny's house.

On the way back we passed through the centre of Alignan where the annual drive for children's charities was taking place. It was late afternoon and getting cold. A man with a microphone hosting a raffle was trying to enthuse a handful of bundled-up spectators. We felt bad that we'd come out without money, so went back to the house to get some. Upon our return, we were received with great joy, the man excitedly announcing, we've just gone international! It's no wonder. Henny and I will never be mistaken for natives as we're about twice as tall as anyone local, male or female. But the welcome we got made us feel right at home. Here's Henny with the raffle mascot in bustling downtown Alignan du Vent.

Cloudy sunset

On the way from one house to the other after a hard day's work, we were recently rewarded by this magnificent sky.

Kitchen progress

I've just returned from 12 days in France. Apart from the delicious feeling of being home for more than just a weekend, the purpose was to move works forward. And we did get a lot accomplished. Henny had already decorated the living room with stunning results, a magnum opus due to previously detailed difficulties. You'll have to wait for pictures; the ones taken with the camera phone just don't do it justice.

This week the kitchen was painted. Sorry we couldn't shift the scaffolding. I like looking up and seeing the old pigeonnier through the skylight. The two stunning beams are reclaimed, not an original feature of this house, but now the best we've got.

The length of the room running under the glass bricks is 6.4 metres. We hope to put a linear kitchen straight across once we figure out what we want. The centre of the glass bricks is where the extractor will go; you can see the hole for the duct. We created a soffit here with 6 recessed down lighters on a dimmer which give off a lovely ambient glow at night. It's exciting to see things you planned and hoped for actually up and running. Is that a light flickering at the end of the tunnel?