Diary of a Facelift

2008-10-23T10:27:00.004+02:00

Updated kitchen. The lights don't look like much in the photos, but they are gorgeous, hand-made, translucent porcelain with tiny pinpricks, so they look like stars. I found them a while ago in a gallery, but I couldn't bring myself to buy them because they were so expensive. One day I was walking past the gallery and saw a notice that they were moving, so I went back in and asked them if they were selling these lights. They called me about 3 weeks later, and told me I could have three for the price of the one that they originally quoted me. It felt like these lights were certainly destined for me, and having got three for the price of one allowed me to believe that I had somehow got a bargain. This was not of course technically so, since they were still far more than one would normally consider paying for what is after all just a lampshade. Interestingly, lights have proved to be my achilles heel, the one thing I have consistently splurged on. If you ignore the fact that the kids got chinese paper balls from Ikea.

2008-10-13T08:43:00.004+02:00

My office. This is now my favourite place in the whole house. A gorgeous view, light, and amazing storage (that's two IKEA Malm chests of drawers with an Expedit bookcase - 200 euros total for all your storage needs).

Ido's bedroom. I was sceptical to say the least about the red wall but I have to hand it to him, it really works. This room is so light - top floor and west facing, so flooded with light up until nightfall - that in fact it was almost too light when it was all white.

The landing, with its little patch of herringbone parquet. I think this parquet is older than the rest - possibly salvaged from another house, as apparently were many of the windows. They were at this salvage business even then.

2008-09-02T22:58:00.002+02:00

I suddenly realised, like gust of cold air blowing all the leaves of a tree, that the place where I ordered our oven is not, in fact, going to deliver it. Well maybe one day, just not soon.

Oven-buying is not as straightforward here as it is in England. In England you go to John lewis or Argos or Littlewoods and you order the oven of your choice. It is delivered and installed and everyone is happy.

Here everyone buys from Darty. I have bought plenty from Darty and it must be said that as long as you aren't stuck on any specific model Darty has enough choice and excellent customer service to be an acceptable consumer experience (take note, Emi!).

The oven I was after though it turned out wasn't as straightforward to source. I want a nice modern stainless steel range, with a 5 ring gas stove and a double oven. The whole 100 cm wide. It's the double oven that proved the sticking point. Noone seemed to sell a model with a big oven and tehn a little one for when you are just baking cookies. I saw a lovely de Dietrich model on their website but no shop seemed to sell it and de Dietrich, a French company, needs to put its customer service in order. The girl on the phone really didn't give a shit. And no, you can't buy direct from the manufacturer.

So i did an online search and found it. Not only that but from a discount white goods store, with a discount for the oven and a hood that came to 1000 euros. Placed the order, paid my 1000 euro deposit, and waited for delivery on July 17th.

July 17th came and went. August 17th came and went. 1000 euros went from our bank account but nobody answered my calls or emails. I kept saying that it was August, noone works in August. Then the end of August came and I tried to call. Noone answered the phone. I looked on line and even a desultory search threw up a dozen forums for disgruntled consumers to vent spleen. I am not, it seems, the first to deal with this company and find them wanting.

Bref, we sent them a threatening letter, who knows what this will result in. We paid by credit card so will eventually get our money back if it is genuine fraud. Otherwise I suppose they'll send us back our deposit.

It turns out I could have gone to BHV in the first place and placed a special order. next week I'm going there to buy myself an oven. It will be delivered in four weeks. Meanwhile we eat bagels toasted cheese sandwiches and bake potatoes in our toaster oven/microwave and I grumble.

2008-08-21T14:19:00.006+02:00

Apart from the serious lack of wisdom of choosing a wooden worktop over granite (I hate granite, but I may hate my severely scratched wood more eventually) I am pretty pleased by how nice the kitchen is to work in. I obeyed the basic ergonomic triangle rule but every day I am secretly happy at the perfect placing of the bin for catching the teabag after I've added milk. In our old house I used to feel like Gretel dropping breadcrumbs as I dripped teabags over from counter to bin, leaving a tawny trail over the hated white tiles.

Many decisions about this kitchen were made less with regard to practicality than with regard to emotion. I hate porcelain floors, and don't like wearing slippers, so we chose the most kitchen-unfriendly flooring, oak parquet. Ditto wooden counters (mitigated by a bit of stainless steel, to be fair). The String System was chosen in order to make the kitchen look less like a kitchen. I don't know if these decisions are part of the reason it's such a lovely room or if it's just the sun slanting through the windows when we have our breakfast.

We haven't even sat down in the living room yet. We're hunkering down in bed or sitting in the kitchen or the garden at the moment. I suppose each room will have its moment. The living room, with an open fire, will be the winter room.

For the moment every ray of sunshine (and there aren't actually very many at the moment) summons us outside. We originally had the table out by the side of the house, but in fact the gardeners (who were having a bit of a Ground Force moment) moved it round to the back and it's much nicer there, really private. Cyril and I have drunk many glasses of whisky there since we got back. Especially last night, as I explained the source and consequences of the leak.

The real silver lining to yesterday's leak only revealed itself later on in the evening. The boiler now appears to work. This is either a) a mystery of mystical proportions or b) (bad thought) something to do with the leak. We're waiting for the plumber to get back to decide which. We have been having innumerable hot baths and showers ever since. For some of us (no names, but they are all under 5 feet tall) these were the first real ablutions for almost two weeks. Thank god for ripe camembert, that great masker of stinky boy smell.

2008-08-20T20:31:00.003+02:00

Is this a silver lining post or rampant depression?

We have a bad leak from our bathroom into the living room below. I have spent the afternoon drying out hundreds of CD covers. I had to turn the water off when it became apparent that a tiny leak was getting much much worse. I called the emergency plumbers and begged them to come. My tendency to pessimism overcame an equal tendency to optimism as I wondered how I was going to water the lawn this evening (priority number one, given that it's brand new and will die without a nightly soaking) and how the children were going to wash their teeth tonight. Also how I was going to make myself the cup of tea I desperately need. No water! And the plumber is back in ten days' time!

So the emergency plumber came and confirmed that this is a Big Leak. And Tricky To Fix. Might Take Him All Night. Excellent news. BUT he did find the valve to turn off the water to that side of the house. So we have a kitchen with running water and a bathroom. And the sprinklers (that rise out of the grass at the flick of a switch and will one day be PROGRAMMED TO COME ON AUTOMATICALLY) also work.

So it's a silver lining post. I think.

2008-08-20T14:24:00.004+02:00

Okay Jen. You win. You should know that we've only had a phone line since 11 am this morning. We've only been home two days, after a week in a 17th century cottage with - guess what - no wifi.

We don't have an oven yet. Or half our worktops. (This is France. Noone answers the telephone let alone supplies long-ago ordered goods in August.) We have no hot water. We have a leak that has soaked all our CDs and DVDs in their fancy red laqueur cabinet in our living room that is moonlighting as a box room for the time being. We have a broken floor board in the downstairs loo. None of the electricity in the living room works. The TV (30cm HCCR - that's Hyper Curved Cathode Ray for all you non-techies with your fancy 140cm flat screen plasma LCD screens) is in our bedroom, which sneakily I like and plan for it never to leave.

BUT we have an amazing garden -

it was dug up and returfed while we were away, a very extravagent decision but based on the idea that a hummocky field filled with nettles and brambles and bits of glass and asbestos and much rusty iron simply wasn't the lifestyle we were going for. The black thing that looks promisingly like a swimming pool is actually a vegetable patch. The poles in front are for espaliered apple and pear trees, and a grapevine. We are planning on chickens.

We have a lovely bathroom

The kids are loving it. Why not, really? It's big, they've got their own rooms for the first time ever.

They are rediscovering their old toys - R and A don't wear ordinary clothes any more, preferring to go for the Halloween ghost/devil/one-legged pirate/cowboy look when dressing for dinner. We have barbecues every night (cf above, no oven). Every time I ask them, in a pathetic pleaser way, if they like the new house, they look at me like I'm barmie. We have an American fridge with an ice dispenser, for goodness sake. What's not to like?

2008-08-08T00:12:00.004+02:00

Our kitchen!

We're in! And out again, as a matter of fact, having spent five days moving and unpacking and then scarpering to London to pick up the kids and enjoy a rainy English summer. In the course of the move many many things have been mislaid (though since many many boxes remain to be unpacked many may yet resurface) including my camera and my usb cables, of course. This picture is on my phone, bluetoothed (yay!) to my computer, both of which survived the move due to much cossetting.

Of course, we don't have a phone line, a working boiler (our brandspanking new condensation boiler is broken), an oven, internet - many of the things considered necessary for general well-being. Even so we were ridiculously happy to be in the house, which is dusty, messy and absolutely lovely.

Kitchen!

2008-07-11T14:20:00.004+02:00

I have to be virtually kicked out of the house every day. Why I feel that my presence is going to make things get done faster is a mystery even to myself, but I find being there reassuring. I think the guys won't leave as long as I'm there.

Yesterday Saeed invited me for lunch. We perched on paint pots on the top floor and ate couscous as he told me about his life in Egypt, working in Iraq during the first Gulf War, and living in France. He's a very sweet, teddy bear like chap, always looks like life is getting him down slightly, incredibly hard working. Not long ago he sidled up to me and asked me what we were planning to do with the studio. Obviously nothing yet, it's a wreck, but I said once we're in the house we'll deal with the studio and then we'll rent it out. He sidled even closer, and whispered in my ear 'I would like to rent it. For my wife. My other wife.' I tried not to look too surprised, and simply replied that it is really quite small to live in. 'Not to live in. Just to see me sometimes.' I said I'd talk it over with Cyril, but I have to say I'm not that keen on having a shag pad right next to the living room. It makes me feel a bit queasy just thinking about it. We've never brought the subject up again.

2008-07-09T22:56:00.004+02:00

In three weeks less two days the packers are coming. Three weeks today exactly we are MOVING IN. Which definitely explains the enormous number of people working in the house at the moment, desperately trying to get on with their job whilst surrounded and often impeded, by other people also trying to get on with their's. We have tilers, painters, plasterers, window fitters, plumbers, kitchen fitters, carpenters and electricians in there from 8 am to 6pm every day. Some have begun smoking heavily. There's a nice enough camaraderie between them but some of them look like they're on the brink of tears. Saeed, the head painter, really did look close to tears today as the plumbers filled the radiators which then leaked onto the newly polished floors - which are covered with plastic but which the junior plumber had carefully pulled back before leaking large amounts of water all over. The beautifully painted hall has had a huge chunk gouged out of it and is looking, well, tatty. Needs repainting already.

On the plus side the bathrooms sort of resemble temples to cleanliness,

the windows are amazing,
and the beginnings of a kitchen are in.

Plus the amazing doors in the living room have been returned to where they rightfully belong, and somehow they really make it.

My brain is a mush. I'm dying of tiredness, still feeling somewhat drunk from an overindulgent weekend (is it technically possible to still be drunk three days later?), and the kids are now on holiday. Plus I have a forty five page translation to finish for the end of the week, tiles and curtain rails to buy and a nervous breakdown waiting patiently in the wings.

2008-06-30T14:25:00.002+02:00

The first window is in. Like a symbol, of promise, of hope, of triumph in the face of adversity. Of the last lap. Of a house that one day will be our home.

That may all sound a little flowery but it's heartfelt.

2008-06-28T18:25:00.003+02:00

Kitchen floor!

Windows going in this week. There was a slight hitch when our planning application - which you need if you're going to do anything whatsoever on the outside of the house - was sent back as incomplete. It takes 2 months from when the full dossier goes in, so whatever happens we don't have permission to do the windows. Last week I was almost sick when I went round on Saturday morning to see various men hanging off the roof fiddling with new velux windows, in full view of the neighbours at the back, where it so happens that the mother of the architect I have been dealing with at the Mairie happens to live (as he told me when he came round to tell me last time I got a telling off). I could feel her curtains twitching. I'm waiting for an angry letter but nothing so far.

Let us not forget that the French have a long and noble tradition of ratting on their neighbours so I don't see any reason why we should get away with this. But I've been told - and am choosing to believe - that as long as the dossier is in and we're not actually changing the exterior, it's not a problem. And if all else fails I shall ratchet up my English accent and apologise.

2008-06-18T21:27:00.007+02:00

Yay! I think we're gonna have sanitation one of these days!

GDF (gaz de France and just about anywhere else you care to mention, who said those wily French don't like capitalism) have been remarkably - or perhaps not - tricky about reconnecting us to the gas mains. This was one of the few things I left to C - my French is really very good but I don't have the cultural understanding to be able to deal with the gasman here. However C has the incredibly irritating habit of giving our home phone number to people he doesn't really want to deal with so I always end up having to sort the gasman or the taxman or the dentist or any number of bogeymen out anyway. If I'm feeling mean (often the case) I give them his mobile and his direct line at work.

One day last week the gasman called to tell me he was coming to fix the meter. I said that as far as I knew we needed to be connected to the mains before we could have a meter fixed. 'Then why did you call me?' he said irritably. I pointed out that he had called me. I asked him if he could fix us to the mains. He said he could only do one thing which is fit a meter and what's more he couldn't do that if we're not on the mains. I said 'I know that, that's why I'm telling you we need to be attached to the mains before you do the meter'. We continued in this somewhat circular vein for a few more minutes before he got tired and told me that he had other things to do besides talking to me. I had rather the impression that this wasn't the case since he was so keen to continue the conversation, but still.

My genius solution was to call the plumber on my mobile and hold the mobile to the phone in order to let the two of them clarify the situation without any intervention on my part other than holding the two phones next to each other.

Yesterday GDF turned up, dug up the pavement and whacked in a tube that I guess will carry the gas to the future meter. They didn't of course fill in the hole. Cleaning up after yourself is clearly not the way to become a multimillion euro multinational concern. Perhaps that suggests a great future for each one of my children?

2008-06-12T17:57:00.004+02:00

We inherited a safe when we bought the house. It was, inconveniently, on the first floor, made of concrete and steel, weighing around a ton. It closed with a combination and a key. Unfortunately neither of those came with the house. They seemed to have died with the former owner.

It's been sitting outside our future bedroom for the last four months, while we tried to work out what to do with it. Ideally we'd keep it I suppose, you never know when you might have cause to lock away something of infinite value. We don't own anything worth over 3000€ (as we discovered when the removal company asked us to list our valuables) so it wouldn't be for right away, but one can dream, after all.

We also found ourselves dreaming that there were other people's valuables locked up in this safe. In our wilder dreamstates we imagined gold bars whose value would cover the costs of the renovation. In less flighty moments we thought of useless banknotes in old francs, or perhaps a long-lost pearl necklace. Nazi documentation was the nightmare possibility.

The plumber seemed to be really desperate to know what was inside, so, having decided that we were going to bust the safe then get rid of it, I enlisted his help to break it open. Ocean's Eleven this was not. In cinematic terms it was rather more Mr Bean. It took half an hour of concerted and smoky work with a metal cutter, then a lot of yanking with different shaped iron rods. Powdered concrete poured out of the holes but the door wouldn't open. The plumber poked around in despair.

After 45 minutes of wondering if smoke inhalation was a worthwhile payoff for a stash of gold ingots, or anything really, the door swung open.

There was, of course, nothing inside.

2008-06-10T13:40:00.006+02:00

Polished floors!

Still no running water. No bathroom. No kitchen. But we have bedrooms, we have a (large) living room. We have beautiful floors.

This morning I spent two hours with metres of fabric and a woman called Annabel who is going to turn the fabric into curtains. When we were in India we spent a moderately amusing hour in a sari emporium in Madurai choosing fabric for curtains. Albie had been very sick and needed the toilet every five minutes. The other two were just bored and determined to communicate this fact. They perched on stools and swung wildly against the counter, singing lustily. Large fans blew hot, humid air around the room. Desperate, we grabbed at saris as they were proffered by helpful salespeople, pulling the fabric over the counter, looking at each other with eyebrows cocked. Like it? I'd ask Cyril. Many nos later he nodded as I held out an orange sari, embroidered with gold and banded with a deep crimson edge. The saleslady draped it over my shoulder, nodding gravely. 'It suits you very well, madam', she said. 'I'll take eight', I said. She glanced back at me, somewhat surprised.

We left with a small suitcase (whose zip broke almost immediately) filled with twelve individual boxes, each one holding a beautifully-folded sari. I opened them again for the first time today, unfurling them like enormous flags over the newly-polished floors.

2008-06-02T13:23:00.003+02:00

Lovely new floors, all ready now to be polished up and moved into.

2008-06-01T12:43:00.004+02:00

The big mirror is now above the fireplace, looking like something on loan from Versailles. The painters knocked some of it off as they were manhandling it into position and promised to knock some bits off the other side off to make it symmetrical. I forbore to mention that I'd paid 1000 for it. Luckily it looks OK even missing bits and wonky.

Also note that the walls are now painted a very subtle shade of off white. Much much better than before. If anyone is interested in 4 pots of Farrow and Ball Off White (a misnomer, incidentally) do get in touch, it's all yours.

And the kitchen, which is still far from showing any signs of ever being useful for preparing food, nonetheless now has a huge magnetic blackboard panel ready for shopping lists and scrawled reminders of school trips and doctors appointments:

2008-05-27T21:20:00.003+02:00

I think I ought to be thinking we're on the home run. I know we are actually, but it doesn't exactly seem like it, the place is still quite a mess. But it's getting there. I hope.

Alien invasion of the radiators:

This is a chauffe plat. A radiator with a little cupboard in it for keeping your roast potatoes warm. May be used on a cold day for warming up your knickers while you're having a shower:

Raphael's Lulworth Blue bedroom, with concrete floor. It was sagging alarmingly and after some thought we decided we had to change it. It's probably going to look crap, cheap parquet always does, though this isn't particularly cheap it must be said - but better than sagging and creaking.

You can sort of see the colour of the hall and staircase here. You can also see the state of the parquet on the stairs. Covered in wierd hairy stuff, like the sock fluff you sometimes get between your toes:

I had these friends in London, both architects, who did that very London thing of buying a Victorian terraced house and gutting it to make way for a lovely, minimalist interior. They moved about two years later. "I just hated the place," K told me, "after living through the hell of the renovations, I couldn't wait to get out and move somewhere that wasn't filled with the phantom shadows of the builders." I didn't understand it then. Now I am rather afraid I think I do.

2008-05-13T21:17:00.002+02:00

Oh, today I'm feeling more stressed than ever. I just don't think this baby is going to be done for when we're moving. How long can we survive with neither sanitation nor kitchen? Or does it just look like it's not going to be done, is everyone just pretending to freak me out and then on July 29th they're going to be jumping out from behind doors screaming 'Surprise!" Would like to think 'twas so, but fear that is more naive than simple optimism.

Anyway they've started painting and guess what, I hate all the colours. All the colours I chose. All the colours I painstakingly painted onto large sheets of sugar paper so that no nasty surprises would be delivered in the form of colours that look surprisingly anodyne on one inch samples, whilst becoming stridently well - colourful- when painted on entire walls. Guess what! It's so fucking colourful! I hate it.

The living room is particularly terrible. It's called off white on the F and B swatch, and seemed okay, kind of grown up and murky on the sugar paper swatch. But all over the living room - which is, let's face it, large - it's absolutely disgusting, the colour of a long linen skirt I own (which I actually quite like). Okay for linen, but just vile over all the walls, like a really grim accident with a can of mushroom soup. I don't know why I didn't listen to my instincts, the room was so beautiful and ethereal in white undercoat, it was obviously the right colour. Bugger. Well it's just paint. Not so difficult to deal with.

Our bedroom is this slightly pinky white, which I fear might cause C to suffer a crisis of masculinity. Perhaps he will never again be able to get it up. My lovely friend K, here from London for the day, thinks this isn't going to be a problem, claiming that anyone who has fathered three children has nothing to prove, and citing as evidence of his inherent confidence in his masculiity the fact that he is not ashamed to wear fluffy sheepskin slippers in front of guests.

Albie's got the glorious Borrowed Light, a perfect colour that I would have happily slapped over every room in the house if not for fear of eventual banality. But it is such a lovely colour! Raphael's Lulworth Blue is a bit intense for my taste but nice, the yellow for the playroom ditto. The dining room is sultry in blue green, will probably look lovely by candlelight. They're all okay but I miss that lovely, easy white. It all looks so bloody busy now, so much like we're trying for an effect.

2008-05-09T22:32:00.003+02:00

I went to the house this afternoon to see the electrician, and found a car with its hazards flashing parked in front of my drive. I beeped a few times and the electrician came out and said 'I think it belongs to your neighbour,' gesturing to the house that belongs to Monsieur Toulemonde, the guy who wants my garden to be his garden. Funnily enough, M Toulemonde has his own garage and there's a great big space outside it...Why does he need to block my gate when he could block his own? Who knows. All I know is that I'm already pissed off, and late, and the obvious solution is to park my car in front of his garage. As I am doing so his front door opens and out comes a rather elegant little man who asks me not to park in front of his garage.

'Monsieur,' I say, 'is that your car parked in front of my driveway?'

'Ah. Yes'.

'Why?'

'I am expecting a van any minute to arrive and I needed to keep my driveway free'.

'You might have thought of that before. Now my car is there and I am not moving it, I'm late as it is'.

An old guy, his father in law it turns out, joins us.

'I'll move the car and then you can park in front of your own garage.'

I was feeling mean.

'No. I'm late. And if you don't want me to block your garage, then I suggest you don't block mine.' For good measure, I left the car there for two hours.

2008-05-09T13:53:00.000+02:00

Is anyone reading this any more?

2008-05-06T15:46:00.004+02:00

I was pootling along somewhere in the centre of town when I heard someone call my name. It was the postman - who already knows me for some reason - with a registered letter from the Service d'Urbanisme.

This much I knew from the envelope alone: trouble. The Service d'Urbanisme is not in the business of sending you letters welcoming you to your new neighbourhood. With a slightly fluttering heart and shaking fingers I opened the letter; from the first line - 'travaux realises sans autorisation' - it got only worse. The letter infomed me that the Architect whose job it is to protect the town's heritage was walking past the house and heard noises indicating that we were doing major demolition work. This is strictly forbidden within the conservation zone. It went on to order us to stop work immediately (ironically not so difficult since guess what not a single person working there today, think I might be right to be a tiny bit concerned) and summoned us to the Mairie to explain ourselves.

I had already heard that you Don't Fuck with this particular city architect, who is a fusty old bugger who will say no to every single planning application that passes through his office.

It took me a minute or two to figure that we haven't actually done any demolition work to the house, that the noises he heard were probably the plumber drilling holes in concrete. In other words that I had nothing to fear from anyone in that department. So I rang him up straight away. He was pretty aggressive on the phone, informing me that even so I was bound to be in breach of something. It occurred to me that the best thing to do was to disarm him. 'I think the best thing would be for you to come to the house and see for yourself', I said in reply to his rant. 'Oh. Really?' he replied. I don't think he often gets invited round for coffee. (Not this time either actually, since there's no running water, but it's the thought that counts.) 'I'll be there in twenty minutes'.

True to his word, exactly twenty minutes later he was at the gate. I showed him around, explaining how the house had been divided into four apartments and how we had decided to unify it again, respecting its history whilst bringing it into line with contemporary building regulations. After we had looked around inside and outside, he turned to me and apologised. 'I've been doing this job for twenty years in various parts of the country, and I can promise you that I have come across no more than ten people in all that time who have, like you, a deep respect and sensitivity for the architecture of their homes. I assure you that I will look favourably on any planning application you make for this house.'

I'm such a creep. I felt like teacher's pet. Was only sorry I didn't have an apple in my bag (I have just about everything else) to polish and hand to him. But at least we're out of trouble.

2008-05-05T14:08:00.003+02:00

I'm a tiny bit worried that the initial burst of enthusiasm - that has lasted 3 months - on the part of the builders etc is wearing off. There are definitely noticeably fewer people there each day, which is widely considered to be a sign that they've gone onto other sites. Still, so much progress has been made, I will hold on to my belief that they know what they are doing. All the bedrooms are ready for their final coat of paint and have the beginnings of polished floors (first round of sanding with a rough sand, then one more with a fine sand before being sealed up with some incredibly polluting and hardwearing varnish that would keep a boat buoyant on the high seas for a couple of years, so jolly well ought to withstand the abuse meted out by my three children). The Farrow and Ball, lugged back from London last week with only one casualty (yes, the paint might be good but the pots split open if you so much as tap them with your little toe. Luckily it was my dad not me spilled it over his hall carpet. and who then used a blue cloth to dab white spirit on, thus ensuring that a fairly innocuous patch of off white paint on an off white carpet that has seen better days turned electric blue and means they now have no choice but to replace the carpet).

I was at the house on Saturday morning, talking to Floor Polisher Guy. I said how pleased I am with how the work is going; FPG replied, 'Madame, everyone likes working for you, that's why everyone is working so hard. If they like you, they enjoy working. If they don't, you know it.' Quite simply, the nicest thing anyone has said to me for a very long time.

2008-05-01T20:56:00.004+02:00

Front

back

side

I feel like a hairdresser.

Hope you like it.

2008-04-27T11:13:00.000+02:00

Done. Gone. Yippee.

2008-04-24T19:20:00.003+02:00

It had to happen. Things have been going almost unbelievably smoothly, a hitch was inevitable.

A couple of weeks ago one of the electricians told me that they thought that the panels in the dining room were made of asbestos. I mentioned this to Monsieur G., who poo pooed the idea, telling me to leave the wiring to the electricians and the rest to him. I was happy to believe him - after all we have the asbestos report, legally required to be provided by the seller, which says there is asbestos elsewhere (in the basement and the little studio, we were going to deal with that later) and nothing in the dining room or the little room that we are turning into a toilet and cloakroom. The panels mysteriously disappeared from the dining room, thus successfully removing the problem. I thought no more about it. Then last Friday, just before we left for London, another electrician mentioned that he thought the panels in the cloakroom were asbestos. Since they were about to make a doorway there I realised that I couldn't ignore this, so I told them to do nothing until I came back from London, when I would make an appointment with an expert to find out if it is asbestos.

Walking back to my car I saw a poster advertising the services of an architect who does asbestos reports. I called him straightaway, left a message, and when I got back late last night there was a message from him. He agreed to go round right away - his office is round the corner to the house - and confirmed that it is asbestos. Even I could see it was. He was reassuring though, promising me that it does no harm if you don't actually drill holes in it. The problem is that the electricians have been drilling holes for plugs already, and the plumber is due to. So I told the painters and the electricians that they have to stop work immediately in that room and give me 24 hours to decide what to do. I found myself in tears, to the absolute bemusement of the kind man who had offered his opinion, and Saeed the painter, who actually put his arm around me to try and comfort me - I couldn't really explain that I was really weeping about the most ghastly week that I have just spent with my mother in law. They all presumably think it's because I care so much about their health - which I do, but not to the point of weeping.

After midnight

2008-04-18T00:15:00.002+02:00

Am sitting here, past midnight, trying to make a list of bathroom things - taps, sinks, shower trays, loos - for four bathrooms, and a loo. this whole project is insane, really. I can't believe I'm doing this. I don't even know how much money we've spent so far, or how much more we are about to spend. Just tons and tons and tons. And tons. And then some more. And how can a shower enclosure possibly cost 1500 euros?

My first list was a silly mixture of quality stuff and the cheapest you could imagine. I mean, who cares what a shower tray looks like? I gave it to the plumber this afternoon and this afternoon he came round here to tell me that I was mad getting this cheap crap, that I would regret it and that the pleasure of saving a few sous would be quickly reversed when things started to crack and need to be replaced. So I've sat here for the last two hours ploughing my way through catalogues once again - smarter ones this time, so generally less depressing, but still fucking dull - and making lists of toilet fittings. This is definitely the downside of renovations.

But we got a great quote from a kitchen guy who's going to custom make an island on an IKEA skeleton. The rest of the kitchen is IKEA with custom worktops. It's boring to read about but surprisingly fun to think about.

Took MIL to see the house. She was quite taken aback, I think by the size mostly. She really couldn't speak. I don't really know what she thought.

2008-04-15T17:22:00.003+02:00

Actually I lied. I didn't get Vola taps, they are out of stock in the UK and if I order them now they won't arrive before we leave, so I got the next best thing, which I have to admit is kind of better - they look almost like Vola but don't cost as much, but are still expensive enough to qualify as decent quality. But not so bad that I will never forget how much they were.

I did want Vola, but now it's out of my hands...

Today wasn't as bad as I had feared. Monsieur G wasn't sniffy with Window Man and Window Man seemed to think that they would make only a minimum of mess (having warned me it could be pretty awful, and the whole house is pretty much going to be done by the time they come in, which I was beginning to be afraid could lead to a lot of extra decorating woes).

I spent an amazing day last Friday with an experienced brocanteur friend of mine, who knows how to reupholster and lay wood panelling and all sorts of stuff that is way beyond my ken. She has an amazing eye for stuff and how you can recycle it. The place she took me too, in the middle of nowhere, is a veritable treasure trove of tat and other stuff, parquet, iron railings, masses of terrible dark wood Victoriana, cast iron spiral staircases, enormous stone gryphons and dragons, station lights, beds that look like the one your granny died in. It covers an enormous patch of land, and we were there for hours, sifting through old mirrors and doors and trying not to give in to temptation. Of course in the end we did - that's what we were there for - and I bought an incredible mirror that came from a hotel particulier in Paris and will look fantastic in our living room above the fireplace. A few bits of it got broken when it was removed, he gave them to me in a pot, they looked like something nasty you might be asked to bite on at the dentist's. A whole pot of dirty, strangely shaped bits of plaster. We got three other mirror frames between us, which we need to spend a day cleaning up and painting, for 50 euros each (I'm not telling how much the first one was. Way, way more than I would ever have considered spending on a mirror, but oh, it's so beautiful).

H also gave me the idea of buying an old unloved chest of drawers for the bathroom, painting it, plonking on a piece of marble and sticking a sink on top. At her bidding I discovered the fortnightly Maisons Laffitte auction house, where lo and behold there was a perfect little washstand, complete with marble top. I overbid for it, to be sure to get it (luckily, since someone else wanted it) but just the cost of the marble justified it - 230 euros for the lot. Painted, topped with a Duravit sink and Voila! (if not Vola), it's going to be just about perfect.

tell me why I don't like Tuesdays

2008-04-14T23:52:00.002+02:00

I'm dreading tomorrow. I have to get up at the proverbial crack of dawn, share a crowded train with a bunch of disgruntled commuters, schlep over to the absolute opposite end of Paris to sit with a book designer and input all the corrections to the text of the book I just translated, try to find my about-to-be eleven year old son a birthday present that he will like and yet that does not correspond to what he actually wants (his own computer - why do children grow out of lego? And what do we give them for their birthdays during the period that ends with them rediscovering how great it is, cf Michael Borowitz?), pick up tile samples (how can something like unbevelled metro tiles be so hard to locate in this city?), rush back to my house to be bollocked...

Way back when, oooh, at least a month ago, I found someone to replace my windows in a way that seemed to respect the house. All that was great, except that inadvertently I upset my lovely Monsieur G, who was fully intending to do it himself, albeit not very well nor very cheaply. I was nice but firm, because it is after all my house, but I could tell that I had really offended him, and he was making quite an effort not to be shirty with me. He found a subtle way to be shirty with me after all though, and it's all coming out now. The Window Man called me on Saturday to ask for a meeting with Monsieur G to talk about the mess that they are going to make when they put the windows in. I transmitted the message only to receive a sulky earful in return, insisting that he didn't want to meet the Window Man, that the mess was their problem, and by extension mine, but certainly not his, and that if I insisted on being ripped off by some shyster I would have to sort the problem out myself. It took all my reserves of niceness to pacify him but this I fear will run and run....

I have managed to order taps and paint in England. Unbelievably noone in France has even heard of Vola. I got so fed up I just ordered them from a shop in Primrose Hill. C will be driving a car back loaded with the equivalent of four baby elephants (enough paint for the whole house, three lights, a chair and six taps). I can't quite say vive the falling pound, since I'm not exactly going to be unaffected, but at least we are squeezing something positive out of the imminent global recession.

2008-04-07T22:14:00.009+02:00

My friend A, who knows everyone round here, looked knowingly at me the other day when I delightedly told her that every time I go round to the house, whether it's Easter Monday or a snowy Saturday afternoon (there was an inch of snow on the car this morning, like an unseasonal harbinger of discontent for the Olympic flame that barely made it through Paris today for all the protestors), the painters are in there diligently stripping away, or plastering, laying glass fibre paper (a new one on me, which a little scarily hides any superficial cracks in the walls, but I am assured that if anything serious is going on it will split, which I suppose is a good thing) or layering on lashings of undercoat. They are so far ahead of schedule that they are ready to polish and varnish the floors.

The first floor and downstairs are looking coolly beautiful in their underclothes:

According to A, the reason they are steaming ahead with my house is every other project these guys are supposed to be working on (including a grim tragedy when a very beautiful old house that always makes me think it would sit well in Charleston, north Carolina, in its lacy prettiness, burned down a few months ago almost to a shell (noone was injured, it caught fire during the school run, which may or may not contain a moral for us all, if you can find it)) is languishing, whilst my builder's entire team is doing overtime on my place. Do I care? I most certainly do and I jolly well hope they will continue to focus all their attention on us and ignore everyone else.

They are so bizarrely ahead of schedule that they have started on the third floor, which they weren't meant to get to until October:

That is going to be my bath one of these days. I asked them to reinforce the bathroom floor; the bath apparently weighs 200 kilos when empty and obviously a good deal more filled with water and me.

The plumber is hard at work like a mole in the cellar. Every so often he pops up for air. He really does look like a mole, he's small and a little squat with whiskers and chubby cheeks, and as you would expect from a mole, holes are appearing all over the house (ready to receive the 20 odd renovated old cast iron radiators that I ordered last week).

Tomorrow I'm going to bite the bullet and order taps and baths and things. I'm bored of thinking about all that so I suppose the only thing to do is to do it and then forget about it. We still haven't ordered the kitchen either. I can't stand all this decision making.

2008-04-02T22:30:00.002+02:00

Am feeling a bit wobbly about the next step. I have to make real decisions about what I want it to look like and I am finding myself incredibly reticent to do this. What happens if it looks horrible? I'm kind of on my own with this because C, whilst competent on many fronts, is hilariously rubbish at anything visual. I discovered when we were painting our house in London that his answer to the question 'What colour shall we paint this?' - where 'this' could be anything at all, from the front door to my eyelids - was always 'yellow'. It was sort of funny and cute and anyway I always disregarded it but now I find myself wishing that he could engage at least vaguely with the question. Actually to be fair he has been - I've got my ridiculous swatch of Farrow and Ball nearly-colours on large pieces of sugar paper that I dutifully shift around rooms to catch rays of sunlight or dusky shadow to see how they change, just like they tell you to do in decorating magazines and boy have I read a few of those, and having chosen two not-whites for the living room (to go with the hastily-purchased orange and red saris that we bought in Madurai to make curtains - I know, they sound horrible, but actually they're gorgeous and anyway I have a thing for orange silk curtains) he suddenly objected to one of them on the grounds that it was 'too yellow'. Uh? You like yellow, don't you? The off white he objects to isn't yellow at all, which makes me wonder about all the other semantic misunderstandings that may pepper the history of our relationship.

But back to my wobbles. I went to the house today and began to wonder if everything was wrong, from the hole in the kitchen wall to the larder to the way we've divided up our bed and bathroom, to where the children are going to sleep. Everything. It's worth admitting that the house is a bit of a mad hotchpotch of different bits that have been added on every so often over the last 150 years and we made the decision to leave it that way, which maybe was not the right decision. I feel completely paralysed now. We can't go back on the things we've done but I suddenly can't bear to commit to anything further. I'm almost going off the whole project, which is a bit like being six months pregnant and changing your mind, in that at this point it's not realistic to think that I can run away to live in an igloo in Greenland. Really tempting though.

The rooms, they are a changing...

2008-03-31T21:01:00.004+02:00

Took my friend C to see the house this weekend. C teaches history by day, paints by night, and lives with her two girls in a very tiny apartment in the Goutte d'Or. I wasn't sure if her bohemian instincts would be utterly disgusted by the bourgeois excess of our oversized mansion, but she was really lovely about it; she described it afterwards to her partner A, saying, "Elle est grande oui, mais d'un certain cote elle reste modeste. C'est vraiment une belle maison de famille".

There are some decent before and after photo ops now.

This room is R's bedroom. It had this odd asymmetrical thing going on around the fireplace; the door on the far right was just leaning against a hole into the next room. it didn't look terrible, until we scratched beneath the surface and found this:

There didn't seem much to do except try to put it all back together again somehow. And so now it looks like this:

Instead of the fireplace looking like a hat put on at unfortunately jaunty angle, just waiting to fall, it's regained a bit of dignity with a proper chimney breast, and where there was once a broken door there's now a nice wide niche just right for some shelves. Shelves are the things that occupy my mind most of the time nowadays, being of course the thing that one simply never has enough of, ever. I think in this house we might finally have enough shelves, and some lovely ones too. Quite by chance I discovered the gorgeous String System and have managed to justify the purchase of it for the kitchen by promising (to myself, since I don't think anyone else really cares) that the rest of the kitchen will be dirt cheap IKEA:

(Except that IKEA kitchens aren't dirt cheap any more, but nothing is really, considering that the euro seems to be the only currency not in complete freefall at the moment.)

F***cking shepherdesses

2008-03-24T17:50:00.004+01:00

Funnily enough, one of the people I know who uses toile de jouy in a non-ironic way popped in to see the house today, and in the process reminded me of what a sensitive business this renovation thing can be. I knew from the minute she stepped over the threshold that it was a bad idea, and every step she took confirmed this. The sharp intakes of breath I'm used to, but I couldn't quite forgive the endless slightly disparaging remarks about the plans we have for decoration (the old 'How can you possibly have an IKEA kitchen in a house like this' which I'm fairly used to and pretty much impervious to, but her snottiness went much further than that, to the extent that I just want her to get OUT). She did that old 'With all the experience I have in renovating houses I think I know better than you' which of course gave me a headache with the effort of keeping back the words that were just desperate to come out, (cf toile de jouy and a certain kind of taste that may not be shared by all). She was all 'Oh', pursing her lips disapprovingly 'You're going to have to walk through the kitchen to get to the dining room, are you sure that that is a good idea?' Apart from anything else this is simply the layout of the house which we decided to keep; I sort of muttered feebly about that being the way that we entertain but she was totally unimpressed. And then she went on and on and on about how we were never going to be able to move in in July and we had no idea what we had taken on. 'But it has the makings of a lovely house, if you do think you'll be able to do it up properly.' I think she was hoping that I would ask her to help me, but given my strong feelings about toile de jouy and swagged curtains, I think that would not be such a great idea.

Finger painting

2008-03-23T10:12:00.009+01:00

One freezing cold day in January, full of enthusiasm, we took the children to see the house. They walked around in a kind of catatonic trance, speechless, then in a rather muted tone said that they preferred to play outside in the garden. Afterwards we asked them if they like the house and, as one, they looked at us as if to say 'You have finally, definitively, lost the plot'. 'No', said A, speaking for them all. 'It's absolutely horrible.' We felt slightly crushed, and it wasn't until later that I realised that we had forgotten to mention that we would be doing it up before we actually moved in.

To be honest, it's hard for an adult to summon up enough imagination to be able to picture the derelict house in front of their eyes transformed into a comfortable home. I shouldn't have expected the children to be able to accomplish that feat. I decided that it would be best not to make them come to the house too often, to avoid total morale collapse. I am occasionally forced to bring them along with me when I have to see the plumber or whatever after school, and when I do that I endeavour to make them see how far it's coming along, but I's exclamation last Tuesday - 'It looks like a bomb hit it!' - suggests that he hasn't yet developed the eye.

Yesterday though I enlisted their help in painting sheets of sugar paper with Farrow and Ball paints to test the infinite variations of white that we are going to choose between. They enthusiastically set to, dipping their big brushes into dimity little pots labelled Hague Blue, Rectory Red, Great White, James White, off White and House White, expressing surprise and delight at the genuine differences between all these shades. When they had finished they spent ages consulting the colour cards and choosing which colours they want their rooms painted. I've managed to persuade R to have Borrowed Light, A wants Pavillion Blue and I wants, god help us, either black or crimson. Incipient Goth tendencies, anyone? It's tempting to say no, but that doesn't seem quite right, so I've said he can have a single wall in either.

It turns out that paint in France is either top quality imported or a really rubbish and yet amazingly expensive synthetic domestic product. I think that's because, unlike in England where the upper classes traditionally favoured paint, historically the French aristocracy and later on the bourgeoisie favoured wallpaper or, for the truly wealthy and aesthetically-challenged, fabric printed with small-scale monochome shepherdesses, a look that mysteriously persists in this age of decorative enlightenment amongst extremely wealthy Americans trying for that oh so sophisticated European look.

So there isn't really a tradition of quality paint or historic colours for interior paints in France. I suppose that's why all elegant Parisian apartments are painted dead white all over - a lovely elegant look if you don't have children and have had your mess gene surgically removed. Farrow and Ball is twice the price it is in England and even cheap paint from a big hardware store costs about what F and B costs in the UK - ie for synthetic paint in really nasty colours you could get delicious F and B if you can be bothered to make the trip. So it's kind of inevitable that when we go back to London in April to get the car serviced and MOTed (because yes we still have an English UK registered car that we can't quite work out what to do with) we'll load it up with paint. As well as lights - I've splurged on a few lovely lights that cost up to £300 less in England because of the drop in value of sterling. Leading to a recapitulation of the clouds and silver lining theory - although we lost a lot of money converting our money from sterling to Euro in January (having failed to notice that sterling had done a nose dive since last November) we will claw back a tiny fraction of it on buying our paints and our lights in England! Every little helps!

2008-03-19T21:35:00.004+01:00

So much going on, a massive deadline I'm about to miss being the main reason that I've not written, as well as nightmare school applications (totally Kafkaesque - you pay 160 euros for each child to apply to a school for which they have to sit an exam and for which there are no places) and, of course, the house.

I meant to have photos of windows to show you in detail what I've been going on about, but didn't get round to it. The house is so dusty that I'm not sure my camera even still works. (Also to please my blogging mentor, whose gentle criticism has been taken to heart).

But things are looking up, after a weekend of worrying that I was losing my dignity, as well as betraying the house. I have found the windows I want! For the same price as the ones I don't want. A bit of pootling around on Google one night when I was feeling very low led me to a company that specialises in historically accurate windows. A man whose passion for history and architecture is such that he sometimes refuses to change windows if they have historical significance. And, almost unbelievably, the company is based about ten minutes from where we lived. I can't believe I hadn't found him before.

The next day I called and couldn't stop myself blurting out how miserable I was about all the horrid shysters who had come to give me quotes for nasty windows that weren't going to look anything like the old windows. I must have touched him because having said initially that he had no time to come for over a fortnight he then agreed to come on Monday afternoon. He walked around the house dating windows through their hinges and closures, pointing out the different styles of how the wood was carved, according to whether they were first Empire or Haussmanien. I was enthralled, and cautiously excited. After all if he cost twice what the others cost we just couldn't afford it.

The next morning he called. When his name popped up on my mobile I started to shake, I was so afraid he was about to quote a sum so astronomical that there was simply no way we would be able to justify it. He gently suggested that I sit down, since I was going to be shocked - and then proceeded to quote a price that was literally fractionally more more than the other quotes I've got. I nearly burst into tears.

He takes the metal closures from the old windows and puts them onto the new ones. He calls them the fingerprints of history.

In which Lydia Bennett wonders why all men treat her like a complete nincompoop

2008-03-13T21:44:00.006+01:00

I thought I was doing really well, and today the carpet got pulled from underneath my feet, the veil slipped off, the illusion was shattered and all sorts of rather beautiful cliches got called into use.

It's all about how people treat you, after all, life, isn't it? My day can be pretty much made by some arbitrary stranger being unexpectedly nice (obviously this is even more true in France, being that much less likely to happen) and of course vice versa - I don't know about you, but the morning can be completely ruined by someone behaving like a total fuckwit. Like the waiter in the cafe in Paris who once told me that if I wanted to pass as a genuine French person I had to learn to drink coffee properly (I had ordered a cafe creme, and he had got out of bed on the goddamned ceiling that morning).

We've got this big house, and it has a lot of windows, all of which are rotten, and anyway we wanted to do the environmentally friendly thing and insulate properly, which folks means special glass and a big bill. Well it was my husband who wanted to do the environmental thing (tax deductable, you see); I just wanted it to look nice. So I have been very insistent that I want nice new windows that look quite a lot like the old windows. It turns out that you can't just say 'I'd like to replace the windows, I'd like them to look the same as the old ones, have the same kind of 19th century fastening, but have better insulating glass'. I thought that was quite specific, but apparently not specific enough. I got three quotes and when I asked about each one in detail it turned out that each one was for the most basic kind of window that doesn't look a jot like the ones they are replacing. Another WTF moment: I had contacted one of the companies because they had done the windows in our stylish cousin's place in Paris and they were really beautiful and she couldn't speak highly enough of their workmanship. So I called and asked them to give me a quote to do the same kind of windows as in Mme T's flat, which they duly did. The quote was so reasonable that I couldn't believe it, which turned out to be a fortunate lapse of faith, as when I questioned them in a bit of detail it turned out that the quote was for the very cheapest kind of window that you can get in wood (I suppose I ought to be grateful that it wasn't for PVC). When I realised, I called them to say that it wasn't what I wanted and they agreed to come back to talk about doing them properly. When I asked why they hadn't given me a quote for windows like Mme T's, even though that was what I had specifically asked for, the talkative one of the pair said innocently 'Ah! Vous parlez des fenetres qui donnent sur la rue! Nous on a cru que vous parliez de celles qui donnent sur le cour'. Which translates roughly as 'Oh! You mean the fancy ones in the main rooms! We thought you were talking about the really lousy ones in the servants' quarters!' Anyway they came up with a quote for sort of the kind of windows I'm after, done in traditional style with a typically French 19th century style iron knob thing to close it. It was no more expensive than the first quote, so I was pretty pleased, only when I looked at it properly they'd changed the glass to a kind that no longer qualifies for the tax break because it doesn't comply with environmental norms. It's all so technical and so detailed that it's only by chance that I realised: a month ago the figures 4/10/4 wouldn't have rung any warning bells, as I'm quite sure they still don't for most people. (I was recently trying to explain the various ways of replacing windows to a friend of mine, telling her about the controversy surrounding one particular technique - it's true, it's a bit of a hot potato of a subject for those who care about such things - and she interrupted with a look of concerned puzzlement and gently suggested that I should find some alternative form of entertainment to take my mind off such things.)

Is all property theft? Apparently so, sometimes

2008-03-12T10:35:00.004+01:00

I probably shouldn't write about this, but since only two of you are reading it I'll take the risk. I was hanging out at the house last Wednesday, chewing the fat with the painters, as you do, when a man came to the front gate waving a sheaf of papers and asking to come in. There was something about the papers that made me unwilling to open up so we talked through the railings. He was the son of the now deceased owner of the house next door, and he wanted me to know that the house was being sold and that the new owner had been apprised of the possibility that a part of our garden actually belongs to his house. In an oddly affable way, considering what he was asking of me, he said that he just wanted me to sign an 'accord' about this, though without explaining what precisely he wanted me to agree to. Since obviously I'm not in accord with the notion that my garden is actually his I wasn't about to sign anything. I told him to get his lawyer to write to us and refused to discuss it any further, although I agreed to let him have my mobile number.

On Friday night, in the lobby of a cinema in London, my mobile goes. It's the new owner of the house, just ringing to let me know that he still thinks my garden is his but he's going to be nice and let my children carrying on playing in it. Just so long as he can access his garden through my garden whenever he needs to. He insists, and I agree with him, that the most important things is that we have good neighbourly relations, and he isn't going to do anything to jeopardise (I've tried spelling this four different ways, all wrong apparently) this, just so long as I recognise that it's really his garden and he's being a real gentleman about this. I tell him, as nicely as I can (I have a bit of problem which is that I can do really nice and really mean but I struggle with anything in between) that I don't think he has a claim on my garden but I appreciate the sentiment.

Yesterday I visited the service d'urbanisme of the commune to find out more. A nice woman shows me the website of the cadastraux, which is the French land registry and shows the boundaries of every plot of land. It is not quite the final say, in that it can be disputed, but according to our notaire, it's generally recognised to be the official map of your terrain. Nonetheless, according to the woman I spoke to at the cadastraux, it has no legal weight, it's entirely topographical...Still, reassuringly, it clearly shows that our garden belongs to our house and not to his. Last night he calls. I tell him that I've been to the cadastraux, that it unequivocally shows that the terrain belongs to us, and that he needs to stop bothering us about it. He tells me that he has some fifty year old plans that show that there used to be a wall there and that at that time that bit of garden belonged to his house. I ask him what happened in the interim, when and why the wall got moved and why it's not registered as still belonging to him. Then I asked him straight, does he want this land. He says no. I ask him in that case why he's pursuing it, if he doesn't even want it. As far as I can tell, officially it's ours and will remain so unless he brings a land surveyor in - as he tells me he is planning to do -who can prove that the cadastraux are wrong.

Somehow this feels like a feud straight out of Balzac. He just wants to be friends. I just want my garden. And yet he isn't going to let it rest.

What's the time, Mr Wolf?

2008-03-11T22:52:00.014+01:00

Much of my time at the moment is spent pretending to be someone else. Someone who understands French better than I do, someone who knows what she's talking about when discussing the intricacies of damp proof courses and RSJs, someone who cares about paint colours other than white. It's quite a familiar feeling - what parent hasn't marvelled at how wierd it is to be responsible for another human being whilst not feeling responsible enough to be looking after oneself? - but somehow lately the feeling has become acute. I've been feeling no older than 15 lately, and that's an improvement on the seven year old of last week. It may be a desperate attempt to shuffle off the responsibility of this whole project onto some other being dressed up as me, and it may just be that for some reason a lightness of being has crept up on me and made me incapable of a single serious thought (though heaven knows I was serious enough at 15, so it can't be that). Anyway I'm back in outer Paris after a refreshing pit stop in London last weekend to see my new adorable goddaughter Nell Bella Georgia Mabel Molly May Burton (and I may well have missed a couple of syllables there, apologies).

On Monday I went to check that the house was still standing, and found that the street was blocked by a line of fire engines. Fire engines serve multiple purposes here in France, from scooping up old ladies who've fallen over their shopping trolleys to rescuing children who've fallen down wells, only occasionally being pressed into service to put out fires, so it didn't necessarily mean anything bad. Overactive imaginations never listen to reason and it was inevitable that I would spend the seven minutes going the long way round picturing the dusty heap of bricks that was once my house forlornly occupying the plot. (I find if you imagine the worst it usually isn't that, a useful trick for warding off bad things.)

Well, the house is a mess, dusty and filled with rubble where once there were floors, but it is still standing, and some of it is looking downright lovely. This was the hall when we bought the house:

Now it looks like this:

I can't help thinking I'm right about white paint. This may only be undercoat but it's hard to see how it could be improved upon.

This meanwhile was a bedroom with a harmless bit of broken joist bringing the ceiling down which unfortunately you can hardly see:

Now it looks like this:

This, by the way, is what the salon/sejour looked like originally. I think I'd forgotten this because it was so disturbing, I can't shift the idea of it as the Bates Motel a la francaise from my mind:

It still gives me a chill to see it, even though its transformation appears to have exorcised the ghosts:

Oh, and my parents, my husband and Cath were right. The hole has been made in the kitchen wall, with two massive RSJs holding up the house, and through the rubble I can see that my whole life has improved with the destruction of the wall. Sorry folks. At least I know when I'm beat. And when I'm wrong:

Week 4

2008-03-03T16:49:00.009+01:00

It's quite a good idea to go away for a week. Two things are good about it - one is that you allow your imagination to get carried away and think all sorts of dreadful things are happening because you aren't around to prevent them (ha! such delusions) and the second is that after a week all sorts of things have happened that are actually good - ie progress has been made - and nothing quite as bad as your imagination would have it.

So, beginning of week 4 and where are we. The living room is the room to hang out in at the moment. All the old shit has been scraped away, and a lovely layer of undercoat has been applied and the whole thing looks light and sunny and beautiful, far far more beautiful that it did before. No more tobacco coloured walls and net curtains like your granny's tights. The photo doesn't do it justice:

It's a bit of a shame that the electrician has yet to go in and do his thing - they're going to have to start all over again when he's done his worst in there, but so long as I don't have to pay twice I don't really care.

Upstairs, where the electrician has almost finished, is looking okay too, not quite as classy but not too bad at all. He was very patient with me this morning when I asked him to redo the lights by our bed. I'm sure he wanted to throw something at me but he managed to smile.

Because there must always be something troubling to balance out the smoothness, in another part of the house the ceiling is coming down. We always knew it was, we just weren't sure why. Now we know. The joists have rotted right through and snapped in some places. As with the living room, the photo doesn't really do it justice:

Trust me, it's worse that it looks.

Meanwhile predictably enough one of the Egyptian painters has decided I am quite the nicest woman he has ever worked for and is promising me a 'grand cadeau d'Egypte' when I next go in. I dread to think what it will be. We smoked a cigarette together this morning while he told me how much he loves the 'Britsch' and reeled off names of football clubs. 'Munchster? No? Chelsea? Roogby? No? Tea with milk?' When I agreed to the last he was clearly relieved and wished me Mazal Tov. Do I look like a typically English Jew or was that just a stab in the dark? Had he perhaps misplaced his glossary? Was he just searching for any non-Arabic/non-French word he could unearth or was I unmasked? I nodded noncomitally.

How much did you say?!? !?!?!

2008-03-01T20:25:00.002+01:00

Wow. I knew when we went into this we'd be in for some big surprises. But still. How much could it cost to replace a few windows? Your turn to guess! I'm going to have a stiff drink.

2008-02-22T12:23:00.003+01:00

Sophie, the architect not in search of a job, came to see the house today. She was delightful, definitely a new friend, very down to earth and cheerful and very nice about the house - though clearly slightly awed by the scale of the renovation. It was positive and negative - she gave me the thumbs up about all the ideas I have for reorganising the space and loved the kitchen plan. I warmed to her even more when she asked me why we were bothering to open up the space between the main kitchen and the 'arriere cuisine'. This has been a rather fraught subject, with my parents, my friend C. and my husband united and slightly bullying in their conviction that this is indisputably an essential thing to do. I have said all along I think it's completely unnecessary but caved in finally for a quiet life. Without even being asked Sophie spontaneously said she couldn't understand the point of doing it. I explained my quiet life philosophy, and she conceded the point. Otherwise she was extremely, gratifyingly positive about everything, which was lovely - but looking at all the structural stuff it was clear she thought there might be issues. There might be indeed. My philosophy is to trust Monsieur G. who does this kind of thing, more or less, all the time; he will sweat the big stuff, while I focus on the details like tiles and kitchen units. Obviously in terms of structure there's no way I can have the slightest idea about what is going on - I can't tell the difference between a dangerous crack and a superficial fissure. I just hope he can.

Peeling layers of history

2008-02-20T14:50:00.003+01:00

It's tempting to wonder why we didn't get out of this when we still could. The house is a quite extraordinary mess. It's not exactly derelict, it does for example still have a roof, but it's mind-boggling that people actually lived here until last October. It's layered with the filth of many decades; when I walked in for the first time with the estate agent it required a genuine leap of imagination to see beyond the dreary tobacco-coloured walls and shit-coloured lino that is covering up the beautiful oak and stone staircase.

In the last couple of days the walls in some of the rooms have been stripped back several generations to the original plaster; different wallpapers like palimpsests revealing the past lives of various rooms in the house.

My favourite is the wallpaper in our bedroom, which is the room which I fell in love with originally once I had got over the tobacco coloured walls. It's a lovely, peaceful room, airy and bright, with two floor to ceiling windows, a lovely curvaceous marble fireplace, intricate mouldings on the ceiling; long fingers of afternoon sunlight slant over the floorboards as if they were illustrating a story. The walls were patterned in a pretty pattern of rosebuds; it was certainly a lady's bedroom at some point in its history.

chambre de madame

The salon, now that the cobwebby old net curtains have been pulled down from the windows, reveals its many different characters; a rather dull black on cream repeat from the 1920s covering up a splendid midnight blue (which I stupidly didn't get a photograph of). And each layer scrawled with the notes of the builder at the time.

Most of the the last two weeks has involved the revelation of one nasty surprise after another; a radiator is removed to reveal a patch of damp wall; the dining room parquet turns out to be rotten, entire walls are literally unplastered brick. The windows are barely able to stay put in their rotten casements. But today a nice surprise - attached to a window an old projection screen, rolled up in its metal casing, in perfect condition. One day we'll be able to watch films on it. One day all this will be behind us.

Week Three

2008-02-19T22:16:00.000+01:00

Two weeks ago we became the proud owners of a magnificent pile of bricks and mortar. It took us months of tortured negotiations with the third generation inheritors of the house to get to this stage, and even having got to the notaire's office we considered walking away when their demands and refusals became too absurd. When they categorically refused to empty the house of literally tonnes of rubbish accrued over a hundred years of ownership (all of it entirely worthless, since they had of course sold everything of any worth whatsoever that they could short of gouging out the mantelpieces and parquet) it was only thanks to the estate agent, who saw his commission dissolving before his eyes like a cheap telefilm, that we didn't get up and walk out for good.

Everytime someone comes to measure up for an estimate, whether it be for radiators or new windows (our main gesture towards environmental issues will be to insulate properly) or the expensive kitchen that I dream of having but certainly won't be able to afford, they purse their lips, whistle through their teeth (a sound I hate above any other), shake their heads and say, "Oof! Il y a du boulot la. C'est pourri la, vous voyez?". And I smile, determined not to let their patronising horror get the better of me, even when I feel like weeping. Yesterday it was the turn of a man in a jet black toupee, his eyes crinkling like Charles Aznavour in full swing, creases in his trousers sharp as a kitchen knife. Today it was the Brad Pitt look alike, all chiselled square jaw, artful stubble and leather jacket. Difference in style notwithstanding the way they shake their heads, trying to calculate (it seems to me) how much they can get away with estimating for their work so that I won't be horrified and go elsewhere - the eternal builder's conundrum of how to screw the foolish client whilst making them feel they have got a bargain - differed not a jot.

Thankfully our lovely builder, Monsieur G., manages to comfort me when I get particularly despondent. I can tell he is thinking that this is a bit early to be so despondent, and I should really save that for later when things are getting really hairy. If nothing else he always sounds pleased when I call, and tells me that there is nothing to worry about, certainly nothing to lose sleep over. If only my bloody unconscious would take heed, it is two weeks since I've slept well and whilst I'm always on the lookout for an easy and effective diet, at this rate, with at least eight months of work ahead of us, I'll have disappeared to almost nothing by the time we move in.

At the advice of my friend Avril today I called a friend of hers who sounds like the answer to my dreams - an architect who doesn't want big projects, who understands about doing things nicely on a budget, and who doesn't really want a proper job, but who is prepared to hold hands and give advice and generally act as a sounding board. They say it's impossible to improve on perfection, and thus far, she sounds absolutely perfect, but the best thing is she lives nearby and is going to come and see the house with me on Friday. Hurray. I think tonight I might sleep well, finally.