Rumour has it....

I have it on good authority that a staircase is being installed in my house in France as I write!! The photo above is not THE staircase but the photo I sent to the carpenter to give him an idea of the kind of thing I was hoping for.

This development is so damn exciting, it is truly scary. The word is it should be fully installed by next week. When we were there I kept saying to hubby, I feel I need to have a good look at everything because...hopefully....I won't see them this way again. Looks like I was right. I know it is hard, but try and contain yourselves....photos to follow shortly. Then you can see if I did get what I was hoping for. The joys of part-time long distance renovating.

Progress?

Now that we are back and showing people the photos, I can see that they are having trouble seeing the progress...but honestly there has been some. I can see how everyone is still thinking that it looks fairly basic.

But here goes:

New windows:

New heated towel rail:

Washing machine and storage shelving in the utility room:

A nice mown lawn:

Even a vegetable patch!

Progress... several steps forward...yes....but then of course a step or two backwards:

A nice big hole in the ceiling .......which hopefully soon will contain the staircase.

In the Big City

Well we did get stuck by the volcano mayhem in Europe. We were supposed to return a week ago today, however being on holiday! we hadn't actually been paying much attention to the news and although friends mentioned it, we had no idea of the chaos it was causing. So we dutifully got up early and set off at 5.30 am!! to get to CDG in good time. When we arrived to drop off the hire car, the guy did mumble something about us keeping it as the airport was closed but again the significance was lost on us and we trundled off into the airport. What d'ya know, the airport was closed!

So we joined the three hour ( 3 hour !) line up, just standing there for three hours to re-schedule our flight, the earliest they could do by time we got to the desk was Wednesday. Wednesday! We were scandalised, thoughts of my teenage son, left at home ALONE for the first time fought in my head with thoughts of another wonderful five days in sunny lovely Limousin! As it turns out Wednesday was perfect as the planes did not commence flying again until Tuesday, and of course teenage son was just fine without us.

So we about-turned and set off for our adventure in Paris (yes I know I always bemoaned the fact that I never actually got to spend time in the city but this is not quite what I had in mind!)

We got the train to Gare du Nord, a large and confusing station. For a little while there we really did feel like the two little country mice who had found themselves in the big scary city! Anyway we made it across to Gare Austerlitz and waited in another line up for our train ticket back to La Souterraine, our nearest station, called our good neighbour to arrange for her to pick us up at 9.30 pm and managed to find an hour to have some lunch before heading back to race for our seat on the train. It wasn't until we got to the change over station at Vierzon, when the connecting train didn't bother to turn up until an hour later than scheduled that someone mentioned that there was also a train strike in France!!

That would explain the very full train with many many people sat on the floor in the aisle, luckily we had seats.

It was a very long day but it meant another four days at the house, the longest we have ever spent there. As I reported on Facebook, I was stranded in France on my birthday, but wasn't complaining too much as the weather was gorgeous and the wine is cheap!!

Countdown

Sorry to be so slack in the blogging but had a hectic couple of weeks. As I said in my last post, I gave my notice in for my part time job and have been going as full tilt as possible at the real estate and now have a couple of listings bubbling under so that is a positive result of my decision.

My dad has been with us for the last week over Easter. He lives in San Francisco so we don't get to see him often enough, it was great to spend the time with him. He experienced gorgeous unseasonable weather here, yes it is still with us, much nicer than the wet Easter weekend that was forecast for San Francisco. Saturday and Sunday were particularly lovely, temperatures in the mid-20's, much sitting out on patios soaking up the sunshine. We went downtown Toronto on Saturday to watch daughter and son-in-law do their 8k run, taking our granddaughter with us. This was a first for SIL so he was thrilled that he achieved is goal "not to throw up"!! Well done to both of them.

So now it is the countdown to our trip to France. Still quite a bit to do before we set off on Friday. Such as buy travel insurance, pick up euros, do taxes (!) eek, pack, in and around that, clean the house, leave enough food for youngest son who we are trusting to stay behind and take care of the dog ....and himself.

I hope to report back the other side of the holiday with lots of photos. A bientot!