1929... it was a very good year

We're at the hotel and I suppose I forgot that we'd have this brief week before we move to the gite out in the country for the month. I have one more week of internet!

Yesterday we spent the day at our new house cleaning. I may be bold enough enough to call it our house, but it isn't quite yet. We have a few more days of waiting for the lender's response to our paperwork but we feel like it will be a yes. In the meantime the owners have given us the keys so that we can start taking down the wallpaper in the first bedroom which is downstairs.


Our first job was to empty the room of the two old 1960's armoires and the various nicknacks perched on the mantle and then it was time to clean. There was a lot of dust behind the armoires and spider webs and black grime. We were back in time to our house in Th*n*n five years ago, sweeping and dragging out old carpet. A few surprises ! We uncovered the green dusty carpet to find the wood floors in pretty good shape. The agent told us the floors were oak but we were wiser. We didn't correct her but we knew they were a standard pine floor. In the 1920's when the house was built they installed pine in all the rooms on all of the floors and then this was often covered with carpets or later linoleum. The pine floors in the bedroom are just in need of a good cleaning (peroxide, ammonia and water) and then we can start to staining and sealing them. The bedroom has a wood frame fireplace which when we moved the armoire revealed another surprise. It wasn't wood at all but marble! They had painted over the marble. It's a lot of fun to make discoveries like this when renovating an old home. There's always a lot of surprises. The walls are plaster papered over with floral paper we've been picking at all weekend until we can rent our wallpaper steamer. The bedroom is growing in size with each scrap of paper that comes down. We should have a nice downstairs bedroom big enough for all four of us. The first six months we'll have no choice. The upstairs bedrooms are a whole other project. We'll be breaking everything and starting over at zero.

a jolie surprise...marble painted over with green latex paint --we talked about looking for an old marble fireplace for the house and even looked for one on the internet so we were really excited to find the exact same one we would have chosen -- pretty red tones

Once we get the official response from the lender we can become renters and move in...and we can breathe again! I have been holding my breath for two weeks now. The renter status is just until the final papers pass through. The owners have been really nice to us and although my idea to ask them to let us rent the house seemed a little crazy at first it was just because it isn't so common in France. After they got used to the idea they were okay with it. Oddly enough the wanted to meet us first to see what type of people we were. They liked us and adored the kids so they said yes.

We have a lot of work to do but we love the house. It's much more recent than our first house but it still has many of the same problems. The project should go much faster though.

We're also much wiser this time around and we know better than to launch off in all different directions but to finish one room at a time. We hope to have the bedroom done in three weeks.

I'll share some photos in another post. I'm feeling a little funny about sharing too much until our papers go through. I do have a few more pictures over on Flickr.