The basement today

Cooking in the basement has its advantages but I can't help but remember its sordid past whenever I'm down there, -- the twelve inches of water in every room, the green mud, the wading boots and the fear of being electrocuted everytime we had to check the heater.

But there are some good points to the newly redone basement. The kitchen we've got down there however temporary is HUGE compared to our upstairs space and it's charming as all git with the bricks and vouted ceilings, and even if it hasn't got a sink it has a really, really nice ambiance.

Some photos perhaps? They'll be a little blurry because I don't have a camera with a flash and our lighting consists of a little bedside lamp from Mexico and a hanging utility light.



The floor's been dug out and now it's tiled and best of all there's no more mud. We put in a drainage system under the floor just in case because that was an awful lot of water and we hope it doesn't come back.



Most of the walls are in brick and so is the ceiling. It's overbearingly charming and we love the brick. If you have a 1900's era Northern French house chances are your exterior walls are stone and your interior walls are brick. Got a sledgehammer? We are on a brick kick and I can just see us bashing off all the plaster in the new kitchen so we can create the same thing upstairs.







An exterior stone wall, so two walls in stone and two in brick. The stone doesn't look so good in this style house though. We'll probably cover them up.



We took out the old electricity but we still have these old ceramic switches that you turn. Now you now why we say TURN off the light. We lost the action but kept the verb!