Two scenes of 'Isle de Brehat' (Brehat Island)
A spectacular Thousand Island look-alike a half hour from our door
No cars are permitted as it is a 'zone for feet' only
Show and tell!
Show and tell is so much fun! I feel like a kid being potty trained, bragging about his self control while dragging his parents to the bathroom to proudly display his achievement. They cheer, they applaud and he thinks he is just the cat’s meow.
First off we finished part of our kitchen renovation. I say 'part 'because we still plan to tear down the ceiling and install 'old world' beams with textured drywall in between. I have been hand hewing the beams with an adz in my spare time but we may get lazy and do part two of the actual renovation next year. When I left off last month I had just started by smashing the kitchen counter, sink and cabinet. This is only part of the kitchen mind you as this is not a typical American styled set-up.
Before...Here, Janice has nothing fancy, just a large farm styled work table in her kitchen, an old French buffet styled piece of furniture to store cooking implements in as well as a long bench for someone visiting to sit and swill wine while she is cooking.
During....
...and after(Click on any pic for an enlargement)
This is not anything like a typical American kitchen, but my bride wanted a French traditional styled look and that is what she got. The center section baskets are fixed so the shelves slide out. The left side cabinet door is a false front concealing a slide out trash receptacle.
It would not surprise many to know that the plumbing sizes in the US and here are quite different. I was quite meticulous in preparing for this project, trying to anticipate all eventualities, problems, issues and unintended consequences, so I brought gobs of extra everything.
Still, it was a little daunting knowing that I have never done any plumbing without having to go back to the hardware store for extra bits and bobs for whatever plumbing job I was doing and that I had not anticipated that I would need. The problem was that in this case, the closest hardware store that would have the parts in the sizes I would need would be 3000 miles (4800 Km) away.
The long and the short of it was that it required my doing the one thing that I will never do to Janice’s airplane---jury rig things to make them work. Still, it is a real nice improvement.
Next on our agenda were having our master bedroom / dressing room in the loft carpeted, new bed drug up the 2 flights and Janice putting her personal decorating imprint on the whole shebang. This is one of those projects that seemed a little anticlimactic since it has been unfolding in slow motion as it rose higher on the to-do list and as we could afford to move forward on it over the past 7 years.
Our bedroom loft, 2002
Doing my thing
A friend inspecting the new windows
Stack of drywall board on floor yet to be installed
Subsequent years saw the electrical work done, framing, building closets, insulation, drywall, refinishing the ceiling beams, paint and texturing. In the end what matters is that we have what we set out to do. We should be good to go for a while as we now have 4 bedrooms and 2 ½ baths for 2 of us. Won’t someone please come and visit?
Same angle, same view as above
...and part of the dressing room beyondIt has been a bit of a push for the past two months and there is still a couple of weeks of odds and ends to do before we wrap up our building projects for the season. I have been making serious deposits in my brides love bank so that I can relax when it's time to get back to doing really important stuff in June, like finishing building her airplane...
As much as it may seem, life around here is not all work and no play. Having regained the use of our kitchen and living room, we have started another round of dinner parties.
Chatty news
We have lined up our usual home exchanges for our upcoming European road trip but we were pleased that we were also able to make a few available for our daughter Kami as well. This is the second one of our kids who has cottoned to this whole scheme and is fast becoming an enthusiastic proponent.
Some time ago, she asked if it would be possible for us to find a place for her in New York City to stay in order to see the Tennis Open. We came up with a possibility or two but in the end she chose not to go.
Recently though, she asked if we could possibly find a place in Vancouver, British Columbia during the winter Olympics this month as no accommodations remained available. Within hours we had two excellent homes for her and her girlfriends to choose from, so obviously she chose a real nice condo near the events and they flew there this morning.
Empowered by her success, she hesitatingly explored the possibility of our willingness to find a place in Maui (Hawaii). The hesitation was not so much because we had just found her a place for the Olympics but because she would be taking her mother (read my ex-wife) and she feared we would be about as receptive to the idea as a Muslim opening a bikini stall at the Kabul mall.
They just got back from their holiday there two days ago.
As our kids are able to get it together, we expect they will all want to pick their favorite vacation destinations in the world where they will only have to fly there to have their own home waiting for them.
Let's go on an adventure!
Whenever we find ourselves needing a quick island fix, (admittedly, we have a real fetish for these things) we stroll down to one of our local beaches which has a plethora of them. Often, we have gazed up at a small castle on the bluffs across from Lliec Island, home to famed aviator Charles Lindbergh in 1938.
I have often though that I would give your right leg to see the place, but alas, it was not to be. Then again, it was! We have friends in the village who asked us to go for a beach walk with friends of theirs (rubber boots required as we go sloshing about at low tide). We drove to their door and SHAZAM, it was the castle!
It is fascinating to see the inside story of these places when you realize they have been passed down for generations. The interior rooms are filled with antiques and cozy family furnishings, giving an old world ambiance matching the exterior.
The place is quite huge, with additional towers on the main entrance side (this view is the 'back', facing the sea) complete with secondary structures on the property. There is an 9 foot high (3 meter) stone wall that surrounds the property and gardens that I estimate is a half mile (1 Km) long.
It has become common for the owners of these places to occupy only a small portion of the place in the winter as heating is simply prohibitive. And now you know the rest of the story...
