One of 5 Texas sized Canadian Maple leafs
at our favorite winery
"La bise" (aka) Air kisses
Few people would have missed news footage of President Trump and French President Macron's meetings during the recent visit. [Relax, this is not about politics] Many Americans were aghast at the sight of the two men exchanging cheek to cheek 'air kisses". We are familiar with the behavior when pseudo sophisticated Hollywood types exchange air kisses, but not like, well, real people.
"Is this how I am supposed to do it?"
Just don't leave a hickey, ok?
I don't know if this is common all over Europe, but I can attest to the behavior in France. I first saw it when we were in Brittany and thought the men must have a bromance thing going. The first time a guy approached me in that way I thought he surely had me confused with someone else and I instinctively wanted to blurt out "DON'T TOUCH MY JUNK"
Fortunately, I had come to realize that here, it is a sign of really close friendships (no, not that kind!) and would be a real slight to rebuff it. It's a cultural thing. Not one that we as Americans are comfortable with but when in Rome...
No one is swapping spit so you are safe. Macron is a savvy enough guy to know the cultural eye raising it would cause and surely put Trump on the defensive. The one-up-man-ship was on. So when we go to our favorite restaurant here... we exchange air kisses with the owners. With close buddies...air kisses. If we must. Its a cultural thing. If you are an American and you try to air kiss me, you will draw back a bloody lip. Its a cultural thing....:(
OMG, say it isn't so!!!
I got a call from my sister recently announcing that she and her husband were looking to buy a home in the Thousand Islands area. Having heard lots of plans from lots of people about what they were 'going to do', I saw little reason to get too excited about the idea.
For the past 35 years, most often we are thousands of miles away from my family, giving us blissful respite from the inevitable family drama that plays itself out occasionally, while we are unaware half a world away. We must have set a good example, since all 5 of our kids moved at least 1000 miles away from home themselves. Admittedly, 'home' is becoming harder to pinpoint, but I digress. I panicked when my sister announced that they had actually put their house on the market in Toronto and were visiting some properties.
When she told me that they were looking at island properties 3 minutes away from ours, you could have knocked me over with a feather. I absolutely freaked. Now, we will probably have to move to Tanzania or northern Alaska.
I did everything I could think of to dissuade her. I started by warning her that while crossing the river, her boat could sink and she could drown. She said that they would be sure to wear life jackets. "What about the sharks?" I asked, hoping to have her conjured up the images in the movie 'jaws', but knowing full well that the only sharks around here were at the aquarium. " But the people here are really mean" I lied, not wanting to compete for the great friends we have made. "You might be marooned" I cried, hoping to spur some basic primal fear. No dice. Growing more desperate, I shouted " You might be flooded if a tsunami comes!!!" " Island people are weird" I said in a final attempt to reason with her, thinking that she might be able to relate by looking at her own brother.
If that wasn't enough, my sister started to talk to my mother about moving closer also. OMG! The very 'chain migration' a certain president [who will remain unnamed but whose name begins with a 'T' and ends with a 'RUMP'] has warned us about. Then, it happened. She called to tell us that their house had sold and that they bought a property on a larger nearby island. Well, there goes the neighborhood.
The point of all this is that if you see a woman on the river with a shark harpoon, go easy on her. She may have gotten bad advice. Besides, she may not be looking for sharks. She may be looking for me.
BTW, just kidding, sis. Welcome to the islands.
Show and tell
OK, it's time. We have not written once about our projects here this season because they were not finished. They are now. If you are fond of pictures, this month we have a boatload of them. The plan this season was to complete the renovation of our front entry and do what needed to be done to our lower level area dining room, living room and bedroom #4 out of the eventual 5.
We live on a cul-de-sac. On one side of the street are 8 'fisherman's cottages' whose residents spend but a few weeks a year here on holiday. They range in size from 500 to 700 sq ft (50-70 sq m). One of them is for sale, if you are interested- a steal at $390,000 (US) or $502,000 (Canadian)- but buyer beware as they are in need of serious renovating. There is also a neighbor with an attached house that took two of the cottages and combined them, doubling the size of their home. On our side of the street is a small chapel, a Michelin rated restaurant and our villa.
Janice, applying colored grout.
You may recall my explaining that the villa we bought has essentially two levels. The street level has two bedrooms, a kitchen, dining and living room, 1 1/2 baths and a large terrace.
The lower garden level, accessed by an interior staircase, has 3 theoretical bedrooms, a second kitchen, dining, 2 bathrooms and living room with its terrace also. I say theoretical because at the time we bought the villa, the lower level was little more than a WWII concrete bunker with no power, water or working drains. If you are fond of raw concrete walls, ceilings and floors, you would have been right at home.
It would not be fair to call it a remodel as other than the cement shell, there was nothing to work with in the first place. Last year we jack hammered the floor to the dirt in the first lower level bedroom, ran new water and power lines, poured a new concrete floor, tiled it with Travertine stone, textured the walls and ceiling, added light fixtures, doors, bathroom fixtures and a travertine shower in what is now the master bedroom and en-suite.
Remember this?
Our bedroom when we tore out the floor. When we bough the place, the home inspection report listed 60 pages of itemized reason why we should NOT buy. Home inspection reports are for unimaginative wimps.
After we were done
Surprisingly, this years project went much faster and easier than I had expected, something that is quite unusual for me. While well intentioned, I am usually ridiculously optimistic about how long things will take me to finish, to the point that anyone who knows me usually ignores any predictions I make as to completion dates. I may come within budget, but rarely on time. The before and after pictures are quite startling, even to us. We quickly forget how it used to be after the changes are made. OK, here is a peek at how it turned out.
This was our front entry at the time of purchase. The lack of curb appeal was obvious.
Our property is on a double lot and is shaped somewhat like a wedge. The entry is at the pointy end near the street and gives not a hint of the villa's 3000 sq ft (276 sq m) size. From the street you can't see the sea even though you know you are close.
Invariably, when people enter for the first time, they step into the short hallway to the living room where they gasp at a wall to wall view of the sea below at the widest part of the property through the 7 floor to ceiling glass panes of the 2 double wide French doors that open to the upper terrace. Their reaction is like our pulling the curtain back in the movie the 'Wizard of Oz'.
View of the raw framing under the roof of our entry
As little as there may have been to our entry, we needed to get real and kick up the curb appeal a notch. So, we tore out the stones that were uneven and picked up all manners of dirt, leaves and trash that the wind blew in. After laying a new cement slab, I tiled the floor. Next, was having a glass wall with double entry doors installed. Rewiring to put in some recessed lights, I helped Janice drywall the ceiling with a hand troweled texture and finally added a few furnishing touches to do the trick.
Done deal.
Then there was the colorful wall art piece. Oh, boy... There are two things that Janice and I struggle to see eye to eye on. One is music. I lean towards the 'Grateful Dead'. She leans toward the seriously and completely dead. As in Mel Torme, Tchaikovsky and other relics from the past. I think music should not only be heard but felt. One of us plays music at a volume to wake up the dead, the other at what I am told is at a reasonable level. You figure out who is who.
The second is art. We are in different universes here. We are rarely simpatico on a piece so when we do find one, we jump on it as it is not likely to happen again anytime soon. Speaking of universes, that is what happened here. We chose a triptych that is like a photo of part of the universe you have seen taken from the Hubble space telescope. Very colorful, trippy, awesome and 'spacy' looking. It just struck a nerve with us and was sooooooo not French. Trying to integrate ourselves into the local culture can only go so far.
New entry sitting area and wall art
We ordered the piece last summer when we were at the island. As usual, we plan our projects 8 months ahead, so we picked it then, knowing what we had envisioned when we would return. It was much cheaper to order it while in Canada, even though it was printed on metal In India. When we got it, we flew it with us to California, then on to Seattle when we visited the kids in the fall, and finally our trip home to the South of France. That sucker traveled a total of over 17,000 miles (27,000 km).
So much for curb appeal, it was time to end the side distraction and get on with the main project of the season. This year saw us tackle the dining / living room and the garden level bedroom (#4). This will leave us to complete the 2nd kitchen, another bathroom and the last (#5) bedroom next year.
Before
View of the lower terrace at the living room / dining room entry level
After
I started the interior work by cutting the slits in the walls and ceilings to bury electrical wires for outlets, lights and switches.
Predictable, it caused a little dust, so I made sure to cover the sofa with a good layer of plastic until we could...
...give the room a good spring cleaning. Considering the area had been vacant for 25+ years, the cobwebs were thick and the dirt was ground in, so I power washed the ceilings, walls and floors. With all windows and doors opened 24 hours a day, the room dried in only 4 days. Once done, the walls and ceilings got a hand troweled textured finish, light fixtures installed and furniture brought in. Add a little Janice decorating magic and TA-DA!
Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing. The room had what at first was somewhat of an issue: an unconventional low ceiling. This not being our first rodeo, we did what we always do... turn an issue into a feature! Using a tried and true principle of magic, we hid it in plain sight by giving the room a bit of a cozy intimate wine cellar look by building the arches and laying refractory bricks. 886 of them to be exact, but other than me, who's counting?
The gizmo on the barrel at right is a wine bottle corker. Here, we have access to bulk premium wines from the local vineyards and we can bottle our wine ourselves. The doo-dah on the far barrel is a wine bottle opener so you can safely stay on the sofa and not lose your balance walking around.
The two built in wood niches used to be old style cast iron radiator inserts. 3 years ago when we bought the place and started to clean up the garden, I cut hundreds of these branches with an eye to using them in this way when the room would be done. When our neighbor watched me stack boxes and boxes of these at the time, she thought I was nuts.
Close up of wall art
We put this little art piece together when we found these Indian blocks. They would stamp the blocks on an ink pad then transfer the design onto fabric. What does this have to do with a French wine cellar? Nothing, but it is so organic looking we thought it looked great.
Next came the garden bedroom. This was the saddest part of the place as it had the look of an abandoned farm building as seen below. It, too, got the above treatment after it got new entry doors and a tiled terrace. The 'middle' terrace is right above this bedroom. All 3 terraces have a sea view right behind where I am standing to take this picture.
Before
What's not to love? A blank canvas ready for our touch.
After
After
The 'desk' was a raw piece of wood destined for the fireplace when I recovered it from a friend before we moved from Brittany. Into the back of the moving truck it went. After a little refinishing, it turned out to be a beautiful slab of Oak wood and was perfect for the room. The wood wall feature is Olive wood that we acquired from a local sawyer who harvests unproductive trees from Italy and Spain.
With a new heat exchanger (heat and A/C) unit, lights, a Travertine stone floor, staircase, the 'desk' and this bad boy started to look pretty sweet for a 14' X 15' (18.5 sq m) bedroom.
Click on the arrow to see our day at the beach
Today is May 15th. We are slowly winding down our stay here and I hear the sweet sound of an airplane calling my name. Besides we have a little project awaiting us at the island...
