Leaving our home in France for a visit in Canada seemed more difficult than usual this time. It is the first time we were leaving a house that was really ours. A house that we put a good amount of sweat into. It is where we braved the dust, where we camped kitchen-less, then saw the floor being laid, painted the walls, saw the kitchen go in.
And many, many weeks later the countertop too. The countertop was made by a Portuguese crew, and they DO NOT work in August. EVER.
So we lived with half of the electrical and lights working, with only cold water in the shower (a “feature” for August weather, really) and, despite the whirlwind, we are still making plans for future upgrades.
And maybe it’s more difficult to leave because we haven’t had time yet to enjoy the house after the renovations. The window installation, which was supposed to take three days, was almost two weeks long. It only fully finished at lunch the day before our trip.
The renovations were an all consuming activity. Lots of coordination of the trades, of material purchases, scheduling days off from work to be available for quotations, advice, or visits from the electrical company. Working from home was “compliqué”, meaning too difficult to do, with the noise and the dust, and the talkative nature of the contractors. I continued to work at the site office and Nicole had to organize the summer for the kids.
Above are four progress photos of “during and after” looking from our dining room into the kitchen. Top left is the first photo, where on the ceiling you can see the traces of the walls we removed. Bottom left is in progress. Jacob in the top right photo shows us that the ceiling is done and floor is leveled. The last photo has Nicole’s hand pointing at the freshly laid floor tiles.
We didn’t make any vacation plans to leave town, expecting to have to be flexible and to accommodate the contractors’ schedules. We were also concerned about construction or material delivery delays foiling our carefully prepared trips. On top of that we had a fair amount of reno work that we chose to undertake ourselves – removing wallpaper, smoothing out the walls and then painting. The thought of taking off any more wallpaper gives Nicole an allergic reaction.
I would call our project a success overall. Thanks to our main contractor being unusually solid for the South of France we were able to keep to our schedule. We moved into the house four weeks after the renovations started. Kitchen arrived a week later. In the meantime we used the “guest suite” kitchen, which is sized and equipped for a studio apartment, and not for five people with appetite multiplied by scraping and painting.
Here are four photos of the kitchen in a strange order. Bottom right is “before”, then clockwise walls and floor are progressively removed, and top right is after the kitchen counter is installed.
We stayed in Manosque until the very end of August, when we took just one long weekend off. We ventured west to visit with some friends in Montpelier and Bézier, and make a quick tourist stop at Pézenas (in the photo above), during a lovely weekend away.
The start of the school year was our easiest yet. Everyone was in the same place as the year before. Jacob’s second year, and Ron and Patrick’s third at the same school. We moved a little bit closer for Jacob. It is now faster for him to roll down the hill to school on his bike, than for me to drive him and sit in the traffic. For the twins the walk is quite a bit longer. But it’s along a nice canal, and it is still a walk. However, instead of coming home for lunch, they started eating at the school canteen, since the twenty minute walk there and back would only leave about an hour to eat at home… crazy short, right? Well, and Nicole would be basically spending her day shuttling between home and school.
Being able to leave the kids at school all day also leaves Nicole some free time for employment. It all came to a head a week before leaving for Vancouver holidays – Nicole was wrapping up window installation, packing our bags, and starting a new job. Now, Nicole is preparing her material during this vacation for teaching English to French elementary school kids. Sounds like a real teacher already.
I’m finishing up this message on our flight back home. So today this day only has 16 hours (due to the daylight savings nonsense that happened in Europe, but not yet in Vancouver), and we are going to be struggling over the weekend to adjust so we can all be functioning on Monday.
We came and went through Vancouver “like thieves in the night”. Just like last time, we only saw very few people. We can really only afford this kind of a trip once a year, and we only have two weeks each time, so outside of immediate family we see very few people. You’re just going to have to come here and visit us.
à la prochaine!