Our Little Place in France: January 2014

Saturday, January 25, 2014

Bathroom Addition

As I mentioned earlier, a bathroom addition is highest priority on our renovation list. The house of course was built before indoor plumbing, so at some point a toilet was put under the stairs. Later, when the French decided regular bathing was a good idea, a shower was added and drywall put up, taking space out of the kitchen. Not only is it a cramped little bathroom, but the water seeps out of the shower into the drywall and presumably the floor, so we want to get it out as soon as we can. I also hate shower curtains.

Shower

Current Bathroom

Because I have a hard time with spatial visualization (thus I'm not an engineer or interior designer), I made Jörg tape everything off with me so I could get an idea of how it would fit together. There are two windows in the back bedroom and we didn't want to give up the beautiful light by closing it in, so the bathroom will be open to the bedroom. We plan to have some type of panels up the wall to the horizontal line so that the plumbing and electrical can go in behind, without having to cut into the old stone walls. This will also provide a ledge which one can put toiletries on while getting ready. I had wanted the tub parallel to the window, but the contractor and Jörg think it is better perpendicular, so they are probably going to win out.

The picture below is the original inspiration for what we want to do with the wooden ledge and the Kohler Brockway double sink that we fell in love with. Of course it is quite expensive, but we never found anything else that quite measured up.

We haven't completely settled on the color, but we are leaning toward leaving the upper wall and the rest of the bedroom white and painting the panelling in the typical grayish/green of Southern France.

Deciding on the tub has been the biggest challenge. We wanted a Victorian-style claw foot cast iron tub, since it will be the centerpiece of the room, but they are so big and heavy that it would be prohibitive to get one up the narrow old wooden staircase both because of the size and the weight. We then looked at other options like acrylic, enameled steel, and composite materials. Finding what we want is doubly difficult because we have to find vendors in Europe who will ship to France. Because I can't deal with negotiating with people, this part has fallen on Jörg, who is quite over it. One of the options under consideration is a composite material from a British company called Victoria + Albert. They are made from "finely ground volcanic limestone carefully blended with high quality resins." Because we aren't familiar with the material, we located a store in San Francisco that carries their line for a trial run.

Amazingly, we both really like the tub, although the display model they had (above) is the standard 60" length and the one we plan to get is 7" longer.

Finally, Jörg fell in love with these industrial-style sconces from a German company.

After three weeks of going back and forth, I think we have finally settled on the basics. Jörg even made a spreadsheet of all of the options we are considering - very un-Jörglike when it comes to matters of the home.

Although finding fixtures we can agree on is going to cost us an arm and a leg, since this is our forever home we are going to make the investment. Our philosophy is perfectly summed up in this sign we saw today in a store in Bernal Heights. It is a school uniform/fancy dress store for children (saw it and stopped in for a princess dress for my visit to see Mei over February Break), where a sweet old lady has been selling uniforms to kids of the poorer neighborhoods of San Francisco for 34 years.

Thank God we are not renovating an entire home all at once! I don't think our marriage or our budget could handle it.

Basic Difference

Hard to believe it has only been three weeks since we returned from France, because it feels like months ago! This is mainly due to starting up the new semester at school and finishing up reading UC Berkeley apps, which was completed this week. This is the first weekend I have had completely free since starting to write recommendation letters at the end of September. Taxes are up next, but I only have to do two sets this year (as opposed to the FOUR we have had to prepare since 2008)!

Reflecting on the trip, other than the house being so cold for the first few days, we are very happy with the purchase. It is solid and comfortable, but has a lot of areas where we can put our own touch and improvements. Jörg is already planning his trip for March, when he will deliver some furniture from Germany and my next goal is to start learning basic French.

An interesting observation I had on the trip that shows a basic difference between Jörg and I, both in the way we view the house and more broadly how we view life: When we arrived at Brussels and had to clear immigration, as usual Jörg sprinted to the EU citizen line with his German passport, leaving me for what he calls "the loser line". While we were having a coffee and waiting for our flight to Toulouse, I asked him, "what did you say to the immigration officer was the purpose of your trip?" Without hesitation, he said "vacation!" When I was asked the same question in my line, I hesitated, then had to say "because we bought a house here." I didn't want to sound pretentious, and the agent didn't care either way, but a) I didn't want to lie to an officer of the law, and b) I really don't view going to work on the house as vacation. It isn't that I'm not excited about it or don't love it, but I just can't see it as a "vacation" (that would be laying on the beach in Hawaii or a room at the Ritz in London).

Thursday, January 2, 2014

Project #1

Our 2014 project for the house is to have an ensuite bathroom put into the back bedroom. Because I have a hard time with spacial visualization, we taped off the plan and then met with a contractor to formalize. Hopefully when Jörg is back in March the upstairs floors will be refinished and the bathroom will be in!