Before and after

A good friend of mine has told me many times that he thinks blogging is a form of exhibitionnisme. I guess he's right. You have to be slightly exhibitionist to display pictures of your house and write regularly about your personal and family life in blog posts.

But this is our life in Saint-Aignan. And the attic conversion was a project we conceived when we first moved into this house seven years ago. Or even before. Because of economic realities — the falling U.S. dollar, mainly — and immigration realities — it took us six years to get our cartes de résident — the work was long postponed.

Yesterday we moved the living room furniture upstairs,
where we imagined putting it when we bought it seven years ago.

If Walt and I didn't live here full time — and I really mean full time, because 95% of the time at least one of us is in the house — I guess I could worry about burglars seeing these posts. Not that we have anything of any real value. Just computers and TVs and stereo equipment. Kitchen things. A dog and a cat.

Before...

...and after

Yesterday we hauled the sofa, TV, and coffee table upstairs. Now the loft is officially our family room. Our private space. My computer room. Our sleeping area. Downstairs, there's the kitchen, living room — la salle de séjour, they call it in France, which means a dining area and a sitting area — the guest room, and the "den," where Walt has his computer but which can serve as a second guest room for one person. That's our "public" space.

This will be the downstairs sitting area.

It's getting a good cleaning.

It's still a work in progress, but what house isn't? We have a lot of work to do before the upstairs will feel really homey, and we have a lot of work to do downstairs to turn what is now a big empty space into a nice sitting area. I'd better get back to it. I have a lot of old pieces of furniture that could use a good coat of varnish.