25 June 2019

Reasonable heat and progress

Yesterday's high temperature on our outdoor thermometer was only 30.4ºC — see the temperature conversion table on the right for the ºF equivalent. This morning, the temperature outside is about 21ºC. I got up at 4 a.m. and started opening windows and shutters to let the cool air in. So far, sleeping is comfortable and the house isn't too hot (23.4ºC).


Meanwhile, progress continues on the new "facilities" upstairs in the loft. Detail work remains to be done up there — a shelf on the ledge over the sink and toilet, baseboards all around the inside and outside of the room, a toilet seat, the pocket door, a couple of coats of paint — but the focus is now shifting to the work needed in the downstairs bathroom and throne room. Pipes between the downstairs half-bath and the upstairs half-bath still need to be connected together.






Yesterday the building contractors boxed in the big drain pipe that runs from the new "loo" down through the floor and along a corner of the bathroom. The resulting column will be painted the same color as the walls. We'll be getting a new "wall-hung" toilet in the downstairs petit coin too. Both toilets will drain through the same pipe out to the sewer mains.


I happened upon a nice light fixture for the new W.C. on amazon.fr last week, and I ordered it. After I did, I got worried that at just 600 lumens of éclairage it was going to be too dim. Doesn't it look like something you'd see in the Starship Enterprise?

It came yesterday and the contractors installed it. Walt got up a few minutes ago — it was still pretty dark outside and in the loft — and switched on the new loo light. "It's almost blinding," he said. That means it's fine and bright enough for the space.







Here's that boxed-in pipe in the bathroom downstairs. Not much of it will be visible, because under the white cabinet we have a little brown wood cabinet that we moved out of the way for the duration of the construction project. We'll paint the column to match the walls. And yes, that's a bidet next to the sink. We've kept it because it's a nice French touch in the room.




I was just looking at the MétéoFrance web site, and they appear to have lowered temperature predictions for the rest of the week. They say we might have temps of 34, 35 or 36ºC, instead of 39 or 40 degrees. The other site we follow, MétéoCiel, actually has the highs Wednesday through Friday two or three degrees lower. That's significant, and better.



13 comments:

  1. Will you be having a first flush party?

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    1. Probably. We'll pop open a bottle of bubbly with the contractors the evening they finish the work.

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    2. Do you use the expression "go potty" in your English? Or is it American? "Go potty" means going to the loo, not losing one's marbles.

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    3. English : 'Going potty' is to go slightly mad. A potty is what little kids use (usually now made of plastic). Pots are ceramics and I have gone slightly mad about Moorcroft ginger jars.

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  2. We are relieved, too, to see the lower predicated temperature. The polluntion haze, though, has settled in over Paris and I can feel it in my eyes.
    Having a toilet at each floor is important -- you don't want to trip and fall down the stairs on your way to the toilet or have to climb upstairs if that's where the only one is.

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    1. What goes up must come down, n'est-ce pas, Ellen? Et vice-versa. I haven't felt it in my eyes yet. There are fewer people and fewer cars making pollution out here in the country, I guess.

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  3. Your downstairs bath is also a half bath?

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    1. We have a half-bath (toilet and sink) plus a ¾-bath (sink, bidet, bathtub, shower) downstairs. No toilet in that bathroom.

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    2. I'm sure my husband would pee in the bidet and probably wash his feet in it.

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  4. Oh boy, it's looking good! I appreciate your showing us the progress :) It's fun to watch the changes you make in your house.
    Thinking of you in the heat!
    Judy

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    1. Heat is not too bad right now. Only 86ºF in the loft! Not humid though. Hotter tomorrow, Thurs., and Fri. Something to look forward to.

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  5. We had a separate loo in our old UK house, no sink in there. In the bathroom there was a sink, bath and shower, no loo. All very old fashioned and inconvenient (excuse pun).
    We knocked through from the bedroom into the toilet to make and ensuite with shower, loo and basin. We then remodelled the bathroom to add a loo. Much better. You can never have too many loos.
    My father recounts the tale of his mother coming home from work at a local gentry house where she was cleaner, cook and dogsbody and was outraged that her employers had plans to put a toilet INSIDE THE HOUSE! Apparently inside toilets were thought to be very unhygienic back in the 1930's!

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    1. The house I grew up in, built in 1910, originally had what we called an outhouse. We moved in in 1951 and indoor plumbing had been added on by then — I don't know when, but probably before the war. In 1960, when we went to see my mother's family in South Carolina, there was a pump in the kitchen and no indoor toilet or bath. They had a farm and kept cows, guinea fowl, chickens, and dogs. The outhouse was a few hundred yards from the house, through the woods, on the banks of a stream. It seemed awfully primitive to us.

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