Remue-ménage

Déplacement de meubles, d'objets divers qui crée un état de confusion, de désordre momentané — that's the dictionary definition. Moving furniture. Causing chaos. Out with the old and in with the new. What was it all about? We got a new rug. A rug that goes under the sofa upstairs in the loft, to protect the floor and keep the furniture from sliding around. I just couldn't stand the old rug any more.

We had the loft, the attic, converted into living space 10 years ago. We painted the walls white, and we had a knotty pine floor put down — nearly 650 square feet of it (60 m²) — the loft space about 32 x 20 feet. We left the loft open — no walls except to enclose the half-bathroom we had built out and installed in one corner in 2019. We left the roof trusses exposed. A lot of French houses are done this way nowadays, since nobody stores grain in the hayloft any more.

To get the old rug out and the new one in, we had to take all cushions off the sofa and turn it up on its back to get it out of the way. We had to move other pieces of furniture too — an end table, two footstools, an armchair, and a long bookcase full of (mostly) cookbooks. And then of course it all had to be put back together. This is our bedroom/family room, as well as my main computer workstation.

As I said, this is our family room. Our TV room. It's our private space, as opposed to the "public space" for company downstairs. And it needed a good autumn cleaning. Don't focus on the dust and dog hair... The new rug is made of all natural fibers (jute). It's 3 meters long and two meters wide — about 10 x 6½ feet.

The towel over the middle of the sofa is for Tasha and/or Bertie to sit on while we watch television in the evening. The lighthouse lamp is one that my parents gave me for Christmas when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old — so it is getting close to 65 years old. If you look closely, you can see Bertie the black cat sleeping on the bed in the background. The remue-ménage didn't phase him.

In the afternoon, the work done and the room put back together, I glanced out one of the Velux skylight windows up in the loft and saw the scene above. The vineyard is golden now and steely November clouds are blowing by.