A keeper, and a goner

I've learned a new term during all this bathroom work: une vasque. That means "a basin" — as a sink or tub. A bathroom sink in France is called un lavabo if it's large, or un lave-mains if it's small. A kitchen sink is called un évier.

Here's the sink in our downstairs WC. After first thinking of replacing it, we finally decided it was a keeper. It's good to keep some original features in the house.

Once our decision was made, we talked to the plumber about putting in a new drain pipe, trap, and plug in the sink. He suggested what he calls un clic-clac. It's a kind of spring-loaded "push-button" plug. You push down on it and it closes; you press down on it again and it pops open. The only disadvantage with it, I think, is that is you have filled the sink with very hot water, putting your hand in there to pop the plug open might be uncomfortable. Previously, the drain in this lave-mains was just a wide open hole. There was a rubber plug hanging on a chain. The danger was that things could fall into the drain. And it was ugly. This looks better, even though the sink and backsplash need a good cleaning and a new bead of silicone.

The "goner" is the new sink I ordered for the upstairs WC. It's just too small. Maybe it feels that way because I wanted such a big faucet on it. I'd like to be able to fill watering cans or other containers because I'd like to keep a few potted plants up in the loft. Hauling water upstairs all the time is a pain.

Problem is, every time I turn on the water in the new "little corner" and stick my hands under it to wash them, water splashes all over the room. We talked to the plumber, who says he can take it down and put up a bigger sink and cabinet. I can return the sink to Amazon for a refund. If the cabinet, after being glued and screwed to the wall, ends up not being returnable because it would be considered damaged, that's okay. We can use it elsewhere. Notice that we still haven't even peeled off the plastic film that was applied to protect the finish from dings and scratches.

So here's the new wall-mounted cabinet and sink. It's the same width as the one above, but it's twice as "deep" — no, I don't mean the depth of the basin. I mean how far it sticks out from the wall. It's 43 x 49 centimeters; that's 17 inches by 19¼ inches. The smaller one pictured above is about the same width but only 22 centimeters (about 9 inches) in the other dimension. I don't know why I thought the new WC was going to be so tiny that it needed a tiny sink. Instead of the tiny lave-mains, now we'll have a full-size lavabo up there. I hope.

The other nice thing about the new cabinet is that it has two big drawers in it for storing whatever we want to store in the new WC. You can probably tell that this is an Ikea product. It has that look. We hope the plumber will come today and do the work of taking down the smaller cabinet and sink and install this model in its place. We're also waiting to have the new toilet installed in the downstairs WC. A friend of ours will be arriving on Friday to spend the weekend, and it sure would be nice to have all the plumbing functional by then.

Weather obsessed. And duck!

Accuweather says the temperature hit 39ºC here yesterday. Our outdoor thermometer, located on the north side of the house, read about 36º. It was about 32º in the house. We closed shutters and shades on the west-facing back of the house (two windows in the loft and 4 on the main level), but we kept the windows on the north and east sides open. I'm not really a fan of living in darkness. We toughed it out, and I was able to sleep when bedtime came.

We had duck legs cooked on the barbecue grill for lunch. I read about cooking them that way on the internet, where a French chef posted his method: put the legs on the grill at very low temperature and cook them for an hour or more. Actually, I cooked them in our countertop oven in a baking dish for about 90 minutes at about 140ºC (285ºF). That way I could "capture" the duck fat they released as they cooked.

Walt then grilled the duck legs to brown them while I opened a jar of the French white beans called mogettes, which are grown and packed in the Vendée region. In other words, we kept indoor cooking to a minimum because it was a hot day. When the duck legs came out of their baking dish and went on the grill, I poured the beans into the dish and stirred them around in the duck fat. I set the dish in the countertop oven until the beans started to bubble slightly. Lunch was then served, with salads (carottes râpées, céleri rémoulade, etc.) following the main course.

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Back to the weird weather: Accuweather and MétéoFrance both predict a high temperature of about 32ºC for Saint-Aignan today. Their forecasts have been on the high side compared to the temperatures our thermometer has been registering. It's breezy and cool this morning, so maybe it will be significantly cooler all day. Actually, MétéoCiel says we should expect a high of 28ºC this afternoon. That would be nice. It's supposed to turn even cooler tomorrow. We have survived.

France or Las Vegas?

Yesterday France recorded the highest temperature that has ever been recorded in the country. It was about 115ºF (just shy of 46ºC — off the chart) in the town of Gallargues-le-Montueux, in the South of France about halfway between the cities of Nîmes and Montpellier. Here in Saint-Aignan, our thermometer read about 36ºC in the afternoon, and the temperature in the house was in the high 80s in ºF.

I just took this photo of some of our heat-loving potted plants out on the deck. They seem happy with the current weather conditions — as long as we keep them watered. You'll recognize the basil on the right, and that's a Donkey's Tail plant (Sedum morganianum) on the left. It's a Mexican succulent. In the planter box hanging off the deck rail is a clump of Sempervivum tectorum, called Joubarbes in French and Houseleeks or Hens and Chicks in English.

Finally, here are a Jade plant that I've had going for years, and a big pot of Aucuba that seems happy with its growing conditions. Thanks to CHM for the Aucuba cuttings.

Today is supposed to be even hotter here. MétéoFrance, the national weather service, says we should expect a high temperature of 39ºC. Accuweather says to expect a high of 37ºC — that's the normal human body temperature, or 98.6ºF. We'll see who's right.

Today is supposed to be the last really hot day, at least for a while.

Un grand « petit coin »

I'm realizing something this morning. I think we could have made the new WC a lot smaller than we did. I suppose an argument could be made for having made it so spacious. Later, after we're gone, somebody might decide to put a small shower stall in there.

Here's the WC in the gîte rural we stayed in last October in the Vendée, out on the Atlantic coast. It really was a petit coin — and rustic-looking. It was downstairs in the rental property, off the kitchen. There was a full bathroom, with a toilet, sink, and shower, upstairs.

And here's the petit coin in the gîte rural we stayed in last March in Le Puy-en-Velay (Auvergne). It was more finished, felt cleaner, and was located off the living room. There was the same kind of bathroom upstairs as in the Vendée gîte — shower, sink, and toilet.

I thought our new WC was going to be a cramped space. I was wrong. It's a big room, considering its function. We'll be able to put a storage cabinet inside, to the right of the door. We might also decide to put a shelving unit or cabinet of some kind on the opposite side of the room. I'm thinking we might have chosen a larger sink too. Things can always be changed.

Here's the WC door. You can't really see through it, but the frosted glass panels let in daylight from the window on the right. That's nice, even though the light fixture we found and have had installed over the door lights the room more than adequately. In this photo, the light inside is switched on.