Indoor Rain

Sometimes it's easy to forget just how much we've managed to get accomplished in the past four years. The pics today are the before and after shots of our upstairs library/office/study/studio, first as it was when we bought it, and then after we repainted & totally re-vamped it. We continue to have 'adventures' with the roof, however.

Our roof is rather mangy - an old, slate-tiled thing covered in moss (one can easily guess the age of a roof in Brittany by how many pads of moss have sprouted on it, and how thick they are). When we bought the house, the owner assured us that, "No, never, it had never given any problems!" so you can imagine our surprise a few months later when the first hard rain of October created a miniature waterfall down the stone wall of the spiral staircase.

Insert displeased face here.

What we've found over the past few years is that the brief periods of hard wind we have almost reliably take off a shingle or three, leading immediately to odd adventures in indoor rain. The day before yesterday, it blew so hard the trees were bending, and after this we were taken back four years by seeing a familiar thing, a nice stream of water running down the stone staircase wall again, stemming from an open hole about the size of my hand. So, we installed our giant bucket and wailed for the roofer, and today all is well. Odd, though - no call or advance warning or doorbell ring. I simply heard this mystery thunking from outside and opened the window to see a ladder coming at me, and roofing guys scrambling all over. They had the whole thing sorted in two hours, with numerous little holes and problem areas patched up. And I was amused, because it led me to another cultural observation - contractors are different in France, but they all seem to look like each other in the same way that US contractors do.

Call an electrician, or a roofer, or an HVAC guy in North Carolina, and what you'll get will almost always be: a great big guy, lots of gut and exposed butt crack, talking at full-blast volume, driving a huge pickup with a logo on the side and bumper stickers for NASCAR and Bush on the back. In France, the standard seems to be: a little short guy about 5' tall who looks like a Slim Jim meat stick come to life, with a weathered and wrinkled face like a saddlebag with eyes, smoking a Gaulloise. It's these things that make our cultures special ;)