You place the flowers in the vase

One of my readers, Ron of Retired in Delaware, recently asked to see a picture of our house. I directed him to the archive category "our house" which includes many photos of the house, but you have to sift through the over two hundred posts to find a shot of the front (sorry, Ron!). So I thought I should just go outside and take a new picture.

Chez nous, 21 April 2011. Soon there will be flowers in the window boxes. Click to maisonify.

This is the house just after eight o'clock on Thursday morning. The morning sun is filtered by the twin red maple trees on the east end of the property. If you've been here, you know that the main living space is on the second floor which is called the first floor in France (because it's the first "floor" above the ground level). The ground level is called the rez-de-chaussée (road level).

On our rez-de-chaussée we have a garage, a utility room, a pantry, and a small entry hall with a wide stair that climbs up to the first floor. There we have a good-sized living/dining room with doors out onto the deck, a kitchen, a bedroom, a den (or second bedroom), a bathroom, and a wc (water closet or toilet).

Last year we had a hole punched in the ceiling and a second stair added up to the attic which we were having finished. The attic is now one large space that we use for our bedroom, tv room, and Ken's office. If you click on the "attic conversion" label in the right-hand column, you can see the transformation of the attic into living space.

So there you have it. And now, one year after we started the attic conversion, we're finishing up the painting on the first floor landing and hall where the new stair is. The old ugly wallpaper is history and the walls look much, much cleaner as you can see in this photo that Ken took this week.