French renovations, day 7

A whole lot of steps
Trash total: 22 bags, 11 hand loads

I spent the morning cleaning and organizing the back room. I like a nice tidy workspace, even though it will get dirty again. I sorted through all of the ceiling beams and kept the best ones. The rest went into the trash--they had way too many nails to be worth keeping.

I then had to carry everything to the garbage station: 4 bags of debris and dust and 9 armfuls of beams. It is so satisfying to work with my hands and not just with my brain.

Zari took all the kids out to the park while I was working. Thank you to all the kids for letting me work! Zari filmed a sibling dance competition, which I haven't had time to see yet.

During one of my trips up to the garbage station (literally "up" as it's uphill on the rue Rosetti), I ran into the owner of the Café Simone. We cross each other all the time but never really talked until now. He thought we were Dutch, which happens a lot. We chatted about what brought both of us to Nice.

We're in the middle of some drama with the owner of the other part of the basement. Prior to the 1960s, they were affiliated with the Communist Party but eventually ended up changing names and splitting ownership of the various parts of the building. This group owns the first floor (called the "rez-de-chaussez" here) plus one of the "caves" or cellars in the basement. (There are 2 cellars, a big one and a small one; we own the small one. They don't have labels on them, but they are partitioned with 3-foot-thick load-bearing stone walls that have obviously not been moved since the building was built 5 or 6 centuries ago.) This group thought they owned the whole basement and have been using it exclusively for the past several decades--and they are the only ones with the keys.

However, the legal paperwork shows otherwise: the Communist Party owned the smaller "cave" in the basement. However, they had forgotten about it over the years until they got the papers together to sell the apartment.

So what is the drama? The owner of the other cellar doesn't want to give the small cellar up! We met with the owner twice in the spring and thought we had worked everything out. We looked at the cellars and agreed on which one was ours (the much smaller one), and he said he'd give us the keys. But when I wrote him an email yesterday letting him know that we had signed the papers and asking if we could get a set of keys to the basement, he called back very angry and said he was contesting our ownership of the small cellar.

He's been sent all of the legal paperwork, contacted by the notary, but he still insists that we should at best only have a small portion of one of the cellars. He won't accept anything without a drawing of the exact square footage of what is ours (which doesn't exist in any of the governmental records--our notary checked).

So we have to try to mediate this with him...and worst case, go through a legal process to have them declared as squatters. The representative from the Communist Party is really frustrated on our behalf and said, "Don't worry, we always have Plan B: I call my lawyer!" I told him I hope it wouldn't come to that.

After a shower & lunch, Zari and Ivy helped me and Eric in the front half. We took down most of the wood paneling. Zari and Ivy were our nail pullers. It's slow work. Eric wants to throw all of the paneling away, but I think it would make a great ceiling for the bottom of the mezzanines (painted a nice glossy white). Bead board is a classic look and it would be free. So for now, I'm going to pull all of the nails and stack it away in case we end up using it.

We stopped at the underside of the mezzanine. There was too much dust and we weren't masked up.

 

I also rescued three very nice duvet covers from the garbage. I have no shame! I threw them in the wash and they are good as new! I don't need any immediately, but it's nice to have extras in case of spills...or perhaps we'll use them once the apartment downstairs is finished. I might even use one of them as a drop cloth. I usually throw things away more than I accumulate, but renovating makes me take a creative look at reusing things. Our budget for this project is "spend as little as possible, make it as nice as possible."

Zari helped me make dinner: Thai coconut chicken soup. SO GOOD! I don't know why I haven't made this for so long.

Here's the recipe (serves 4, so of course I made double). I didn't have parsley on hand. 

• 3 1/2 c. coconut milk (2 cans)
• 1 c water or chicken broth
• 1 lb. chicken, cut in 1" cubes
• 1/2 lb. mushrooms
• 1 oz. fresh ginger, grated or finely shredded
• 1 oz. fresh lemongrass (finely mince the tender inner part, and throw the hard outer stalks in the pot after bruising them a few times)
• 3 jalapenos, sliced (leave seeds in if you like it really hot)
• 1/3 c. lime juice
• 3 Tbsp. fish sauce
• 1 Tbsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 Tbsp. parsley, chopped
• 1 Tbsp. sweet chili sauce

Bring coconut milk and 1 cup water to a boil. Add ginger, jalapenos, lemongrass, and cook at medium heat for a few minutes. add chicken, salt, fish sauce, sugar, parsley, and lime juice. Cook until chicken is done. Throw mushrooms in, cook 1-2 more minutes, and serve. Add sweet chili sauce to taste. Serves 4.