You are looking down from the mezzanine.
The top half of our house, known as The Loft, started out as an architect's studio, white and bare.
We are proud to have renovated and divided it up into rooms using ecological methods and materials, to have furnished it with things found in bins and brocantes, and with the the cheapest and most ecological that IKEA can provide, and to have decorated with ecological paints.
I'm very pleased with this little number, made from two IKEA ladder shelves, and some untreated wood box files stained in sun colours.
The large yellow wardrobe we hauled on our backs from where it had been abandoned by the previous owner in the basement, we re-constructed it, cut it to fit and painted it. It houses our computer among other things.
Every last little corner was organised, beautified,
...the tasteless curtains were made from a 1970s tent liner, abandoned in a scout hut, the cupboard cost 3 Euros in a brocante.
...the tasteless curtains were made from a 1970s tent liner, abandoned in a scout hut, the cupboard cost 3 Euros in a brocante.
The Loft was transformed into a veritable Temple to the Sun God...
...and just as I arranged the last art and craft tool in the last jar and wedged the cupboard door shut, feeling like Lucy the Prehistoric Woman, my back bent double and my knuckles brushing the floor, it was obvious there would be no more box lifting for me for a while, yes, just as I found myself late for the cooking dinner and getting children to bed shift, bereft of a single shred of strength, my husband J-C said to me...
Lightening flashed, horror film chords struck,
'AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH'
whimpered Lucy the Perhistoric Woman.
'THIS IS SIMPLY NOT POSSIBLE...you are maaad, maaad maaad...' (collapses on floor face contorted in a gruesome mask of pain).
'THIS IS SIMPLY NOT POSSIBLE...you are maaad, maaad maaad...' (collapses on floor face contorted in a gruesome mask of pain).
What is the problem, I hear you ask. This is the problem, yes, here it is, exposed. You are going down into the basement...SHOCK
HORROR
PROBE
Yes, while I was waxing lyrical about beautiful boudoirs and palaces to the Sun God, the horrible truth was lurking below. Shock, horror probe! Yes the sordid truth is, that while we were gagging with horror and snorting with superiority over How Clean is Your House, secretly, our Hell Hole Basement could have qualified for an entertaining episode.
How did it come to this, the interviewers would ask, as Aggie ran her pastic gloved finger over the cement dust?This lot was dumped in the basement two years ago, when we moved in, and while we converted half of our house from an empty office into a house.
It was like this: on the day we moved house, I said to the removal men said I ' Put all boxes on these tables, not more than 2 boxes high as we will have to store them here for some time, while we renovate The Loft, and I want to be able to access my things.
'Yes madam' they said, as they rushed by heaving and dumping...my boxes, 16 boxes high, anywhere they fancied.
Then we found out the concrete floor had never set properly while the foundations were layed, and was effectively, 5 centimetres of carenogenic lung-caking cement dust.
Life happened, we rummaged, we added to it, mixed it up, kneaded it, turned it over, rummaged in it again - until it was done. As you can see.
This was the beginning of the end, the day we began the basement.
And the basic fact is, since then, we have been sorting out the basement...
We are still doing it. One day, our whole house will be organised. I hope this has karmic significance. If not, I may ask the question; what happened to our life?
