They Wash Rugs Don't They?

The spring is a magical time in Finland; as the sun kisses the frosty land, slowly melting the snow and a layer of dog shit usually around two foot deep, and each of our thousands of lakes is suddenly freed of ice, shortly followed by millions of birds returning to their shores to nest… so the first Finn crawls out of their cave – and immediately seeks to start a fight for the best position at the local rug-washing station. 

Washing of the rugs is an important task for the Finn, the alpha and omega of good housekeeping.  Although wearing shoes is strictly forbidden inside Finnish homes as to keep our rugs clean, allowing only a rare exception: a baptism, birthday or a funeral, those jolly summer parties we all love and cherish and whip out the good china for.  The rugs must be washed annually.  

Dirty or not. 

Finnish rug washing in Tervo and mangling in Pirkkala - images borrowed from their sites respectfully.

Before moving to Scotland and later to France, I too engaged in this national sport.  And why not - it is made very easy for you as even the smallest villages would have a station, usually outdoors and near a lake, where you can take your carpets, (handmade by grandmothers if you’re a traditionalist or bought if you’re city scum) scrub them clean with pine soap, mangle and hung them to dry.  Like most decent people with an acute sense of good housekeeping, I like my rugs cleaned annually. 

No exceptions.

As we joined our lives and possessions, James, who is to thank for most of our furniture, contributed three stunning carpets to our shared home.  My inner Finn roared and rumbled as I discovered these rugs have never been washed.  Gross.  So unhygienic.  So English!  Three years and a dog later, the carpets remained unwashed and my Finnish needs unsatisfied.  There was nowhere to go, no mangle and they were too heavy.  Then my mother came for a visit and gears started to turn…

Conveniently, I was feeling under the weather on strong antibiotics, having just hurt my face and rendered one of my hands temporarily unusable in an incident involving a stray feline, so it was up to James and ma to get the washing started.  As the nearest rug station is around two thousand kilometres away, we made our own from two architect’s tables, a pressure washer and a few bars of Marseille-soap.  My mum scrubbed as James wielded the pressure washer, starting from the dirtiest rug as I napped upstairs.  It took a bit of grunt, I was told, but the results were truly stunning.  This blond rug with red, white and pale blue accents had gotten so dirty it was nearly all grey to the point where you could hardly distinguish the pattern.  After the wash, Finnish mum-style, it was like brand new. 

James, seduced by the power of his beloved pressure washer, also cleaned up parts of our exterior walls that had gotten mossy over the years, again, with a glorious effect.  I woke up from my nap just in time to capture few snaps of the action and take credit for the job in the eyes of our elderly neighbour who probably thought we were barking mad as the French, together with the Brits, hardly wash their rugs.  Perhaps they just really love shake and vac? 

Bof - Je ne sais pas.

And speaking of our neighbour, although she sneaks us greetings from Jehova every now and then, I really like her and often practise my gardening vocabulary on her as she has the most beautiful jardin I have ever seen.  It has got the perfect balance between a traditional potager with an addition of tomatoes, salads, pumpkin etc. and a flower garden with roses and perennials.  We have a few pots of cherry tomatoes, patisson-squash, strawberries and herbs ourselves and they do give us a good crop but wouldn’t sustain us for the nuclear-winter if you know what I mean.  Anyhow, I like my gardening like I like my men: easy and low maintenance.  Having said that, it is also great to see some of my gladioli finally starting to flower.  The bulbs were planted a tad bit late this spring and my expectations for a flower-show this summer were pretty non-existent.

Fresh from the garden... 

As it stands we are waiting for a hot and sunny weekend to finish up the last of our rugs.  The woollen ones take a day or two to dry completely, but it’s worth it – if not for anything else other than my peace of mind.  I had this funny moment when I caught a glimpse of our freshly scrubbed piece of carpet drying in the garden as the sun slipped behind a wispy cloud: just in that moment there, somewhere far away, my old granny looked down and smirked.  The dirty skank washed hers never. 

Wonderwall

Wonderwall (Noun) 

“A barrier which separates the mundane from the Transcendent Reality. A true Wonderwall will always have a crack, or a slit or an opening which allows anyone a glimpse of what lies beyond the Wonderwall.”

Do you ever catch yourself staring at a project, an unfinished wall perhaps or a gargantuan pile of ironing and say to yourself will this job ever be finished?  I love my old house with its rough edges and all its imperfections, but living inside a project does take its toll:  I get fed up of clearing up fallen plaster, let it collect in the skewed corners around the house and I tire of fighting the armies of spiders we share this house with, allow them to conquer the contours of our stairwell and erect their flags in the ceiling.  The work never ends.  Priming a wall can take a week when the moral is low.

This is usually when my husband strolls in with a new gismo and I rediscover my enthusiasm of painting and decorating.  To battle my growing apathy towards home improvement, last Monday he adopted a wallpaper kettle and come Friday, I have already given it a name and a place around our dinner table – that’s how much I love it. 

Our new wallpaper kettle and my mum in action...

For those who have not had the pleasure of seeing one of these babies in action, a wallpaper kettle is a simple gadget that makes stripping wallpaper a joy.  It looks roughly like a petrol canister fitted with a hose and a plastic tray.  James told me it was around thirty euros in our local Bricomarche - money well spent I thought.  As water boils in the tank, stream is directed through the hose and into the shallow tray that is kept pressed against the section of a wall ready to be stripped.  Unlike my fingernails, the steam will penetrate several layers of paper at once.  The old adhesive is melted away, allowing big sheets of wallpaper simply to fall off with a gentle pull or a scrape – all in a matter of seconds.  On top of all this, the device is fairly light weight and using one is easy as pie. 

If only it made tea, I would elope to Spain and marry it. 

Conveniently, the purchase of our latest toy coincided with the visit of my mother, who, when faced with a choice between a relaxing trip to Benidorm or being sent to a Gulag, would choose the Gulag every time.  Like a good daughter, I thought, if working like a beast is how she likes to spend her vacation, who am I to stop her.   

So now, in five days, she has managed to be done with Mount Everest’s worth of washing and ironing, pickled enough cucumber for an army and walked the dog around the globe. Twice.  Last but not least, it was she who picked up the spanking new kettle and stripped, single handed, the walls of our entryway that were grotty and unfinished after past half-hearted attempts of wallpaper-removal, going back to the days when we first moved in.  Embarrassed to see how easily she had turned one of our biggest failures into a success, I may need to step up my mother’s day game for next year… 

Despite of my personal feelings of inadequacy, the results are superb: plaster that was hiding under the stained 90’s wallpaper turned out to be painted light green and in surprisingly good condition.  It was always evident that whole sections will need to be replaced, especially from around the front door and in the back where previous occupants had tried to half-arsedly cover up old damages with floppy sheets particleboard, but the rest is pretty solid.  To see these walls for the first time without scraps of paper was both weird and wonderful.  Although the old paint job is in a dire nick, you get a good feel how the space could look like once fully restored. 

Having a partner-in-reno, or a fabulous mum, to share the workload with every once in a while, is helping me to stay motivated.  When I find myself lacking in energy, nothing feels as good as a helping hand and some hearty progress.  My mum will spend a total of three weeks here, this being her whole holiday allowance for the summer, and I must admit, I was dreading it.  No matter how much I love my mother, three weeks is a long time to cater for any guests, including family, on a building site.  Luckily we seem to work very well together and she loves our house as well as Mazamet.  With her help and whirlwind like enthusiasm, I even found myself with a bit of free time for the first time this summer.  In a week I have managed to catch up on work, make a pretty summer dress and see attractions and events all around Mazamet and La Montagne Noire.  To summarise, I have managed to relax.

I can concur,  la vie est belle!  Seeing my mum adore the pace of life by the foot of the Montagne Noire is making me incredibly happy.  And as she happens to be dead afraid of spiders, I have a new reason to brake truce with the cobwebs brigade.  God knows, it's about damn time!  

 

Stairway to Heaven

Yeah, I know.  I had to.  I am a simple girl: our stairway was in a dire need of tender love and care and I had just the title!  Cheese or no cheese, I hope you will appreciate my next project that stands before you as a living-non-breathing-proof of the transformative power of paint: 

It was dark.  It was dreary.  It was mahogany-tinted pine. 

I am of course talking about the tongue and groove panelling on the first flight of stairs leading from the entryway to our main living space floor above.  This particular section was poorly lit in the begin with, but the imposing hue of the pine was making the situation much worse by masking out the contour of our beautiful oak staircase as well as dating the space significantly.  Sure, we will be adding proper lighting to the landing area later, with the help of our trusted electricians, but in the meantime, replacing the whole panelling that was perfectly functional, just a bit depressing, felt like an overkill, hence James and I decided to give it a lick of fresh paint instead. 

The pine panelling was stained with a heavy hand and waxed to protect this lovely shade of drab.  It made the first flight of our stairs feel unwelcoming and dark and did no favours for the lovely oak stairs that blend straight into the dark background.

Having looked at a few colour charts we went with our usual: a tin of brilliant white.  With my pesky Nordic heritage and a taste for everything minimalist, it just felt like the right choice for this dark and narrow space.  As the panelling had been treated with both, stain and wax, I chose to use a Nuance Mono Créme multi-surface emulsion in matte finish.  Nuance is a French dupe for Dulux and this particular concoction is self-undercoating, thus sticks like shit to a blanket, fast drying and silly easy to use. 

As with any good paintjob, I started mine by sanding the panels.  One could use the good old sandpaper in medium grain, but I chose to fasten things up a little by cranking up my beloved electric sander.  To get rid of most of the old wax treatment, I needed to go over the area a few times before I was down to regular wood.  There was no need to bother getting rid of all the stain* as it sits much deeper than wax and my paint would cover it up easily with a few thorough coats.  Having cleaned the surface of all dust, I applied the paint with a brush.  A roller is certainly a more forgiving tool, especially for the beginner, but I do not like the way using one inevitably wastes paint.  The grooves of these panels and the fact I had to work with my hands behind the spindles of the staircase also made the brush a good pick for this job.   

*Stain is a generic term for (usually) water-based colouring that penetrates the wood highlighting the natural variation of wood-grain.  The more you apply, the darker or more vibrant your final colour will be.  It’s recommended you seal the wood after staining by waxing it or applying a coat of lacquer, oil, etc. to protect the finished surface and make it repel dust and dirt.

The tools of the trade: my beloved sander and wood, PVC and aluminum compatible paint - if these can't beat the shit out of that faux mahogany, nothing will!

I let my wall to dry overnight after the first coat, not because it would have needed it, but as it was getting a bit late.  Without my beauty sleep though, I could have been finished with the whole job in about three hours, including an extensive search for an extension lead my lovely husband had tidied away exactly where it belonged.  

Bastard. 

And here's the results: Not bad I say! 

Having seen some photos of the new colour, he couldn’t believe how airy and open the corridor suddenly felt.  The fresh white paint is the best substitute for natural light in a space like this in my view and having erased the oddly red-ish mahogany tint, you can actually distinguish where our lovely staircase begins and the partition ends.  How clean it all looks certainly gives me hope when thinking about rehabilitating rest of our stairwell that is currently painted in varying shades of natural white with decades of dirty handprints and nicotine stains.  Yummy!

I'm not a great believer in art hung in narrow spaces, as normally I am too clumsy to risk it, but this little "home" sign felt appropriate here.  It was a housewarming present upon moving to France nearly three years ago now and will hopefully hang in our home, in this old house, for decades to come.

That’s it folks!  I think I can concur this was a small but transformative job – one that we would have tackled ages ago if only we had known how easy it was…