Happy roses on the terrace at Les Murets. Don’t ask Sam about this though!
You can read the Cote de Texas blog here.
Reading Joni’s beautifully written and thoroughly researched blog, which is mostly about the redesign of Les Murets, reminded me of the days when we actually “suffered through” the renovation – when I begged Meg for a few day’s off and subjected Sam Jones, our in-house designer extraordinaire (who is singly responsible for my perusing real estate listings because we have SO MUCH FUN renovating houses together!) to round the clock labor for 6 days straight , at Les Murets in Gordes, France.
For those of you who will go on and read Joni’s wonderful blog, just remember that the end result wasn’t always rosy. Just take a look at my sweet house when the outside walls were crumbling from terrible water damage and the roof needed to be replaced, along with the stucco resurfaced! Oh, it pains me to see this photo!
The outside of Les Murets, prior to a new roof, new stucco, and new paint color!
And even worse is the memory of our rushing to choose the stucco and
shutter color, which are so essential in the overall look of a house,
from the teeniest little sample. For some unknown reason, we
couldn’t get our contractor to give us paint samples so we made a
monumental decision from the most minimal paint chips.
Yes that’s Sam holding up the lone little paint chips that were all we
had to work with to blindly pick the entire color of the house, shutters
and trim!
It wasn’t without many sleepless nights that I returned, a month later,
holding my breath, to the complete and utter realization that with Sam’s
help, and a lot of luck, we had totally nailed the paint color! I
can’t tell you what it is … but I love it every time I see it!
Ahhh … what a relief that it turned out to be the right color!
While Joni will take you through “before and afters” that chronicle the
house’s sad state when we bought it to its subsequent happy renovation,
I’m just a little embarrassed to show you my own early decorating
snafus, BS (before Sam), and prior to our most recent redo. And to think
this room wasn’t even on the agenda for a make-over.
I’m sure it didn’t really look as bad as this photo, honest!
Our dramatic quick change … thanks to a fun local fabric store, Ikea,
and some great little finds from the antiques capital of the world at
Isle sur la Sorgue!
What started as one tiny project, of adding an upstairs bedroom, snowballed into a huge effort that completely tore the whole house apart – and had the two of us working non-stop, pretty much 24 hour days, until it all came together, as viewed in Joni’s beautiful blog.
So for all of you who have ever considered undertaking a renovation, just know that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. And while I hope you will enjoy Cote de Texas’ generous blog about the beauty of Les Murets (for which I am very grateful!), just remember that it took two crazy ladies, six sleepless nights, and acres of grey paint and “stitch witchery” for the house to go from this:
I think we swore we would never show this picture … but truly, this is
what the living room looked like, half way through our week! Notice the
ironing board which was “stich witchery” central!
To this!
Ta da! With just 5 minutes to spare before we had to leave for the train … at 7 a.m.!
Ta ta …
HH
PS Oh and by the way, please don’t ask Sam Jones about the view of the Luberon valley (since she never got to see it) or the delicious restaurants in Gordes that she never got to eat in. She is still complaining about that!
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