Working Weekend

Today I want to share some photos of our working weekend. We returned to Ste. Marie, where Philipp's parents have a house. Actually, they're in the process of moving to a new house, so Philipp spent the weekend building a new bedroom in the (huge) garage of the new house. At various points of the weekend, some of the family members also worked very hard helping out. Here's a "before" picture:



You can see that there is an existing bedroom to the right. Our mission ... to close off the space on the left, insulate, create a two-sided closet, and install a door. A lot of work for one weekend, but we got a good start.

Philipp began with the electricity. He ran wires around the periphery of the space to install outlets and switch plates later on. Then we prepared the drywall. Here in France, since most homes are build with concrete block, rather than wood, you glue the sheets right to the walls. Philipp had bought drywall backed with Styrofoam to serve as insulation. It looked like snow whenever we cut the drywall or shaved off parts of the Styrofoam! My job was to mix the MAP (the glue, although it seems more like plaster) and put the globs up on the walls. I had a fun job. We put up most of the ceiling before a pause for lunch, and were very happy to see that it was still stuck up there when we returned. (For ceilings, you use screws in addition to the glue.)

Next there was the wall to build, including the two-sided closet. Philipp let me use some of his power tools, which was exciting. I used the drill, the electric screwdriver, and a saw. Here I am sawing a piece of wood. Please ignore the fact that I'm wearing flip-flops. A true Girl Scout would not wear open-toed shoes when working with power tools. :(



Because the space is now enclosed, it was very difficult to take a picture of the room as of Sunday evening. Here you see that the drywall is up. We used the left-over pieces for the section under the window.



There remains a lot of work to be done. The joints, painting the walls and ceiling, prepping the floor and installing the linoleum, baseboards, outlets, ... There certainly is a lot of work involved!



This is a picture of Philipp mixing one of the first batches of MAP, before I learned how to do it.


As I said, I had fun using Philipp's power tools, but my favorite part of the weekend was watching Philipp work. I am in awe of his ability to completely transform a space. He knows each step and what needs to be done at what point. The rest of us who helped simply took instruction from Philipp, because he was truly the leader of the project. I am excited to work alongside with him someday in our own home!


So that's all for now. I'll share more photos when the project is done. Have a great weekend, everyone!