I’m excited to share that we now have two spacious, private apartments for rent in Carcassonne, in our home! It’s just a 10-minute walk to the medieval walled city, shops and restaurants, and both apartments offer ample free street parking. One apartment has a stunning view of the walled city from its private balcony and salon. Enjoy a comfortable, relaxing stay as you get to know the beautiful city of Carcassonne!

The next room that we tackled – our master bathroom, which is on the same floor as our new kitchen, and next to our bedroom. Destruction of the old bathroom started about mid-July. And voila – we started using the new bathroom about a month later, just in time for Karen and Tootie’s arrival on Aug. 20!

It’s apricot season, and our apricot tree was extremely prolific! So for at least a couple of weeks (if not more), Jeff picked apricots every day, and we spent a fair bit of time “processing” them (mostly in the old kitchen – the new kitchen wasn’t quite ready yet.) I’m so happy with the results!

We are so happy to be in our new kitchen! We’ve been using it for about two weeks, and I wanted to share some photos comparing our original (old) kitchen (upstairs) on the third floor with the new kitchen (downstairs) on the second floor. We used the upstairs kitchen for a year; we couldn’t have lived without it and are so grateful for it, but oh, gosh, it’s so nice to be in a more functional kitchen. And we love not having to carry our dinner downstairs every night – finally, our kitchen is on the same floor as our terrace. There’s still work to do, but the heavy lifting is over!

Our granite in our new kitchen was installed today! Plus our refrigerator arrived last week, and it and all the appliances are now connected to power as of yesterday!

Jeff has come up with another brilliant design. On our balcony that looks out on the walled city, instead of having two rickety wooden chairs and a short rickety wooden table (that the previous owner left behind) we now have a tiled bar-like counter, and four barstools!

Here’s a preview of our new kitchen. Our granite countertops are coming soon. We are so happy to convert what was a relatively useless living room into a kitchen that is going to be the heart of our home.

I haven’t missed having a tv for the last year, but we finally bought one three weeks ago, specifically to watch the French Open. And what a thrill to, yesterday, see Rafa win his 12th French Open title. So happy!

Here are some improvements that we’ve made in our salon and staircase, compared to what it looked like when we first viewed our house two years ago. We still have work to do, but it’s better!

Guest bathroom on our third floor before: Brown shag carpet on the floors and walls. (Yes. Brown shag carpet that was installed in the 1970s — back then, a sign of wealth. Today, ick.) Bathroom after: No more shag carpet, and many more improvements. The previous owners did install some beautiful travertine marble back in the 1970s — so our challenge/opportunity was to find and install tile that worked with the “old” lovely travertine. Here are some before and after photos.