The grand old lady gets her smile back

I share an update on our house renovation, and a recipe for a stifled beef casserole.

This week, I’ve mostly been waiting for the windows to arrive. Maybe Tuesday, maybe Wednesday? Maybe not. Renovating this house has taught me patience, that things seldom happen as quickly as you might hope, or in the order you’ve planned, but they will eventually happen. Probably.

Our house was very briefly owned by a developer. He bought it from the family who had owned it for decades, with an eye I think to turning it into a smart B&B, and then Covid happened, and the B&B idea became a lot more complicated than I am sure he first imagined. Carving en suite bathrooms into a house not designed for them at every corner is not the most enjoyable way to burn through a tonne of cash. This worked out very well for us. I remember the house being on the market several summers ago, when the idea of living here hadn’t percolated in our brains. Monsieur B&B held onto it briefly, until our dreams caught up with our lives.

The one thing he did was replace the old, leaky windows with modern, dark brown metal windows. These look blank and hard. Their hulking form sits oddly with the whimsical, delicate appearance of this grand old lady of the Belle Epoque, with her cheerful tiles and wrought iron balconies. I knew we had to change them.