I Swear, This is the Last Time

I swear this is the last time I will ever besmirch North of Andorra with words and pictures about a bathroom remodel. For two reasons; first because I know you could probably care less, and second, because I will never remodel another one. Now, on with the show. First, the old bathroom in all it's glory.

I must ask you to notice the pink sink and pink tile, the saloon doors and the most beautiful wallpaper you could ever imagine. I particularly like the way the sink jutted out from the counter top. Very stylish. The counter top itself was about 12 inches wide, just enough to fool you into thinking you could put something on it. A most exquisite detail is the switch plate with wallpaper to match the walls.

You can barely see the toilet here and you will have to imagine the toilet space itself, which was just about the same width as my shoulders. Admittedly, that's wide enough for most folks but it was claustrophobic for me. When we hauled out the tub and took down the wall we found the the whole shower stall arrangement leaked and the studs were rotting away.

We pondered the problems for a month or two trying to find another spot to put a new, larger bathroom, but it would have been too expensive to construct in another place. We debated knocking out a wall to enlarge the room, but again, it wasn't worth it. So we crammed the new bathroom into the old space.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, I present the new bathroom.

Voila! Feast your eyes on the new shower stall made of travertine tile with an Italian pebble floor. Behold the bead board ceiling painted a crisp white and the loveliness of the crown moulding. Revel in the glory of the light fixture shedding it's light in the shower stall.

Behold a sink that's not pink. Rejoice in counter top that's wide enough to contain the sink, the whole sink and nothing but the sink. Notice the new pine six panel door.

But most of all, glory in the fact that it's done.

Roots

Things are beginning to fall into place for our summer travel plans. We made our flight reservations some time ago and told several interested parties of our plans. They are now making their travel reservations and giving us some idea when they will be in Leran.


John and Eileen, friends here in Montrose are arriving in Carcassonne on September 9th and staying a week or so. Ursula and Didi, old friends from Montana arrive around October 1st. The time between the departure of J&E and the arrival of U&D is reserved for Nancy's cousin Bruce and his partner. And therein lies an interesting story.


Several years back Nancy begin to do some research on her family history. This was based mainly on the idea that her paternal grandmother was born in Ireland. Ireland was granting citizenship to grandchildren of its citizens even if they had never set foot there. If Nancy could get Irish citizenship, she would also be an EU citizen. This provides the great advantage of having the privilege to live freely throughout any of the EU countries, even permanently, without a visa. I could only hope that it would then be easier for me, and I would find the path to obtaining a visa much less traumatic.


So, Nancy dove into Ancestry.com with a vengeance, but could not find her grandmother's birthplace in Ireland. She began to question that her grandmother was actually born on the old sod, as was the family rumour. She has since found out that, alas, the dear old woman was born in Chicago. It burst the bubble that was her dream of Irish citizenship and her chance to get European citizenship the easy way. But that was many years ago, and Nancy continued to wonder about her ancestors.


More recently, after becoming immersed in the PBS TV programs about celebrities searching for their 'roots', Nancy resumed her search, this time delving into the maternal grandparents side. However, all she knew about them were their first names. The only concrete knowledge at hand were the names of her mom's siblings. Several weeks ago, through correspondence with her brother Jim and cousin Cynthia, she began to piece together a few little snippets of information. Jim had unearthed the grandmother's death certificate and mother's birth and baptismal certificates, all sporting variations on the spelling of the family name. 1910, 1920, 1930 Census records recorded the family surname spelled another three different ways. The country of origin was variously listed as Austria, then Hungary, and again Austria. The response for mother tongue had been crossed out and written above was what looked like "Slo". Could that mean Slovak? All Nancy could remember was her mother saying she was Russian, or was it Ukrainian? The Austrian and Hungarian responses didn't fit with her mother's "Russian" roots. Nancy began to believe her family was running from the law.


The Austria, Hungary, Austria information was puzzling. Where were her grandparents from? Why don't we pay more attention when we are younger? Both Jim and Cynthia remembered a village somewhere in the Old World that had been mentioned, but only produced a phonetic spelling---something akin to 'Hostabisca Vandege'. The location remained a mystery. Trustworthy Google rendered nothing. But, the boundaries of Austria and/or Hungary today are nowhere near where they were around 1900, when her grandparents emigrated. Empires came and went, new governments sprung up and fizzled, and international boundaries shifted like sand.


Coincidentally, both Jim and Cynthia mentioned that yet another cousin, Bruce, had once visited this mysterious village where the maternal grandparents had been born with Nancy's Uncle Mick, but neither knew little more. And they only knew that Bruce lived somewhere around Atlanta. If Bruce held the key to finding the home village, now Bruce had to be found. Bruce has one of the other six spellings of the family name (which was not the same as her mother's), and Nancy was pretty sure he hadn't changed it.

Google to the rescue, but this time it produced a connection to someone with her cousin's name who was partners in a business in the Slovak Republic. Remember 'Slo'? So, Nancy penned off one of those inviting emails beginning "If you are the same Bruce K. who lived down the street from me on Wicker Avenue, then this is your cousin writing....." Who could resist?


Well, folks, the rest as they say, is history....literally. The contacted Bruce is the cousin, he has been the 'village' in question---not once, but many times. He is partners with a distant cousin in a business in Bratislavia (the capital of the Slovak Republic).


To make an already long story a little bit shorter, the village is in present day Slovak Republic, once part of the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, then part of Czechoslovakia. There were a few other landlords before and in between. From 1863 - 1902 it was called Hosztovica, and from 1907 - 1913 the Hungarians re-named it Vendegi (pretty close to the phonetic Hostabisca Vandege, no?). By 1920, after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, it was given its present name Hostovice. The village hadn't moved but the international borders certainly had. Nancy's maternal grandparents were Carpatho-Rusyn, or Ruthenian, an ethnicity, not a nationality; a people without a country. Cousin Bruce confirmed that his father Mick always identified himself as a "Ruthenian---not a Russian." Somewhere along the line someone had mixed up Rusyn and Russian.


In the late 1800's, upwards of 900,000 Ruthenians emigrated to the US, primarily to Pennsylvania and eastern seaboard states, lured by the steel companies. Unknowingly, they were 'imported' to be strike breakers. Ironic, to leave a country for a better life only to end up being treated once again as a second-class citizen. Nancy's grandparents' first child, Anne, was born in Pennsylvania in 1906. That area of Pennsylvania was also home to the Pullman-Standard Co., manufacturer of railroad cars, who then opened up a big plant in Hammond Indiana. That's where the family shows up in the 1910 Census, and by 1920 the Census lists their street as "Company Housing" for Pullman-Standard.


Nancy and Bruce continued to correspond, and the result is Bruce and his partner are planning a visit to Leran. We have a standing invitation to visit Hostovice to meet Nancy's 'people'. It may happen this September. Amazing.

I Don't Know Vic, but I'd Like To

I'm going to follow Vic's Big Walk. He's walking from Puivert about, France to Blackpool, England and he's keeping a blog about it. Check it out at http://www.vicsbigwalk.blogspot.com/

Don't be surprised if it looks familiar. He's using the same template on Blogger that North of Andorra uses.

Deja Vu All Over Again

There was a time when we were building our cabin in Montana, that we used to fantasize about having the time to sit on the front porch for an entire morning or afternoon, with no work that tugged at our conscience. Eventually, that time came, but at times, it seemed that it would never arrive. Deja vu, to borrow a French term. We are looking forward to finishing the upstairs bathroom, and not a little bit of the anxiety is because we have to trudge downstairs at night to use the toilet. But at least we have another bathroom. We've been busy not having too much fun. This is the upstairs bathroom that has been gutted. The pink sink, pink tile and pink bathtub have been removed and hauled away. Down came the plaster, up came the floorboards and they all went to the dump, except for the bathtub, which will get melted down and made into cars or something. You can see the plumber has spent some time here (at $88 an hour), and run new PEX red and blue water lines and some black ABS waste lines. Little remains except the old floor joist.

This is after the new sub-floor has been put down. You can see the toilet waste line in the corner and the shower drain line in the left center, and a few of the new water lines, copper and PEX blue.

This is the wall where the pink sink was attached. You can see a bit of the old wallpaper, which we don't miss at all, and a few electrical lines, some new water lines. What you can't see are the tools and tile and wire and lumber scattered around the upstairs bedrooms. Everything is in turmoil, with cardboard on the floors along with new tile, buckets of drywall mud and tubes of caulk. At times, the beds had tools and stuff scattered around on them. Oh, woe.

This is a picture of the first few pieces of beadboard going up on the ceiling. Shortly after we finished the ceiling, we put up drywall on the walls and cement board on the shower walls. To make room for the shower stall, we had to rip out the old door (which opened like shutters, hinged on each side, kind of like an old saloon door) and move it a half a foot over. Rest assured, we threw away the old doors and installed a handsome six panel pine door.

This is a picture peeking into the shower stall while Nancy is laying out the new tile, which is natural stone, or more correctly, natural pebbles. They come glued to a square foot of plastic mesh, but they are still difficult to handle.

And here are the pebbles set into place and grouted. We are beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. The drywall is being finished when Nancy has time between laying tile and grouting tile. I don't have a good picture of the new tile floor because it is always covered with cardboard during the construction. But soon, we will have pictures of the finished bathroom, and if we can find it, a picture of the "before" with the pink sink and tub. I know I can't wait. Stand by.

It's Been a Month

I notice it's been almost a month since I've posted anything on the blog and I don't feel all that guilty. We've been very busy, and doing things that are not the least bit interesting to write about. We took a quick trip to Montana to see some friends and we didn't do much beyond eat, drink and be merry.


We demolished our main bathroom and we've begun work on the new bath. Nancy is setting tile today and will be doing that for a few more days. We hauled out the old pink bathtub, a cast iron behemoth, and we got $12.50 for it at the metal recycling business in town. We hauled several other loads of crap to the dump. The plumbers were here for an entire day installing new pipes and vents. We are exhausted at the end of each day but we have a deadline to finish before my sister and family arrives in early June.



We made airline reservations; Denver, Frankfurt, Toulouse for August 5, and that's the biggest news I have to report.

The Pelicans of Peurto Vallarta

The pelicans on the beaches in Peurto Vallarta were very comical, but they were also very efficient fishers. They would infest any boat or structure anywhere near the water, watching the activities like awkward old men. When they took to the air, they were transformed into more graceful objects and we watched them delicately float ten or twenty feet above the surface of the water until they spied a fish and then quickly dive into the water and come up with a meal.

Below, I caught a pelican just as it splashes into the water. It looks rather clumsy because rather than slicing cleanly into the water, they more or less plop onto the surface. All you can see are the wings. What you don't see is the long neck and long beak stretched out underwater to capture a fish. Click on the picture to embiggen it to see a little of the drama.

Although there were zillions of pelicans, no shortage to be sure, it was sad to see one dead on the beach. Why was it dead? It had got caught in fishing line. I saw this numerous times in Yellowstone, birds caught and drowned due to some careless fisherman who threw or abandoned his line in the water. No telling how many birds die every year due to being tangled in fishing line, but I'm sure it's a lot.