Greetings from Tours - pics

[Steve Maskery]

Hi all,
Found a little CyberCafe in Tours, so just collecting my email.

Found an absolutely brill hardware store in Paris (sort of B&Q meets Harrods), a hundred different castors, a thousand different hinges and more knobs than Ladies' Day at Ascot.

Some amazing old furniture too, not to my taste, of course, but I can learn from it just the same. Some pics to follow.

A bientot
Steve

 

[ByronBlack]

Sounds great steve, looking forward to seeing the piccies

 

[engineer one]

more important steve, don't keep the address to yourself,
keep us up to date cause i spent hours trekking to find
nada.

paul :wink:

 

[devonwoody]

To Steve,
Have a good trip.

I am shortly leaving my home address for an extended holiday, could you or any member please let me have an silly person setup sheet how to collect email from my home address whilst away.

I would add that my home telephone is being disconnected by BT whilst absent, will that mean a service such as you mentioned be dead on the ground (or line)?

 

[Newbie_Neil]

I am shortly leaving my home address for an extended holiday, could you or any member please let me have an silly person setup sheet how to collect email from my home address whilst away.

This will be down to your ISP having a webmail facility available. You just collect it using any browser.

....will that mean a service such as you mentioned be dead on the ground (or line)?

No.

I would add that my home telephone is being disconnected by BT whilst absent, will that mean a service such as you mentioned be dead on the ground (or line)?

If you have broadband, don't do this as you will have to start from scratch, wait for the connection and then pay for the installation again.


Cheers
Neil

 

[devonwoody]

I apologize for the intenional hijack!!!!!!!!!!

Thanks Neil for your information and advice.

 

[RogerS]

T

I would add that my home telephone is being disconnected by BT whilst absent, will that mean a service such as you mentioned be dead on the ground (or line)?

if you're worried about anyone racking up a huge bill for outgoing calls while you are away then if you subscribe to one of the Bt star services, you can set up a code that blocks all outgoing calls except 999. When you return simply remove the block..

 

[devonwoody]

T

I would add that my home telephone is being disconnected by BT whilst absent, will that mean a service such as you mentioned be dead on the ground (or line)?

if you're worried about anyone racking up a huge bill for outgoing calls while you are away then if you subscribe to one of the Bt star services, you can set up a code that blocks all outgoing calls except 999. When you return simply remove the block..

Thanks for info Roger, that was one of my intentions.

 

[Steve Maskery]

Hi all,
The Department Store is called BHV. Whilst the rest of the store was nothing to write home about, the bricolage section was terrific.

BTW, I've found out why the Paris hotel accepts farts. The word PETS exists in both languages. In English it means domestic animals, and in French it means bottom burps. So when Google looks at the page it translates the French into PETS and then, for some reason, translates again into FARTS. The manager was a bit non-plussed when I showed him, I had to explain what a fart was. At least he had a sense of humour!

Now for some pics.

There is a nice collection of furniture in the Musee d'Orsay. Unfortunately flash photos are not allowed, so in typical museum lighting exposures are far too long, but nevertheless I think they can show us some interesting features.

This is a 19th C chair, but I don't think it would take much to turn it into a very nice contemporary design:

This is another from the same collection:

I'd forgotten how to take voice clips on the camera,and didn't figure it out until a couple of days before the end of the holiday, so I can't remember where most of these others were

This was in a restorer's window, so we can see them naked:

The cutouts in this chair all have a raised edge, like cockbeading:

The roll-top on this is solid, not tamboured. Did't get to see how well it rolled though!

Now is this weird or is this weird? The two opposite-corner legs are different! Two have flats and two don't. It's not an injury, it was made like that in the 17thC.

This was in the Hotel l'Univers in Tours. Not to my taste, well none of this is, but you still have to marvel at the craftsmanship:

This was in one of the many Chateaux in the area. The top is just three boards:

The buildings have shutters. This is nice example of a shutter. The braces are nicely toed in and everything is bevelled off nicely, too.

This medieval building had some interesting pegged tenons and mason's mitres. The timber must have been incredibly green for it to have shrunk that much, don't you think? Either that or they drilled the holes for the pegs with the offset going the wrong way!

Finally, this is a typical timberyard. The stuff I could see close up was all oak. No fence, just piled high by the side of the road.

That's it. Sorry some are blurred, but without a tripod, flash is essential, really. I hope it was worth the download.

 

[engineer one]

very nice steve, and thanks, so what have you bought us all back :lol: :twisted:

a trailer full of the oak i hope :lol:

paul :wink:

 

[Paul Chapman]

Thanks for posting those pictures, Steve - very interesting. The underside of that refectory-style table looks like they used to flip it over as use it for pasting the wallpaper :lol:

Paul

 

[dedee]

Steve,
thanks for posting all those pics. Seeing all that wood lying around makes me recall a statistic that, IIRC, stated that there is 10x more woodland per person in France than the UK and most of that is managed hardwoods.

BHV have a chain of stores in France. There is one in Caen just around the corner from my inlaws in which I have spent many a rainy afternoon!

Amdy