Mark this one down as a red-letter day. Things are coming together nicely. The scaffold guys started the day off well by finally removing the scaffold that has blighted the view in and out of our apartment. How nice to have it out of the way, more light and clarity. I managed to tidy the bathroom, installing some small fittings and the mirror, and assembled another set of shelves to tidy the place further.
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| Van Central, and our kitchen arriving |
Next was a call from the Castorama deliverymen saying they were on their way. Before long they were at Place de la Republique where I’d suggested they arrive, as the normal streets to get to us are blocked by works. I directed him in, then they got to unloading the kitchen and shower. The kitchen is 300kg by itself, and the shower is brutally heavy with its glass panels. Unfortunately they only took it in the front door, not up our stairs, so Karen & I had a torrid time again tripping up and down lugging boxes. As we were contemplating the unit containing the fridge, a couple of M. Freitas’ workmen took charge and helped us lug it upstairs. I don’t know how they did it. It was appallingly heavy and desperately awkward. We took them a thoroughly-deserved 6-pack of beer as a thank-you.
The kitchen is now more or less in its correct position, but more important, we have a cold fridge full of cooling cheese, wine and beer! We’ve been eating heaps of cherries (€5/kg) and strawberries (€1.50-1.90/kg) but we have been forced to scoff entire punnets at once as they simply won’t keep, not even overnight. It’s been awfully tough.
We are delighted with the kitchen. We’d planned on the 3m €1500 white one we’d seen here last year, but that is not on this year’s list, so we changed to a glossy dark slate-brown 2.5m one at an unbelievable €999. It looks perfect. The brown looks great against the parquet floor, and possibly white may have been just a bit much with all the other white we have. So it’s worked out very well. Even the fridge is nice and quiet.
The next good news of the day was that the NZ-Welsh couple Karen had met in Café Gourmandise in Nelson in March had replied to an email we’d sent, saying “yes” they would really like to rent the apartment from the time we leave this year until we get back next year, some 10 months. What a bonus. Not only is it good to have somebody in it, but the rent will sure come in handy. We won’t get the peak-season rates but we also avoid the hassles of employing people here for the changeovers.
