Avant/Après

It's amazing what hours of scrubbing and 40€ of paint can do for a balcony:

The nasty entryway closet:

The kitchen (though the volet switch hasn't been fixed yet):

Old/new flooring:

And the best for last - the nasty bathroom closet is now nice and white, and houses my favorite purchase - a gigantic washer & dryer that we bought for 180€ from an American couple desperate to sell before they moved back to the US!

A couple of you asked if we ever figured out why it was so cheap. And that answer to that question is YES. After signing the lease, we came back to do the Etat des lieux, and that's where we realized just how much work we had ahead of us. During our first visit, we'd only seen the potential of the place; during the second, the reality of it all hit us.

A lot of the walls looked like this, which meant first having to scrub them clean, smooth them out and then repaint:And then there was this lovely carpet that had to be removed and replaced:And the state of the balcony:The biggest project though was having to clean, sand, clean again and repaint the nasty shiny pale yellow paint that covered the kitchen and bathroom walls. Also, notice how the shutter switch is taped to the walls - probably half the plugs in the apartment were like that:And here's another example of the paint in the bathroom closet - it was just so darn grimy. How do people live in such filth?
Also, why is it so acceptable for people here to leave their apartments without cleaning them first? Every apartment I've lived in has had to be scrubbed down from top to bottom before we could move our stuff in. The previous tenant here left crumbs in all the drawers, a couple boxes of food in the kitchen and some old tupperware on the shelves. How is that okay?

I think this experience has taught us both that we aren't cut-out to be renovators. I suck at decorating and don't enjoy painting, so it was a pretty long month. Plus I was working poor C pretty hard - most nights we were up until at least midnight doing travaux. I'm telling you, the man has the patience of a saint. Luckily almost all of the hard work is done now, and we mainly just have unpacking to do now. And I'm really happy with how it turned out. Maybe I'll post some before and after pictures once everything is put away.

A conversation with C

Sometime in July:
So a lot of people have been asking me lately when we're going to move in together...
Yeah, I've been getting that too.
What kind of timeline were you thinking?
I don't know - maybe sometime in October or November?
Yeah, that sounds about right. I'm going to sign up for some alertes emails on pap.fr and seloger.com, just so we can start getting an idea of what's out there and what can afford.
That's a good idea. We should make a list of exactly what we want in an apartment. My musts are: on the line 12, easy access to Luxembourg garden, safe neighborhood. And a balcony and parking spot would be great, even though it's not likely. How about you?
Hmm....I'd say I'd like at to have least 45m2, less than 10 minutes from Montparnasse, and a decent-size kitchen. No higher than 3rd floor (French) if there's no elevator. My optionals would be: a bathtub, room for a washer, dryer & dishwasher, a cave and somewhere in the 5th or 6th arrondissement. And it'd be great if there was a gym nearby.
Do you care if it's an old or new building?
No, not really....but maybe newer would be better so that we wouldn't have to deal with creaky floors or bad plumbing/electrical work.

A week or so later:
Hey hon, check out this email I got. It's for an apartment in the 15th. It's 50m2, has a parking spot and a balcony. The only thing is the price - it's about 200€ less than it should be...
That sounds kind of suspicious, but it's through an agency, so we could at least give them a call and try to visit it. There's no harm in visiting a few places so that we can see what we like and what we don't like.

A few days after that:
So this is the apartment. As you can see, it's on the 3rd floor, with an elevator. It's 2 minutes from the metro, on a quiet street. There are plenty of shops around here and there are two gyms within a one minute walk. The parking lot is downstairs, as is the cave. It's 50m2 total, and has a nice big living/dining area. The balcony is a bit small, but it's big enough for a small chair and some plants. Now on to the kitchen- it is a decent size, with lots of storage, AND there's room for an oven, a dishwasher and a fridge/freezer. The bathroom is quite large as well, and has a bathtub, plus hook-ups and space for a washer & dryer. And now on to the bedroom. It's a bit small, but also looks out on to the balcony and has electric shutters, which are great for keeping out any noise. So what do you think?

We look at each other....it's perfect. It has absolutely everything we want, at a really fantastic price. The only thing is....it's available August 1st and we weren't planning on moving for a few months yet and it's not in my neighborhood (more on that another day). Plus Crystal & her husband had given us some good advice on getting an apartment through C's job, and there are some real steals to be found in Paris (though we found out afterward that we made too much money to qualify for any of the good stuff anyways).

We decide to think about it overnight. It really is the perfect apartment for us. And neither of us had any notice to give on our current places. The low price would allow us to make some small improvements, such as giving the walls a fresh coat of paint and replacing the carpet with parquet, with money left-over to buy some new furniture & appliances. The gym was just a few doors down and was worlds better than my current gym (for the exact same price). Taking it would also mean that I wouldn't have to spend the next few months pouring over ads or stressing about the fact that I was out of town so often and would miss out on visits. Or that I would be gone on a work trip when we would need to move. And that was all extra stress I certainly didn't need or want.

Which is how we found ourselves signing a lease on August 4th, and then spending the rest of the month cleaning, renovating, cleaning some more, shopping, packing and unpacking. There are few more boxes to put away and a few more decorations to buy, but we're just about settled in now.

So that was my August. How was yours?

There's a small side street near where I live that is constantly changing. Pretty much every time I walk down it, there's something new to note.

It's a mostly residential street, with lots of small shops on the ground floor. Over the past few years, I've seen a lot come and go - people seem to set up shop, hang around for six months or so and then close their doors. And then someone else will come along with a new idea, throw on a fresh coat of paint, and the cycle repeats itself.

It's especially noticeable now that everyone's off on their August vacation - the workmen have moved in and are getting the new stores ready for la rentree.

Which is why I found this little hole so lovely. It just seemed so fitting for what happens in this street. All the layers people keep piling on. It left me wondering what else could be hidden behind all that paint. And about what all that street has seen over the years...

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