Jinx Apart

A year ago today

2009-11-23T21:32:00.003+01:00

A year ago today, I was out walking with my best friend, trying to get my head around the fact that, coming home in the wee small hours after a fantastically happy, enjoyable party, I'd been attacked by a stranger as I made my way up the stairs to my flat, ripped out of my happy cloud and dragged into an incomprehensible parallel universe. A year later, I'm still trying to get my head around it. I never would have thought it would be like this. I don't feel like I have anything to say on here at the moment.

Knitting keeps on lifesaving

2009-08-04T21:09:00.004+02:00

Not a great couple of weeks for reasons related to the bad stuff that happened in November. Wonder where I'll put all my knits and purls of unhappy once this blanket is finished? Into a clapotis perhaps, or more socks. Off home for ten days tomorrow night. This is definitely A Good Thing - I need space and air and a change of scene to clear my head and get some perspective.

Knitting as lifesaver

2009-07-20T21:55:00.004+02:00

My granny was a great knitter and taught me some basics when I was little, but I was never that interested and had forgotten everything when about eighteen months ago, out of the blue, I got the urge to knit. There's a little haberdashers just down the road from me, so I went in and bought a pair of 8mm needles and a couple of balls of chunky black wool and produced a basic garter-stockinette-mix scarf, which I proceeded to wear ALL winter and which, I'm surprised to say, garnered quite a lot of compliments.

The knitting bug had bitten, but things just pottered along gradually with a scarf here and a scarf there, until the bad times hit in late November and I found myself spending a lot of time sitting at home, feeling deeply unhappy and struggling to chase away bad thoughts. I don't think it's any exaggeration to say that knitting kept me sane this winter (at the very least it stopped me veering totally off course and into a ditch).

Lots of repetitive, don't-think-about-anything-but-stitches work (I knitted a ginormous and ridiculous K1P1 scarf of fingering yarn that must have about a hundred hours of work in it and will be frogged as soon as I resign myself to doing it) slowly turned into slightly more complicated projects, like bags and hats and bootees, as I picked up courage both in life and in my ability to knit. Last weekend, I turned a corner and decided I was ready for socks. And yesterday, I finished my first one. I'm not quite back to normal yet, but I'm getting there. I wonder what the knitting sign for "normal, properly ready to rejoin life again" will turn out to be?

Scherious scheep-based schopping in schunny Stockholm

2009-06-29T22:10:00.010+02:00

I was away in Stockholm most of last week for a convention which I stretched out into a weekend. The convention was fine and the weekend was fun and there were lots of boats, but it was faaar hotter than the weather forecast.

I'd packed for 12-20°C and it ended up being 28°C. Which meant that instead of my nice little skirt-and-warmish-top / trousers-and-t-shirt combinations, I had to work the skirt-and-tee angle and boy oh boy but I had NOT considered that option and ended up looking like a mismatched clown most of the time. We're talking formal-black-linen-skirt-with-blue-striped-pirate-t-shirt-and-strappy-silver-platforms clown. I'm not great at working it at the best of times, but this....

Ah well, fortunately there are yarn shops run by nice older ladies with sufficiently broken English that it's all smiles but no need for conversation. We have Malabrigo. Yeah. I'm embarrassed to say that I'd been staking out my Stockholm yarn purchases and was all set to go to Nysta and KnitLab and buy all sorts, especially my first-ever Malabrigo. I'd actually started dreaming about the Great Malabrigo Purchase. But it turns out that Nysta and KnitLab have both closed and so I found myself wandering the streets, bereft and lonesome, which is when I walked past the Anntorps Väv window and hope bloomed in my little heart again. I trotted back first thing the next morning and had a great old time. I could have bought half the shop, especially where this stuff, Östergötlands Ullspinneri Pälsull, was concerned:

That's my sister-in-law's colour and this yarn will end up being her Christmas present - just have to decide what to turn it into. There were some great yellows and oranges too. And a few skeins of Malabrigo. I bought 100g of black lace-weight (with a project in mind) and can't wait to get started on it. I also bought this monster chunky wool-and-soy, although that was in another shop that I passed:

Also fortunately, when I changed to my non-convention hotel, I got a tiny noisy room that looked right onto the hotel bar. I'd booked tiny, so that wasn't a problem, but I'd also booked (and wanted) quiet so, for once, I asked to change. And they gave me a gorgeous double on the fifth floor with a balcony and let me stay there both nights. Not the best photo, but it was very luxe and very lovely.

And then I got home and washed my windows and oiled my wooden worktop and watered my plants and all was well with the world.

I just should get over it...

2009-06-21T23:11:00.008+02:00

... and rename this blog "the lovely lizzies". They are lovely though.

Speaking of lovely, isn't this cat pretty?

Unfortunately, he's also very SAD (possibly because he's called Lulu, which doesn't sound like a very macho name to me).
So he spends all day and half the frrrrrigging night crying and meauwling and generally expressing his profound sorrow. I don't know where it's come from. For the last two years, I've known him for his remarkable climbing abilities and pretty little monkey face but for the last couple of months it's been the CRYING and the YOWLING and the DEEP SIGHS. Pretty much every single day. And almost every single night. Gah. At last it's given me and one of the Mr. Rupert Bears an opportunity to do some bonding of a "is that goddamn cat keeping you awake as well?" variety.

Shame-free shelving

2009-06-01T20:46:00.008+02:00

I've had a great weekend: a nice lazy Saturday and then two days of beavering away (today's a public holiday) with lots to show for it. Things to say about the smoky downpipe in the loo, the leak (eek) in the bath, tiling at the sink, a slightly disappointing mirror situation, knitting and, above all, my hall cupboard.

When I arrived, my hall cupboard looked something like this: two rails for hanging clothes and a two-thirds finished space up top for stuffing suitcases and the like.

In January 2008, I christened my new Christmas drill and put up shelves. The Shelves of Shame, to be precise. They were shameful for two reasons. First, I mis-measured, so one of the brackets at the back was about half a centimetre out. This was particularly shameful because I actually went so far as to chisel a half-centimetre sliver out of the skirting board to account for this difference, but at no point did it occur to me to triple-check my measurements. Very stoopid. The other thing was that I got the shelves cut to the right width at the shop, not realising that the cupboard gets narrower towards the back and that I'd need to leave space for the bracket system, so lots of half-assed slicing of little strips ensued. With a desperately blunt old hacksaw. Yeah, embarrassing.

Add to that the totally knackered old paint job and the dusty holes and gaps left behind by the workmen and the random electricity and gas paraphernalia and it was a pretty grubby place.

I liked the blue paint, but it was in a terrible state and this was a good excuse to use up some of the many random tubs of white paint and primer I have lying around taking up space. I made the mistake I make every time and completely forgot that I needed to do the door as well until I was halfway through and didn't want to be adding sawdust and grit to the mix.

This was the scene last night, with shelves everywhere and an old tin of primer used up on of the blue (most of it anyway - I ran out with a couple of square feet to do at the bottom corner):

Today, it's been painting city. Actually, I haven't been outside for two and a half days now I come to think of it.... Fortunately, the outside comes inside, even at night.

Lovely lizzies

2009-05-24T13:30:00.008+02:00

They were in a fairly poor state when I bought them, but my busy lizzies are recovering their forces and are well on their way for the summer. My kitchen window faces south-west, but it looks directly onto the windowless side of a high apartment building. Fortunately, the apartment block is built slightly back from the street, so there's a gap that lets a slice of direct sunshine come through late in the morning and lights up my kitchen. It also brings out the colours and glitter of my little lizzies. I've already taken dozens of photos and the whole of the summer has yet to come...

My sitting room and bedroom face north-west and only get direct sunlight in the summer. After several years in flats that faced due south, I miss having the sun in my flat in the winter (although it's a relief to have a nice, cool flat in the height of summer). That said, it makes it all the more special when the sun works its way round and shines in during the summer months.

Where do I start?

2009-05-17T21:08:00.017+02:00

That was a long, long break, but I needed it. Work's been crazy and not-work has been crazy too but things are finally settling down (I hope). I also had a week away at the sea, taking sailing lessons, at the start of this month. I'm really glad I did it - definitely A.Good.Thing. and it blew away lots of lingering winter cobwebs.

In the last few months, there's been a LOT of knitting. My first ever lace, my first ever hat (a black mistake stitch beanie to match the black mistake stitch scarf - one of my favourite people has a birthday coming up), my first ever bag (in progress), and more to come. I love the colours in the last picture!:

Some new furniture. Slightly rubbish photo but I'm pleased as punch with my little sideboard and the fact that it allows me to free up the mantlepiece and move the radio to a better position in the room:

And new plants a-go-go:
After all that waiting, the tulips came and went in a flash.

And I couldn't get the heat/light/water balance right for this little thing. Beautiful while it lasted, but it didn't last long.

The new geraniums (to replace my trusty old bright pinks, that were zapped by the week of ten-below in January) are doing well and seem happy.

I don't seem to have killed off my first ever orchid yet. I love the white-pink-yellow against my blue bedroom walls.

And this afternoon I spent a happy couple of hours grubbing around on my bedroom floor, planting up petunias for my other windowbox and setting this season's kitchen busy lizzies on their way. Those busy lizzies were one of the best things about my house last summer and autumn - it's almost embarrassing about how much I'm looking forward to watching them grow.

Spring.

2009-03-26T21:50:00.006+01:00

Might be time for me to come out of hibernation soon.

Double needles, aka "getting too big for my boots"

2009-01-10T23:05:00.003+01:00

After feeling very smug about how nicely my mistake-stitch scarf turned out (the black in the second picture is accurate - don't know where the navy blue in the first comes from), I'm now getting my comeuppance in the form of double-pointed needles. Oooh-là. Not easy. I'm trying to make mittens to accompany the world's most boring scarf (the mistake scarf was knitted as a Christmas present for one of my favourite people). I'll persevere for the moment, but this may well end up being one of those projects that isn't spoken about in polite company.

Happy new year.

2009-01-01T20:56:00.007+01:00

Remember this? Hideous, wasn't it? And, from a very long time ago, this? Well, I'm pleased to say that after many hours of working and thinking and planning it's all come together and my kitchen now looks like this:

Yay! I'm totally thrilled. Still a few little things to iron out, like the shelf at the end of the top cabinets and the splashback, but it's worked out better than I could ever have hoped and I really enjoy spending time in there. I'm doing loads more cooking than I used to (not surprising really, but still) and having a washing machine after five and a half years of schlepping up and down endless flights of stairs is BEYOND exciting. Really. I spent a year on the fifth floor with no lift and three years on the sixth with no lift so even though moving to this flat, which is on the first floor, made it much less painful, not having to go to the laundrette is just the best thing.

I found two lovely little stools at an on-street antiques fair just before Christmas. I'd been looking for ones like that for a while and even though I knew I could buy them new at one of the big art shops at Nation, I quite fancied getting old ones like we have at the engraving workshop. They're working out perfectly and are perfect for perching on to read a magazine while I wait for things to cook or to make a change from eating on the couch. They spin down to the right height for my dining table and spin up to the right height for my wooden worktop so they're nice and multi-purpose and exactly what I'd hoped for. Very reasonably priced too, which is lucky because I'm rather skint after all this work. The little one could do with a bit of waxing to bring up the colour of the wood but that's small beans. Very pleased. :)

Here are some random tulips to finish. I was very surprised but quite pleased with how the second photo turned out.

Happy new year to anyone who stumbles by. Hope it's full of good things.

Hanging in there.

2008-12-21T20:48:00.003+01:00

Just had quite a difficult few weeks there which left me with neither time nor energy for rambling on about my flat. Anyway, life is getting back on track so I guess I can get this little show back on the road too. But not until I've finished knitting my best friend's Christmas present and been home for the holidays. :)

Pancakes

2008-10-22T00:07:00.009+02:00

I just finished a little project and am feeling all buzzy and wanting to tell someone, but it's after midnight so a quick post will have to do. (I also want to share the news before I have to look in the cold light of day and realise that some important part has gone wrong....)

Start with one crappy kitchen floor. The tiles should be a mix of three different kinds (with some plain ol' concrete thrown in for fun), set at different levels, and at least half a dozen should be sporting big cracks.

Mix up a half a sack of Solplan, bought on impulse the day before because the guy offered to deliver the lino and the sack for free that evening and the sack weighs a hefty 25kg. (I've realised that I'm much more decisive when faced with free delivery and a shop that's about to close and stay closed for the next two days, especially when my kitchen is going to be installed the day after that and I risk not having a floor.)

Note how much the Solplan looks like deliciously creamy hot chocolate. Note that lumpy hot chocolate is perfectly acceptable, but that lumpy Solplan is a pain in the ass and will bite you about half an hour down the line.

Start spreading. Spend far too long faffing around smoothing and spreading the Solplan (which is self-levelling) and thinking how pleased you to have taken on this little job yourself and grinding away the little gritty lumps of unmixed powder and spreading and smoothing and....

Realise that it's gone and set in the bucket. Ooooh yeah. I think the fact that I don't have a professional cement mixer and had to stir it all up with the pole that used to support my kitchen worktop didn't help. By the end, there were quite a lot of little lumps that I had to mash out and that slowed me down quite a lot. Result: when I went for the last helping of chocolate milk, it was more like a thick mousse that I had to apply like plaster. Lumpy plaster. And I ain't a plasterer. It isn't perfectly smooth by the door because it was too thick to self-level, but I think, and hope, that I've got away with it. I won't count my chickens yet, but even in the worst case scenario I would just have to take it up tomorrow and do it again and it really wasn't that painful an exercise. And look how lovely and smooooth my floor looks now!

In other news, I painted my kitchen and bathroom ceilings, and Monsieur Y. came round to fix the gas, which is no longer leaking, although the downside is that I can't keep the pilot light on my boiler lit any more. Very mysterious, because he was nowhere near the boiler. Cold shower again tomorrow I s'pose.

Don't know where to start

2008-10-18T12:13:00.009+02:00

I've been back at home for a week and a half now, gradually coming back down to earth. I'm not great at being a house guest, so four weeks on couches and airbeds (albeit staying with friends who couldn't have been more welcoming) while simultaneously trying to manage the renovation and finish up at work and suffering from a rather sore post-bike-accident shoulder, wasn't particularly easy.

Now that I'm feeling a bit more chilled, I don't know where to start. So much has changed in the flat, and I'm so generally delighted, that I want to post a million photos and write a thousand words. Instead, I'm going to go and buy paint and a better roller and finish putting undercoat on the new plaster and plasterboard in my bare-naked kitchen and bathroom and not let myself get distracted from finishing my part of the renovating deal.

Although I guess I could post two little photos anyway:

And some quick pictures of the unforgettably awesome weekend in Brittany:

And note that my oven is still hanging out on my bedroom floor in my pre-kitchen-installation, living-in-one-room arrangement and that, if those brownies are better than the ones we had that night, they must be MIGHTY fine.

And finally, to say that yesterday was my last day at work. Freedom!!

Almost there.

2008-10-05T19:16:00.003+02:00

I'm hoping to get back home tomorrow night, or Tuesday at the latest. Things have come on great bounds in the last week and I'm really delighted with how it's looking so far. A few things that haven't turned out quite how I'd imagined, but no disasters. And still lots of work of a patching/painting variety to do, of course, but that's for me to get stuck into.

They left the electricity and the water off again this weekend so paint stripping wasn't really an option (I had to make an epic kitchen-ordering trip to IKEA anyway and, to be honest, I wasn't really in the mood anyway) but I did remove the broken tile on the bathroom floor and prepare one of the old baseboard tiles to plug the gap.

Lots of photos to come (of the flat and of the fantastic weekend I spent last week in Brittany with friends from work - bliss :) ), but I don't have my computer with me at this flat so they'll have to wait.

Quick update

2008-09-24T13:37:00.010+02:00

Very very quick.

Things seem to be going fine and now that the electricity is almost finished, it should be possible to see some progress soon. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, this:

has become this:

This:

has become this:

This:

has turned into this:

and this:

Now they just have to put it all back together again...

And they're off!

2008-09-17T22:16:00.002+02:00

Travaux started exactly a week ago today. I'm staying with various friends, on a variety of airbeds and sofas, so I'm pretty tired and email access isn't easy. Suffice it to say that I'm still hemming and hawing about kitchen lighting, and that I had to water my plants with bottled water at the weekend, and that having felt really quite disoriented by seeing my lovely home reduced to dust and broken plaster I'm now feeling an awful lot happier and really quite hopeful. Pictures to come as and when I'm able to upload them. :)

Exciting times

2008-09-04T22:40:00.007+02:00

I've accepted a quote for all my travaux: looks like the dust and destruction could start as early as next week and, even more excitingly, that it could all be clean and beautiful and new a mere four weeks after that! I don't know what I'd do with a proper, functional, hole-free flat but it's a terribly enticing prospect.

I'm going to be spending this weekend finalising decisions about taps (so difficult!) and kitchen floors (so know what I want, so don't know exactly where to find it or what kind of material to choose) and windows and tiles and I'll probably find time to second-guess my thoughts about baths and sinks too.

Just in case there's anyone out there, here's a picture of three ways I might end up doing the high window I'm going to create between the kitchen and my dark, underwater bathroom.

Any thoughts? I know which picture I like best, but I have a feeling that might not be the best real-life choice. The proportions aren't anything like the same, but this is the kind of effect I'm looking for:

Picture: Apartment Therapy

Also, does anyone know about Kludi taps, specifically the Bozz? I've never heard of them but I saw them in BHV, which is a pretty reliable sort of shop, and I like the look of them, but I'm slight concerned that the url ends "...bad-bozz" and that I received a note from my neighbour today telling me off for keeping him awake by running my washing machine at 1am (yeah, I don't have a washing machine... yet) and he is called... Mr Bozza! Subliminal messages or mere coincidences?

Anyway, all of these things to ponder AND I need to drum up the enthusiasm to drag myself out to spend yet more time in the 6-and-a-1/2th circle of hell that is the IKEA kitchen department.

On that note, here's a flower for some cheerfulness. It's one of my long-suffering gardenias, flowering. Those poor babies have been sunburnt and overfed and burnt again and dried out (and, of course, appreciated for their hardiness and sheer stubborn ability to return from the precipice every time). Even after all that, the big one, which had clearly been pumped up on plant food by the garden shop and looked like a goner for a couple of months after I got it home, has managed to produce TWO flowers this year. Here's the most recent:

Smells lovely too.

Warning: contains images that may shock.

2008-08-27T22:06:00.018+02:00

This is going to be a picture-heavy post, but I figured if I'm going to go for disclosure, I may as well go for full disclosure. If you think you have a rubbish kitchen and you still feel that way at the end of this post, you have my sympathies.

So, here goes. Come on in...

That's pretty much everything you need to know. I have a grand total of two cupboards and there's always a lot of junk under the work top (to be fair, that big green plastic sack isn't there and I usually have the rubbish in the rubbish bin - I must have been using the bucket inside as a water pail when the photo was taken).

But oh, this is meant to be about full disclosure, and if you're going to shake your head in disbelief when I tell you I paid dollar (let alone top dollar) for this place, you need to see a little more. Let's start with the gas, which kind of hangs out right in the middle of the wall, taking a break after its great long journey right the way round the wall:

"Hangs out" is literal rather than figurative. The meter isn't hooked to the wall. I'm guessing that's really not a good idea, but the gas boiler was replaced about a year before I moved in so a gas person must have seen the meter then and not felt it was a major issue.

The electricity also takes a looooong journey into my flat. It comes up the stair to my front door, then treks all the way through to my kitchen, which is as far from the front door as it's possible to be, stops for a count, and then heads all the way back through the flat. It would be so much happier kicking back in my hall cupboard, but the guy who just gave me a quote for kitchen-bathroom-electricity-plumbing-heating (did I mention I don't have heating either? and that I paid good money for this place? while being quite aware of all of the above... sheesh) wants to charge me big bucks for shifting it (even though all the electricity will be getting ripped out), so I guess it's going to stay in the kitchen for now.

That little blue meter is the electricity. (Take advantage of this opportunity to admire the window - it's the only nice thing you'll see in this post).

The white box above contains.... fuses! Wooo! Every time I've shown this to a contractor they've shuddered.

The other really fierce thing is this downpipe and the plumbing in general. As I mentioned, all this was visible when I bought and I STILL went ahead with it. I've always thought people who say they have a "coup de coeur" for a house are soft in the head but that's exactly what happened to me with this place. I wasn't even over the threshold and it felt like home. When they offered to show me the kitchen and the bathroom I was all "Ooh, it has a bathroom too? That's great. Lovely!"

The water pipe sprang a leak the first weekend I was in here (fortunately just on the building-side of the tap!) but there haven't been any issues since. It's just so terribly, terribly ugly though. I've never really looked at it this closely before - I'm borderline horrified.

Let's move on to nicer things: cupboards!

I have a big one:

And a little one under the window:

Between them and my fridge I survive quite well but it will be awfully nice to have more storage space when I get the new kitchen. I think it's going to be one of these "how did I manage before?" moments.

Anyway, here's an aerial shot for a bit of perspective:

And a picture from just after I'd moved in:

Oh, and remember there's a giant hole between the kitchen and the bathroom, just to the left of this picture.

Like I said, if you still feel bad about your kitchen, you have my sympathies.

Finished.

2008-08-22T19:43:00.020+02:00

I've done it! I started on April 26 so it's only dragged out for a measly four months, but that doesn't matter because it's done. DONE! And boy oh boy but it's beeeooutiful.

Soooo beautiful. Sigh. I keep going into the kitchen just to admire it and have little daydreams about how lovely it could look surrounded by a non-disastrous kitchen.

Anyway, here's a little "see how far that window's come" set of pictures:
- back in March, when there was scaffolding outside my window and I kept forgetting and ambling through to the kitchen straight after my shower thinking that my window still looked out onto a wall and not onto a bunch of builders doing work on said wall. Oops.

- getting started back in April. When I was still a paint-stripping innocent and had no idea what awaited me. Although I have also realised that the whole thing, including sanding and oiling and more sanding and more oiling and blacking and polishing this weekend, probably took about 45 hours all in, which is exactly how long that little baby blanket took to knit. Not that I'd be queuing up to knit baby blankets if rubber gloves were part of the equation.

- here it is before I went on holiday, when I gaily thought that the sanding-oiling-blacking-polishing bit would be done in two shakes of a lamb's tail. I thought it was pretty then, but the extra work has made all the difference. And no, I can't believe I'm getting all gushy about a window either, but there you go.

- and here's the blacking in progress:

- and here's the blacking and polishing done:

Yay.

Small-scale photo extravaganzette

2008-08-14T23:11:00.028+02:00

Beach weather... For me, this was one of our best days, surrounded by storm clouds but quite happy in a little pocket of sunshine.

Which isn't to say that anoraks aren't still de rigueur when it comes to beachwear...

Although I'm quite happy if wearing an anorak is the price to pay for enjoying this. :)

The huge west beach - bleak, beautiful, and ferociously windy.

Best beach find: a perfectly-formed, translucent prawn skin. It was about as long as one of my fingers and even though it was extremely fragile, all the articulations still worked. It still had its feelers and everything. First time I've seen one!

The house where my great-grandfather was born.

And some others that don't need explanation. It was a good holiday, the kind of open air and space that makes me wonder what I'm doing living in a city.

One day, I will finish my kitchen windows.

2008-08-11T22:45:00.013+02:00

But for the moment, I'll just keep on sanding away. Lots of sanding last night and tonight - I'm now just about ready to oil the easy half and am in the middle of a little experiment with the iron-protector cream, which is really more like shoe polish than anything else, to see how it copes with rust.

Anyway, I'll post pictures of that and of gorgeous beaches as soon as I get them off my camera and sorted out. In the meantime, here's a photo of the little blanket I knitted for my newest nephew:

Not remotely complicated, but quite pretty for all its simplicity and I think my brother and sister-in-law were pleased. My nephew responded with a small vomit, but given that he doesn't have a lot of other ways of expressing himself yet, I'll take that as a positive...

Here's my very first video post. Doesn't show the full glory of the beaches, but heck, what could be cooler than an airport where the plane has been known to be put in a holding pattern, not because there aren't any landing slots, but because there's a fat seal lying in the middle of the beach. :)

.

On holiday

2008-08-02T20:09:00.005+02:00

The island is as wild and peaceful as ever, although the weather leaves a little to be desired. At least that means I'm getting lots of time to knit a blanket for my latest nephew, who was born ten days ago.

I'm also managing to unwind a bit from work, helped by the face that I resigned on Wednesday 23rd July. No smiley in the world could do justice to the relief I feel, but here goes anyway. :) I found my new job so quickly that it all took me a bit by surprise and I didn't really have time to think about whether it's really what I want, but I do think it'll be interesting and worth doing for a couple of years at least. We'll see, but whatever happens, it was certainly time for a change. God but it feels good to know I'll be out of there long before Christmas. I'm a happy happy kid.

Knitting for stress relief

2008-07-20T22:54:00.008+02:00

I guess I could have done "sanding woodwork for stress relief" or "protecting wrought iron with the special cream I bought for stress relief" or "anything basically USEFUL for stress relief", but I've been feeling so anxious about this potential work situation that real, hard-core procrastination was the only thing that would do. So I took a trip to one of my favourite places in all Paris - the Marché Saint-Pierre (the website is worth visiting for the translation alone) - and went yarn shopping.

And then stayed up until 2am this morning trying to work out how to do seed stitch. And yeah, I know it's dead straightforward once you've sussed out that you need to change from knit to purl and back by pulling the yarn through the gap BETWEEN the needles, but that is something NONE of the knitting sites tell you. And by the time you have a durrr moment and work it out for yourself, it's already 11 the next morning and you've probably unpicked everything about, oooh, three times. Sheesh.

Anyway, my wedding washclothes are now ticking along nicely and should help keep me busy when I'm home in Scotland for a couple of weeks from Sunday next (assuming my needles don't get confiscated by the meanies at CDG). I'm also dreaming of granny squares and ripple blankets, because another procrastination project over which I can then procrastinate is probably just exactly what I need at the moment...

Hope and hard work

2008-07-14T22:06:00.005+02:00

The hope refers to a big ol' fingers crossed about work and the hope that I'll be able to spill the beans in the next week or so.

The hard work refers to my kitchen window. Yep, I finally did it: all stripped. I was starting to wonder whether I'd ever get there - it's such ferociously hard work and takes so LONG and I hate wearing rubber gloves, especially when they get wet and sweaty and my hands smell of rubber for 24 hours after I finish. Other than that, great fun.

Anyway, still a few little bits of scraping left but I'll do that dry, without any paint-stripper. The important thing is that the windows are washed and ready for sanding and oiling, even if it took me a good part of my long weekend. I did a big session on Saturday afternoon then spent another seven or so hours this afternoon.

It was a glorious 14th of July outside, so shame I was inside fuming it up, but at least it'll be another "memorable" Bastille Day. My first 14th July, I went to the Firemen's Ball in the 6th and the fireworks on the Champs de Mars with Georgina, the second I was painting my then-new flat at Bastille and almost fell off my ladder when the jets and helicopters flew past after the military parade, the third I was up in Granville and met J for the first time, the fourth I was in Rouen with D and had a fairly massive post-break-up fight with J on the phone (oh yeah), and last year, I went to the fireworks on the Champs de Mars with... good ol' J. Heh.

Catch-up.

2008-07-05T11:40:00.011+02:00

No posting for a couple of weeks due to a mix of good times and bad.

Good times: S&R arrived back from Spain (with dulce de leche :) ) and stayed for a few days before heading back to Canada. As always, I really enjoyed having them around and it was a great excuse to hold my first proper dinner at the flat. We managed to get eight round the table and managed to feed them all too, thanks to S taking care of pudding and an inspired decision to plug in the oven in the bedroom and leave the kitchen free for plates and other gubbins. Not the best picture ever, and I've no idea what exciting story was being told, but I think it kind of captures the atmosphere:

More good times last weekend, down in Cannes with another friend and her cute-as-all-heck 10-month old. Three days lazing on the beach and spending the evenings sipping rosé on the balcony was just what the doctor ordered... yep, work is hideous at the moment. Resignations a-go-go and one of the new recruits is giving me real headaches by behaving like a jerk with clients and then getting aggro when I try to coax/steer him back on to the right track. Very unhappy state of affairs which isn't leaving me with much energy for anything else.

In the circumstances, not much has moved with the flat. I finally sorted out my bedroom curtains yesterday, and I'm going to do more paint-stripping in the kitchen tomorrow night. At least my flowers are still looking nice. :)

Damn. Leaky bath... again.

2008-06-15T20:52:00.017+02:00

Yesterday, I steeled myself and went ahead one of my least favourite tasks in the world: cleaning out the bath plughole. I can't stand it - it really brings me to the point of vomiting. My reward? A bath that drains... directly into the floor underneath. Soaking concrete, welcome back, we've missed you. :( Clearly my manoeuvres had dislodged the precarious plastic pipework that links the bath to the rest of my plumbing. Just what I needed. Back to buckets... I haven't done anything on the flat this weekend apart from cleaning. Last night I went for ciné/dîné with J. We saw Tabarly, a terrific documentary that I'd highly recommend. I found it quite moving, in part because he and J could be father and son. The likeness - from their faces, to their physiques, to the way they walk - is remarkable. In the trailer, it could be J in the little black & white interview (and in the shot that comes just before, where he's in the red shorts climbing the sail ;) ). It was like seeing everything that's good about him up on screen, the shyness and kindness and toughness and sense of humour, but without being confronted by the stubborn, headstrong, uncommunicative aspects of his personality. I've been feeling quite melancholy all day, mainly because Eric Tabarly seemed like a genuinely decent human being, but also perhaps because I know that it will never work with J, however fond of each other we are.

Anyway, all that's as may be. Even if I did nothing this weekend, I did at least work pretty hard last weekend, zapping woodworm and stripping paint on Saturday night until 2:30 am. It's so painfully slow. I started here:

And five hours later, I was here:

I've worked hard for about fifteen hours and I reckon I've got another twelve hours to go.

In the background, you can see the plant pot hanging system I've rigged up. I'm very pleased with it. Here's a close up:

Very pleased with my plants in general. My passion fruit plant is like slow-motion fireworks at the moment. Almost every day there's a new, glorious flower somewhere. They're so beautiful and delicate and bold.

Damn. Woodworm...

2008-06-01T13:57:00.002+02:00

So it's a lovely sunny day here. I was out for dinner with friends last night, had nice English muffins for breakfast (a neighbour who's gone away for a week left them on my doorstep yesterday along with a pineapple and some bananas), and I have woodworm in my cool little telephone table. Darn.
Not too much, but it means buying and applying more chemicals and keeping my fingers crossed that the little buggers haven't had time to get into anything else in the flat.

Art & asparagus

2008-05-25T21:34:00.007+02:00

I've had a very chilled weekend with a focus on me. As in treats. For breakfast, I went to the boulangerie for a demi-baguette yesterday (not very glam but oh-so-good with raspberry jam) and for a delicious chausson pomme today, and I also went all-out on dinner. I bought a roast chicken from the butcher last night and ate it with asparagus and mustard, then tonight I had it cold with more asparagus and scrumptious sweet-potato mash and loads of sea salt and black pepper. Still more left for tomorrow night, probably in a risotto with the stock that's simmering away on the stove at the moment.

Apart from a looong walk with S today (a weekend ritual), I've not seen anyone. Instead, I spent last night making this gem:

Too cool, no? I've been eyeing it up for weeks and decided to just BUY the kit yesterday and sod the "oh, but it's a bit silly to spend money on something like that" anxieties. I primed it because I wanted it white and I already had the primer out to do a third shelf for my bedroom and then spent a merry couple of hours trying to put the damn thing together. Not easy. But very engaging.

I spent this afternoon playing with a linocut. Not sure how it'll turn out - I don't have ink at home so I'll have to wait until my next class to print - but it was fun. Off to do some more now.

Oh, and my flowers are growing madly and looking mighty fine. :)

Busy having fun

2008-05-18T22:35:00.019+02:00

It's been a busy few weeks. Lots of work (no surprise there), but also lots of socialising and even a few days away.

Flat-wise, the stripping continues:

Flower-wise, the impatiens in my kitchen window are (I know this sounds uber-cheesy but I'll say it anyway).... delightful. Really:

Friend-wise, I had one of my favourite former colleagues and her equally lovely husband staying for a few days on a quick stopover in Paris between travelling in Asia and hiking across Spain. I so enjoyed hanging out with them, especially as the friend is none other than the Casual Baker and she decided to whip up some delicious strawberry yoghurt muffins one sunny afternoon:

Holiday-wise, I and another friend set off with S&R to join them for the first few days hiking through the Pyrennes. Damn but it was GOOD. The weather was phenomenal, the jinks were high, and the walking was just right:

Wisteria in the alley

2008-04-27T20:56:00.008+02:00

Another flower-centric weekend. The wisteria in the alley has bloomed:

And I came home on Friday night to find the vacant shop across from my flat has turned into a florist! Super-pleased. I bought some flowers to celebrate.

Although it's been beautifully sunny, I've spent most of the weekend inside, stripping paint from the kitchen window. I worked from 10pm to 1:30am last night and from 11am to 4pm today and only have the central strip to show for my efforts (although it is the most fiddly part, because of the metal). It's not even perfectly finished, as this photo shows. Such hard work - I was already grateful for my parents' work on my bedroom but I now really understand how much my Dad had to do to get such a good finish on the bedroom window.
Oh, and it seems I'm doomed with shelving. I screwed the shelves to the brackets, did some polyfilla-ing and painting to cover the screwheads, and loaded them up with books... to find that I'd forgotten to take account of the added height of the books when working out where to position the shelves on the wall so they look a bit too high now. :(

Shamefree shelving

2008-04-21T21:33:00.005+02:00

I managed to borrow an extension lead from work so I put up my shelves this afternoon. I had a day off (my old school friend was over for the weekend and left this afternoon) - holy smoke but it felt good to have a three-day weekend, especially because I had a few sleepless nights last week, finding myself hopping out of bed in the middle of the night to check that my wall wasn't collapsing... hem.
I need to buy some little wood screws to attach the shelves to the brackets before I load them up, and I also want to cover and paint the screws, but the hard bit's out of the way. They're nothing special but I'm pleased.

The hole in the wall...

2008-04-13T20:55:00.012+02:00

...just got bigger.
Back in September, I excavated a chunk of my bathroom-kitchen wall. Other than pointing out the hole in the wall to interested visitors, I haven't really thought about it much since then. For some reason, however, the words "dry rot" lodged themselves in my brain last weekend and ended up keeping me awake half the night on Sunday and Monday. I know dry rot smells, and that the absence of a smell meant I was probably in the clear, but I couldn't get past the niggling thought that something dark and dangerous and possibly very expensive was going on behind my bathroom tiles. So I decided to reduce my chances of something rotten by removing at least one potential culprit, namely the rest of the wooden supports.

It was all so rotten I was able to do all this while I was waiting for my washing to go round in the laundrette. The big panel was so flimsily held in place that it just lifted out. All that remains is to get rid of the evidence. It's almost dark enough now for a trip down to the bins...

Fantastic flowers: part II

2008-04-07T22:00:00.006+02:00

Just looked up from my computer and found this lovely surprise sitting across the room from me:

It must just have opened in the last ten minutes or so.

I bought this passion flower yesterday but the earth in the flower pot I want to use is so water-logged I can't plant it out yet. Certainly didn't expect to be seeing any flowers on a chilly April evening among the paint pots. :)

Fantastic flowers

2008-04-07T21:31:00.003+02:00

I spent the weekend catching up with friends so I didn't get anything done in the flat. Thought I'd share the remarkable shelf-life of these flowers though. I bought them for 4 euros the Saturday after my parents left, as in on the 1st of March. And they're still going strong! Five weeks later!! (Well, strongish - they're no longer on top form but until about a week ago they were still good enough that I would probably have bought them in a flower shop).

Don't know what variety they are, but I'm certainly impressed. Oh, and in all that time I've topped up the water once. I think they must break some kind of record for low maintenance...

Baby steps

2008-03-30T22:05:00.005+02:00

I had a friend staying last weekend as well, but I managed to get a pair of shelves primed and painted only to come up against my lack of an extension cord. I only have three proper sockets in the flat. I can plug in lamps and chargers and the like in all of the sockets, but to plug in "large" items like computer, radiator, hairdryer, iron or drill, I need to rely on the biggies, of which two are in the kitchen. So really, I have to rely on the single proper socket in the hall, which permanently has a little multi-socket extension cord in it for computer, radiator, etc. And damn but that little extension cord is MILES away from being able to reach my bedroom windows. A couple of friends brought round four metres of cord to allow me to put up my curtain rod, but I'm now stuck for cord to put up my shelves. Not urgent, but a little frustrating. Vivement new electricity!

So, shelves almost done. Other priming news concerned this little chair, which I found beside the rubbish bins a couple of nights after I moved in here (it doesn't really show in the picture but it was a pretty nasty yellowish colour):
- which now looks like this, ready for a coat of proper paint:

- and I primed the new bits of my DIY'd bathroom door.
I've also finished oiling my bedroom windows and have sorted out curtain rings for one side of the window - I miscalculated so I need to buy more rings for the other side. I think that's all for this weekend. Baby steps indeed. :)

Lots done, loads to do.

2008-03-16T22:06:00.007+01:00

Since my parents left it's been a succession of busy weekends and twelve-hour days at work so not much time for posting. Here's what's changed:
- my sitting room has gone from this:
- to this: Still lots to do, especially with regards to paint, art, curtains and lighting, but I'm loving my lovely fuzzy flokati, my new comfy sofa from Ikea, and being able to see the floor.

Bedroom-wise, we've gone from this: - via this (thanks for my beautiful wooden window Dad!): - to this: I'm super super happy with the colour. The ceiling colour isn't right given the wall colour (not that I think it's desperately wrong either, and it does have the advantage of really bringing out my über-posh cornice) but I think it's going to look poifect on the walls of my sitting room. Yay. Here's another look: In less photogenic developments, I put up a mirror in my loo and spent a merry evening brushing bleach on to the ceiling to kill the black mold. :)

Feeling a bit guilty

2008-02-21T23:57:00.002+01:00

My parents are over. They arrived on Tuesday evening to find the flat in a bit of a state - I'd done the washing up on Monday night when I got in from work at about half-midnight (yeah, it's going from bad to worse) and a very quick tidy up but I hadn't cleaned properly and everything was still piled in the front room. Which makes me feel particularly bad that when I've dragged my sorry self home from work the last two nights it's been to find dinner on the table and increasing amounts of paint off my bedroom woodwork. My dad's just about finished the window and boy but it's been a huge job. He's got it looking so good I'll feel almost guilty (that word again) about painting it again. Wonder what it'd look like with a wooden window frame against painted wood trim everywhere else. Quite good perhaps...
Anyway, to bed. Work again tomorrow, engraving in the evening, then the WEEKEND!!!!

Paint chipping

2008-02-10T22:35:00.000+01:00

Late nights at work again all last week so I didn't get back to my bedroom until Friday night. As I waited for the kettle to boil for my hot water bottle (yeah, very hot, but I don't have proper heating and I love my repurposed Sigg - stays warm 'til morning!), I went in to take a look at what I'd done last weekend and started idly picking at a loose bit of paint on the hall side of the door. Bad move - an hour later, I was still there, surrounded by paint chips but at least I'd done a whole side. Nothing more addictive than picking, especially when whatever it is comes off in satisfyingly large pieces.

I know that this is NOT an effective way to strip paint but I'd started, so I ended up spending the weekend finishing that side of the door. Of course, I enlisted the support of my trusty scraper and my trusty penknife but it was still a slow job. In the process, I discovered that the clumpy layers of white paint hide semi-clumpy green paint and that two of the windows have been broken and replaced at some point so the molding is just a rough approximation of quarter-diameter dowling. I was rather relieved to discover that actually, as I'd got down to the wood in a couple of places and was wondering if I'd be morally obliged to strip all the doors and panels in the apartment back to basics to show off the wood.

This is how things stand tonight:
Next steps: find a way to take the paint off the handles and bring on the chemicals for the windows and the other door - enough of this penknife nonsense!

Dust

2008-02-03T20:38:00.000+01:00

Having de-poussièred my house last Sunday night and spent a whole week of evenings breathing fresh air, I got stuck in with the sandpaper again today.

This morning, I shunted all of my furniture into my sitting room in preparation for a blitz. My parents are coming over in a few weeks - partly for a holiday, partly to wield paint-brushes - and even though I know they'd be happy to do it, I don't want to land them with all the preparation. So I got out my steps and my sandpaper, put on my work clothes, plugged the gaps under the bedroom doors in a (failed) attempt to keep the dust from getting out, and set to.

The lazy bugger was who sloshed white emulsion all over this flat at some point in the last twenty years deserves to be shot. I spent four hours just on the glass door and I didn't even finish there were so many slobbery drips and runs and lumps (how do you even make lumps when you're painting?). There's paint on the glass and paint on the door handles and the detail of the molding is obscured by... paint. Yeech. Oh, and he had a go at the cornice too.

It's really strange powdery, chalky paint which is pretty difficult to clean up so I'll see if I do anything this week during the evening or if I just have another blitz next weekend when I have enough time to make real headway and justify the cleaning up time. In the meantime, I'm all cosy in my sitting room. Slightly crowded, it must be said, but it'll be nice to wake up in here for a change.

All systems go

2008-01-27T21:55:00.000+01:00

It's been quite a weekend. Quite a week actually - so busy I was just about hyper-ventilating, finally lost my temper and snarled at my obnoxious colleague, and told my boss I want to hand in my sheriff's badge and go down to 4 days a week by July at the latest. She took it well (too well?) and told me I'm welcome to change my mind but I can't see that happening any time soon.
Flat-wise, lots on the go. :)

Last weekend, I picked up handles for my cabinet from BHV. I ended up going for slightly expensive ones that caught my eye and I'm really pleased it did. The end result is exactly what I'd hoped for. Now I just need to get the rest of the bathroom into working order...

I'm getting there. This weekend I've been working on the door. It's been difficult and I'm not out of the woods yet but things are looking promising. I ended up finding molding that was almost a perfect match in BHV - thank feck I didn't try and muddle something with bits of dowling, a thought which crossed my mind and was, fortunately, rejected. I can't imagine what a nightmare that would have been. To make the difference between the original bit and the new bit less visible, I ended up removing the good bit of molding on the right-hand side. It was tough getting the joints to align, especially as I don't have any sort of work table and my only saw is a small, increasingly blunt hacksaw (the last two weekends have been heavy on the tool-blaming front...).

Once I had the molding sorted, I set to trying to replicate the central panel. Lots of sanding to get the existing bit of mdf and the door frame smooth enough, little bits of sanding to soften the edges of the new additions and give them a similar look to the originals. Measured, glued, looks okay, probably should have let the glue cure a little longer than I did but I'm desperate to get my flat cleaned up tonight - I've been living surrounded by sawdust since Christmas and it's getting a bit old.

Getting the central panel into place was a real drag. The piece that was originally used to replace the kicked-in section isn't quite the right size, so I couldn't align it with any of the wooden edges or prop it on anything to keep it in place. I tried to glue it but I couldn't keep it in position long enough for the glue to set and I don't have any clamps or anything. I was also trying to manoeuvre it into place from inside the bathroom while peering round to the hall side to check it was correctly aligned. It was definitely an occasion when it would have been useful to have had another pair of hands. Or to have glued on the central panels once the main section was in place. Hem.

I ended up using some tiny nails which are hidden by the molding glued on the other side. I think the central bit will look fine once it's painted.

On the inside, I again resorted to the glue. Again, I'll withhold judgement until it's painted but I think it's a pretty decent save and it didn't work out to be particularly expensive.

The last thing I did this weekend was to finish the Shelves of Shame. Still shameful, but fully functional. I've been able to put away all of the stuff that's been cluttering up the corner of my bedroom since I moved in and my new Danish chair is now in place, just waiting for the rest of the room to come into shape around it. Bought new foam for the chair too, so a trip to the Marché Saint-Pierre will be in order too.

The Shelves:
- before: two clothes rails right at the back

- during: using my superduper new drill (AEG 600R) to throw up a heck of lot of dust

- halfway through: loading up shelves while cursing the mismeasurements that meant I had to shave half a centimetre off each shelf to take account of the cupboard narrowing towards the back and the top. With a small, increasingly blunt hacksaw.

- after: all loaded up with a salvaged clothes rail towards the front and space to hang brushes and the like between the clothes and the door. The organization will change slightly when I get a wardrobe, and I'm also planning to fix up something for shoes, but for the moment, it's a million times more useful than it used to be so I'm happy.

Shelves of shame

2008-01-21T21:51:00.000+01:00

The shelves at the back of my hall cupboard, henceforth to be known as the Shelves of Shame, are almost finished. I will do everything in my power to ensure that NO ONE ever inspects them closely. It would do untold damage to any slight reputation I might have for careful, considered, neat, well-finished work.

2008-01-15T21:56:00.000+01:00

Um, so I might have exaggerated a little bit about my chair being ruined. Maybe a tiny element of melodrama creeping in there. Might actually just be the fact that some parts have seen a touch more wear than others and are less glossy....

Should have known better.

2008-01-13T20:44:00.000+01:00

Rather a frustrating weekend. It started full of ideas about shelves and doors and cupboards and ended up with a damaged chair. Not best.
On Saturday, I braved the sales crowds at BHV and Leroy Merlin but came home empty-handed - no brackets for shelving at BHV, realised I'd forgotten a key measurement for my door supplies, queues at the tills and the wood cutting too long for me to buy wood without being late for dinner, handles I wanted for my black cabinet all sold out, harumph.
My very grim bathroom door has been kicked in, poorly repaired and poorly painted at some point in its life. It's one of the uglier features in an already ugly space:

Knowing I'm probably going to end up buying a new door in any case and have nothing to lose, I took a chisel to it when I got home from work on Thursday night to see if it might be fixable. I think the chances are slim. First, I'd thought the molding was separate and would come away fairly easily but it's actually a continuation of the body of the door so I don't have a very clean join. Second, they don't sell this kind of molding in BHV, Leroy Merlin or M. Bricolage, so if I'm going to get a near match I'm going to have to do lots of fiddly work and even then it'll never be quite right. It's almost definitely not worth the effort but I'll give it a shot anyway.

Having failed to get the necessary supplies yesterday, I was a bit stuck today so I just went for an amble by the canal and stopped in at the depôt vente... to find, waiting quietly, the chair I've been hoping to find for the last few months - new cushions and it'll be perfect. I had a seat and a think and a stand around and another think and went for a hot chocolate to think some more and came back for another look. It was when I came back and had a little heart-sinking moment when I thought it had been sold that I decided to stuff the price and just buy it. I carted it home there and then.
Which is when the trouble started. I wiped it down with a damp cloth and some detergent because it was pretty grubby and flecked with white paint here and there. Unfortunately, I made the STUPID mistake of rubbing too hard at some of the paint and I've ended up raising the grain. I felt sick when I realised what I'd done. It's not a disaster but basically it's gone from being a beautiful Danish Modern armchair, albeit with some flecks of paint, to being a dull-looking, albeit paint-free, second-hand chair.
I'm hoping oiling or waxing it will repair the damage but I'm not doing a thing until I'm sure I won't make the situation worse. Damn. Ah well, I'll get over it - it's still a lovely thing with beautiful workmanship and gorgeous honey-coloured wood.

Also spotted at the depôt vente today: the fantastic "cowhide commode". Intriguing and terrifying at the same time...

New year, new glam cabinet

2008-01-06T20:28:00.000+01:00

December was a bit of a write-off between work blues and winter blues. Looks like January and February aren't going to be any better on the work front but I'll keep my little fingers crossed...

I had a good few days at home over Christmas and came back with all sorts of ideas about things to do in the flat only to have a major reality-check when I opened the front door. Heck but there's a LOT of work to do. At least I now have a clearer vision of how I want it all to come together design-wise. The key will be getting the electricity sorted. Once that's out of the way, I'll be able to get the sitting room and bedroom into shape and the kitchen and bathroom will come along in their own sweet time.

In the meantime, I decided to go for a quick win. Not quite so quick in real life but a win nonetheless. Still a few little things to tidy up but, over the last couple of weekends, I've:

- taken the other, very shabby, bedside cabinet I bought in the dépôt vente by the Bassin de la Villette

- (that I'm planning to put in the bathroom once it's all tarted up and has a new, smaller sink and more, em, forgiving, tiles)

- sanded it down (resorting to nail varnish remover when it came to extracting old wax from the more inaccessible carved areas - surprisingly effective)

- sanded it again with fine grain and wiped it all down

- and painted it with black gloss

Needs a little finishing but it's looking pretty fine, though I say it myself.

Note, also, that the bedroom door is CLOSED in that third picture. Yep, I decided minimizing dust levels in the rest of the flat was a bit of a priority so I went at the door with the roughest sandpaper I could find and managed to get rid of the extra layer of emulsion/gobs of old paint/sloppy-drips-and-runs that were keeping it from closing. Crazy amounts of dust - I now understand the work that will be required if ever I'm to close the other doors in here...

Drawings into images

2007-12-05T22:54:00.000+01:00

I worked out how to do the jpeg transformation! Here's the latest thinking with regard to my kitchen floor:

In other flat-related news, the insurance guy came today about my loo ceiling. Result? I'm strongly advised to leave the window open until May, when he'll come back to see if the ceiling's dried out enough for them to repaper. They can do that when the humidity is at 12%. At the moment, after a full month of drying, it's at 80%. Ouch.

Praise be for the post!

2007-12-04T21:30:00.000+01:00

My very welcome guest caught a train to Amsterdam on Thursday afternoon. He came by my office beforehand so we could have lunch together and he could give me back my keys. The lunch bit went very well, the key bit less so. Four hours later, chatting to a colleague about his visit, it struck me that my house keys, office keys and post-box key were all on their merry way to Holland. Ah...
Fortunately, my spare keys were with a friend rather than in a shoebox beside my bed so I've been able to function, but I've been lying awake at night wondering why on earth I told him to post me my keys rather than insisting on UPS or registered mail or even just jumping on a train to Amsterdam for the weekend. I should add that I have the most hard-core five-point dead bolt system on my steel-reinforced door (heck knows what the previous residents have been scared of but they did not want visitors) so getting spares or replacing locks is an expensive business.
Anyway, all this to say that my keys finally arrived at work this morning and boy was I relieved. Probably even beats the Aerobed delivery day in terms of wide grins.

Busy

2007-12-01T23:32:00.000+01:00

Busy-busy last week and an unexpected but very welcome guest most of this week so I'm having a lazy weekend to myself. I did a proper clean this morning - crazy dust bunny activity - and have been enjoying mooching and drinking tea in my lovely flat this evening.

In November, I:

- "restored" my sitting room floor:

- hung new curtains (the long, thick dining room curtains of my childhood but, as it happens, pretty much perfect for the room and nothing I would ever have had the guts to choose myself):

- reorganized my furniture with the aid of two conveniently-sized cardboard boxes (not the final layout! This photo was taken in the middle of all the cardboard swooshing):

- bought two bedside cabinets, not a pair, one of which is now doing sterling service hiding all my computer and telephone wires (and the other of which is now clean and will, one day, do sterling service in a renovated non-submarine bathroom):

- wrinkled my nose every time I went into the loo because of the disturbing smoke/mould smell which, I assume, is coming from the ceiling:

- sussed out, I think, the way I'm going to organize the kitchen (but can't work out how to transform the drawing into a jpeg file),

- and made another ginormous pot of soup. :)

Old friends

2007-11-12T22:14:00.000+01:00

My best friend from school was over for a flying visit this weekend. I think we must have talked 24-hours straight as we wandered the streets of Paris and ate and drank. It was great to see her properly and I was super pleased with the places we went. Sometimes, it just works out and you land on the nicest, most handsome, most interesting streets by accident. On Saturday afternoon we walked all the way down my street until we reached the Seine, crossed over to take a walk around Notre Dame, ambled up through the backstreets of the 5th to the Luxembourg Gardens then back down into the 6th, where we stopped and bought a mini-macaroon each in an impossibly glamorous cake shop. Fortified, we set off again.
Further through the 6th, peeked into the lovely courtyard of the building where I lived in a tiny 8m2 studio my first year in Paris, headed down to Bon Marché where we took a detour around the incredible food hall to compensate for the Christmas windows not being up and running, walked back through the poshest parts of the 6th and across the Pont des Arts into the beautifully illuminated courtyards of the Louvre.
Stood by the pyramid and waited for the Eiffel Tower to start her sparkling gig (which she didn't), then walked off through the Marais to a café just beside the place des Vosges where we had a well-deserved kir.
Again fortified (but now quite footsore), we walked up boulevard Beaumarchais and the boulevard Richard Lenoir until we got to the canal, where we settled in for a lovely long dinner and lots of good red wine. Home at 2am.
The next morning (the Aerobed was a great success - yay!) we walked down rue Lafayette until we got to the rue des Martyrs, ambled down oohing and aahing over all the beautiful cheese shops and flower shops and everything was just impossibly French and classy. Perfect for visitors. Cut along the boulevard to the Moulin Rouge for a photo op then all the way up the back of rue Lepic into the touristy bits of Montmartre and Sacré Coeur before lunch, coffee and a stroll back to Gare du Nord.
And that was that. Hope I get more visits like that soon.

2007-11-03T13:38:00.000+01:00

Oh dear. I guess getting home after a couple of glasses of wine and attacking your kitchen wall with a scraper maybe isn't such a great idea:

But then, it's difficult not to be suspicious of your walls and attack anything that looks vaguely damp or mould-concealing when your afternoon has revolved around this:

And when you've been dealing with that the previous day, what you really don't want to notice when you're getting out of the shower the next morning is a big ol' crack that runs the length of four tiles halfway up your bathroom wall and corresponds perfectly to the big ol' crack that your excavations revealed along the kitchen wall.

There are times I really really wish my Dad lived up the road.

Blowing up a bed was never so much fun

2007-10-30T22:17:00.001+01:00

My experiment with the worryingly backstreet website Triway / Boutique TV has turned out Just Fine. Last Thursday, I clicked "send" on the page with my credit card details and wondered how long it would take until my account was cleaned out. Turns out old style sites that rely rather too heavily on "As seen on TV" to convince you of their merits can be trustworthy. This afternoon, a big fat box was delivered to my work and, one rather heavy walk home later, I unpacked my first ever Aerobed. So much fun. There's a super-powerful built-in motor so my king premier inflated in two shakes of a lamb's tail and I was able to spend a happy few minutes lolling around, lying on the edges to try (and fail) to make them squish and tip me off. Looks like my old school friend who's visiting in a couple of weeks will get a decent night's sleep after all. She'll never know just what a narrow escape she had from "snuggle up on the other side of my bed, darling, don't mind if I kick you".

Even better news, I'm a soup-free zone. Five of my workmates bravely trudged through the rain up to mine yesterday lunchtime and polished off the whole pot. Nice friendly little lunch. Oh, and my friendly Pole phoned yesterday. He apologised profusely for being late to send his quote but at least he's still in the picture, which is a relief. Here's hoping I get electricity before Christmas.

Soup

2007-10-28T19:15:00.001+01:00

Mmmm. My lovely friends gave me a kickass blender and a shiny toaster (with toasted sandwich option - hurray) for my birthday/house-warming.
It's been kind of grey and chilly today so I figured it was time to overcome my illogical acclimatisation issues, at least for the blender, and make some soup. I have no idea why, but I very rarely use things right when I get them. Instead, I sit and look at them for a period that usually lasts several months, if not a year or so. No problem for me, but for people giving presents it can look like good old-fashioned "don't like it".
Seeing as I do like my presents, very much, I thought I'd make a special effort. I unpacked them after only three weeks and today, three months to the day after I received it, I put the blender through its paces. It's great.

I'll be checking the quantities more closely next time though. Smooth, velvety sweet potato and white bean soup is a good thing but that is a LOT of soup. I think I'll be inviting my colleagues round for lunch tomorrow....

And now, time to show a little respect for the blender and do the washing up. J fixed the kitchen light last night, working out that it had died because the connection was rusty then being a good trusting fellow and sticking a knife in to scrape it clean, so I have proper light for the first time in three weeks. Next step will be working out why my bedroom light is so skittish.

New chair, good news

2007-10-14T20:49:00.000+02:00

Miserably busy at work at the moment, so lots of very late nights (regular 11pm finishes, getting home at 2am was the record) and general blues as I try to decide whether or not I can stay with the company and what I'd do if I left.

Fortunately, I got some Very Good News about the flat. I've been wondering where I'll find someone to do the plumbing and electricity work. The lovely Mr Kitten appears to have left his company. Every time I called to ask when I was likely to get his quote I'd receive an evasive response. Finally they just sent someone else. Still no news from him either. The other two companies did send their quotes, but one is very expensive and the other is expensive and goes way beyond what I want done and doesn't include some kind of important elements.

At that point, in steps a friend with the phone number of a Pole. Said Pole comes round later in the week (7.30am after the aforementioned 2am finish) and proceeds to wrap me round his little finger. He's a young bloke, late twenties I think, with the cool gelled hedgehog hair of the moment and a blue jacket with 'Daredevil' written across the back.

He won instant brownie points for being the first guy to ask me to turn on the tap so he can see where the leak is. Next thing, he was halfway under the bath, wrestling with the pipes. He emerged two minutes later with some plastic joints in his hands and said that, as he thought, the plastic pipes linking the plughole to the evacuation have sprung apart because the pipes were cut too short so there wasn't enough of an overlap to take the strain when the bath dropped. He was appalled when I said that everyone else had said I'd have to rip out all the plumbing and start again. Seeing as the quotes I'd received for doing that were around five thousand euros, and he was telling me I could fix the problem with a tenners' worth of plastic, it felt like winning the lottery. He then disappeared under the bath again and spent the next fifteen minutes trying to sort it out. He was clearly frustrated that the pipes had been cut so short that he couldn't completely fix it, but since his work, I've been emptying an eggcup of water after each shower instead of a fruit bowl, so I'm a happy customer. I haven't received his quote yet either but I'll definitely be going with him and his band of Polish plumbers and electricians and heating engineers if I can.

In honour of my newfound less-poorness, I went to the brocante at Chatou with some friends and bought a comfy chair. Little bit tricky getting it home on the RER and the train but I had boys to help. Nice chair, I think.

Shroom 2 (actually, 5 and counting)

2007-09-25T22:15:00.000+02:00

Another bathside mushroom yesterday morning. At 9am, as I was leaving for work, it was just a little nubbin:

By 9pm, when I got home, it was like this:

And that's a pretty slow growth pattern compared to the other guys. The work I did on Sunday must have reduced the amount of damp in the general vicinity, but clearly it's still enough. Sigh.

A dark day for silverfish

2007-09-23T22:34:00.000+02:00

I rolled up my sleeves and got stuck into my bathroom today. After my mushroom discovery yesterday, I decided I couldn't play the ostrich any longer. The time had come to break down the rest of the tiled bath front and investigate what lay behind...

And the answer was: silverfish and rubble. Lots and lots of silverfish, lots and lots of rubble. The silverfish did what they could to scarper - and generally did it very well, in classic hectic silverfish style - and I took care of most of the rubble. I must have hauled about 12kg down to the bins in a selection of unobtrusive, "this is normal domestic waste" plastic bags. It was pretty hard to smash the tile and chipboard combo that had been put in front of the bath, but I got there in the end thanks to my new hammer and my trusty screwdriver.

This evening, I went back for another look - I knew there was still some rotten wood in the area and I couldn't resist. I spent another merry half-hour prising wood out of the wall, steadfastly ignoring the little voice that was telling me it maybe wasn't such a great idea to be digging the guts out of my wall. The result? Much better. There's now clear daylight between my bathroom and my kitchen, but I think I've got rid of 90% of the rotten wood (the stuff that didn't immediately turn into powder was as light as paper) and, even better, it looks like the wood was just a frame around the useless ventilation panel and not a wood frame for the wall itself.

My bath as it's appeared for the last month, complete with attractive damp patch:

Halfway through the demolition. Along the bottom, where it had been damp, the chipboard was like paper. Along the top, it was sturdy enough that I thought it might beat me.

Yay! All done. This is all that remained of the wooden post which was meant to be supporting the bath. The bottom had completely rotted away - same story on the other side.

And here's the bit of wood which the back-right leg of the bathtub was resting on. They managed to prop the other legs up on mounds of cement and broken tile and the like (as can be seen in the background) but this leg? nah, bit of wood'll do. I'm guessing this is the real culprit in the whole affair. The bath has dropped around 1cm at some point, probably because this bit of wood rotted, and that must have put stress on the pipes and created the leak fiesta I'm now dealing with...

My kitchen wall, as it's been since Mr Kitten cleared away the dead skirting board and knocked this hole in the wall by removing tiles from the bath front:

And my kitchen wall as it is tonight. I can remember when that was rotten wood, as far as the eye could see...

Shroom!

2007-09-22T12:44:00.000+02:00

Ow. Just discovered another mushroom, under the bath by the kitchen wall this time. Here's the bad boy in all his glory:

Not bad, seeing as he wasn't there this time last night.

And here are a couple of glam photos of my bath. I updated my leak-capture system on Wednesday night (this is the old one - I now have a tray/pizza-tray combo on the go) and am catching more water than ever. Still don't think I'm managing to catch it all though.

One day, this will all be a memory...

Korean windows

2007-09-16T21:59:00.000+02:00

The table is finished! Well, almost. I finished all the sanding and waxing and screwing last Saturday night at about 1am but still haven't tracked down the glass for the top. I went into Mr. Bricolage yesterday morning to get some cut only to be told that I should use safety glass and that it's only available on order. Fingers crossed for next weekend.

This is where things stand at the moment. No bad, huh? I'm pretty pleased. It's very stable and it scoots around quite happily on its little castors. The legs are just pine and were super-white when they started but three layers of coloured wax have done the trick - they're still a little lighter than I would have liked but the difference is barely noticeable in daylight and the windows themselves are made of at least two, if not three, kinds of wood anyway.

Today, it was sewing. I inherited a pair of old white(ish) muslim curtains from a friend and finally set to doing some much-needed repairs. Several buckets of soap and water, some new tabs and an attempt at ironing later (the plug doesn't fit properly in my ancient sockets and I realised after a few minutes that the metal connections were so loose that they were blackening and starting to burn - time to unplug, learn to love the wrinkles and obsessively check the wall for burning for the next few hours), they were good to go. The new tabs at the left are cream rather than white but I figured making them a bit ugly was a good tactic for making sure I replace them reasonably quickly.
In the meantime, the bathroom trauma continues....

Photo op

2007-09-13T21:25:00.000+02:00

My camera was finally delivered today. The day was a big ol' exercise in delayed gratification, but I finally got home around eight and opened it up. It's beeeootiful - black and shiny metal and the very epitome of sleek. The battery's busy charging but should be finished by the time I've ploughed through the instructions. Can't wait to play!

Wax on, wax off

2007-09-07T22:18:00.000+02:00

I've had such a grand week, even with the teeth and cheek situation. (Visited the dentist today - the inflated cheek is, in fact, an inflated cheek. I blew my nose VERY GENTLY after my post-op lunch of yogurt and apple purée and my right cheek suddenly flooded with something liquidy, to the extent that when I gave it a gentle squeeze, whatever fluid it was came out of my eye. Nice: the mind turns to blood, gunge, apple purée... what's going on in there? Anyway,the rest of the swelling has gone down and I'm feeling very chipper but I was starting to wonder if my cheek might be infected, hence the dentist. Turns out the root of my wisdom tooth had grown into my sinus canal (ooh, nice again) so when I blew my nose, all the air took a short cut through the opening in my sinus and blew up my cheek. I didn't know I had space in my cheek for extra air supplies but, apparently, I do. Just got to wait for it to disperse.)
In the meantime, visits from another two contractors, more progress on the table-windows, might have managed to buy myself a little camera, and definitely managed to buy myself a little gardenia, which is sitting beside me smelling awfully nice.

A whole week to think

2007-09-04T18:24:00.000+02:00

I have the luxury of a whole week off work. An enormously swollen cheek and cute little black eye, accompanied by occasional nose bleeds (all four wisdom teeth out yesterday morning) is a small price to pay.

I'm taking advantage of my housebound status to finish waxing the Korean windows which are all set to become a coffee table as soon as I find a good leg solution and to do some thinking about colours. I'm going to have to make colour decisions about the bathroom pretty soon.

At the moment, the floor is dark grey marble-effect tiles and everything else is turquoise. We're talking floor-to-ceiling, surround-sound, ovalish tiles in deep-sea turquoise, set off by a turquoise door. It's an indoor bathroom too, so there isn't even a window to remind you that you're not twenty-thousand leagues under the sea.

Clearly, I'm going to be taking a break from that particular shade of blue. White tiles around the bath are in. For the moment. Floor will be... um? Untiled bits of wall will be... er? I'm on a bit of a beige vibe at the moment but by tomorrow I'll probably be back to green.

Make my mind up time is on its way, however. Another contractor came round today to give me a quote on the plumbing and electrical work that needs done and the third company is coming tomorrow morning. Once I've got the quotes in from them and the charming Mr Kitten - who came a couple of weeks ago but has still to send his doubtless terrifying quote - it'll be time to go cap-in-hand to the bank and get started as soon as possible. Even taking short showers I'm having to empty about half a litre of water from the leak under the plughole, and that clearly isn't the only leak on the go as the raggedy concrete under the bath is still wet and getting wetter. Oh, and mushroom number three popped up today - just time to say hello to the contractor before he got his marching orders and disappeared binwards.

First post

2007-08-30T22:05:00.000+02:00

Five weeks ago tonight I was busy packing, ready to sign and move the next day. It didn't quite go as planned, but I'm here now.

Other than the wooden floors, the cornices, the green chimney and the great windows, almost everything's going to change. It's gonna take time and it's gonna take money - a whole lot of precious money if the mushrooms in the bathroom are anything to go by - but the flat has lovely bones so it's going to be worth it.

In the beginning, there were dirty windows and not a lot else....