More reasons I love our new apartment:
The 1930's-era spiral staircase, as seen from our door.
We're on the top floor of a 4-story building. I love that the building is NOT "Haussmannian" in design; it's a nice change, although I love the old architecture as well. There is an elevator but 4 floors is not so bad if you're not carrying anything heavy.
The skylight over the staircase is a really nice touch.
I really love the rich colors of the carpet and how the trim paint on the staircase is the same dark teal green as in the carpet. It's lovely to see COLOR in a city that is known for it's drab neutrals.
More photos to come, but probably after we get some furniture moved in and boxes unpacked. I will be slowly decorating for months to come, what with our travels in May and summer holidays in July.
The gardienne seems quite nice; she showed me where the various garbage cans are for trash and recyclables, and I gave her the list of names for incoming mail, which she delivers to our door daily. The shared areas of the building are spotless, so she clearly does a good job and now we understand better why the monthly charges seemed a bit high (they also include the heat and hot water). She also took me around outside through a coded gate to show me that there is a lovely garden on the opposite side of the building, so those that don't get our great view have the garden to look at, and it's really nice (I admit to being a bit jealous, but only a bit). I also learned from the gardienne that there is an American woman living in the building, who owns her apartment (with garden view); the gardienne promised to introduce us as the first opportunity. I guess Americans are considered a bit of a novelty. It's always advantageous to forge a good relationship with your gardienne; she will always be a wealth of information on what's going on in your building, so I feel we are off to a good beginning.
The owners were going to replace the floors in what will become our master bedroom, due to damage from an old leaky radiator (also to be replaced), and when we picked up the keys on Tuesday we discovered that ALL the floors were brand spanking new! Whoever installed them did a sort of crappy patched-up job in the entryway (we can't figure out why unless they ran out of longer boards), and we'll let the owners (who live out of town) know about that, but otherwise it looks great, and everything seems to have a fresh coat of paint. True to form for Parisian apartments, there are no light fixtures whatsoever; just naked bulbs or wires where light fixtures should go. I can't even count yet how many different types we'll need to buy, but along with needing to provide all our own appliances in the kitchen (including the new stove/oven we just bought, as our old one is built in and we're going to leave it behind), that's just par for the course. Renters typically provide this stuff and take it with them when they go; it's not as common to have a kitchen come completely equipée. If you're planning to move to Paris and set up an apartment from scratch as a renter, just be prepared for this.
The place needs a good overall cleaning, but with the new floors the work will now be cut in half from what I was expecting. I already tackled the toilet and kitchen counter tops yesterday. Today I'll go back and take second measurements for curtains and furniture placement, just to make sure of what will fit where.
Oh, and yesterday, just as I was preparing to leave, I met a neighbor coming out of the elevator, and in chatting with her, it turns out her husband has a little boy the same age as Georges' Little Guy, and he comes to stay on alternate weekends. If it so happens that the boys are both on hand during the SAME weekends, what a nice thing that might be for them both, to have a playmate in the building! That's one thing the Little Guy will miss in our moving... ready access to his honorary "little brothers", the boys next door (ages almost-7 and 3). So it was a nice discovery to learn there is at least one young boy in the building (apparently many of the residents are vieux according to my new neighbor, which makes for a very calm environment).
I can't wait to see it all come together... "M" day is 2 weeks from today!
