Floor plan fun
I went to the bank as scheduled today, and would have signed the mortgage but for the fact that the banker had mistakenly put me down as being French. For that simple oversight, the dossier has to be officially re-approved, but it should go quickly. In any case I now have an official statement of a loan offer. I went to my real estate agent to give them a copy, and among the various required inspections, the Loi Carrez (basically, official surface area) had been done for my apartment, so now I have a nifty floor plan. The left side is north, the right side is south. The solid grey blocks in the walls are windows, and placard means “closet”. The floor plan shown above is a cropped view without the terrace/patio; click on the image to see the whole thing.
My terrace/patio looks (comparatively) huge, which is what it feels like in real life too. The living room/kitchen is quite nice as well! The layout gives the same sense of spaciousness as my visits have despite its modest overall size of 45sq.m/490sq.ft. I say “modest” but in reality, families of three regularly live in places with the same surface area due to the high prices here. The bedroom is more or less average for France at 12sq.m/130sq.ft (including the closet); 9sq.m/100sq.ft bedrooms are common. Also classically French is the separate toilet in a minuscule room (it’s only 80cm/2.5 feet wide). The bathroom is decently sized, but very oddly shaped — odd shapes are something you get accustomed to here. My completely unscientific hypothesis based on ten years of gathering purely anecdotal evidence is that the French have an unconscious aversion to straight lines and squares that manifests itself in random outbursts of roundabouts, quirky angles, and a maddening propensity to throw standard sizes to the winds. I mean, just look at the closet in my entry. I have no idea how or why they did that. (It is clever though, made to hold a washing machine in the back square part and with shelving elsewhere.)
March 27th, 2008 at 02:54
Oh, I love looking at floor plans, maps, and the like… Congrats on the apartment!