This is a new style of postmodern deconstructivism, which I’m sure will be all the rage soon. It’s my walk-in shower, which was put in by the previous owners. When I visited the apartment in February, just before signing, there was no sign of water damage in the bathroom. I asked about the shower, though, since it looked “homemade”. I was told that it had been built correctly and waterproofed.

When I moved in at the start of June, my bathroom wall was covered in mold, and the walls in the WC were soaked. I called my insurance agent. After much going in circles (the syndic, building management, had to be notified as well), no clear cause could be found. The plumber decided to check beneath the shower, just in case, and last week the plumber finally got the OK from everyone involved to partially demolish the walls.

There’s no waterproof membrane beneath the shower floor. What happened is that the grout began to break down, and water seeped onto the floor and into the walls. As for the visible damage, there are two possibilities: it was so new in February that no mold had grown to visible proportions, or the previous owners had painted over existing mold so it wasn’t visible. To make a long story short, I took on a real estate lawyer and met with her last week. Appropriate action has been taken and we’ll see how things go. In any case, I’m happy to have found a great plumber, and hopefully will soon have “after” photos of a new shower installation to post here.

With the water damage cause finally determined, this weekend I had fun with some small DIY projects, making my WC a bit more civilized. I put in a corner shelf and, finally, a toilet roll holder. Kanoko again performed quality control, checking the shelf frame. This photo shows my full WC once finished. In France it’s quite common to have a separate toilet room, and they’re usually small. A closer (and cleaner-looking) view of the shelves. They sit on fittings and are held to them with socket screws, so they’re easy to take off and put back on, which means it will be a snap to repaint my WC walls as soon as all the water damage is repaired.

The previous owners of my apartment had set up the phone line oddly, putting it in a cupboard near the window onto the terrace. I had put my PC in the corner against the wall by the cupboard until today, when I cut the phone cable to reinstall the phone jack near the sofa nook. (Those photos are from April, before I moved in, since it’s easier to see. The rest of the photos are from today.) I don’t have a television (purposefully), but I do like to watch DVDs, and plan to set up my sofa nook so that I can both surf the ‘net and watch movies from it.

After cutting the wire, I took apart the phone jack, noting which wires had been connected. As I suspected, they were rather loose; a couple even fell out — I’ve had intermittent problems with my ADSL connection. Here are what the connectors on a French phone jack look like. I had found this wiring diagram to use for reference, and set about rewiring the jack in its new location.

Sure enough, the phone cable in my place wasn’t standard, and different colors had to be wired. Once that was figured out and done, it worked! On Wednesday the furniture I plan to use for the PC setup in the nook will arrive, and then I’ll show what it looks like — right now it’s somewhat unsightly, although functional.

Questions you may be asking about this photo:
- Are those potatoes?
- What’s that black thing behind them?
- How did they get there?
- Did you cut that hole yourself?

Answers: Yes, those are potatoes. Ever since Kanoko arrived, I’ve been mysteriously losing potatoes. Since it was only one or two at a time, I figured that I was just miscounting them and had forgotten how many I’d actually eaten. But then, a few days ago, five went missing all at once, and I noticed a rank stench coming from the corner in my kitchen where I’d kept the potatoes. The familiar smell of… rotting potatoes. Looking behind the kitchen, which had been set up amateurishly by the previous owners (the main reason I got my apartment for such a low price), I noticed two things:
1. There is a space behind the lower cupboards that’s just big enough for a kitten to get through from the open area beneath them.
2. There is also a space beneath the particle-board bottoms, just high enough for kitten paws and… potatoes.
The two spaces were not big enough for me to be able to fish around with a pole for the potatoes.

Since the kitchen is indeed mediocre, and I plan to replace it eventually, I started to attempt ripping out the particle board bottom. True to inexperienced builder form, however, it had been put together so chaotically that there was no way I could pull it out cleanly and easily. And so I started to saw. I stopped after an hour, realizing it was going to take more than a couple cuts, and decided to wait until this weekend.

Today I finally managed to hack my way through the particle board and create a hand-sized hole, having to make several cuts due to the nearly-impracticable angle in the small space available. The first potato was visible as soon as I finished ripping out the last chunk of particle board. Ten more potatoes — for a total of eleven in all — were nearby. That black thing behind them? A rotting wooden spatula, shown here in a larger view of the area beneath the cupboards, so you can see what I was dealing with.

As just another Joe(anna) who had her own business (but which was actually mine, and I know enough about finances to know the difference between “earnings” and “profit”), I spent some of my hard-earned euros on a big arbre à chats — cat tree. This meant a bit of DIY. For anyone else interested in putting together a cat tree/scratching post:

1. Identify all the parts and organize them so you’ll know which is which more quickly. For instance, this tree has different-length posts, so I laid them out from longest to shortest.
2. Start with the base.
3. Build up gradually. The perch attached to the cat house/box on my tree had a bracket on it that was supposed to bolt to the box, but its screws had ripped out. Luckily I’m Anna the Handywoman! and have a wide variety of screws around, so was able to reattach it, though slightly off from its original position (the original holes were useless).
4. At this point, since you have a cat, you will probably have to take into account the unpredictable addition of extra weight onto various parts of the tree, in the form of a pouncing, rapidly-moving furball. Keep a strong hold of the tree during this delicate period. Finish with the top perch.
5. All done, kitten included!

I found this particular cat tree in several places, but got it from ZooPlus since it was cheapest. (Good-quality cat trees and scratching posts are expensive…!) It’s called Alicante, and is part of the tall models on their French site. On their US site, here’s the Alicante, where it’s among their medium cat trees. I liked this one since it seemed stable (which it is indeed), was tall but slim enough for my smaller-sized apartment, had several platforms, and came in a decent color. It was hard to choose though, there are so many neat-looking cat trees!

What with Kanoko’s kittenish penchant for pouncing on my toes at 4am and dashing around the apartment, another scratching post seemed to be in order. Luckily I found a fun one on sale, that’s designed like a pineapple. I hoped Kanoko would like it. At first he only went in the hole, but a bit later he’d hopped up top. Then he realized that the balls made tantalizing sounds when they were batted, and that he could propulse himself in circles around the post while swatting!

This photo is my favorite of the bunch, for Kanoko’s eminently feline expression. Plus you can see how enormous his (adorable) paws are, and the cute ear tufts.

First thing this morning, I went and bought some more fine wire to cover the terrace’s remaining hand-sized holes and prevent my inner courtyard neighbor (her part is to the left in this photo) from carrying out her threats to poison my kitten. The entire terrace is now enclosed with wire that has 1cm squares, so unless she takes wire cutters to it, Kanoko (kitty) is much safer now. It’s a huge relief.

In France, the vast majority of stores are only open from 9 or 10am to noon, then from 2pm to 6 or 7pm, and from Mondays to Saturdays. Chain stores generally stay open at lunch time. Almost no stores are open on Sundays (in general it’s best to expect they’re all closed). I’ve come to appreciate it because it’s better for the employees, and it makes you get things done during normal waking hours. The obvious downside is that in an emergency, such as a neighbor threatening to kill your 3-month-old kitten on a Saturday evening after closing time, you have to either take a day off work to go to the store, or wait until the upcoming Saturday to buy what’s needed to keep the neighbor at bay. (I made do until Saturday with leftover wire on a particularly vulnerable part, only letting Kanoko outside after I’d checked the whole perimeter, and then keeping a close eye on him and neighbor-lady. I’m still going to keep a close eye on things.)

I do love the terrace. It’s very quiet and full of light, but stays cool since it faces north. There’s plenty of room for my clothes drying rack too — I photographed the terrace with it on purpose, since lately I’ve heard/read quite a few Americans wondering about alternatives to electric clothes dryers. I’d honestly forgotten how common they are in the US… here in France, and Europe in general, almost no one has an electric dryer. Most everyone uses a clothes rack, which is ecological, free once you’ve paid for the rack (mine cost 18 euros and I’ve had it for two years), and doesn’t damage the fabrics like hot dryers do. No balcony, or rainy weather? Dry clothes indoors, cracking a window open to refresh the air. Racks that fit over bathtubs are quite common here. Cold weather? Ha! When I didn’t have enough room inside, I dried clothes outside on a rack in Finland. Winter temperatures when I was in Helsinki were between -5°C and -15°C (20°F to -10°F). It even got down to -30°C (-25°F) for a week one year. Once they’re folded and put on, the clothes regain suppleness, no matter how concrete-like they may feel from being in the cold. It’s actually kind of fun.

My new terrace, finally clean! And this photo only shows two thirds of it (doesn’t show my windows, on the right, nor the part behind me). My privacy blinds are more for show than actual effectiveness, apparently, but they do help a bit. It doesn’t matter much since I have just one neighbor across the way, and she keeps to herself. The bougainvillea looks happy in its new home, alongside the peony. Tired of constantly having to bend over to cut my herbs, I put them all on the garden table, along with the lavender plant. It’s right in front of my living room window, so that I can smell the lavender and basil with the window open.

I really love this terrace. It’s immensely gratifying and relaxing to have this quiet, cool space all to myself. The courtyard is completely enclosed by buildings, so there’s no one but the single neighbor across from me sharing the space. Other neighbors have effectively closed themselves in, using solid gating. I’m glad the previous owners of my place chose otherwise.

I also did a tiny bit of DIY, putting a rod into the entry “cupboard”. Here’s the before photo, and here it is now! I’ve never had a coat closet before; it’s great to finally have one, modest as it may be. I’m also really happy to have somewhere closed-off to put all my shoes. The coat area is doubling as a closet for my long dresses at the time, since my bedroom closet doesn’t yet have an area tall enough. (That’s to come eventually.) Also to come in the future, I’m going to replace the thin little shelves in the entry closet and put in more of them, so that all my shoes can be put on shelves.