My apartment has been giving me all sorts of opportunities to work on it lately. After the latest water damage (upstairs neighbor’s bathroom leaking into my living room), I discovered that the textured paint in my apartment could be removed by using a wallpaper glue dissolver. I started removing paint in my entry, since its walls have the least surface area of the rooms in my place. The paint removal went quickly and easily, but I discovered that a floorboard was hiding a shallow but long hole in the wall.

This had several implications: I’d also been removing tile in the entry. With the floorboard out and the wall needing repaired, I realized it would be best to finish taking tile off the floor before patching and painting the wall, in case I ran into any other areas that needed patched. I finally finished that difficult undertaking today, as shown in the photo above! Here it is “finished” (all tile removed). I’m glad to say that only the one floorboard area needs fixed, so I should be able to do that and repaint soon.

As for the entry flooring, I may try to remove the old, grey linoleum and restore the original floor beneath it. Easier, though, would be to find some nice-looking carpet tiles. My main criteria for replacement flooring are removability — no more adhesive! — and ease of trimming to my entry’s odd shapes. A floating parquet could do the job too, but would be harder to trim with the limited tools I have. Carpet tiles would be great since they would do double duty as an entry rug, and would be easily replaceable if/when they get too dirty. After all, my feet aren’t the only ones running around on it — my cats love to sleep in the entry, since the building’s heating pipes run under it before reaching my radiators and going to the rest of the building.

Then there’s still the living room! I started removing paint in the damaged nook first, since I’d like to paint it a darker, complementary color to the one I’ll be using for my living room. That way I can finish it first, then move furniture into it to make repainting the ceiling easier. Then I get to tackle painting the ceiling, removing paint from the rest of the walls in my place, then repainting those! And I still have to finish removing tile from the kitchen area. It’s nice to be making progress in the entry though, since it feels better to come home to a tidy entry.

Yesterday I went to Nice’s city center to shop our summer sales, then buy groceries for the week. After finding some clothes and DVDs, I went home. As I walked into our building entry, my upstairs neighbor’s middle son asked me whether I knew how to turn off the building’s water, since they had a leak. “You should have a cutoff for your apartment,” I offered helpfully, “I have one in mine.” “We don’t, or we can’t find it,” he said worriedly. “Where’s your leak?” I asked. “In our bathroom… a pipe beneath the bathtub blew out…” Suddenly I realized I was probably being inundated. I ran downstairs, opened my door, and sure enough, there was water streaming down my walls, as you can see here. I moved the stereo and computer away — luckily the wood table over my PC had protected it, and only my stereo and the tabletop were wet. Then I took the photo you see here.

The neighbor’s son and I went into the building’s plumbing and heating room, but couldn’t find which valve to turn; there were nearly a dozen. I shoved the Pages Jaunes (French Yellow Pages) into his hands, since he didn’t know any plumbers, and told him to find one and call them. Then I ran back into my apartment to save more things and strategically place buckets to catch the rainfall from the ceiling.

Thankfully, my neighbor across the hall got home a few minutes later. “Bonsoir !” I said quickly, then “do you know where the building’s water supply cutoff is?? A pipe burst and we can’t find the valve, meanwhile my apartment’s turning into a lake!!” He showed me which valve to turn. It was in a small back chamber of the plumbing room, which was black with age and entirely dark. Once the building’s pipes had emptied most of their remaining water, the rainfall in my apartment subsided to intermittent dripping. Mission accomplished — and now our whole building was without running water.

A plumber, drunk, finally showed up two hours later. Diagnosis: the pipe that had burst in my upstairs neighbors’ apartment was part of the building’s main line. We don’t know when it will be able to be repaired; it’s made of copper, which erodes with age and hard water. Probably all of the building’s pipes need to be replaced — as a matter of fact, two weeks ago I had noticed micro-leaks in pipes that run through my WC, which I’d reported to our building management and my insurance. (French homeowner rule #1: never trust a syndic — building management.) We told the drunk plumber to go home for the evening since he could do no more, and I called another plumber, the one who looked at my shower last year. He doesn’t work weekends, so I had to leave a message, and we won’t know anything more until tomorrow. My living room looks like this, and my bedroom was affected too. The good news being that nothing else was damaged, and I’ll likely have both rooms repainted by my homeowner’s insurance.

I did get to see my upstairs neighbors’ apartment. It’s about 60 square meters (645 square feet), two bedrooms, one bath, separate WC, living room, and separate kitchen. Six people live in it. Two adults, their three sons, and their eldest son’s daughter. It’s not unheard of here, since real estate prices are so high, but it was the first time I’d ever witnessed such living arrangements myself. It humbled me, having 45 square meters (480 square feet) all to myself. I certainly don’t look at my place with the same eyes as before.

On a related note, this MetaFilter post led me to a wonderful site about communal living in Russia: A Virtual Museum of Soviet Everyday Life. Once you’ve chosen your language, you may need to set your video options, which can be done with the “Options” tab on the right there. It’s fascinating. Apartment buildings in France weren’t too different up until the mid-20th century. Although apartments themselves were private, not many had their own toilets, which were shared, one on each floor depending on the building’s size. This is why my own WC is so small — originally, there was only the bathroom; the WC was put in later, its size minimized to save space.

In January, we copropriétaires (owners of apartments in our building) voted to redo our building’s sad interior. The exterior had been redone just before I moved in, which was a major selling point for me — un ravalement de façade (façade cleaning, renovation and repainting) is very expensive, but doesn’t need to be done often. As for bargaining points, I was able to lower the price thanks to the electrical hiccups along with the downright ugly state of my entrance and the rest of the building’s interior.

It looks so much better now, it’s incredible. I’ve done a couple other small DIY projects inside my place too, putting a glass shelf in my bathroom and, today, getting a new light fixture for the kitchen. With our big summer sales on now, it was half off at Habitat, which always has nice quality light fixtures. I was very glad to replace the flimsy old wood fixture when I took it out and realized that the previous owners — them again — had bolted the fixture directly into the electrical wire hole. As in, they had drilled a metal screw into the same hole as the electrical wires, using a wood light fixture.

I admit I’m increasingly tempted to call them up and tell them never to touch anything electrical ever again in their lives, because every single electrical fixture they’ve done has been a fire hazard. Not to mention the shower (they built a tile-bottomed shower without waterproofing the bottom) and water heater. Water heaters are supposed to be hung on load-bearing walls. The previous owners hung it on a cheap partition wall. And only used one bracket instead of two. Brilliant. I noticed the water heater issue when I first visited; it will be fixed along with the shower once I can afford all that in a few months, which I’m really looking forward to.

I’ve continued restoring the original tomettes, traditional southern French terracotta tiles I discovered (and uncovered) in December. As a reminder, this is what the living room looked like before, while this photo shows the tile adhesive I had to remove.

The photo above, tomettes now clean, shows how the sofa nook looks now, and here’s the other half of the living room. Last Sunday I decided to test my theory about a heavy-duty cleaner (décapant in French) that I had used before and that didn’t work so well. Instead of diluting it as recommended, I added only half the amount of water prescribed, making it more concentrated. This worked nicely, and I was able to scrape off tile adhesive residue very quickly. About two-thirds of the living room still needed adhesive scoured off — I finished it all that same day!

What most surprises me is that the floor is in such good shape. The apartment building dates from 1953, so the tomettes are 56 years old, and yet only one of them has serious damage. The rest were so well cared-for that even after being tiled over, then having that tile removed, and being scoured, scraped and treated with a chemical cleaner, they still shine! My apartment has only had two owners before me, with the previous owners having bought four years ago and putting in the tile when they arrived, so it would seem that the original owner truly cared for the terracotta floor.

Some thin spots of residue still need to be scrubbed off with a regular scouring pad, but that should go quickly. After that, all that remains is to seal and wax the floor. Easier said than done since with the furniture, I’ll only be able to do half at a time. And will need to keep kitties from exploring the floor while it’s worked on. They behaved surprisingly well with the ammonia-based cleaner, never once touching it — I’m assuming because it smelled bad.

I woke up relaxed and cheery this morning, put the two furballs out to play on the patio, fixed myself breakfast, checked on my plants — the cayenne peppers are growing fast! — then came inside to turn on the computer and read my email.

“Envoi de votre facture Bleu Ciel d’EDF” was one subject. I thought to myself, “ah yes, they turned on my electricity a year ago today — that would be my invoice that accounts for any meter reading discrepancies with their estimates. But that’s odd, because no one has come to read my meter. Hm.” EDF is Electricité de France, and I had signed up for monthly payments (mensualisation) based on an estimate of electricity usage for my home size and appliances. I clicked on the link to my invoice.

“Facture du 08/06/2009 : 544,81€ pour une consommation estimée de 3.400kWh en heures pleines et 5.300kWh en heures creuses.”

In France, the decimal separator is a comma, and the dot is used to separate thousands (or sometimes just a non-breaking space, for instance 3 400 is three thousand four hundred). In other words, they were charging me five hundred forty-four euros and eighty-one centimes. I nearly passed out. Finally enough blood returned to my head for me to walk to the electricity meter and check it: since last year, I had actually used only 700kWh in heures pleines (regular hours, 11 centimes per kWh), and 1800kWh in heures creuses (low hours, 7 centimes per kWh, from 10:30pm to 6:30am, which is when I run the water heater and washing machine).

I phoned EDF, hands shaking from the adrenaline rush and subsequent relief, and worked it out. They had made a typo in both my address and my phone number, which is why a meter reader had never contacted me. I’ll still be charged the 544.81 euros in July, since according to the woman it’s automatic and can’t be cancelled, but EDF will then refund me. With the true meter readings, I won’t owe anything, and may even be refunded further (my calculations say about 40 euros in my favor, accounting for the twelve months I’ve been paying their previous estimates).

So if you’re in France and using EDF’s facture électronique, pay close attention. This is not the first time they’ve messed up — last year I tried signing up online, got two confirmations, no one came, and then I had to call twice to get a worker to come hook up my apartment. This year I almost didn’t look at my invoice. The only reason I did was because it seemed strange that no one had ever done meter readings in the past year — usually they come to read meters once every six months.

In a change of pace from floor photographs, here’s the ceiling in my entry. The previous owners — them again! — had put up a false ceiling with three spotlights. Considering their track record of wiring an extension cord for kitchen outlets and putting in a walk-in shower with no waterproofing, I wanted to check this and redo it if needed.

I took this photograph after removing the dozen screws that held the false ceiling to the walls, looking “behind” it and standing in the shock of disbelief for a few seconds. Behind the large pipe (the one that’s dripping dark fluid), there’s an outlet wired to the ceiling. Plugged into that outlet is a transformer (the black box), which is sitting directly on the false ceiling, which is made of wood. All the white debris is plaster; there were some large chunks on it and who knows why or how they got there. The false ceiling, I kid you not, was simply leftover parquet that the previous owners had painted white. In addition to the transformer sitting on it, the ceiling was touching the three central heating pipes that carry heat to the radiators throughout the building. (As a side note, my apartment is very toasty since, in addition to my two radiators, all the heating pipes that supply the building go through it.) That pipe that’s dripping? Is dripping because a layer of its paint is melting. I guess they didn’t waterproof the shower so that when there was a fire caused by their home “improvement”, the walls would be too damp to burn?!

In the entry, I cleaned up everything, removed the outlet from the ceiling wires, and put in a new light fixture. I chose a simple one that echoes the industrial feel that the pipes give the entry, and it now looks rather nice. While I did prefer the cleaner look of the false ceiling, I’ll take a few visible pipes over death by incineration any day. In other news, I’m still removing tile as part of my tomette restoration project, and have finished about a quarter of the living room. So far I’ve only encountered two damaged tomettes, both of which will be covered (and were probably originally damaged) by furniture.

This is how I’m spending my Christmas and New Year’s holiday! All of this is the result of “just” three hours of work today. I’m glad that these went much quicker — I should be able to finish a good part of the living room by the end of next week. These are the tools and protection I’m using. Always use face protection when removing tile; I can’t insist enough. No matter how careful you are, the tiles break in unpredictable ways and pieces go flying everywhere. My eye protection and face mask have been hit by flying pieces of tile very often. Along those lines, if you have a pet, either don’t let them near the work area at all, or stop working when they’re nearby. Kanoko rests on his cat tree perch to oversee my work, so he’s been fine. I only worked for three hours because that’s all my arms and legs could take. It’s best to kneel (I used a folded-up blanket as a knee pad), which takes its toll, and it’s tiring to pound and lift all the time.

The thick gray line just above Kanoko’s head is not due to broken tile — that’s originally where the living room wall was. The previous owners took it out and put it further back to create the sofa nook. This is both good and bad: the good part is the tomettes aren’t broken; the bad part is there are no tomettes along that line at all!

While I consider tomettes to be a treasure because of their beauty and soft, silky feel, they are also a treasure in the material sense of the word: since tomettes are no longer made, you can only find vintage ones, and hexagonal tomettes cost from 50 to 70 euros per square meter. My living room and bedroom are 35 square meters in all, multiplied by 60 euros makes for 2,100 euros, or about 3,000 US dollars at the current exchange rate (I use xe.com’s currency converter). In comparison, decent-quality modern tiles cost about 20 euros per square meter, or one third of the tomettes’ worth. In short, for 3-4 weeks of tile removal work, I’ll be tripling the value of my floors! (Why did the previous owners tile over these tomettes? Well, since they are “vintage”, there are some French people who don’t like them. I’m assuming that’s what happened, since the previous owners were a young French couple.)

For Christmas I gave myself a new bedroom! What it looked like three months ago, when I got my bed, and here it was just three weeks ago after putting up the drape. Today I finished removing the rest of the parquet and emptied the bedroom so I could thoroughly clean the tomettes. I used savon noir à l’huile de lin — savon noir with linseed oil. It worked wonderfully, even removing paint from the tiles.

As you can see, having a dark floor makes a huge difference in the room’s look. The drape already looks much better; I imagine painting the walls a medium grey will improve things even more, once I have the chance to actually paint. I’m in love with these tomettes and couldn’t be happier with how my bedroom is coming along. I also started removing tile in the living room, where there are tomettes too. It will be a while before that’s finished though — it took an hour just to remove one and a half tiles, and there are about 200 in all! (I’m being extremely careful not to damage the tomettes beneath. With any luck the rest will go more quickly?!)

That was interrupted, as usual (as nearly always), by my neighbor. She had started off by yelling “une belle fille bien baisée ! Va te faire foutre, connasse !” at which point I went to get my camera phone, since Kanoko was also being adorable as I cleaned my patio/terrace. This is what followed. Mostly it’s kitty being funny, then at 35 seconds in, you get to hear my neighbor for yourself and witness what I put up with (though on a small scale, since it’s worse than just these few seconds, of course).

As can be seen, I’m merely on my patio, playing with my kitten. I do not engage her; I never engage her. Today is the first time I’ve dared to try and film. She noticed: she yelled “moi aussi je peux filmer !!” and she did, which I don’t mind, because she caught herself on camera calling me “connasse !” while I remained silent, playing with my kitten. Kanoko and I went inside after I’d finished the film, since I figured the neighbor would come outside. Indeed, the neighbor lady then stormed out and sprayed my entire wall, window, door and all, with her garden hose.

I’m getting pretty tired of this. I forwarded the video to a neighbor in the abusive neighbor’s apartment building so that their management can be made aware, again. (I realize I’ll need to be more careful than usual now, since the filming pissed her off and may escalate things. I’m hoping, however, that seeing how bad she can be — and this is average, not her worst — will help handle the problem.)

This afternoon Kanoko was swatting around a broken piece of ceramic. It was dark red and reminded me very much of traditional Provençal terra cotta tiles, called tomettes. My curiosity was piqued — every so often, you’ll hear a story of someone buying an apartment, pulling up the old floor and discovering tomettes beneath. It even happened to my former landlords, whose floor was gorgeous. Since the parquet in my bedroom was badly laid and I thought I needed to replace it due to the water damage from the adjacent bathroom, I pulled on a corner that was already sticking out.

This is what I found. I jumped; I squealed with joy; I bounded into the kitchen to put on eye protection and returned to the bedroom to pull out as much parquet as I could. It hadn’t been glued, merely laid onto a protective sheet covering the floor. The tomettes are in perfect condition. There’s only one exception: the previous owners broke some tomettes to run… a TV cable. Ugh. (By any chance, do any readers have a few tomettes laying around that I could use to repair this? They’re hard to find. Mine are 11.5cm from point to point; 10cm from side to side.)

Pulling up the parquet brought something else into evidence: the tile elsewhere in my apartment is on top of yet more tomettes!!! Tomorrow I’m going to pull up tile in an out-of-the way corner of my living room to see what’s been done and if it’s recoverable — I certainly hope so. I’m delighted since I had in fact dreamt of redoing my bedroom floor in tomettes, but had to set aside the idea since they’re very expensive. Then today I find that it was already done 60 years ago!