I hate to admit that I believe it’s a clear sign that we’ve gotten old when we are as excited about getting a bathroom shower redone as we would be about a trip somewhere exotic. That’s us. Excited about a bathroom shower renovation.
As I explained last month, our shower was about the size of a buffet platter. You could not bend at the waist without hitting your head against a wall. Even a vigorous scrubbing would lead you to hitting your elbows on the glass walls and we are under 6 foot and do not weigh an exorbitant amount. We’d figured out that we had room to elongate the pad to a rectangle instead of a square and had been wanting to have it done for over two years. No plumber would come because of parking issues and old building problems that tested codes. To say we were excited when our handy guy (bricoleur) Giovanni said his son-in-law would do the job – is putting it way too mildly. It was like being a kid on Christmas eve or a night before a trip to Disneyland. It was electrifying. Of course we have ‘before’ pictures….
….and ‘during’ pictures…..
…then lastly, ‘finish’ pictures !!
It took all of 3 days, we stayed at a hotel to stay out of the way and still be able to take showers (which just got us even more in the mood for a spacious shower) and even better, the new shower cost us less than we originally planned especially with our landlord, Fabrice, splitting the cost.
It’s really good that we planned the time away from the apartment since you can see that after we cleared away space in the living room, it pretty much got filled with demolition and tools.
The finished product, I thank Giovanni and Clement every morning when I step under the water. It has a step up of 8 inches instead of the previous 12 inches (which on some mornings felt like a climb up Everest), features grab bars, a fold out chair (looking ahead for time we’ll need that) and a sliding door that no longer hugs our shoulders coming in. It is nothing short of miraculous in how it affects our daily life. I don’t care if it screams that we’ve gotten old when we drool over all of the new, efficient features. It’s been nearly a month and I still break out in a Belgian-chocolate-eating grin every morning when I step into the shower. I know – it’s probably as boring to others as having to sit through scores of pictures of other people’s babies, pets or vacations but damn, this was worth its weight in gold to us.
What else did we do this month? We got out into the warmer weather that we began to have here. The really nice days came and went – flickering back and forth with cold, rainy ones, but the good ones we took advantage of by going out to cafes, for walks and running errands. We came across a bookmobile parked in our Opera plaza that was a surprise. The libraries here are not the community centers that they are in the states, which is a shame. That is an import I think that would really be a benefit in France.
We worked on our French, of course (a subject I have beat to death and will not continue to flog), went to the dentist some more (we will eventually finish the work there); G did the French taxes – more an exercise of filing online forms to say how much income, how many foreign banks, and how much taxes we paid in the US and we have none to pay here, (not doubling our taxes) thank you very much, due to tax treaties. We worked on a photo montage for our anniversary party next month and solidified some strategic details with Fool Bar. G also sent our immigration attorney the files for our yearly Carte de Séjour renewal. Oh boy, oh howdy – another opportunity to send in the required smileless mug shot in stark lighting. No way to look good for those. Trust me, they’re way worse than the driver’s license pictures.
We had a couple of festivals down in the plaza, a weekend of rowdy futbol fans partying late into a Saturday night with Kylian Mbappé’s last game for Paris Saint-Germain vs Lyon playing here in Lille for the French Final (PSG won) and there is a shot of firemen putting out a trash bin fire in front of our building (not related).
Yes, all in all this means no trips to talk about. But our days are getting nicer, next month we get to see some old friends who are coming into town for our party. Gotta go for now – um hum, I am going to stand and admire the shower before heading to bed. But we’ll leave you with a beautiful Lille sunset and some of G’s shots of Lille.
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