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| Janice's Sistine Chapel |
OK, so we have landed. Not much to report as we are knee deep in trying
to adjust to our new home. Last month, I wrote that the ground floor of the
villa was ‘turnkey’ and it sort of was. This turns out to be through the prism
of a teenager on his first date though. All glossy eyed and couldn’t see a flaw in her
no matter how obvious.
The only friends who have been here to date (on the day
the sale closed, no less) could clearly see what we saw: the enormous tasks that
lay ahead. But to us they were-and are-merely details, that once addressed will
be memories of what it ‘used to be’ before we brought the property back to
life. That is what these next 4 months are all about for us. No big month long trips for us this winter and spring.
What continues to leave us breathless is to stop no less than 20 times
a day and gaze out to the crashing surf that lies just beyond our garden and
the snow capped French Alps in the distance.
This is the 4th time
that we have entered a home and begun furnishing it from scratch. This is a 5
bedroom villa when we have family and friends visiting, that can- by merely closing an interior door
that would separate the two- become two entirely separate homes, each with
their own bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen, dining and living rooms. This now
requires an additional refrigerator, stove, dishwasher, washer / dryer, beds,
linens, furniture and on and on and on. The whole enchilada. To quote a good buddy in California when faced with my lamenting the costs of building our recent deck.. "Michael" he said, "just shut up and write the check".
This meant that I had to get real and acquire a modicum of tools to
do some serious remodeling around here. To that end, I bought and will erect a
70sf (7m2) garden outbuilding to use as a poor man’s workshop. If it had a flat screen TV, some Playboy
magazines, a Lazy-boy and a fridge for beer, I could call it a man cave…but it
doesn’t. What it will have is a 100 item list of things for me to do, with a
yellow sticky note attached that says “Don’t come back into the house until
this is done!”
One of the things I have gotten a kick out of is how in Europe all
tools and appliances come with an owner’s manual, just like at home. The
difference here is that all instructions and warnings are printed in all the
languages the items are sold in the various countries they serve. I counted 31 languages that my new chain saw
safety instructions came in (“Never use
this electric chainsaw under water”). The owner’s manual are as thick as
bibles. Occasionally, they even have to divide them in several books.
It has taken us weeks to open all the boxes of our stuff we had stored,
after doing a DEEP cleaning of the entire house. Just because the place was ‘turnkey’
doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot to do to get it up to Janice's standards. Toilets that
leaked were cheaper to replace than to purchase parts for.
I had to re-plumb
for a water softener and washer and dryer as there were none before. It soon
became evident that this place had not seen any maintenance whatsoever since Louis
the XIV. The two front door locks broke on the same day, requiring us to keep the
door closed with a 5 gallon bucket of paint. Electrical breakers needed
upgrading and the (yard) garden….HA! Let’s just say that it bore an uncanny
resemblance to the Amazon jungle in addition to having palm and olive trees.
We spent weeks chopping and dicing. The payoff was that we tripled our
ocean view. Not to beat a dead horse, but it would be hard to exaggerate the
lack of maintenance this property has had. Home ownership is not for everybody.
Previous owners bought the place, lived in it and never lifted a finger or
spent a dollar (Loonie, Pound, Euro) all the years they were here.
Interior door latches
were broken, 11 old 250 pound (115 kilos) cast iron radiators that no longer had plumbing connected to
them were still in place and have to be removed. I even found all outside faucets turned off because
there was a burst pipe that was never fixed. Fortunately ;) the price we
paid reflected the sweat equity we are investing in it.
I don’t mean to sound like I am complaining; I just want to keep it
real. Otherwise it would be like writing about the Titanic but forgetting to mention that it sank. The long and the short of it was
that we tweaked our original plans to leave the ground floor alone once we got
our furniture set up to begin the task of doing all that needs to be done to
get the lower garden level up and running.
We decided that we would do all we
could reasonably do in the first 6 weeks to make the main floor as nice as we
could. This is not only for our own enjoyment but we are trying to gear up for what
to us will be significant rental potential for both, the 8 months we are gone.
Munich or bust!
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| Seigfried, Markus, Mandy and what's his name in Munich |
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| Dolomite mountains, Austria |
Once at Mandy and Markus's place we got to work on the install and fix-it list. Markus's dad Siegfreid, who does not speak a word of English, took a 6 hour train ride to join in again as he has in the past. In spite of the language barrier, we work amazingly well together.
In Europe, it is typical for people to take their kitchen cabinets and appliances as well as all ceiling light fixtures with them when they move. Don’t ask me the sense of it as previous cabinets will rarely fit in the new kitchen and more damage is done in moving them than it is worth, in my humble opinion. But no one asked me….
So, you move into an apartment with a kitchen stripped to the walls, pipes sticking out and two bare wires hanging from where the light fixture used to be. It's a good thing Europe has some cool history going for it because real estate resale ain’t it.
Speaking of history, we went for a walk when we noticed the bronze tile below. Seems that these memorials are to be found all over Germany embedded in the sidewalks in front of homes or businesses where Jews were taken, deported and killed by the Nazi's in one concentration camp or another.
