After a pretty sleepless night (we couldn’t seem to switch the boiler
off and it rattled and banged most of the time – oh dear another job for the
list) we nipped out for a quick breakfast and then made a start in the
apartment. I set to work with a roller
and a very large trade bucket of white emulsion and Darren donned the rubber
gloves and tackled the grime (there was lots of it as you know….).
He started in the toilet – and yes the first thing to go was the tartan
carpet! The much needed disposal of this
revealed a very serviceable if not the
most attractive tiled floor. It looked
like the same floor continued through the hall so up came the hall carpet as
well – there seemed to be no stopping him and I started to wonder if there was
going to be any apartment left by the time he had finished!
The bathroom was next– it was a closed door situation and he didn’t
surface for some time – there was lots of huffing and swearing going on and I
think shares in Mr Muscle must have rocketed from the amount of product he was
using – but we eventually got a room that was usable and good hot showers were
a distinct possibility at the end of the day.
The Mr Muscle treatment was taken into the kitchen but by the time Darren
realised that the dirt in the very badly installed cabinets was not going to
shift (neat bleach being the final effort) the decision was made to rip them
out and start from scratch. The death
trap gas cooker that had been left for us as part of the kitchen (a section of
garden hose connecting it to the gas pipe) wasn’t even attempted and was
dismantled straightaway but despite several large chips in the enamel the sink
came up relatively well.
Darren would be able to wash up with confidence.
Several trips to our section of the cellar later (we didn’t know of the
local rubbish tip (…dechetterie) at this point) and the room was cleared. A good job done but we hadn’t really given
any thought to what we would replace everything with, that could be dealt with at a later date. The name IKEA kept getting mentioned – I was
oblivious to it!
The painting was relatively straightforward – we had decided to paint
straight over the existing wallpaper as we didn’t really have the time to strip
and prepare – this was definitely a quick fix scenario and after a solid day
the lounge was completely white and much improved. I was beginning to feel a little more heartened.
The next day, what we were going to use as a dining room was tackled
and I produced much the same result at the end of the day. Darren had scrubbed floors, washed windows
and cleaned pipes I wouldn’t say everything was sparkling but compared to what
we started with he had done wonders!!!
We packed up, as much as we needed to (we were due to return to the UK
on the next mornings' ferry) and headed to what we were now calling our local
bar – L’equinoxial owned by a young couple Amelie and Benjamin (now probably
our closest friends in the town) who had only bought the bar and moved to Saint
Malo a few months earlier.
The locals were intrigued by what we were doing particularly as we had
bought the apartment from the previous owners of L’equinoxial and it seemed
that they wanted to get as much information out of us as possible. We weren’t concerned, we were just delighted
that the locals were friendly; that they were talking to us and that they were
happy that we had come to join them!
We stayed in the bar sometime – ouch!!!!
With sore heads we locked up the apartment early the next morning and
headed for the ferry. We were closing
the door on a very empty but much improved home – there was obviously a lot of
planning to be done before our next scheduled trip in about 4 weeks time.
The laptop was fired up and within 10 minutes of boarding the ferry
(and courtesy of Brittany Ferries WIFI at sea) the blue and yellow of IKEA
could be seen across the screen.
Happy days!
TO BE CONTINUED ………….
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