Paris Apartment, Part 3

Above is my apartment. Before we go any further, yes, that was our bathroom, which eventually became just a hole in the floor. Needless to say, there wasn’t a lot of privacy, nor did there seem to be a sense of urgency to rebuild it back.

(Speaking of non-private facilities, I once went to a dinner party in San Francisco many years ago, back when San Francisco was a different place than it is today, and the host’s bathroom was in the middle of his loft with no walls either. Needless to say, if you were shy, you probably shouldn’t have been on the guest list.)

But at least there was a bathroom, unlike when I did a renovation in San Francisco and had to use a port-a-potty on the sidewalk for a year. Yes, I had (somewhat) more privacy, but marching outdoors to use the outhouse in the middle of the night wasn’t much fun. Nor was it during the day, when neighbors and passers-by were lingering around outside, going about their business as I was doing mine.

In my previous post:

My Paris Apartment

…I talked about what led up to buying my current place and how I wasn’t planning to write about the experience. (Yet—here I am…) I went in without a lot of knowledge and quite a bit of American optimism. Americans go into situations expecting things to go right, then have meltdowns when things go wrong, whereas the French are more skeptical right off the bat. French friends, and Romain, were surprised at how nice I was to the workers, which came back to bite me in the derrière. As far as I know, there’s no French equivalent of “I told you so!” which was a relief, but I learned it on my own.

Above is what things looked like about a year after they were supposed to be finished. If only I had 5 centimes for every time someone said to me, “You know, it’s going to take twice as long…and cost twice as much!” (Which I think is another only-in-America phrase.)

If only it had taken twice as long and cost twice as much, I would have been happy.

The apartment was formerly a metal shop with very high ceilings, which are rare and coveted in Paris. We did put soundproofing in the ceiling, which was one of the smarter things I did, since Parisians invariably have issues with neighbors. (There was a long-running TV comedy, Nos Chers Voisins, My Dear Neighbors, highlighting some of the issues and conflicts.) Although noisy upstairs neighbors aren’t specific to Paris…

In San Francisco, I had an upstairs neighbor who would blast show tunes starting at the early hour of 7 am. Look. I like The Sound of Music soundtrack as much as the next gay man, but since I worked nights, the fellow upstairs and his admiration of Julie Andrews and the von Trapp family were the bane of my existence.

My dream is to live below someone that wakes up at 7 in the morning, sits quietly at a table enjoying their coffee and reading the newspaper, then goes to work, coming home around 7pm to eat dinner, check their email, and (quietly) go to bed at 10 or 11pm. That seems reasonable—doesn’t it?

The soundproofing helped a lot. Noises from the outside, however, could be a different story, and when the mayor declared that Paris was a party, it seemed to open the floodgates to turn any and all terraces, street corners, building stoops, and apartments, into impromptu parties that lasted well into the night. It was nice that young people wanted to celebrate…well, I’m not sure what they were celebrating…but the rest of us didn’t get a lot of sleep. One particularly lively night, the gendarmes broke up two raucous parties on our street that took place during our first, and strictest, confinement, when we weren’t even supposed to leave our houses and apartments.

Since space, and quiet, are premiums in Paris, if you can go up…why not? So we did.

It was Romain’s idea to go all the way up to the ceiling, and it’s a good thing I listened to him (thankfully, he didn’t say “I told you so”…) as all those cabinets are now currently filled, with a waiting list, of flea market finds. We went with Ikea cabinets, which are inexpensive and the insides are well-built, although the doors tend to chip. So if you go that route, it’s best to buy extra. Of course, after I bought my cabinets, they changed all the sizes of their cabinetry and none of mine can be replaced. The downside of Ikea cabinets is that you have to go to Ikea in the first place, and generally, you have to go back (usually multiple times) to get everything you need to assemble and install them.

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Just a note that like previous newsletters about the Paris Apartment Stories, since many requested shorter posts, the shorter version here is free for all subscribers. Paid subscribers can read the full post. If you’d like to upgrade your subscription, you can do it here:

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Ikea cabinets are relatively inexpensive, although you end up paying in frustration dealing with Ikea. (For a full account of that, you can read about my experience at the specialty Ikea Cuisines kitchen-only store in L’Appart. Spoiler: The French online reviews are brutal.) To make the cabinets look nicer, I got knobs from La Quincaillerie, which is one of those narrowly defined shops in Paris that sells only one thing, and does it very well: They just sell cabinet knobs and handles.

The process was excruciating and took a lot longer than expected and during that time, all my possessions were in a big pile under plastic tarps. While Romain and I did our best to ensure that they were well-protected under les baches, the workers weren’t so careful at keeping everything covered. So when it came time to unpack, everything I owned was covered with a very fine layer of white dust.