Brusselsstyle?

In the past 4 weeks...

2010-11-07T21:09:00.000+01:00

Matt has been to Istanbul, Milan, Zagreb, Manchester, Prague and Nuremberg. He has designed a website for my mother's music coaching business, he has fixed the rotten piece of #@%&!!! that is our flat....no wait... I mean the rotten piece of wood at the bottom of the balcony doors, stripped some walls, plastered some others, made roasted wild boar, bangers and mash, chicken kiev from scratch (with much swearing) and various other meals, countless cups of tea and coffee, and learnt to play 3 pieces of the Associated Board Grade 1 piano selection.
I've either been asleep or eating pasta.
Although I did go to an overnight training course on "Personal Leadership" in deepest Limburg, the entire thing was in Dutch and my brain was so fried by the end of it I couldn't string a sentence together in any language at all, the resulting effect was not unlike Esperanto.
Here are some pictures

Yes this is the progress we have made since April.
I say "we"...I say "progress"... hmpf.

I do not love the flat anymore. I feel a bit sorry for it though, which is daft, but a bit like a toy truck that's lost one of its wheels, it was once a source of all sorts of positive things and now it just seems like a piece of junk. Poor flat. I don't even want to live there anymore, it's kind of small and echoy and cold, it smells of dust and drains, the floor is full of holes and the walls are kind of moulting. We have owned it for a year. We have spent over 9000 euros of our budget on costs related to Crazy Bastarditis, and 3000 euros on miscellaneous renovation costs (of which 1000 is an deposit still held by Selfmatic in anticipation of us someday in the next decade being able to install some heating).

What a miserable post. I'll have cheered up by next week. For behold, I am making a list! Lists are a sign that things are moving in the right direction, right?

Back

2010-10-30T16:22:00.001+02:00

Yes, well, I kind of lost my motivation there for a while. I didn't feel I had anything particularly interesting to write about, and I seem to be very bad at taking photos, so the whole blogging idea seemed a bit pointless.
What's been going on?
Firstly, we are not moving yet. After lots of sums on the backs of envelopes, giving the hassle and emotional drain a numerical factor, we came to the conclusion that staying put until the end of our lease makes the most sense. Matt travels a lot for work, I'm very busy in my new job, last thing we need is to be packing boxes and moving to loony Wallonia. Lease ends in April. Will we have a home to go to?
Looking at the rate of progress of our legal appointed and highly expensive expert and syndic, we'll be in a tent with the asylum seekers in Parc Gaucheret.
The syndic is a complete jerk, but at least he's a jerk to everyone (he answers my emails "cher monsieur" and yells at us when he gets appointment times wrong). Perhaps by pissing us all off he's trying to build some kind of camaraderie among the owners that will somehow propell us to finally getting the damn project off the ground? Don't you believe it...
Our last meeting all together at the end of September went something like this
Syndic: so have you considered the expert's proposal?
Crazy bastard: yes, and I reject it! Are you mad? I don't want my neighbours to have windows, ceilings, hot water and heating! How absurd! Let me build my balcony! Have the top floor flat condemned! Ban the roof terrace! No chimneys!
Expert: um...well if we make pipes for your heating, we have to make them for the others too
Crazy bastard: I DON'T CARE, I HATE YOU ALL, YOU PEOPLE ARE NOT NORMAL, I'M GOING HOME TO DESTROY THE WHOLE BUILDING!!
Everyone else: *blink*
Ah, my dear expert and syndic, finally you have seen that the problem is not one of silly neighbours not getting along, but that we are dealing with psycopaths.
The answer to this from the expert has been complete silence. Our court date went by with no case, as he hadn't finished his report. WTF is he doing all this time? Is he going to hold us to ransom for another 3000 euros? Probably. He can stick it. I'm now hoping Crazy Bastard will actually carry out his threat and spare us all the expense.
Anyway, on a happier note, the stress of the past year has given me a fun type of gut rot disease with the consequence that I am only able to eat foods like pasta and cheese, or bangers and mash. Hurrah! No more worrying about fresh organic vegetables and whole grains and muesli! Waffles! White bread! Rice Krispies! Down with cabbage and associated cruciferous vegetables, boo to beans, raspberries to raspberries!
Oh, and I've also "learnt" to "drive", which would be terribly useful if my company-car-to-be hadn't sprung a leak from the oil tank 2 weeks ago and been in the car hospital ever since. I'm hoping I won't have forgotten everything by the time I can get it back. Heck I could barely remember anything from one lesson to the next.
What else? Still no government, but who could tell? And the Delhaize has started stocking proper cheddar again which is handy. I'm going to eat some now, with my own home made plum and pear chutney! Unless I am not allowed pears and plums. Bugger.

Our summer

2010-09-03T19:55:00.000+02:00

Today it happened. Autumn arrived. It was chilly but softly sunlit this morning, and misty and grim by this evening. The temperature thingy on the pharmacy said 19 degrees but I didn't believe it. Time for a bit of looking back...
We had a great summer. It started in June in the drizzle at the wonderful Chateau d'Hassonville near Marche en Famenne in the south of Belgium. Matt took me there as a (re)treat, the first half of 2010 having had me almost stretchered off to the loony bin.
The chateau is delightful, in acres of green grounds. It was first built as a hunting lodge for Louis XIV, bits were added over the years. It's now a hotel and spa, with a good restaurant (perhaps a little underwhelming for the price but redeemed by a fab wine list)

Later that month, our friends Hilary and Leon invited us for a weekend on a boat on the river Meuse, just outside Namur. It was FREEZING that weekend, so we kept ourselves warm by drinking vast quantities of beer. Then we went into the centre of Namur for the Fete de la Musique and ended up watching a gig by the hilarious Vedettes, a pop-punk band fronted by a dozen slightly washed-up looking majorettes. Some extracts from their repertoire: "Je Hais Les Adolescents (encore plus que les enfants)" - I hate adolescents (even more than children), and "Papa est Mort" with lyrics such as "who cares, he was a fascist anyway...but we didn't kill him".
Namur is cool. I even enjoyed the end of the night, being locked out of the car park in the pouring rain.

In late June we sang in a concert with our choir, the Brussels Choral Society. We sang some Boulanger, and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms to a rather small audience at the Lemmens Institute in Leuven. Next bash is 25th of November in the Bozar. See you there!

All of a sudden, July arrived and it went from mild to boiling, with weeks of 30+ temperatures and blazing sunshine. I love the heat so it was bliss for me, even though our apartment does a good impression of a greenhouse in such weather (30C outside, 32C inside!).
We spent a few days in Mouzaive, a tiny village on the Semois river near the French border. A lovely weekend with some good friends, in a renovated cottage. We swam in the river which was a bit like swimming in a tepid but muddy bath, and barbecued under the hot rain. It was gorgeous.

The National Day celebrations seemed to pass without a hitch, we did our bit to support our funny fragile country by attending the Bal National, but took no pics. Drank lots of beer though. Another encounter with the Vedettes too (do we now count as groupies?).

In August we spent a week in Scotland, here are a few pics of that:

Then returned home to this:

We rounded off the month of august with a whirlwind trip down to Burgundy to see mother-in-law's newest acquisition, a beautiful french townhouse with it's own courtyard AND TURRET. Matt really likes the turrets that Belgian architects seem to enjoy putting on all sorts of houses, he's very keen on having one ourselves one day.

Place Colignon in Schaerbeek - turrets!

La Maison en Bourgogne

Burgundy is gorgeous. I lived there for a while when I was a student, in Dijon, and I'm looking forward to going back again soon to reacquaint myself with the area.

And now, it's back to work, back to weekly choir practice, back to the treadmill (ugh), ooh! But also back to a packed Autumn full of heritage visits, garden festivals, live music, cookery courses, cultural events, opera, and anything else we can cram in.

teabags

2010-08-27T16:34:00.000+02:00

Yes, I have 640 teabags.
Being a cultural hybrid of Belgo-English, or Anglo-Belgian, or Belgish as my mother-in-law calls it, I have some engrained habits of both nationalities. My British side is tea obsessed. And one thing that is almost impossible to get in Belgium is a Decent Cup of Tea, mainly due to the lack of Decent Teabags. Belgians swear by the Lipton Yellow stuff which does a very good impression of being tea but tends more to the colour and flavour of sawdust.

You can find decent British tea in Brussels, even in ordinary Delhaize or Carrefour sometimes, but they seem to think proper tea is some kind of delicacy and they sell PG Tips in boxes of 20 teabags at an extortionate rate that only a true addict would pay (more on that later). 20 teabags would probably last me about 3 days.

So as a family we engage in regular teabag smuggling, getting PG Tips supplies brought over by whoever can do so. Last time Matt went to London on business, he bought 3 boxes of 80 teabags and lugged them all the way to the Eurostar terminal only to have the bag disintegrate, leaving him with no other option than to decant the teabags from the boxes into his overnight bag and laptop case. It’s a wonder none of them ended up getting run through the washing machine with his socks after arrival back home. We had to store them somewhere and this is where my jar collection came in handy.

A few months ago a terrible thing happened. I had mistakenly assumed I had another jar of teabags stashed in the back of a cupboard but no! No tea to be found, and my mood darkened for it was a Monday morning at 8 a.m. when the only thing that saves me from a pit of gloom is a cup of tea with my tartine. I frantically called my mother, my PG Tips back-up supply, who by coincidence had also run out of teabags that weekend. Alarm and despondency on both ends of the telephone. Whatever shall we do? Carrefour had stopped stocking them…Stonemanor might have them but it’s out in the murky depths of Vlaams Brabant, or in the desperate ribbon development of Waterloo, and we have no means of transport! Could we face the trek? I’ve never been to Stonemanor. I expect it to be a place full of grim-faced British expats queuing in an orderly fashion for their fix of 8 euro jars of Branston pickle and cans of Strongbow while whingeing about the awful Belgian weather and absurd Belgian bureaucracy. Basically a shop full of people just like me. Nightmare.

An emergency supply of Yorkshire Teabags (not a patch on the old PG) was found in a local Delhaize that evening (where it is also marketed as some sort of exotic beverage with a pricetag to match), but everything British I have ever found in Delhaize mysteriously stops being sold there within a month or so, so it wasn’t long before I was back on the Liptons….

Thankfully we were due a trip to Norfolk a few weeks later, and were able to raid Tesco. I was gripped by tea panic and picked up as many boxes as I could carry, the 240 bag boxes causing havoc with our packing as it meant we couldn’t also fit in all the Fray Bentos pies Matt wanted to bring back. After some negotiating and rearranging of bags, we set off with 6 boxes of 160 teabags, 5 tinned pies of various flavours, 2 bottles of Ribena, a few jars of chutney, a box of shortbread, half a kilo of cheddar and some hot cross buns.

Needless to say the train journey back from Norwich to London on a Sunday with 2 suitcases, one laptop, one backpack and half a grocery store was fun and games (National British Railtrack “Express” liking to make travel on Sundays as awkward as it can by sending passengers by stopping train to Cambridge, then by coach to Wensdon Ambo where you have to lasso your own donkey to trek over the runway at Stansted, canoe down the river Chelmer and finally pick up a disaffected 1950s school bus to Kings Cross.)

Getting from London to Evere was a piece of cake by comparison.

The pies and perishables did not last long, but I am still working my way through the tea. I have got through 2 boxes (320 teabags) since May, that’s about 100 teabags a month. I should be safe until Christmas.

How do I do that?

2010-08-18T12:02:00.000+02:00

A few jobs need tackling at home.
How do I stop husband from having 3 towels in use at once, each to be found damp and scrunched up on the sofa every evening?
How do I organize all the empty jam jars I've been collecting?
Where do I put 640 teabags?
How do I keep a herb garden alive over a week's holiday? Do I need a herb sitter as well as a cat sitter?

How do we save 600 euros a month? Why, by handing in our notice on our current flat, that's how. EEEK. We shall be out of here by end of November. Where we will then be is a question I cannot answer. Works may have started on the new place by then, but I have only faint hope of this.
Our friend and neighour, the former syndic and ground floor owner, is now seriously ill and will be having major surgery around the time of our next meet with the Juge de Paix. He will then be convalescing for 3 months, right around the time we may need to do the major works on the house. We are hoping beyond hope that his brain tumour is not cancerous. After months of telling ourselves that whatever happens we at least have our health, this is a knock to our thin armour of optimism.
Staying strong and positive...how do I do that?

Ahoy there, Arrrgh, Shiver me timbers etc...

2010-08-17T10:55:00.000+02:00

Growing up, I used to spend long summers with my grandparents in Cornwall. Grandpa was a keen sailor, and used to take me out in his Wayfarer on Plymouth Sound. My uncle Dan worked for many years on cargo shipping lines. Uncle Josh has always worked at sea - merchant navy, tall-ships sailing instructor and more recently as captain of some fairly high-profile vessels. The sea is something that is in the family, even if nowadays I rarely get the chance to sail.
While thinking of decoration plans for our someday-new-home, I came across this post from Style Files, a bath boat (or boat bath?) . I LOVE it. It made me think of this bath, by Aquamass

Which in turn reminded me of a style of lighting that we fell in love with having seen it in a brochure at Batibouw. The Nautic range from Tekna:

Nautical style can be very subtle and charming, with just a few elements of the theme and an appropriate white and blue colour scheme:

Or how about a bold and daring statement:

Or how about...maybe not. This is not a theme park! Less is more, people!
Thoughts on incorporating nautical elements to a bathroom when one is over 100 kilometres from the sea?

Family

2010-08-16T13:09:00.000+02:00

Just got back from a week-long trip to North-Eastern Scotland where we spent some time with my aunt and uncle, cousins and grandfather. I also celebrated my 31st birthday, along with my aunt Rachel's 25th wedding anniversary, my second cousin Livs' 18th and various other bits and pieces that have occurred since our last family reunion.
We stayed at my aunt's house, in the valley of the Deveron, and despite the average temperature of 14C and changeable weather, it was gorgeous and I had a great time.
I spent some time getting to know my cousins a bit better. For a family dispersed quite widely we are remarkably close and seem to click back as if we'd hardly seen each other a week ago. It's especially important to me as I am the only child of two single parents, and I am also the oldest of my cousins by quite a stretch. My cousin Alex is 15, scary to think that when I was his age he was 1! Cat is almost 19, I find it hard to reconcile this grown-up with the Cat I remember who is about 3 years old in my head.
Hanging out with them and their equally grown-up friends made me feel old old old, yet somehow young, because we all seemed to be on the same wavelength. I'm still in the same funny place I always was - partly my mother's generation and partly my cousins'. I'm going to need the young ones as I get older and my parents get older too.
I was very lucky to have the best years of my grandparents, I spent a couple of years when I was very young living with them in a small village in Cornwall, the first 5 years of my life I was their only grandchild and they picked up where they left off with my aunt who was only 21 when I was born. I am like the 5th child to them in many ways, and I grew up with not one parent but 6 if you count my aunt and uncles who were all big parts of my early years.
I visited my grandma in hospital. She's 89 and suffers from altzheimers. She is now almost totally bed-ridden. She can't see, and she can barely hear. It's just amazing that a person who was so frail in her childhood, living through severe illness and war, is physically still so strong. Yet her mind is gone. Is grandma still alive? Plainly so...but what of her soul? If I ever did (and I'm really not sure I did), I don't believe in souls anymore. Maybe a trace of her is still there: when I said "goodbye" a few times, she raised her hand as if to wave.

cousins united

One hurdle - clothes

2010-08-05T12:18:00.000+02:00

HURRAY!
Procrastination be damned, I can actually cross one item off my list.
I purged the clothes.
Piled some of them together for a reassessment, stuck the rest in two piles, one to give away and one to donate to charity. I chucked the stuff beyond repair.

The reason for the "reassessment" pile is that I cannot get on with any of these so-called decluttering schemes that require an instant decision on whether to keep-throw-donate. If you are anything like me (hoarder tendencies, fear of being wasteful and of making a mistake), contemplating items that may have sentimental value, or that were gifts or cost a lot of money, needing to categorize it immediately will send you running for a cup of tea and studiously ignoring the pile under the bed...
So I make a pile of clothes that I am not sure about.

Of course, part of the challenge is to not find everything back in the I Don't Know pile. Some things have to be ruthlessly purged.

I start with trying everything on. If it doesn't fit, it GOES, either to a friend or relative, or to the charity bin.
If it's cut weird, or the colour is off, or it's gone lumpy and misshapen - goodbye!
Does it fit, look good, but not my style? Well, I keep those items. It's amazing how trends recycle, and how something that doesn't fit your life now might do later. I kept 2 fitted shirts that I hadn't worn in 3 years because now I have the kind of job where smart shirts are OK to wear without being overdressed.

In other news, I have done no exercise and have been eating cake for breakfast for the last 5 days.
You win some, you lose some.

Planning and living life

2010-08-01T13:16:00.000+02:00

OK, Grapes, you're on, I will just blog about anything and everything going on right now. Renovations, legal wranglings might turn up at some point in my ramblings, but let's go!
I am on a constant quest to self-improvement, I view myself and my life as an ongoing project, and the consequence of this is that I am a chronic list maker. I make lists and sublists and lists of the lists I should make. Then once I've listed my lists, I sit back with a cup of tea and think the job is done.
Hmm.
Here is a list.
-archive all coursework and former employment papers (we both have files and textbooks lying around from our university days, I realised with horror that I graduated from my BA 9 years ago!)
-finally purge old clothes that don't fit
-on the "don't fit" front, it would be good to lose, not weight, but bulge. I've put on a grand 2 kilos since my fittest days 3 years ago, which wouldn't make a huge differenc if it wasn't for the fact it's all gone to my middle. Consequence - trousers no longer fit and I can't breathe when I sit down in jeans. And dresses make me look pregnant. Oh vanity......I've long given up on a flat stomach, but there must somehow be a way to relocate the belly fat to the non-existent arse area? SURELY??

Anyway, sub-list is:
-stop drinking half a bottle of wine a night
-join the gym next to work and try and go once a week. Devise an exercise programme that shortens my neck, reduces my bust, increases my hip-waist ratio and fixes my SI joint issues. Hmmm.
-take up yoga again after the summer break
-perhaps, if brave, try to follow in my sister-in-law's footsteps to healthy eating (oh cheese, oh cake, oh cheese....this could be tough)

Which leads me to a conflicting point which is cooking. I've been making, yes, a list, of my favourite recipes, trying out new ones, getting into baking a lot more since I started working for a sugar company that gives me 20 kilos of sugar a year (picture it, that's a lot of sugar). I'd like to learn to do some traditional Belgian recipes properly, to stay in keeping with the "Brusselsstyle" idea.

There are other things on my list: piano, choir, driving, German, not killing my herb garden, not chewing my nails, getting up earlier on weekends, making new friends and getting to know old ones better, concerts, museums and trips, photography, oooooh so many things to do....
....I'll put the kettle on

No home

2010-07-31T13:27:00.000+02:00

We're sort of in limbo now, waiting for the judicial expert to finish his reporting, hoping we can get going again, but all the fun has gone out of the project now.
So instead we are making the most of Belgium in the summer with good friends, good food and good weather.
I'm wondering what direction I can take this blog in now. I'm starting some new hobbies and taking up new ones, getting very into cooking and baking, enjoying learning to drive and settling into my new job. Planning for our move to wherever sometime in October (it's hard to plan with no idea where we're going!). Matt is back to satisfying his DIY enthusiasm by helping friends and relations with odd-jobs.Picking up piano again, starting to learn a new language in September.
Life is good.

Rolling on summer

2010-06-14T15:36:00.000+02:00

Since my last few posts things have moved forward...and also not moved forward at all!

We went to court.

The outcome was...a mixed bag, really. The judge seemed to get the general idea of things, but declared that we were all victims of an unscrupulous original seller who should have set up the services before dividing the building up for sale.

This is not untrue, but some of us (well, Matt and me!) have suffered undue delay and damage due to the actions of no one other than Mr A and his witch girlfriend.

The judge has appointed an external syndic or building manager, and an external expert in building matters to assess the damage caused and help us forge a path forwards. We will not allow the slate to be wiped clean, and if the worst comes to the worst we will sue individually. At great cost…but now I’m at a point where another 700-800 euros feels like a drop in the ocean…

So where does this leave us? No sign of a date that we might be able to fit our heating, and a moratorium on ALL works ordered by the judge means that setting up our camping-out option is unlikely to be of any use.

The good news is that the experts are answering to the judge and not the co-owners, which makes me feel a little more secure that A&B won’t manipulate the situation to their advantage. I’m looking forward to seeing if they can act like normal people now that they’ve got what they want (pigs might fly, right?).

We need a solution to the extra money we are spending on rent. I made a detailed budget for the next few months and we need to be free of rent expenses by October, so it looks like we hand in our notice within the next month, pack our stuff off to storage and move to…Rixensart!

It’s where I spent my teens, it’s where we got married, and it’s where my mum lives with a spare room in the attic and a garden for Nina to explore.

In other news, we have had some elections, with a predictable champagne socialist win in the south and Flemish flag waver win in the north. Things roll on…plus ça change…..

Twins!

2010-05-28T14:43:00.000+02:00

Check out what I just found, for sale in Brussels......it's our flat's twin!

It's in a building just round the corner from ours, and although in slightly better shape, it has been cursed with some rather harsh renovation (no ceiling mouldings of note and the dreaded UPVC windows!).

Somehow, it looks narrower than ours, but maybe that's just an optical illusion due to the doors being smaller.

Here's the link:

http://www.immoweb.be/fr/buy.estate.cfm?IDbien=2698961&xmycurrentxsection=buy#ongletphoto

And here are some photos:

So what now?

2010-05-03T12:03:00.001+02:00

I will skip the catalogue of awfulness of 2010 so far, apart from a few choice gems:

1. CBN (crazy bastard neighbour) has taken to cutting off the gas supply to the top floor flat by turning a valve in the hallway. He believes this is "his" pipe, so he is justified in tampering with it. This is for the heating and hot water for X & Y's flat. Not that CBN can do anything with this pipe anyway, though it originally supplied the gas to the gas lamp in his ceiling. Like, back in 1935.

2. CBN believes X & Y's cupboard that, admittedly a construction slightly "bricolage", sticks out over the hall, should be removed. Because it's "moche". Cupboard is part of X & Y's floorspace (it's built-in, or built-out I guess).

3. CBN wanted X & Y to stop using their terrace for safety reasons (the same guy who went walking on his own beams, 5 metres above ground, to fix ("fix") the drainpipe), and took pictures of them on their terrace as evidence (of what? reckless behaviour?). X & Y smiled and waved on all pics.

So anyway, there is more. I will spare you.

9th of June is the date we go to court to sort the mess out. We are suing them to put right their damage. They are suing us for some sort of tenuous obstruction motive. I have absolutely no confidence in the legal system, nor do I have confidence in anyone ever anymore, so I am preparing myself for defeat and yet more financial burden. Boohoo.

The next plan is, what do we do to get into the flat without having to rely on CBN?
What I need to have, for moving in to be tolerable:

1. Cooking facilities (got microwave, toaster, fridge, kettle. Will live off tea + toast + Aiki noodles. Fine.)
2. Hot water
This?

It's a small water heater.
We could fit the old sink from the now removed kitchen, or one of these free-standing Ikea whatsits:

3. Heat: we have these old gas heaters still, of which at least one allegedly works.

Stylish, non? Made by Nestor Martin, still going strong after all these years (must be at least as old as me), Nestor Martin themselves going strong since 1854!
True Belgian quality :)
http://www.nestormartin.be

4. Washing facilities: fit a basic bathtub with shower attachment, it would be great if it could look nice and simple and non-building-sitey:

5. We'd also want to plumb in our washing machine to the existing old pipes, and perhaps a basic sink in the bathroom too, though we could use the kitchen sink for most stuff. This from Brico is only 25€

Finally, we'd need a place to store all our belongings apart from the basics, until the renovation project is finally complete, some time in the next decade at this rate. Storage costs around 70€ a month, that's not too bad.
Then we'll need to rearrange our floor to cover the gaps (we could call it "reclaimed flooring"), and live with mood-lighting due to no ceiling lights being fittable.

There's actually a hotel in London, the Rought Luxe Hotel, that seems to have made this style of semi-renovated living into an enterprise worth upwards of £250 a night. So we could find ourselves the height of fashion, you never know.

pics from Rough Luxe

Milan designers Emiliano Salci and Brett Moran have also made their home out of an unfinished rough-hewn style. And they were featured in Elle Decoration and Wallpaper* magazine (stupid farty asterisk).

pics from Wallpaper*

So a stylish Brussels* future may await us after-all!

Bathroom Lights

2010-04-29T16:47:00.000+02:00

We've gone for recessed spot lighting for the ceiling, a bit like this:

I would really have liked a chandelier in the middle, for a touch of decadence, but the rules are strict concerning exposed light fittings in a bathroom. Shame.

We now need to decide on the lights for either side of the bathroom mirror.

Classical?

Modern?

Deco?

Strange?

STEAMPUNK? I say Yay!

La suite

2010-04-23T17:50:00.001+02:00

So, la suite, le prochain épisode...
We got an email from A&B today that once again spiked my blood pressure and I didn't even open it! I had to get Matt to read it and summarize it so I didn't have to read the general tone of spite and menace of Ms B.

For those of you who mentioned the Urbanisme, read on:

The urbanisme's involvement got more tricky - they sent a PV to Mr A asking him to stop all works, submit a regularization permit or put the works right.

So...what was the response to this PV? Ms B called the urbanisme, and made her very own complaint about the veranda at the back of the property on the ground floor apartment, and the roof terrace that is part of the top floor apartment. These too were built without planning permission! The other neighbours are too in infraction (she likes that word)!
And yes...there was no planning permission for these constructions. The veranda was built, we think, in around 1980 and the roof terrace was set up in about 1989, by the previous owner of the whole property. We all purchased our properties in the house in the full knowledge that some things were perhaps not quite "en ordre", however this is the case for practically every building in the city. If you start dobbing people in for the irregular works committed by the owner before the owner before the owner who sold them the property, the fun will never end.
As a result, the urbanisme, forced to take the complaint seriously, miserably slapped a PV on both other owners too, to submit regularization permits, or remove and restore. Cue a fine of 1000 euros each, for things they didn't even build themselves. Not fair, not fair, but as the urbanisme said, they have to stay impartial and they have to apply the rules, and rules are rules, whether you are friendly, sane and sensible...or mean, crazy and irrational.

Thankfully for us, our apartment had never been subjected to any eccentric additions, and I doubt we would have bought it if it had as we wanted to avoid precisely the problems we've ended up with. It does however put us in the position of being the only ones with leverage against Ms B and Mr A (at least in their minds).

One thing Mr A and Ms B never really grasped, and still seem to struggle with, is the idea that there are rules beyond planning rules: when the building was divided into separate properties, a document was drafted called the Acte de Base. This document is a standard document which determines the manner in which we are to live together as a co-ownership of a building. Mr A and Ms B never read the damn thing until AFTER their destruction-construction spree, and were a little (a very very little) abashed to see that there were many rules, and they had broken most of them. Once I pointed this out to Ms B, she started to use the Acte as the basis for all her trivial complaints against the rest of us. She is however unable to get her head around the fact that a veranda built in 1980 cannot be "in infraction" to the terms of a document drafted in 2009 (particularly as the veranda and roof terrace are actually mentioned in the Acte).

Earlier in October, we had called our very first Assemblée Générale Extraordinaire, with the purpose of asking Mr A to put things right with his neighbours by submitting a list of the works he intended to carry out, and giving us architect's plans and perhaps a quote, or other supporting documents. We also put Electing A Syndic on our agenda for the meeting. Pseudo-syndic sent out the convocation by email.
Big Mistake.
You see, the Acte de Base states an AGM or EGM has to be called by registered letter. Oh yes. So on receipt of the email convocation, Ms B knocked on syndic's door to say they would not attend, as the meeting had not been convened according to the rules.

Recognize this guy? That's Kafka. He makes regular contributions to the story of my life.

We held our meeting anyway, and tried our hardest to get them to come, compelling them to attend as this would help them too - how can we progress in renovation works otherwise? But no, they refused on a point of procedure, so we went ahead, held our meeting and elected the syndic in their absence. We also made a summary of our concerns about Mr A's balcony and various constructions, and sent the meeting minutes to him.
Needless to say, by this point the idea of Mr A having a balcony was fairly abhorrent to all, and we were itching to get him to provide his plans for us to "nay" them unanimously...but the plans never appeared.

Let's go back to the planning permission stuff. So we then had a situation with 3 of 4 flats in infraction to planning rules, 3 PVs, and 3 requests for regularisation plans. Mr Urbanisme had by this point had the pleasure of seeing Ms B about 7 times (including 4 before they even built the darn balcony, when they kept going back hoping for a different answer), and was getting sick and tired of her. To make things simpler, he suggested the best way for the fellow neighbours to ensure their constructions were allowed was to put in a shared project and regularisation plan. Seems reasonable? At this point, I kind of lost the thread of what was going on, being not a party to the whole permit thing, and we simply assumed the other three were working away at the plans for their permits.

It was in November, I think, that we got a copy of a registered letter Mr A sent to the syndic. In this letter, he requested we call an immediate urgent AGE (emergency assembly) in order to sort out the renovations of the shared areas, and shared services.
The fabric of the house being a little out of the ordinary, we were all of the opinion we would need the help of an expert to draw up the project. Enter Mr W, the architect from next door. We were convened to a meeting with him and discussed our project. Things were going....ok...considering, and Mr W was ready to draw up a draft for us. Wonderful! Things were finally moving in the right direction! Because balcony aside, we desperately needed to sort out our boiler situation in order to fit our heating...
A few weeks went by, and we heard the plans were almost ready. We were also informed that Mr A intended to go to [enter stage left] the Juge de Paix. What for? Don't ask me, my brains were so fried by this point I couldn't have followed their reasoning even if I'd wanted to. But I was not too worried, after all, Mr W's plans were in the pipeline, we were able to hold a conversation with Ms B without considering throwing her off the infracting terrace, and it all looked hopeful, if chaotic (bearing in mind Mr A and Ms B refused to recognize our syndic as syndic, due to the invalidly convened asssembly wherein he was voted to power!).
Attempts to find a time to meet in order to finalize the plans were thwarted by the syndic's lack of availability in December.

Next thing we get is a letter from a cheerful Other Syndic, informing us brightly that on request of our neighbour Mr A, the Judge had nominated him as our temporary syndic to deal with the urgent matters of renovation of the house.

*blink*

Now, if I have to explain one more time what led the judge to this decision, I will jump screaming from the roof of the Hotel de Ville. Yes, I do know why the JdP named a temporary syndic. No, I don't want to go into it. No one understands it when I explain it, but let me just say: there was nothing we could do about this, and if someone tells me I should have challenged it I will stab them in the thigh with a spoon. Ok, good.

So at the cusp of 2010, we had: one new flat, one old flat, 3 new neighbours, 2 syndics, 3 urbanistic infractions, 1 architect, 1 misinformed judge, 1 contested AGE, 1 sacked french lawyer, 1 unwanted balcony, and a partridge in a pear tree.

I'm getting agitated again, so I shall leave this post here for now. More next week. Bon weekend!

Brussels Blues?

2010-04-22T15:38:00.000+02:00

I've been browsing a few blogs, Belgian related, and I'm kind of sad to see how much people dislike it here. Maybe it's the transient nature of Belgium's expat community that brings them down.
Seems the government has fallen apart again, too. It's a funny sort of place.
I'm looking out of my window at work at the sun and blue sky and depsite everything I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
Seems the bluebells might be out, shall we go and see them?

Pic Johan Vanden Borre

Some pics of the alleged damage

2010-04-21T23:09:00.000+02:00

Here are some photos of the damage caused by our neighbour.

Firstly, the chimney breast problem.

Our floor

The floor above:

Which shows the former path of our boiler flue and the path of our ground-floor neighbour (syndic)'s cooker hood flue.

The beams for the balcony:

From the outside. Oh WHOOPS it looks like the rain water downpipe will need re-routing...

That'll do it:

Note the "I R SMRT" school of pipework, that was causing the wall to get saturated with water.

Some rather interesting new pipework for gas and electricity:

Yep, those are in a load bearing party wall, and once again, done without anyone else's permission or knowledge. Because, you know, they were in a HURRY.

What else? Oh yes, while complaining about they bicycle and beer crates in the hallway, we also had this delightful sight in the front garden from about July til November:

And this is the sight that somehow makes me saddest. Our little chimney-pots:

RAGE part 2

2010-04-20T18:18:00.001+02:00

So we couldn't get out of the sale, is the short version of the story.
Due to the aforementioned principle that the sale is done and dusted at the time, not even of the compromis, but when the offer is accepted, Mr D the seller was understandably NOT going to let us back out, especially as the upstairs neighbours had now revealed themselves to be Difficult. Our lawyer attempted some round-about way of getting us out of it, our notary was a complete spanner (no, spanners are useful. He was as useful as the new metro line 6 - makes sense in theory, but in fact doesn't help anyone, at all), and after a fair amount of trying to negotiate with the bastard balcony builders, we found ourselves trapped.
Ah yes, because our big mistake was attending a meeting in early October to try and deal with the balcony building bastards in an amicable and civil manner. This apparently sealed our fate. By trying to find a solution, we'd inadvertently given some sort of implied consent to the sale (like one implies consent to molestation by wearing a short skirt?).
So, 300 euros down the drain, a bollocking by phone from severe french lawyer lady (resulting in a hysterical crying and throwing things fit in my office one lonely day in autumn 2009), we found ourselves stuck with the flat and stuck with the neighbours.
While we were trying to manoeuvre out of the contract, the urbanisme had sent round their minion to take a look at the fantastical construction out of the back of our house. I was not present for the visit, but I can imagine there was much tut tutting and head shaking, and pursing of lips. Minion beetled back to the town hall, and issued a Procès Verbal against Mr A for his shenanigans.
Well we might as well have barged into the flat wearing crusader armour and planted the flag of St George in the middle of his beautifully renewed floor. Since that moment relations have just plummeted further, and every time we imagine things will improve they get worse!
I cannot really do justice to the insanity of things, I don't even know which strand to start posting about as it is all so damn messy.
Shortly after the visit of Mr Urbanisme to our house, I decided to take matters in hand and hold a meeting. At this point there was still some confusion as our paperwork stated the ground floor neighbour was the syndic, but nobody else's did. He just happened to be doing the syndic's role as he was the first to buy. Either way, someone was going to have to get things rolling and of course, that person was me.
I couldn't call it a General Assembly of Co-owners, as the Assemblée had not yet been properly constituted (round and round we go!), so I called it a sort-of-AG and left it at that. There were lots of things to discuss:
1. Mr A's balcony
2. Renovation of the electrics for the shared spaces
3. Modifying existing pipework: the front rain-water pipe runs into the house and down the middle, and the waste water for the top floor flat evacs into it. This is illegal, as Ms B kept pointing out.
4. New pipework for everyone's services
And other matters deemed of EXTREME importance to some (Ms B) such as the ground floor neighbour's bicycle being stored in the hallway and blocking access to the cellar. Oh yes.
We met on a Saturday morning. Mr A didn't come, he sent Ms B. Ms B is a neat and sophisticated looking Spanish woman in her 40s. She has a face like sour milk and the body of a teenage boy. She has a Southern French accent and an abrasive manner, once she starts talking she will not shut up. Her verbal attacks remind me of being pecked in the head by a chisel. She avoids obscenities, yet manages to be both rude and aggressive nonetheless. She is incapable of structuring any kind of argument, and speaks in riddles and clever quips that leave everyone else unable to either understand what the hell she is banging on about, or do anything about it. Ms B thinks I am stupid, and she thinks the syndic is evil. She hates X&Y, the top floor owners, as they have accomplished what Mr A hasn't been able to: Moving In Despite the Chaos.
But I digress. Ms B is a liability, not least to Mr A who she is claiming to represent.
At our Sort-of-AG, we couldn't get anywhere, Ms B flatly refusing to address the balcony and instead turning things around by complaining about the syndic's bicycle and beer crates in the hall. We barely touched the problems of renovating the shared spaces and water and gas pipes. The meeting was a nonsense, the syndic had no official authority, we weren't officially owners and Ms B clearly impossible to deal with.
Ms B turned nastier, firing off emails to us all, garbled essays with complaints, threats and accusations: Mr A was unable to complete his renovations, and this was all somehow our fault. With hindsight (ah...hindsight), we should have cut the crap right there, signed our completion of sale and taken the buggers to court. I tried to get a little more assertive, but the other owners (syndic and X&Y) preferred a softer approach. Understandable - they already lived in the house and couldn't escape if Mr A and Ms B decided to become crazier (they did anyway).
Ms B was not interested in the wrongs committed by her companion, she wanted us to focus on what was preventing Mr A from moving in.
Indeed, Mr A had the bright idea of ripping out the interior of the flat he bought, and moving his kitchen to the front of the house. We also had this bright idea until we realised there was nowhere to run the waste water from. Mr A was not to be hindered by this...according to Ms B, where Mr A's kitchen waste water facilites run are our responsibility too.
To this day, I have no idea if we actually have the full story of what Mr A actually wanted from us. I have r-read our email exchanges in anticipation of our court case, and still find it hard to decipher them. I sense there is a piece missing, but Ms B will not do us and herself a favour by explaining things as if to the idiot she believes me to be.
Looks like I'll need to post a "Rage part 3!"

RAGE

2010-04-20T16:48:00.001+02:00

Ugh.
I had a sudden surge of anger and feet-stamping-pouting sulkiness earlier. I thought I would channel it into a blog post, rather than channeling it into chewing my nails or eating waffles (mmm...waffles...).

About one year ago we decided it might be time to buy our own place. We looked at our budget (modest) and our wishlist (extravagant) and started a search for something sensible. We looked at compromises on location, and compromises on space. We found a lovely appartment, large, bright, great area and good price. We bought it in optimism and planned how glorious it would be.
And then we met the neighbours on the second floor.
We signed the "compromis d'achat" for the place in July 2009. At that point, future buyers of Belgian property beware, we were beholden to complete the sale. As soon as an offer is accepted, the contract is binding and there are only a few ways out should you change your mind.
In between the compromis d'achat and the "acte authentique" (when the sale is completed), the notary of the buyer does some investigating into things like the planning laws, the property title etc..., before the keys are handed over and the new owner can take possession.
Come August 2009, the seller contacted me to say the upstairs neighbour, Mr A, had plans to repair his floor, which happens to be the ceiling of our back room (kitchen at time of buying). Mr A wanted to discuss the plan with us, and we agreed with the seller that the costs of the repair would be shared between him and Mr A. So far so good.
I met Mr A, a man in his late 40s from the Middle East, on the 15th of August. He seemed friendly, though his French was really not very good. He seemed to understand my horror at seeing that the chimney breast above our hot water heater had been taken out, and didn't seem to have trouble understanding "DO NOT DESTROY ANYTHING ELSE" as he intended to remove all the chimney breasts on his floor!
He explained to me, in broken French, that he planned to construct a balcony out of the back of his flat, above our bedroom, and planned to put in the structure while replacing the floor and ceiling: "petit, 60-80cm, pas grand".
We pondered this balcony idea that evening. I sent Mr A an email asking him for more details. Any plans? Any discussion with the seller of our floor? I got no answer.
Oh wait, no, I did, I got my first phone-call from Ms B, Mr A's "adviser". She burbled on at length about the balcony and other matters. However no plans or designs appeared.
We discussed the idea in person about a week later, but still no plans...no design...and no planning permission "we'll get it later on, we're preparing our application". We moved too slowly at this point. Had we known what we were dealing with our reaction would have been swifter, and we'd have nipped it in the bud. Ah, hindsight...
Buildings divided into separately owned flats are managed by a co-ownership association (Association des copropriétaires), and represented by a manager called the Syndic. Our little house of 4 appartments had only been sold off to individual owners in December 2008, and ideally the new owners should have set up the association and sydic there and then. For various reasons, they didn't. Like us, our neighbours were unsuspecting as to how things would turn out...
At the point we discussed the balcony with Ms B and Mr A, we were still under "compromis" - we were not yet 100% owners of our property. We focused our attentions in the wrong direction, assuming that at some point in the past few months the owners had held a meeting, had a discussion concerning plans for renovation of each appartment, nominated a syndic...because that is how it is done. Never assume!
Another week further on, in late August, we were the proud owners of a new bedroom ceiling...and of a wonderful view of three iron beams sticking out 1 metre deep above our bedroom window. This was Mr A's "petit" balcony...its structure alone revealing what we would have above us - a 1,20m deep and 4m wide structure obscuring light and views of the sky from an appartment we didn't even fully own yet.
Oh we were slow, we didn't expect them to move that fast. We thought we'd see some architects drawings, thought Mr A might show us his quotes, his builders' plans. Didn't expect them to start building without even introducing their planning permission request. Didn't imagine they would have installed 3 tons worth of metal structure into the very fabric of a house jointly owned by 4 parties without anyone's consent. But they did.
In alarm, we contacted our ground floor neighbour, the syndic according to our documents. In alarm, he contacted the planning department, who took...their....time...
We also contacted a lawyer, to get us out of the sale.
As you can tell...that didn't exactly work out.

Sunny days

2010-04-18T22:53:00.001+02:00

First day of spring! Or it felt like it. I took a stroll from my current neighbourhood, the edge of Evere, to my new neighbourhood "le haut de Schaerbeek".
So here are some pics.
First, a picture of the Cite Terdelt. A garden city created in the twenties opn the model of British garden city idea pioneered by a chap called Hubbard.

Here is a better pic from Wikipedia (I'm not much of a photographer)

I took a stroll a little further and took a picture of one of the streets with slightly bigger houses. All different, yet similar:

Then I crossed the Boulevard to the park. Parc Josaphat, so-called as it reminded someone of the Josaphat valley in Jersualem:

Here's an etching of Josaphat in Israel, from ariadne.org:

Here's a picture of the Brusilia. Built in the eraly 70s, it seems surprising to those of us familiar with high-rises in the UK that this way of living should be desirable. Belgians like their high-rises. Great views, big balconies, comfortable spaces with large rooms and well serviced and maintained shared spaces...the idea of a copropriete serves some very well:

The views, you can see them here: http://www.brusilia.net/
Then I went to the new place, where Matt was fixing the bathroom ceiling with metal beams, levelling it so we could place LED lights

Then we went to Avenue Rogier for a well deserved late lunch

Then I took some pictures of the spring trees and lack of any plane in the sky!

Electricity

2010-04-11T18:43:00.001+02:00

Matt has completed as much of the electrics as was possible in the current situation with the neighbours.
Here are some pictures!

The master at work:

First, take up some floorboards:

Then drill some holes rather awkwardly through the beams, and run your cables through:

You can also make some incisions into the walls up to your sockets and switches, and cement the blighters in:

Keep your building site tidy:

And find a place for your fuse box - ours is going to hide in a kitchen cupboard near the front door:

Once all the wiring had its path, Matt connected his fuse box:

What we have not been able to complete is the ceiling lights. We need access to the dastardly neighbour's aparment above in order to do this without slicing into the ceiling mouldings. Needless to say, our foe was not very forthcoming about allowing us to do this.
I'm totally prepared to manage with floor lighting until they leave. Which I'm pretty sure they will.

Bad blogger

2010-03-31T17:52:00.000+02:00

Well it seems I'm not very good at this blogging thing. I haven't really been in the mood since my last post as winter seemed never ending, and neighbourly relations hit an all time low (at one point I genuinely feared they may be trying to blow the house up).

But there is a light on the horizon! Or at the end of the tunnel?

on a side note, being back in a trilingual working environment for 40 hours a week is putting my ability to construct sensible idiomatic sentences in any of the three languages to the test.

We have taken legal action, done the rather surreal task of calling a general meeting of all owners to agree to suing one of our members (the sue-ee even agreeing by mistake to taking himself to court....oh what larks!), writ has been served, and a court date set for mid April to sort out this ungodly mess we have ended up in.
It's a shame it had to come to this, but we are dealing with people who are not right in the head.

I have no pictures of our flat progress as there hasn’t been much of note. Also I keep forgetting to take my camera with me!

On snow, and progress

2010-02-15T19:02:00.000+01:00

Still snowing here...Carnaval Sunday has just been and gone, Mardi Gras tomorrow. Carnaval Sunday in Belgium is supposed to mark the end of deep winter, however this year we sem to be in for weeks of more ice, snow and temperatures below freezing.
I've been avoiding venturing out anywhere I don't have to go, but Matt has been bravely setting off every weekend, to continue our electrics. Some pictures of our progress in my next post, Matt will explain how it's been going...
...in other news the neighbour problems reached hysterical heights last week when all other apartment owners (that's 3 of us) got royally sick of their antics, and fired off a series of emails the recipient would have been proud of. This sent the darn woman into a spiral of fury, with no helpful outcomes for anyone. Since then, our loyal ally, the syndic, seems to have also lost the plot and is sending nonsensical emails to us all which are NOT HELPING our cause to seem unblemished in the eyes of the law.
I have come to realise that the only way forward is for us to stop mentioning the damage they have caused, and move on regardless (don't worry, we will not give up!). Whenever we try and make them confront their mistakes, all hell breaks loose, and they start slinging mud in all directions hoping it will stick.
So that's that.
And all things considered, it could be worse. The train that crashed today in Halle was the same one I used to take to work back in 2006.

Rue des Chartreux

2010-01-31T23:13:00.000+01:00

Saturday was a reasonably sunny day! So I went for a stroll down Rue des Chartreux in central Brussels.
Back in 1998, my dad moved to this area while it was still firmly in the "up and coming" class of Brussels districts. It was not yet the style-conscious area it is now twelve years later, but we could see the potential. If we'd had the money to invest back then it would certainly have been THE place to buy a flat, prices have since more than tripled and the area is now firmly on the radar of the international design savvy types (design sponge for one!).
My dad has since moved on to Greece (ohwhatashame), but I still feel like Rue des Chartreux holds a little piece of home for me.

A.M. Sweet - Belgians are big tea lovers and always faintly surprised to hear that Brits don't really drink teas flavoured with violets, caramel or spiced apple. This is a tea-room and tea-shop, cosy and cute. Great chocolates too!

Le Greenwich - a Brussels institution. Art Nouveau decor, smoky, surly staff, and chess. Chesschesschess. Apparently frequented by Magritte back in the day, and pronounced Green Witch.

Franco Freres - used to be an ironmongers/pot maker/locksmith. Now a place to buy Art. If you can ever find out when it's supposed to open

The house my dad used to live in! It was not this bright back then...

Gabriele Vintage - amazing vintage fashion shop. I found a vintage Burberry coat for Matt in here, and some amazing accessories. Oh, and UK TV star Ruth Wilson (Jane Eyre, Small Island) was in there this Saturday (at least I think it was her!)

Espace Bizarre - sells designer furniture and accessories from Marimekko, Normann Copenhagen etc

Belgian humour - "Zinneke" sculpture by Franzen. Zinneke is a part of the Senne river that flows through (under) Brussels, and has come to mean "stray dog"...for some reason.

Some Schaerbeek

2010-01-25T18:36:00.000+01:00

Just some pics of our local park, in the frost of an early morning.

and a small pic of Nina

EATS

2010-01-24T14:23:00.000+01:00

We have ways and means....
Despite being fairly financially precarious this first half of 2010, due mainly to paying rent AND mortgage, we have a way (shh...it's a secret) to getting ourselves to some rather fine eateries in the next few months.
We decided we would take the opportunity to try the types of restaurants that would normally be out of our reach, and our first try was last week for our 3rd wedding anniversary.
Bonsoir Clara is a restaurant in the trendy Dansaert area of the city. It was opened in 2005 and has a bit of a mixed reputation. We were a little nervous as the reviews we read stated the food was overrated and the service pretty lousy, but we were pleasantly surprised. The waiting staff were pleasant, the food was excellent, and the setting was a hit too.

I would say the only slight minus is that it's not great value. I think you can get equally excellent food in Brussels for less.

We'll select another restaurant in a couple of weeks...

Bothersome

2010-01-15T12:07:00.000+01:00

Just a quick update, so it doesn't seem I've fallen off the face of the planet in the last month...
renovation going slow, neighbours being obstructive...will update shortly with some Brusselsy stuff to cheer myself up :)

Kitchen cabinets

2009-12-12T21:46:00.000+01:00

While Matt ets on with rewiring our aplce, we have a question of kitchen planning.
We've almost decided on Ikea for our kitchen - sources confirm that value for money they are the best option. If we had more money we might be able to get a better kitchen somewhere like Kvik http://www.kvik.com/fr-BE/kitchen/products/ - lovely deisgned kitchens but out of our budget

Ikea ideas:

modern!

wood?

I am quite tempted by two-tone kitchens. I picked up these pictures as inspiration

What should we do in our kitchen? It will be the middle room of the three-deep flat, and as such will have the least natural light. We have decided tht something traditional but not rustic in style would fit best, and we like Ikea Lindigo:

Essentially the idea would be similar to the one in the picture above, except our room is far taller and thinner, seen here from the back of the house, our future bedroom, then from the other side in mid destruction phase:

The wall on the side where the door is would run the main part of the kitchen, and we would put cupboards on the wall. With a wall height of over 3 metres, we could run 2 rows of wall cupboards like in the two-tone white/wood pic above. Which row should have the glass cabinets? Both, below or above?

More Art Nouveau Interiors

2009-12-02T11:47:00.001+01:00

Here are some more pics of the Art Nouveau Biennale tours of this year. The first few are from a former school, designed and built by Henri Jacobs (one of the major contributors to Brussels architecture at the time) in 1907.

These are pictures of the frise decorating the main hall. All about educating the impressionable youth about the beauties of the world:

Here is some detailing:

These are interior shots from the Maison Cauchie. It is absolutely worth a visit, and open at other times than the Biennale http://www.cauchie.be/cauchie-house

Note the Mackintosh chair in the corner of the pic above

Finally, here are some pictures of the interior of a private house built in 1903 by Boelens. The ground floor interior is very reminiscent of the ground floor apartment in our future home.

I love the decor, but how do you get a working fireplace below a window?

you run the chimney breast off to the side!

Planning

2009-11-30T16:41:00.002+01:00

Here is the situation - we have started renovations to our apartment, but we are blocked on many fronts as all owners (us and the other 3) need to make decisions about renovations to the shared spaces.
There is a certain dispute with the chimney-destroying-balcony-building neighbours above us, who are trying their hardest to win at all costs, even if that means sabotaging themselves in the process.
The nextdoor neighbour is called Michel, he is an architect and has drawn up some plans to help us work out where we can run the services - new gas and electric and new waste water pipes. While we still wait for agreement of all 4 owners for this plan, we cannot do the two main things we need to make our place liveable: HEATING and HOT WATER.
I am even prepared to put up with either/or, but it's winter and I think I am going to insist we keep the luxury of our current place until we have a light at the end of the tunnel....
So what can we do?

So far we have done DESTRUCTION. Remember this?

GONE

Remember our bathroom?

BARE (except we kept the loo for emergencies). We even took down the partition wall between the stairs and the loo.

The plan for this week is I will continue stripping wallpaper in the front and middle room, then remove the strange styrofoam ceiling tiles in the bathroom, and Matt and our good friend Adrien will take up the bathroom floor as it is sloping:

Next step will be to make some sort of wedge implement and lay a new chipboard floor surface over the joists.

That will be the bathroom READY for the bits we still have to all agree on...oh well.

Last week we went to pick up our electrics kit from Selfmatic http://bxlstyle.blogspot.com/2009/08/devastation-and-inspiration.html, and our handbook of instructions. Matt is studying it furiously and improving his technical french language skills in the process. We can do all our interior wiring and then await the new shared electrical wiring to be done.

We also intend to renovate the floors in the main rooms. They are pine floorboards and currently varnished clear. I'd quite like a darker tint like this:

pic from Fernando Floors

This is a floor stain to make pine look a bit more like oak.

So - cleaning, sanding, cleaning again, filling in the gaps with wood paste and tinting. No idea how long this will take, but hopefully all of this will be done by mid-January.

We can do a preliminary coat of paint on the walls after replastering where needed.

Will we be brave enough to move in by then? Or will we continue paying mortgage and rent for months? Or will we admit defeat and move back with my mum until we have heat and hot water? Or will our upstairs neighbour have destroyed the place so thoroughly that we will find her one day, standing amidst a pile of rubble that was our house, clutching one brick in her hand saying "I WIN! YOU LOOOOSE!"?!

Or was that just my bad dream from last night...?

Stay tuned!

Wallpaper

2009-11-26T12:38:00.001+01:00

Getting ahead of myself again...apartment not really progressing due to lack of time and various contentious issues so I am daydreaming about wallpaper.
With our magnificent front room (approximately 5m x 4m), with its lovely high ceilings and mouldings, I would love to do something a bit classical with the walls. Paint seems too flat for such a large surface, so how about wallpaper? STRIPY wallpaper?

(Last pic Sheila Bridges)

The room itself:

And what about the palette? I like this selection from Farrow and Ball

http://www.farrow-ball.com/Company/FBStyles.aspx?language=en-GB&style=13

this colour palette in particular:

Art Nouveau Interiors

2009-11-25T13:16:00.001+01:00

In our journey around the Art Nouveau gems of this city last month, Matt took some pictures of the rather amazing interiors. Here are some pics:

1. The interior of the Hanse Office, built 1898 by Derycker

2. The interior of the Quaker House, built 1899 by Hobe

One interior shot of the Quaker house, through the bay window:

Often referred to as English Style, the bay window was a big hit in these turn of the century houses...but the exterior doesn't look very English to me:

This is more what I think of, a house for sale in our former home town of Didsbury, Manchester:

4. The interior of a private house on Rue Van Hasselt, built 1900, by Devalck

Dark wood pannelling and ornate banisters:

Coupled with stunning stained glass. This particular house features a recurring motif that is inspired from the female form, but is also reminiscent of shapes found in nature. This was a big Art Nouveau theme and I can imagine it must have been quite shocking at the time!

Two more stained glass windows from the same house:

Belgian style

2009-11-17T10:34:00.001+01:00

While browsing google images for pics to inspire me, I thought I would try "Belgian Style" and see what popped up. Brussels Style and Belgian style must surely overlap in some way, and I have my own ideas on what Belgian Style means. What does the internet think?
I immediately found this article on american designer Kay Douglas http://www.housebeautiful.com/decorating/it-must-be-belgium-1007, what Belgian style means to her sums it up as neutral colours, reclaimed materials and a neutral colour scheme (from House Beautiful).

What it conjurs up to me is the style of Flamant http://www.flamant.com/ "A perfect mixture of the personal, the comfortable and the (re)new" as they call it:

From my childhood memories of school friend's homes, I found that people here are prepared to spend a lot of money on buying their property but put very little into the interior. For some this works out well with great quality basics and lovely family heirlooms...for others the effect can be a bit cluttered and...well? (pic from Immoweb.be)

Through my googlings I came upon this rather nice blog called Reese and Marie http://reeseandmarie.blogspot.com/ that is sadly mothballed at the moment, but a post from a year or so ago caught my eye: http://reeseandmarie.blogspot.com/2008/10/belgian-style.html she calls Belgian Style "utilitarian, earthy, country pared-down chic"... and links to an intriguing site called Boho Belgian http://bohobelgian.com/
Which is where I leave this post, in confusion as to how someone could possibly claim to know anything about Belgium having apparently never even been here:
"The inspiration for my home and subsequent design aesthetic comes from my love of all things Belgian. I discovered this style while living in Switzerland. There were many shops in Zurich that featured this style of Décor." The designer will even take you on guided shopping trips in Eastern Switzerland to complete your Belgian Style experience!

First week of ownership

2009-11-16T13:09:00.002+01:00

So we bought it.
The dispute with the neighbours rages on, but now we can do something about it from the inside so to speak. I will not clutter this blog with the tedious details, and concentrate instead on more fun things.
Like renovations.
Here is the bathroom progress, Matt removed all the units with a little help from me:

The plan is to lift up all the floorboards and work out how to level the floor. The house has subsided since it was built and the floor slopes quite dramatically to the middle.
I am quite keen on the idea of underfloor heating, which would free up quite a bit of space on the walls for storage. Then we'd need a tiled floor rather than a wood floor. Not too sure about that. Here is some inspiration for how it could be:

I particularly love the dark floor, slate tiled. And the house being an "entre-guerre" construction, we could really go to town on the Deco fixtures and tiling:

In other progress, I took to the easier task of stripping wallpaper. And what a lot of wallpaper! I think we must have gained a square inch of floorspace, I counted about 10 layers of paper. The best surprise was the last but one. Paper thin, and most likely from the 1930s. I would love to have seen the room in those days!

Working hard:

Art Nouveau Interlude

2009-10-25T22:06:00.001+01:00

The flat thing is on hold due to circumstances beyond our control. Once it's sorted out I'll be able to explain.
In the meantime, we visited various beautiful Brussels houses and buildings over the month of October, during the Art Nouveau Biennale http://www.voiretdirebruxelles.be/biennale, wonderful idea by the various organizations that promote "heritage" tourism in Brussels. Next edition will be 2011 if interested.
The thing about Brussels is that in true Belgian fashion of individualism, people built what THEY wanted. And whatever was in their best interests. So to be able to appreciate the grandeur is hard - there are no rows of beauty like the circus in Bath, or the rows of stunning architecture in London.
In Brussels, you have to look a litle closer. A dramatic facade can hide between a large block of 50s flats and a clasical turn of the century town house. Dig a little deeper...

Where was the inspiration?

2009-08-29T21:31:00.001+02:00

Sorry, forgot the inspiration bit of the post!

Here it is: now that our bathroom will be boiler-free, we can knock out our own strange diagonal bit of wall and position the bath along the window wall. So I wanted to find some inspiration for bathroom design.

Most of these pictures I have saved off the internet with no reference so I'm sorry if they are not credited. If anyone can help me credit them, let me know!

Here is the current bathroom (minus the dust and rubbish from the works):

And here is an idea of where the bath could go, though I'd prefer a blind so the neighbours can't see me showering! Love the retro shower head and sink style

I like the tiles and lighting here, again a vintage looking sink

And how about pictures in the bathroom? This is quirky, I like :)

Devastation and inspiration

2009-08-29T19:43:00.002+02:00

It took me a while to recover from the shock about our chimney!

Two visits later we feel more comfortable with the whole thing. More on that later.

We took a visit to a place called "Selfmatic" last weekend, to step up our plans for our renovation. Selfmatic http://www.selfmatic.be/ provide a way for us to save around 50% of the costs of renovating our flat; they provide training and materials to enable individuals with no experience of DIY to fit their own sanitary installations ("saniself") and electrical installation (amusingly called "electriself").

Sounds insane? YES! But I trust Matt, who is both an expert DIYer and a trained surveyor, to help me through this whole thing without flapping myself into the stratosphere. Right, Matt? Right? Right...

Selfmatic staff were very nice and helpful if a bit builder-like ("oooh I wouldn't do it like that, no no oooh terrible, wouldn't put the bath/radiator/sink there tut tut tut"), and have already quoted for our heating and bathroom. We'll hear about the electrics and kitchen from them soon.

We took some pictures of the devastation that is our appartment yesterday. We met our upstairs neighbour again and his girlfriend and builder and felt a lot better about the whole thing. Removing the chimney from the bathroom is not as big a disaster as we thought - we can fit the heater in the kitchen-to-be!

Their major scale renovations includes replacing their floor...which is also the ceiling of what will be our bedroom. I wasn't quite prepared for the devastation!

Here is some news in pictures:

BEFORE

LAST WEEK

NOW

The person who lived here before, or before them, or even before that, had the bright idea to pour a concrete floor on the 2nd level, and then tile on top of that. The weight of this very Belgian bit of DIY had slumped the floor to the flat above and bowed the ceiling on our level.

Therefore, I am not freaked out about the works. Yet.

Back in business

2009-08-24T18:06:00.001+02:00

I've been a bit quiet all summer, because things have been quiet on the home front.

But now, we're back in business. We will sign over for the keys in late September, but in the meantime we are planning our renovation.

Had the pleasure of meeting our upstairs neighbour, and the new owners of the top floor flat last week. Upstairs neighbour speaks fairly ropey accented french and it took me a long time to understand what he was going on about...anyway, it seems he has removed one of the chimneys!

The one above our bathroom, where the water heater currently flues!!

He also cheerfully told us he was ripping out the other three chimneys...AAAAAH! I told him not to, and I am having sleepless nights about whether he will pay any attention to my email.

The silver lining? The flat isn't actually ours yet, but getting out of the purchase might be a challenge so please cross your fingers that he doesn't do anymore crazy stuff to our new home!

On a more cheerful note, how about a kitchen? I love these:

Signed

2009-07-13T14:03:00.002+02:00

We signed our purchase agreement last week!

All set to be home owners in about 3 months. Now I need to do the decluttering in earnest, but instead I seem to spend a lot of time browsing paint colours and wallpaper samples instead of concentrating on the priorities!

Here is a floor plan of our new home:

steady now

2009-06-22T18:25:00.001+02:00

OK, for those of you who thought I'd got the bargain of the century, we didn't get the flat for 13000 €, we got it for 13000 LESS than the price it was listed at. This through a fair bit of bartering with the seller.
Total sale price: 146 000€.

Home on the horizon

2009-06-20T11:32:00.001+02:00

I hadn't posted about this, because I didn't want to get all excited about nothing...but it is something: we had an offer accepted on a flat!!!!!!!!

We got it for 13,000 € under the asking price too.

Without further ado, here are the pictures of what is to be our new Brussels Style home, it's the first floor of this 1913 house:

It's a style of appartment called "3 pieces en enfilade": we have three rooms leading on from each other. This is the front room, which will be the dining room and living room:

It's about 80m2 (roughly 860 sqft), which is unusually large considering our budget.

It's not ours for a while yet, we have to find out if the kind bank manager will lend us the money. We're looking at a move in end of September.

We're also looking at MAJOR renovation work... wish us luck!

ONE MEEEELION

2009-06-10T19:53:00.002+02:00

What could I get if I were a millionaire?

How about this? 1896, next to the Sablon:

Or this...in Ixelles:

Check out the kitchen! (Aren't the cabinets Ikea??)

I absolutely love this. It was built in 1958 at the time of the Universal Exhibition in Brussels. The city was taking a leap forward, gearing up for its status as capital of Europe, shedding the post-war gloom. Some seriously ugly stuff was done to the city, but the style of architecture was so radically new, I can't help but admire it (I'm ignoring that couch):

And I would be very happy to live in this little Art Nouveau property:

Check out the shelves! I love the whole thing

Le grand declutter

2009-06-09T20:28:00.002+02:00

I say grand, but I'm making baby steps here.
This past weekend I put away my winter clothes until autumn (no doubt it will start in less than 2 months...) and made a pile of clothes TO BE THROWN.
So hard. Some of these clothes cost me a bit of cash back in the days I had a well paying job. I feel kind of weird about giving them to charity, but the extra work of putting them all on ebay and endless trips to the post office is a turn off too.
For now they sit under my bed, awaiting a decision

Art Nouveau

2009-06-06T13:22:00.001+02:00

Brussels' boomtime was the turn of the last Century. The city grew very quickly, and many new homes were built in the style of the times - Art Nouveau.

Two main architects of this style, local boys Victor Horta and Paul Hankar, pioneered the style. They built lots of houses, but also shopping centres, cafes, schools...

Victor Horta construction:

This is a picture of the interior of Horta's own house:

The Brussels areas of Ixelles and Schaerbeek are full of magnificent architecture of this style.

We have seen a flat we want to buy. The building was constructed in 1910 and fits in very well with the Art Nouveau theme. It is in Schaerbeek, a district to the North of Brussels city centre, and right next to a park. Here's a picture we took in winter of the area surrounding, and one of the streets next to Eisenhower:

We need to get some finances sorted, then we can make an offer on the place we want... watch this space!

Home

2009-05-29T20:57:00.002+02:00

We are now house-hunting, or home-hunting I guess. We have discussed lots of options, and decided that a small appartment in Brussels city was what would suit us.

We've done the trawling through apartment listings, with our budget in mind.

We could have this, 60m2 in the very centre of Brussels:

But it's too small and in the middle of the red light district.
Or this, which is like a cheaper version of where we live now: mezzanine bedroom, but no separate kitchen
Here's a creative solution. In the aim to get the most money out of Brussels' typical early 20th century houses, developers have gone into the attics. A bit like our appartment, many flats are now split-level attic rooms. But what if you really have very little space? I know, why not put the shower room IN the bedroom?

Seriously.

But on to our requirements.

A nice area (South-east Schaerbeek, Ixelles, Central Brussels), something with character, maybe a bit of renovation, we're not scared. One or two bedrooms. I'd like a balcony or garden. Matt would like nice fireplaces, or moulded ceilings.

Matt's love is the Art Nouveau-Art Deco architecture style. Brussels is FULL of this. I'll show you.

meticulouslly avoiding exertion

2009-05-24T19:09:00.002+02:00

I was struck down with some sort of coughing-throwing up-sneezing virus thingy on Wednesday evening, just in time for a 4 day weekend that could have been dedicated to all things Brussels, Stye or Home.
Instead I am on the couch in 30 degree heat typing this.
So my task for this weekend is to do what I do best: Planning. (I have problems with Action).
I have made a little list of the future steps to take.

1. Sort out paperwork. This is a big job, as Matt has his paperwork for here and UK, I have mine and the flat has its own. We currently have 3 filing boxes, various files, and several in-trays. I want all of this streamlined. Should I do a filing cabinet or stick with ring binders? Hmmm:

2. CLOTHES. Arrgh. I am always in search of the Perfect Dress and I impulse buy dresses like nobody's business, then never wear them. Wardrobe is full of dresses. And other stuff like shoes...once in a while I do a sort but then I never have the heart to throw or donate things that I spent good money on.
If I could do it over, I would just invest in some decent basics and be done with it. Concentrate my efforts on shoes, accessories, hair and makeup. Maybe I should?
So - the plan is to bag up everything but the minimum, and work from there. If I need something, it will come out of storage. I'll give it 6 weeks or so. Then THROW-DONATE (any takers?) everything that's left. And also...no buying for the next few months! This will be difficult.

3. My headache is back. I'll deal with three tomorrow. Maybe.

In the meantime, here is Brussels in the summer sun:

ummm...

2009-05-17T22:57:00.001+02:00

Jeebus, this is really evidence of my problem! So about a month ago I said I'd start tomorrow, and look at me now! Anyway, better late than never.

In the intervening period, I have done my first bit of organizing.

One trip to Ikea The Marvelous to stock up on storage ideas, and one half hour stint of organizing...the small desk.

In my previous post was the flat on the good day. Here it is on a relatively bad day:

So this is a relatively bad day...don't ask about a REALLY bad day!
So small desk it was.

I have issues with what I call "boy junk" which is my husbands various tools, bolts, screws, electrical cables, drills etc... they get everywhere, and have no dedicated place. So I took a bag and threw all the boy junk I could find into the bag. Instant tidiness!

The small desk is where all the stuff we bring into the flat comes to rest. Pockets are emptied, junk mail is strewn, business cards and bus passes languish in an ungainly pile...

Once I decided what should go where it was surprisingly easy, and it's been 2 weeks and it stays uncluttered! Here is the before and after:

Phew, I feel much better already. The blue tin houses some of the boy's junk, the little glass spare change. White bowl is for keys. The business card holder is for...busniess cards, and the letter holder for things like bus passes, membership cards etc...

I'm not keen on the grey metal theme, and the plan would be to replace with something a bit more stylish, eventually.

The vase was a wedding present. What would you do with it? Unless we buy a really big bouquet, it lies empty.

manhana

2009-04-29T20:19:00.002+02:00

I start.... tomorrow!

What's the plan

2009-04-28T22:14:00.001+02:00

The plan, in the long term, is to buy a house in this city.

In the short term, I want to get life ORGANIZED. I have been inspired by the lovely blogs of thisyounghouse and Chez Larsson: http://www.thisyounghouse.com/, http://chezlarsson.typepad.com/myblog/, with all their fab tips for keeping home sorted and with style, too.

I live with my husband Matt:

And Nina the cat:

Our home, on a good day, looks a bit like this:

Today is not one of those good days. We just got back from a weekend away whcih invariably means CHAOS. It is this sort of chaos that I would like a smooth and easy way of dealing with. Tomorrow, the work starts.

Brussels style?

2009-04-26T21:27:00.001+02:00

So what is Brussels style anyway? I surveyed some friends on what first popped into their mind when I said Brussels: french fries, sprouts, pissing boy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manneken_Pis, beer, chocolate, waffles, lace, griffon dogs, Bruges. The first and last ones struck me. When I googled images of Bruges:

Beautiful, right?

Then I googled images of Brussels:

Iconic, no doubt. But not exactly "stylish"...and note the ever-present greyish sky behind.

Brussels also reminded my friends of french fries. French? Really? Belgium in general, and Brussels seem to suffer from this rebranding quite a lot. It seems Belgian doesn't sell. Here's a link I found on one of my favourite sites, apartment therapy: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/03/03/greathomesanddestinations/0303-brussels-slideshow_index.html

a French-style Town House in Brussels. Why French style? Why not Brussels style?

A well-known Belgian export, Stella Artois beer, has a new advertising campaign in Britain, marketing the beer as very stylish...and in a lovely French riviera way:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHWBGExxDFk

Maybe Brussels style is more understated and subtle than that.

Forray into blogging

2009-04-26T20:56:00.001+02:00

So here is my first step in the world of blogging.
I have decided to create this blog mainly for myself, but also to share my progress in my journey towards a lovely new home. I am neither very creative, nor very stylish and maybe this will encourage me to be a bit more-so.
I live in Brussels, a city that is unfairly labelled as grey and bureaucratic, and I'm hoping that while I try and get my home (and myself) organized and smart, I can take inspiration from the city I live in. And prove that Brussels and Alice have inner style that's just waiting to be shown to the world.