bktheirregular

Finally cooked my first meal in my new kitchen last night. Nothing caught fire. And I didn't go to bed hungry.

Renovations continue apace. Today's edition: the door.

To be less cryptic, when the apartment was painted, the front door got stuck due to adhering paint. Once the painter got in to do some touch-up work on the apartment (through a side door leading to roof access), he decided to try and solve the problem. His solution involved using a screwdriver as a pry-bar, tearing up the doorjamb, and calling a locksmith whose solution was to break the lock. Then the locksmith my aunt had called showed, and got snippy about why we hadn't called him in the first place, because he could have probably gotten the door open without ripping apart the frame.

Our response: take one bit of renovation that had been scheduled for sometime in the future, adding a security door to the place, and move that up. Scheduled for tomorrow; they came today.

From what I can tell, they ripped out the entire door frame and replaced it with a sturdier frame to match the door. And speaking of the door, I have this sneaking suspicion that if I forget my keys in the apartment and lock myself out (as I did a couple of times at the old place), that door isn't about to be forced by anything short of explosives. The only edge that doesn't have bolts on it is the one against the floor.

(It all works off a single key, which is sadly too large and unwieldy to tuck into my wallet, which means that my traditional defense against locking myself out of my apartment may need some rethinking.)

Cabinet-makers for the kitchen are due tomorrow.

Just out of curiosity, the last time anyone reading this moved, how long did it take to finish the un-boxing?

Live from my new apartment, it's ... what day is it again?

The move is less than 24 hours away. The renovations in the new place are still not complete.

Painter: finished. Plumber: came by. Electrician: supposed to come tomorrow. Carpenter: don't ask.

So ... place won't have a kitchen yet, because the carpenter has been dragging his heels on the cabinets.

The movers show up at nine o'clock tomorrow morning.

Called OTE (phone company) today, received an appointment for a week from today (i.e. next Tuesday, November 10). Then I got a call from the mover, who will be unable to move my stuff to the new place until the following Wednesday (the 11th) at the earliest. Might work out in the long run, since the painter was saying that his job wouldn't be completed until Sunday or Monday.

Wonder if they're still cutting off my phone and DSL tonight...

Electrician went through the new place yesterday, opened up a lot of channels for wires and the like. Rewiring, replacement of switches and power sockets, and the like, is supposed to be done tomorrow, along with installation of the kitchen appliances and cabinets, and some masonry work to plug holes which will be left in walls by removal of defunct air conditioners. New balcony window/doors, front and back, have arrived and need to be installed. Rolling shutter for the front veranda, folding shutters for the back balcony, need to be installed.

Then this weekend, if all goes well, painting, which should last a few days. Tentatively, moving in is scheduled for the following weekend - Hallowe'en.

hoo boy.

Saturday, an air-conditioning technician came by to dismount the A/C from the apartment I'm renting, and install it in the new place, to replace a unit the sellers took with them, because they'd charged it to their business account less than a year ago, or something like that.

Naturally, the troubles began before I could even get out the door of the old apartment building. The building superintendent and the A/C tech got into an argument about something, I don't know what, maybe the amount of noise inherent in dismounting a split A/C unit, and then they tried to drag me into it:

Super: "[Tell him to speak more politely!]*"
Tech: "[Tell her to speak more politely!]*"
Me: "[I don't understand even half of what either of you are yelling about!]*" (sotto voce) "For crying out loud, is it something in the water?"**

* - translated from the Greek
** - in English

The fun continued when we got to the new place. One of the nice things advertised for this apartment was the roof access. This was relevant on Saturday because the exterior part of the A/C unit was mounted on an overhang over the front balcony, and the best access was from the roof.

Except...

Me: "The roof access is locked. We can't get up there."***
Younger Seller: "Just undo the dead bolt on the door, and unlock the gate."
Me: "No, I mean the gate up to the roof is locked. There's a combination cable lock on the gate. Do you have the combination?"
Younger Seller: "What? When did that happen?"

*** - This conversation bounced between Greek and English.

Several calls later, we finally got someone on the line who knew the combination to the lock. By then, though, the A/C tech had made use of ladders to dismount the old A/C unit and put up the new one. (More on that later.) I got enlisted to feed a conduit through a hole in the wall, to connect the inner unit to the outer. I was trying to feed when he gave a yank without warning, pulling my hand into the wall, gouging open a fingertip, and leaving my blood in the structure of the building.

When I left, the sellers were still packing, but they promised that they'd leave the key to the apartment inside once they finished moving out Sunday morning, to complement the key they'd given my aunt. (They'd switched the lock on the door for some bizarre reason. This becomes relevant later, as well.) Finally, I bade them farewell and went on to do my errands for Saturday.

Sunday, after lunch, I decided to head over to the apartment again, to measure out the various rooms and put together rough sketches of how to lay out my new digs. I swung over by my aunt's to pick up the keys they'd given her, went over to the building, put the key in the lock ...

...when "put the key in the lock" is a significant step in the process, that should be a hint that something's just about to go wrong.

The key didn't turn. I was locked out of my brand-new apartment. One phone call later, the younger seller came by.

Younger seller: "This isn't the right key. Are you sure your aunt gave you the right key?"
Me: "It's on the same ring as the key to the downstairs storage closet and the front door. This is the one you gave us."

After many attempts to open the door, including springing the lock with a makeshift shim, he finally called a locksmith. Then he left to work on their new office, basically sticking me with the locksmith's bill (35 euros). Locksmith turned up, asked to see my ID (probably figuring a burglar wouldn't have done so), and tried about five different methods to jimmy the door before popping open the shroud around the keyhole and opening the door with a bit of bent wire.

Then he offered to sell me a new lock on the spot.

I declined, politely, informing him that I was planning to replace the lock anyway, and put in a deadbolt as well; meanwhile, I went searching for the key that the sellers had promised would be left for me in the entryway. Half an hour and three phone calls later, it turned out that the older seller had walked away with the key in his pocket. Two hours later, he swung by my old place to give me the key, and you'd better believe I went to test it out and make sure that one worked.

Oh, and by the way, while the younger seller and I were on the roof searching for an alternate way in, we spotted the new air conditioning unit that was supposed to be bolted down on the ledge above the balcony. It wasn't bolted down, just left standing in place. Add that to the list.

I guess I'm looking at some stress this upcoming week.

Spent the morning drowning in paperwork. Came up for air about noon, and my keyring was a couple of keys heavier.

So what's up with everyone else?