Month: May 2016

We are kinda sorta getting there. Long suffering readers know that when I bought the house, this was the only bathroom. As in a room with the setup you see and a bathtub, just this side of that low wall that is sticking out. If you wanted a toilet you had to head downstairs.

And now, voila, sort of.

My apologies for that very dark, rainy day image; clearly I’m not ready for my Houzz feature. I hope you can see the pluses, that the cabinet has been replaced, a towel rail added and the walls painted. They are white, really. We have a toilet now and a shower with a little bench and shampoo niche. There is a tub, if you must have one, in the bathroom — yes, a second bathroom! — just across the landing. The minus? Did you notice the missing window? My contractors keep saying they are missing four windows, which means they are only counting the ones that are not on site. If they counted the others, like this one, we’d be missing six. Yes, there is a little tension around these sorts of disparities. And, um, the radiator hasn’t been replaced and the shutter not refurbished. And I hope that the hideous pipe at the top of the shower enclosures is temporary.

It’s getting a little tense around here. They see a nearly finished project and I see a house that is still uninhabitable, with a “to do” list a mile long. Sometimes I think I should be wearing a wire and hidden camera, so I could record the conversations where they tell me they are nearly finished and I say something like, “I have no kitchen.” To which they respond, I kid you not, with, “Come on. One kitchen.” Then they don’t laugh. I have worked with contractors who gave Oscar-worthy performances but these guys really mean it.

Every day I thank my stars that when something is finally done, it looks good and works well. If I also had quality issues, I don’t know what I’d do.

We were driving along looking for I forget what, when we got hungry. There aren’t a lot of choices out in the countryside, so when we got here we thought, well, how bad can it be, and stopped in.

It turned out to be quite decent. We got a whole meal, starter, main and dessert, all house made, for 12 euros, I think. Apiece, but still. And it was good. As the owner was clearing up she said, “At the end of the year, this place is closing. We are retiring and we don’t have a buyer.” 

The place was reasonably full and there was no competition. It must be one of those signs of the times, depopulation of the countryside, something like that. I certainly can’t imagine myself wanting to live in this drab building, commuting downstairs, cooking and feeding folks all day long, then heading back upstairs to fall asleep until the next day, day after day for decades.

It’s understandable but it’s sad. In a way, these aren’t bad jobs. That nice couple must surely make more than the cooks and waiters at, say, Buffalo Grill. But of course they have to do more than those cooks and waiters: accounting, all those other support jobs, no one to fill in during vacations. 

A whole series of things would have to change to make a business like this truly viable, apart from summer, when the empty villages fill with visitors. It would be like turning the tide. As I am neither economist nor urban planner, I wouldn’t know where to start. So, I don’t know. I guess my choices are boiling down to packing a lunch or learning to love Buffalo Grill.

My obligations as accompanying person required my visit to Keukenhof, a flower show that takes place just outside Amsterdam. The focus is on tulips but they also display peonies and other things. It’s good. If you have a chance, go there and hope you have the kind of warm, sunny day we had.

That’s it. Back to real life.