Tag Archives: belgium

Sunday 13th February 2011 – We’re having a change …

… of plan about this apartment.

The idea was, as you know, that we would come here, spend a couple of weeks tarting the place up, and then sell it on without putting a great deal of effort into it. I’ve a rough idea what the place might be worth and I would be happy with that.

But Terry, Liz, Marianne (yes, Marianne came round to lunch and it was nice to see her after all this time) and I went for a walk around the area after lunch and we noticed a couple of apartments for sale around here, exactly the same as mine. They were quite nicely finished and some amount of additional investment had been made in preparing them, and we could see what the estate agents were hoping to get for them. And if I could sell mine for a figure approaching that I would be absolutely delighted.

So we’ve decided to put some more effort in to the place – basically work until next weekend as planned, go home to do our chores as planned, and then come back and carry on doing more stuff.

wild parrots brussels belgiumAfter lunch, we went off for a walk in the woods down the road to look for the wild parrots who live there. You probably think I’m joking, but it’s true. There was a small zoo near the Atomium and it had a collection of exotic birds. The area was bombed by the British in World War II and the zoo was badly damaged, allowing the parrots to escape.

They have established themselves now in the wild and there is one very successful breeding colony in the woods just down the road from here. The Government does what it can to encourage the birds and they have their own schools – the Polly-techniques, their own hospitals, the Polly-clinique, and their own cemetery, the Polly-gone. Gilbert and Sullivan wrote an opera for them, called the Parrots of Penzance, and the council encourages citizens to make life easier for the birds by installing parrakeet flooring in all the council houses.

Life is extremely interesting, if not exciting, in Brussels. You never know what you are likely to encounter next.

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Saturday 12th February 2011 – We just worked half a day today.

Liz finished papering the bathroom and then painted the half that she had papered yesterday. It looks quite nice too. I carried on scrubbing down the walls in the living room and you wouldn’t believe how much dirt and muck and mess there is on them. Mind you, it doesn’t half look better now.

In the corner next to the bathroom is a little alcove where I hang the coats and leave the shoes. Marianne and I wallpapered there a few years ago but the bit at the bottom is quite badly soiled and needed doing again. But learning the lesson from my attic at home, and bearing in mind that we have a box of unused wall tiles going spare, Terry cut off some of the wallpaper and tiled down there. Now that’s so much better and of course if you are throwing muddy shoes about then all you need to do is to wipe down the tiles.

After lunch we had a brainstorming session and decided on yet another change of plan. The grouting of the WC tiles is awful and nothing we seem to do can clean it up. Grinding out the stuff doesn’t work either as it just creates dust everywhere and there isn’t the room to swing a grinder around so we decided that we would take them off and replace them. The sink is fine but the WC has seen better days and so we are going to replace that, put new pipework in the bathroom and change the tap.

And so with all of that, the stuff to seal the balcony, a pile of door handles and so on, we spent over €400 at Brico. The one at Mont St Jean instead, where they have the rudest staff in the whole wide world. And where they also have the rudest customers in the world too and Terry and I can give it back in spades.

At the Carrefour there we spent well over €100 in food for the next week. We’ve each given our orders for meals and so Liz knows what to cook. Spicy bean fallujahs with spicy rice, and rice pudding are on the menu – I can tell you that 😉

Once the shopping was finished the staff expressed a wish to be wined and dined at a Pizza Hut. Their wish is my command, unless I want to finish off this apartment all on my own, and so a good time was had by all.

But seeing how much these renovations are costing me, I hope that we can finish the work before my heart and my wallet give out. I’m not used to spending money like this.

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Friday 11th February 2011 – We have one room finished!

third bedroom expo avenue de l'exposition jette brussels belgiumThe third bedroom is now done, well, give or take the odd bit of touching up. And if there is any touching up to be done, I’ve had my face slapped more times than enough so in the words of the late, great Bob Doney, “I’m your man”.

Terry and I finished off the skirting board this morning and then filled and sealed all around it while Liz put the second coat of paint on the woodwork in the bathroom. After that, we cleaned and vacuumed and scrubbed the place a little and another load of stuff went outside for the tip.

Once lunch was out of the way Liz cleaned some of the furniture and we installed that in the third bedroom. There’s one of the sofas, the table and chairs, a standard lamp and two occasional tables (whatever they are for the rest of the time is no concern of ours) and now we have a clean and tidy living room. The other sofa, the carpet and a few other bits and pieces then went into the back of Caliburn ready to be abandoned in a needy area of the city tomorrow night and all the tiles I bought yesterday came upstairs. All of the stuff such as tools, construction material, paint and so on that was stored on the inner side of the living room was then moved over to the outside and then I started on washing down the walls on the inner part ready to wallpaper it (Marianne and I painted the ceiling a few years ago and it’s still the best part that I did of the house).

I was going to help Liz wallpaper the bathroom but it’s pretty small in there and two people working in there would be difficult and so she managed on her own. Half of that is done now and the rest should be finished this weekend (we’ve abandoned our weekends off now as we all want to go home).

Terry has been grinding out the grouting in the toilet ready to redo it and while he is waiting for the dust to clear he’s taking the old tiles off the terrace and putting them downstairs. But I’ve had a brainwave about this – the President of the Residents’ Council says that no-one can find the tiles to replace any broken ones that they might have as they aren’t made any more. So instead of me weighing them in (at €36 per tonne!), why not ask around if anyone wants them? That should save me quite a few bob I reckon.

But there are some weird things going on here. Liz told me at lunchtime that she was “going to put the soup on and then clear the table”. The mind boggles. What exciting times we are having right now.

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Thursday 10th February 2011 – I was going to have an early night …

… seeing as how everyone else has retired, but I wrote up my blog and then the computer crashed before it could be published. But never mind – it can’t be helped.

So we are (or were) off to bed early because we have been busy little beavers today. While Terry was sorting out the electrics in the third bedroom I was filling in holes in the bathroom for Liz (who reminded me a short while ago that I have missed one). And while Liz started off the painting in there I cleaned up the half of the terrace that we stripped of tiles. It’s now ready for tiling when I buy the bitumen underseal.

However there is a change of plans there. So many of the tiles are damaged that it’s not really feasible to reuse them and so I approached the President of the Residents’ Council with the idea that we replace them all with some more of the black tiles that we bought to do the edging. He’s in agreement and so I rang up the tile place to order some more. We must have a half-share in that shop now.

So after I had done that, Terry and I started on the floor-laying in the third bedroom and that took ages. Would you believe that it is the same patented system that I found when I bought the flooring to fit in the attic back at home, and how much anguish did I have with that?

Liz finished the first coat of her painting early and so she took over helping Terry while I piddled off for the tiles and a visit to Brico. I ended up at the Brico at the Place Bockstael where I found everything I needed but there was no place to park and there was no-one to cut the glass.

“Glass?” I hear you say. But yes. We decided that the shower screen that we will be fitting looks so nice that we will fit one on the window side. But as they don’t do one the correct size, we will have to make one out of glass and channelling.

But at Brico I encountered a situation that would have delighted Terry had he been there. An old lady was looking for light bulbs and the server there told her that they were in aisle 21 and she should p155 off and look for herself. Terry is continually being astonished by what passes for customer service here in Belgium. I did warn him about it.

Back home Liz and Terry had finished the flooring and so we started on the skirting board but ran out of time. Now we have 2 finished bedrooms (that I did a few years ago), an almost-finished third bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and toilet ( and they may well be done tomorrow) and which leaves us just the huge living room and the two balconies to do, as well as rewire the main fuse board.

No wonder that we are tired!

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Wednesday 9th February 2011 – We had a bit of good luck today …

…which is just as well, because regular readers of my rubbish will know that it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

At the maison communale, there was just one person in front of me so I was in and out in a matter of minutes. After that of course I attended to the matter of getting myself deregistered and that didn’t take long either. we even had a friendly and helpful fonctionnaire, and that’s a first in Brussels, I can tell you.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Terry got on with grouting the floor of the bathroom and while he was finishing it off. Liz and I took all of the rubble downstairs and put it in the trailer, having first removed everything that everyone else has put in it. And I reckoned that we took out more than we put in.

Once that lot was emptied it was off to IKEA for lunch and a quick shopping expedition. We bought a housing to fit the dishwasher into the kitchen, a toilet seat (we are going for all kinds of luxury here, you know) and a few other bits and bobs. Next door at Brico we acquired a shower screen to fit at the side of the bath, and a new shower head with hose

From there it was back into the city and to this electrical shop that I had discovered the other day. A two-gang box and a handful of circuit-breakers and he asked for €109. Having been asked for €145 just for the box at Brico, I expected him to then ask for the money for the circuit breakers too but no – that was his all-in price and he even threw in a pile of cable connectors. This was a good deal by any standards.

At the tile shop, we picked up a few sacks of tile cement to do the terrace here, and Liz’s beady eyes spotted some tiles that were exactly the same colour as the basic colour scheme of the toilet. Of course it’s a shame to spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar and so that’s something else we’ll be having to do. Not that I’m complaining – I want this place to be a credit to us all when it comes to be sold.

In other news, there’s a bookshop in Scottsdale Arizona that wants to pick a fight with me. And as you all know, I’m never one to fail to rise to a challenge and it’s been a while since I’ve mixed it in a good old argy-bargy. It’s also been a long time (8.5 years in fact) since I’ve been to Arizona and I’m itching to go for another holiday.

So watch this space..

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Tuesday 8th February 2011 – Well that was a waste of a couple of hours.

Apparently an identity card is INDISPENSIBLE (in capital letters) when asking for forms relating to property. So with my Belgian ID card having expired in March last year, and me still being on the demographics list for Jette (because I didn’t realise that you needed to do that – d’oh!) a piece of identity would not suffice.

Tomorrow I need to go to the Maison Communale to get myself taken off the list and instead, obtain an attestation that I own the property. Ahh well.

And while I was out, Terry cut all the tiles for the bathroom floor and Liz set to out on the balconies, moving all of the rubbish that has accummulated these last ever-so-many years and uprooted the trees that were growing.

This afternoon Terry tiled the floor in the bathroom and it’s looking excellent in there. Those tiles that I bought for the bathroom years ago, they are a perfect match for the ones we bought the other day and set it off beautifully Tomorrow he’s hoping to grout it.

Liz and I completely emptied the terraces and then we ripped up all of the tiles on half of the front balcony. It didn’t take much doing, that I can tell you, but shovelling up the sand that the gerry-builders had laid down instead of concrete took quite some time.

For a little treat I pushed the boat out and took Liz and Terry for a slap-up nosh at the … errrr … Simonis fritkot. Huge portions of food at … errr … economic prices. Still, they both deserved it and quite right too. we are working hard in this apartment.

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Monday 7th February 2011 – I’m still here

I haven’t been struck down by a thunderbolt for working on the Sabbath, and I haven’t been a victim of Extraordinary Rendition during the night for daring to criticise the Septics either. Mind you, I had a really uncomfortable night and didn’t sleep too well – my guilty conscience obviously – and I’m going to bed as soon as I press “send”.

This afternoon though, I had to pop out to see my notaire about getting the apartment paperwork together. And she sent me off to get a tax clearance certificate, but of course the tax office is closed in the afternoons so that didn’t work out as planned and I need to do that tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I have the makings of a beautiful bathroom now – not quite finished but the walls are all grouted, there’s a sink, there are new taps on the bath and on the sink, and there is central heating again. Tomorrow it will have a new floor, some wallpaper, and be painted if we are lucky, and then we can move the washing machine in there.

I also have a bedroom that is painted now, and there’s a radiator fitted too. And I may well have time to start on the flooring tomorrow as well. But fitting the radiator was exciting – the connector broke as we were coupling it up, so we fitted a spare valve but that meant a trip to Brico for an adapter, and then another trip to Brico for a longer connector for the valve.

It was after 20:00 when we finished, and we are all exhausted. And not surprising too. It was a hard day’s work. I just hope that I can manage to press “send” before I ……

…. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

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Sunday 6th February 2011 – Sunday is a day of rest …

 … as I have said many times before. And so with no alarm clock and no nothing at all I managed to stay in bed until as late as 09:15 which is something of a record.

With a leisurely morning, I carried on working on my website and in particular the pages on the Trans-Labrador Highway. And I’ve now managed to reach Mount Sterling, which is about 20 miles from Goose Bay. That means I’m almost half-way around on my travels. It’s quite a long road, you know.

After lunch, Liz and I decided to change my habits of a lifetime and work in the afternoon. After all, the quicker you start, the quicker you finish. And so now the bedroom door and ceiling are finished. Tomorrow we can put the first coat of paint on the walls.

Tonight though has been something of a major disappointment. It’s the Superbowl and the Packers, who I have followed faithfully for the last 20 years, have made it. But the US Government has gone berserk and every internet channel that I have found that might be carrying the game has either been suspended, usurped by, of all people, the Department of Homeland Security, or absorbed by the NFL.

But its the usurpation by the DHS that is the most frightening. Big business has all the legal guns at its disposal everywhere in the world, but as well as that, in Great Satan it can summon up the Government to do its dirty work for it at the taxpayers’ expense. Even websites in other countries have had their domain names taken over and closed down, with ICANN meekly folding up at the merest suggestion of US Government pressure. It seems that no-one is safe from the domination of Great Satan, no matter where they are. Free speech is an illusion these days.

I did manage to catch 5 minutes of the warm up, where they were interviewing a member of Great Satan’s Armed Farces. He said that they were in Afghanistan “to keep our country (that is – Great Satan) free”.  He’s living under an illusion as well.

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Saturday 5th February 2011 – This gale is still howling away

It’s been going almost non-stop for over 48 hours and shows little sign of abating.And here we are trying to cut tiles and paint window frames and we’ve ended up with dust and paint everywhere.

Mind you, I have the making of a magnificent bathroom thanks to Liz’s artistic eyes and Terry’s workmanship. It’s certainly something. It might even be finished by Monday night and that will be real progress.

In the bedroom all of the woodwork is painted, we have wallpapered and there’s a couple of coats of paint on the ceiling, although there will be others as the ceiling is quite thirsty.

This afternoon I took Liz and Terry to the battlefield at Waterloo but there was far too much wind to make it possible to climb to the top of the Butte du Lion. And at the huge Carrefour at Mont-St Jean we did a week’s worth of shopping and spent a fortune. But it was worth is for I even found a supply of vegan cheese. And that doesn’t happen every day.

Then off to the big Brico where we spent another small fortune, but now we have all the wallpaper and paint that we need for here. I needed an operation for the removal of my wallet, and was given oxygen afterwards.

A major disappointment was that Chi-Chi’s, the really good Tex-Mex restaurant in Overijse, had closed down. Terry suggested a pizza, Liz fancied a fritkot, but once I had Tex-Mex on my mind that was that and we fought our way into Brussels city centre for the other Chi-Chi’s. Terry was suitably impressed with the roads in the city, of course. He reckons that they wouldn’t be out of place in Ougadougou or Dar-es-Salaam.

And what a good night it was in Chi-Chi’s – excellent service (none of the staff is Belgian), really good food, and a couple of South Americans entertaining the diners. It’s been a long time since I had such an enjoyable evening. Liz enjoyed her Mexican coffee and Terry loved his deep-fried ice-cream.

And so that was our day. And a good day it was too, with a good time being had by all. Tomorrow is a day of rest of course, and then back to the grindstone on Monday.

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Friday 4th February 2011 – We are making some good progress right now

Terry has spent all day tiling in the bathroom and he’s making some splendid progress. It’s looking a world different that it did this time last week and I’m really impressed.

Liz and I spent all day in the third bedroom. We started off by putting the second coat of paint on the woodwork, and then carried on with the wallpapering. Liz kept on encouraging me when I was starting to flag, and we managed in the end to do all of it, even the fiddly bits that take all the time. It’s much better when you have someone to help to motivate you.

So not much to write about, but a great deal of work done. We are all thoroughly exhausted and I’m off to bed in a minute. But I don’t imagine I’ll get much sleep. There’s been a howling gale blowing here all day and some of the gusts are shaking the windows, making quite a noise. It’s been ages since I’ve seen a wind quite like this.

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Thursday 3rd February 2011 – So how did we do today then?

We made buckets of progress today.

This morning I had to go shopping to pick up the tiles that were now in stock. We also needed some tile cement (and lots of it), a new tiling trowel for Terry, some more white gloss paint and a couple of other things. While I was away, Liz put a coat of paint on the bedroom ceiling and Terry made a start on the tiling in the bathroom.

Once I returned, Terry launched himself into the tiling and kept at it all day. Liz and I painted all of the woodwork in the bedroom with the white gloss. Yes – me – painting things white. Whatever next?

Towards the end of the afternoon Liz started on a second coat on the ceiling and I began the wallpapering. I’m using that fibreglass wallpaper as I can do that – it doesn’t take much effort – and it hides all of the defects. I’ve put three drops onto the wall before the light went so I’ll finish it off tomorrow. And when it’s all done, the plan is then to paint it with emulsion. Once that’s done we can refit the radiator and do the floor and that will be that room finished. We can then move the living room into there and then do the living room.

Terry kept going until 18:45 and he’s done an impressive job in there. The wall is about half-done, so I gave him the rest of the day off and we finished by demolishing a pile of Liz’s lentil-burgers..

Tomorrow we’ll all be back at it.

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Wednesday 2nd February 2011 – You will hardly recognise this place now

Liz and Terry decided that we ought to empty some more stuff out of the apartment here today and so we had another mega-packing and sorting session. First thing that we did was to empty all of the stuff in the garage where the 2000E estate lives, check what I ought to be keeping, and then bin the rest. That was quite exciting as I discovered all kinds of stuff that I had carried about with me in my company car and which I had had to empty out when I handed back the car when I retired.

So with a comparatively empty garage (I say comparatively because you know that my idea of empty is different than everyone else’s), we had room to start moving more stuff downstairs. So while Terry was moving stuff downstairs and Liz was sorting, I was dismantling furniture and so on. Then we had a mega-bagging session of all kinds of bits and pieces and all of that has ended up in the garage too, and another pile of stuff has ended up in the trailer ready to go to the tip. You can actually move around here now, which is definitely progress from how it was 10 days ago.

We had a break at lunchtime for food, and as what with one thing and another we didn’t have time to send anyone for bread so it was to Carrefour at Berchtem St Agathe and the restaurant there. Just for a change there were nice, friendly and helpful staff – something I’m not used to in Belgium.

Brico couldn’t come up with a new lock for the other garage, which was a disappointment. No sense in breaking off the lock if we can’t replace it. But we did another load of shopping in Delhaize ready for the rest of the week.

And back home again we carried on with the sorting.

Tomorrow we may be starting on the third bedroom, and Terry will be attacking the bathroom, if the plastering that he did yesterday is dry.

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Tuesday 1st February 2011 – The one big advantage …

 of having a hand-picked team is that it’s amazing just how quickly you can progress.

Terry has finished all of the grouting in the kitchen now and has done the wiring in the third bedroom and made good around the sockets. And when that was complete Liz washed down the ceiling and the walls while I sanded down all of the woodwork and patched some of the plastering that needed doing.

Meantime, back in the bathroom Terry has taken the radiator and the sink off the wall, removed the rest of the tiles that I couldn’t reach, and plastered the walls where the tiles used to be. And that bit wasn’t easy either. Whoever did the tiling in here when the place was new didn’t make it easy for anyone to follow.

But after all of that no wonder we are all exhausted. It’s flaming hard work all of this.

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Monday 31st January 2011 – For some unknown reason …

… that I haven’t quite worked out, I’m totally whacked this evening. And after our day of rest too. Mind you, day of rest, when we went off on a route march all across the parks of Jette (and there are a fair few of those) in a temperature of about minus 5 or something.

Today was better, a mere minus 2, and I had the morning off to go and be rude to an insurance company here in Brussels who are trying to charge me 3 months insurance for failing to renew Caliburn’s 2009 insurance. And a profitable morning it was as I managed to overturn a €390 or something demand into a mere €72.06.

While I was away Terry grouted the kitchen wall tiles (and what a good job he made of that – I have a beautiful kitchen here now) and Liz put the first coat of paint on the bathroom ceiling. This afternoon Terry and I disconnected the water (and that was an exciting project) so that Terry could finish off the de-tiling in the bathroom, and Liz and I worked in the third bedroom – me sanding down the window frame and the door and Liz trying her best to wash the ceiling and walls (and understanding now why I put polystyrene tiles on the ceiling and fibreglass wallpaper on the walls).

If Terry can finish the electrics in the third bedroom Liz and I can make a good start in there tomorrow. There’s a lot of work to be done in there.

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Sunday 30th January 2011 – Sunday is a day of rest of course.

No question of any alarm clock. And so at 09:53 (which is early for me on a Sunday as you know) I heaved myself out of my stinking pit. A leisurely breakfast was followed by a shower and just some general mooching about – and why not? After all, we’ve been working hard just now.

After lunch we went for a walk in the park around here. It is in fact an enormous series of parks that are all linked up to make a good walk. We started off just 200 yards from here where you can disappear into the woods that were formerly part of the domain of the Abbey of Dieleghem. Here there is a shrine that is supposed to have been the subject of  a miracle and there are always a few people around there (except today of course – it was too flaming cold). We saw some parrots too there. Not too far away a small zoo was bombed during the war and the birds escaped. They have now established themselves in the wild just around here and it’s quite impressive to see them fly about.

We then walked along the bed of running sand that stretches for a few kilometres from the north to the sout of the city. We took the north direction and ended up at the Chateau de Laarbeck, which is now a cafe.

And that was that. We came home and thawed out because it really was a freezing cold day. But it was still nice to be out and about. Tomorrow we are back at work.

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