07/09/2022
Part 5 - Beginning of August, it was time for the big reveal. And I won't hold your breath any longer. There was no surprises. Micha had been incredible to the end.
Much to John's protest (he can't stand holidays), I had closed the guesthouse for an entire week so we could organize everything. A full week? He said. But what are we going to do? Luckily for him, it was going to be no holiday. I had lined up technicians in a scientific manner (the TV guy just 2 hours before the Internet and cable guy and so on). Everybody arrived on time, except the one who asked to come earlier, at a time that was so convenient he basically freed our entire afternoon. An afternoon that was much needed because there was so much to buy, so many deliveries to take, furniture to assemble, place, displace, replace, organize... We barely managed to spare some time early morning and in the evening for a dip in the sea and/or into the divine and mostly empty pool.
Very quickly, the only 2 things missing were the pale blue sofa and the kitchen. John had quickly organized a carboard kitchen which would have been perfectly adequate had it had had a sink, but I was able to live in the flat quite comfortably for almost the entire month, I just had to rush up and down the stairs everytime I needed a sink or some water but I used it as a justification to try more patisseries. I just needed to be absolutely sure that Orly Sitbon Patisserie - אורלי סיטבון פטיסרי! is the best.
Both the sofa and the kitchen became the actors of 2 new mini dramas. Yes, these 2 again!
They were actually both brought on the same day.
The sofa came about ten days late, it was brought by two huge guys in two pieces. The chaise-longue and the main body. They asked me what side the chaise-longue was going, put the whole thing into place and left swiftly. It was wrapped in so much bubble paper that in my impatience, I broke a pair of huge scissors and a cutting knife trying and get rid of it. Luckily, I had a friend with me, because that thing was bloody heavy. She was even more needed the second we finally managed to free the sofa of it's protective envelope, as I almost fainted and she was here to collect the pieces. Without her moral support, I might have just jumped out of the window! My first thought was that John - who didn't want a sofa to begin with - was going to kill me. How could I ever face him again! Because something was not quite right. It was very much like trying to force a piece of a puzzle where it doesn't belong. It took me a few seconds to realize what it was. The back of the chaise longue was facing the body of the sofa. Bloody idiot! I had ordered the chaise longue on the wrong side and there was no trying to threaten them again (incidentally, I was with my lawyer friend again!). Because it was definitely my mistake. When asked where I wanted the chaise longue while ordering the sofa, I assumed I was supposed to answer the question while facing the picture of a sofa, when I should have answered while mentally pretending to be sitting on the sofa... An exercise that is a bit complicated for me because just like evaluating distances, orientation in space has always been a bit of a challenge for me...
Anyways, we sweated quite a bit to try different positions somewhere else in the room but the ugly truth had to be faced... The only solution was to place it as intended, with the chaise longue on the wrong side. And the second we put it into place, it became evident that this is how it should have been from the start! The chaise longue where I had intended it would have been a huge mistake. This way, the room looked more open, bigger, and who would not want to lay on this chaise longue and look at the sea? When I told John the story on the phone, he was of course cynical and thought I was just trying to make a terrible mistake look like a stroke of genius. But when he finally came to see it for himself, he could only agree that it was really working. So here we were. Even the stupidest mistakes turned out to be a blessing!
And what about the kitchen?
As you may know, apparently it has to do with the aftermath of Corona, Ikea, like everybody else it seems, is having some supply problems. When I ordered the kitchen, quite a few items were missing but since the delivery was going to take forever, I assumed they would arrive long before the truck and I completely forgot about them! Unfortunately, I was reminded of them when exactly 2 hours after the delivery truck had gone, I received a phone call telling me my missing items had just arrived. What a f**k up, I thought. But, I said, the assembly guy is coming on Tuesday. The woman answered she would try and have them delivered on that day. But she couldn't assure me she'd managed to do it. I somehow felt sure she would manage, after all, we had had so much luck so far. But when at 16.59, I received a SMS telling me I had a delivery arranged for October the 22, I was not so confident anymore. Of course, Ikea's support service closes at 17.00 so there was no-one to speak to. Whoever has ever dealt with Ikea knows that once everything has been paid for, there is no-one to talk too anyway. For the next few days, I couldn't get anyone on the phone and the only answer I was receiving to my whatsapps was that it was not possible to change the delivery date.
By the time the assembly guy arrived, let's call him Igor for the sake of clarity, I had kind of made peace with the fact I would be missing a few drawers for a long, long time. From the beginning we had been saying that something was meant to go wrong at some point. So it could have been so much worse!
Igor arrived an hour early and went to work. We went to the pool so we would not bother him. He had been on the job for about 2 hours when I received a very confused phone call. I am the delivery guy from Ashdod, I don't know what I am supposed to bring you. It is only when he finally mentioned something having to do with Ikea that I understood that my missing drawers where on their way (or would soon be). I rushed back to the flat to send him a list of the missing items and was relieved to see that Igor looked a bit new on the job and a bit on the slow side. Something that might have otherwise worried me, but I was now finding extremely encouraging. He had even made a big mistake which was going to set him back quite a bit. This is terrible to admit but I found that extremely satisfying!
I didn't hear a pip from the Ashdod guy for a few hours (let's call him Moshe for the sake of clarity). I was sending him messages to which I was getting no answer. Even at his very own pace, Igor was making progress and the number of unopened boxes was getting alarmingly low.
All the while, I was thinking there was no way Moshe would make it with all the traffic, especially since he had mentionned he also had a stop in Haifa. As I was rushing up and down the stairs to throw the cardboxes away, I finally got a call from Moshe. Igor was now on his antepenultimate box. Moshe was shouting at me. Why didn't you send me the list? Now I don't know what is for you and what I am supposed to bring to Haifa and no-one at Ikea is able to tell me. What a mess, I thought! I can't believe it, the idiot is still in Ashdod waiting for the list! I am downstairs, he quickly added, can someone come and bring me the list? Sigh of complete relief! Of course, I said, I am coming down.
It took a while for Moshe to sort out what was for us and he insisted on checking everything several times because as it turned out, that out of the 11 boxes he had in his car, 10 were for me and only the tiniest one was for the woman in Haifa who apparently was waiting for quite a bit more. She sounded really pi**ed on the phone. But what can I say, not everyone can have everything running as smoothly as me, that is the sad truth!
I was holding on tight on as many boxes as I could, fearing that Moshe might change his mind and decide to take some to Haifa. We finally got upstairs. Igor who thought the whole thing would take 4 hours and was already on his 6th hour was giving me looks of pain and despair.
After asking him what he would like to eat, I rushed to the supermarket with an incredibly specific list, despite him having told me he was not picky and would eat anything. In the meantime, he had discovered that a few more items were missing. This time, this was the planner's mistake. He hadn't included them on the list and we haden't even paid for them. They would have to be ordered. I was already picturing the SMS I would receive from Ikea telling me my items would come sometime around December. But in the end, I went there myself and it turned out they had everything on stock. The work surface came on time and by the very end of August, as planned, we had a finished kitchen (and a sink!!!!).
And this is how this rather smooth and surprisingly painless process of renovating a small flat right on the Mediteranean Sea in Nahariya came to an end. I take it as a sign that this was the right thing to do. We are now ready to share it and rend it on a short term basis. So if you would like me to publish a Part 6 with pictures and details, just say the word in the comments section! And I will happily oblige.
