Our Salle de Bain and Toilet
This is a short story about why I was grouchy this week. It has a happy ending.
This Tuesday, I took my first hot shower in my apartment in a week. That’s the reason I was grouchy – ice cold showers, no matter how quick, are not fun.
It all started last Tuesday, when our hot water heater failed to ignite. We fiddled with the ignite button and dials, but no luck. We realized that we have a gas heater, and that we had never paid for a gas bill. Something similar had happened to a friend of ours, so we quickly contacted our relocation specialist to have her check things out for us. She was out of the office for the next 4 days.
As soon as she got back, she reported that everything was good with our gas – it was combined with our electricity and we’ve been paying it all along. She suggested we talk to our concierge and see if she could check if our meter looked okay. Our concierege only speaks French, and my vocabulary does not include hot water heater, meter, ignite, so we used google translate to print out our questions.
This is the happy ending. The concierge sent her husband up to our apartment and he fiddled with the heater and finally got it going. We were trying reignite it incorrectly, though I don’t know why it went out in the first place. Anyway, he showed us how to do it right, and hot water flowed forth. Yay!
I also realized that I’ve never posted photos of our toilet and bathroom. Toilets are usually in a seperate room that the bath here. Our toilet room is just big enough for one person to barely stand in. It also has the hot water heater, the breaker box, and a tiny sink that doesn’t really work.
Our bathtub room has a larger sink, a small bathtub/shower, our washer/dryer combo, and a couple cabinets. I should mention that these photos were taken with my wide angle, which really distorts things. It’s a small room. We use the heater in there to warm our towels on. Unfortunately, there is no fan to suck out the steam after a shower. Both of these rooms have skylights to make them brighter.
When I lived in my house in Atlanta, the master bathroom was a constant complaint. I thought it was too small, and I missed having a big soaking tub. In fact, it was double the size of the bathroom we now have, and one of three in our house. It’s funny how your perspective can change…



























