Apartment

Happy Post-Easter Greetings.

This post was written in early March but was never published. Ooops. 

We finally found an area rug for the living room. it matches the tuffets extremely well.

During the winter, the window near the dining room table was consistently cold despite using the metal exterior shutters overnight. It was also cold on non-sunny days. The solution? We found a system to mount a rod onto the metal box associated with the exterior shutter using a sticky pad and friction pressure. We found a thermal curtain as well. So far, the rod appears to be well-fixed and the curtain makes a HUGE difference! Keeping this curtain closed overnight keeps 1/3 of the living room/dining room combo much warmer. 

Note: This system worked great until the outside temperatures got warmer and then the double sided tape released on one side of the exterior shutter box and the rod wouldn't stay up any longer. We ultimately took it down and put the sheer shade back up. That will be fine until late fall when the temperatures cool back down. At that point, we shall try to mount this rod again.

After experiencing some nice days, we were in need of a small table and chairs for at least one balcony. We located a very large garden shop which also sold furniture. The chairs are a grey-green and the table is charcoal grey. They aren't a matched set but work well together. The day after we purchased this set it was sunny, but only 30 degrees. Nevertheless, we sat outside bundled up in coats long enough to drink a coffee! Note: We have used this table and chairs multiple times now. We've seen temps as high as 79 so it was nice to have a spot outdoors.

We finally hung the framed photograph of the plant B built in Indonesia. Next to it we hung the clock, handcrafted in Indonesia, that he received as a gift on our departure. It had basically been boxed since we received it so we hadn't noticed  that there was something a little odd about the clock. Can you spot it in the closeup? Note: it isn't the British spelling of tachometer. 

On one of our walks on a nice day in early March, we stopped to sit on the benches across the street and I snapped a few photos of our building. If you look closely, there are skinny, pink arrows pointing to our two balconies. It looks like we are on the top floor, but we aren't. There is one apartment on the 7th floor but they have a wide balcony that we think spans the length of the apartment.

This is the view down the street next to the apartment building.

This is the view looking to the left from our bench.