Our historic street includes the oldest house in Paris!

OK, our apartment might be all designer and modern and stuff, but step out of its warm cosiness and you're straight back into old school Paris, including - just opposite our building - the oldest house in the city! It dates from 1407 and was the home of Nicolas Flamel, a writer.

Funnily enough, I got a book for Xmas called Paris Changing: Revisiting Eugene Atget's Paris, with photographer Christopher Rauschenberg following in the footsteps of Atget, a French photographer best known for documenting a fast-disappearing Paris in photos. Rauschenberg takes identical shots of the city, but 90 years on. Funnily enough, it was Berenice Abbott that brought Atget's photos to the attention of the world, and a book called New York Changing: Revisiting Berenice Abbott's New York is also available. But I digress...

This is the photo of Nicolas Flamel's house at the end of the 1990s, as seen by Rauschenberg...

Here's what the street looked liked for Atget in 1902...

And here's how it looked on the morning of 7th January 2009, 107 years later (it was bloomin' cold too!)

Frankly, things haven't changed that much down rue de Montmorency (apart from the building on the left that looked black and is now white), and I doubt that the next 90 years will see any radical relooking either.

One striking thing is that even in Atget's 'historic' time, a lot of period detail was already hidden; it is only when the building was restored recently that certain stone carvings were found. Here's what it looks like up close (plus it's a little less stark in colour):

It's currently a restaurant, which we'll be trying out before too long to tell you what it's like. First impression is that it's a bit Disneyland Paris (i.e. faked up and chintzy) but let's wait and see...

Lessons learned in 2008

photo by AndяéTeixeiяa

2008 was a great year for us. We are not property moguls or interior design experts, so seeing our first apartment finished (and rented!) was - frankly - very satisfying.

Because of the apartment, the year went very quickly. I first visited it on 31st January 2008, and to be blunt, it looked like crap. Remember ? (cue wave-like fade effect...)
No toilet, no bathroom, lino, mould... the kind of place where you wanted to wash your hands after leaving. Signing off on it took forever (we almost gave up), and there were a few hitches with the work that had to be done, but it was finally ready in October, and since then it's been going really well!

So what have we learnt during the first few months of rental?

- if you compose a window box with 50% of plants that need little watering and 50% that need constant watering, half of them will die. All the time.
- very expensive golden coffee tables look amazing. And get incredibly scratched. Immediately.
- even very very nice guests sometimes steal things (have a nice life, little Lock 'n' Lock).
- bathrooms full of glass, mirrors and stainless steel take a shitload of time to clean.

And contrary to my fears, meeting and greeting people doesn't have to be cheesy or tedious. I genuinely enjoyed welcoming people to the apartment and trying to help them get the best out of their stay in Paris. It was the bit I was dreading, but I've found a taste for it. Call me sentimental...
So what's next? Well, I'm looking forward to adding a few things (ivy at the bathroom window for example), tweaking a few things, improving a few things. I think it's important to make an effort and keep everything looking great. It's too easy just to sit back and think that the money will just roll in. For a start, money doesn't just "roll in": there's a fair bit of behind-the-scenes work to making an apartment a success (blogging is just a tiny part of it), and secondly, anyone trying to make lots of money does not do it by renting an apartment out. For the moment we are content to be able to pay the mortgage, and any eventual surplus will doubtless go into upkeep.

Of course, we'd like to thank everyone who stayed with us in 2008, everyone who said nice things about the apartment, everyone who gave us suggestions (we're always open to comments) and everyone who said they would be back, or that they would recommend our place to friends. We've met some very laidback, friendly people, and it was a pleasure to have you!

So 2008 was the year we believed in our project and went for it. We even got away with nicknaming it 'the great apartment'! Amazing how far blind faith (and bank loans) can get you, eh?!

Our Xmas decorations are up!

Couldn't have the apartment looking all gloomy for the holidays, now could we?

I braved the cold (and psychotic Xmas shoppers) to get a bit of tinsel in, and recycled our very own camp-as-Christmas Christmas tree for y'all to admire. Ever seen anything so pink? May be slightly distracting if you're trying to watch telly (as in "agghhh, my retinas are on fire").
I'm not a great fan of fairies on trees, so we went the kitsch way and added an Indian deity instead...
There are also a few sparkly reindeer sweeping majestically through the front room...
...and even more pzazz near the window box. Now if all that doesn't get you in the mood for binge drinking, over-eating and shameless consumerism, nothing will!

Happy Holidays to all our guests, and all the rest of you too!

New (great) photos by Jérôme d'Almeida

I'm no slouch with a camera, but I'm nothing like a professional photographer. Thank goodness then for Jérôme d'Almeida. We've known Jérôme for a few years now. He's always been mad keen on social network sites, right back since the days of Friendster, enjoys a night out at the club (a real party boy), and is also a talented photographer.

After living in Paris he's now moved to New York for a while, and after his spectacular shots of the Hôtel Paris Rive Gauche hotels (a gig he got via Friendster actually) we asked him to take a few of our great apartment too. And during a visit back to Paris, he said yes! Hurrah!

I have a soft spot for the photo at the top here, taken from the front door (great perspective), and also the moody kitchen shot below...

Of course with a quick flick of a switch, the kitchen comes back to life...

You can see the rest of the shots he did for us here. And do have a look at his really lush website. Some great work on there....

Meet our great architect

As soon as we had bought the apartment, we knew that we would need an architect. Fitting everything in was going to be a problem, and it all needed to be precisely done. It's also useful to have someone to liaise with the contractors so you don't have all that hassle.

After asking around, we finally opted for the colleague of a friend of a friend. From the very first meeting we got on really well. Please meet... Dorothée Février !
This is the only photo of Dorothée that I have: her doing a monkey face, reflected in the microwave with a plastic bucket behind her. Not the most glamorous shot ever, but she declined to give me anything else, so it will have to do!

Dorothy works as an architect, but occasionally takes on personal projects to help people out. She was incredibly patient and understanding while we changed our minds, argued amongst ourselves, etc. She was available when necessary, even for Saturday shopping trips for certains items. She also took it very well when we rejected her first proposed layout for the apartment, realising - as we did - that it just wouldn't leave us enough space.

I asked Dorothée a few questions by e-mail about the apartment...

What was the biggest challenge in the apartment?
Arranging the kitchen and bathroom, definitely! Fitting them in to a 7m² space together with the entrance gave me some tense moments.

Anything that you would have done differently had it been your apartment?
I'd never really thought about it before, as the idea was to meet your requirements, not mine. The differences would have been more in the ambience and colours than the way the space was laid out, as that's more or less dictated by the architecture.

An element that you didn't think would be any good but turned out well?
Keeping and restoring the original parquet. Jason was right to insist on it and the contractor did a good job of it (and lots of other things too!)

A lesson learnt during the work?
I learn something on every project, but here it was handling the space problems, both from a technical and organisational point of view.

Original floorplan of the empty apartment.
There wasn't even a toilet! It was on the landing...

And that's it! Short but sweet interview. It was a really good experience working with Dorothée, and if the apartment looks as good as does to day, we partly have her to thank for it.

Coming soon... an interview with ournotoriously shy contractors, Véli and Boris. Wish me luck!

Extra giant flower turnover

After having bought all the various kit for the apartment we knew that there would still be some upkeep and regular spends to be made. For instance, I like to have a good flower display at the window and fresh flowers in the apartment when people arrive. I think it's the sort of detail that shows that we really do want people to feel at home and have a great stay with us in Paris. We love the city and we want people to get the best from it.

So, changing plants from time to time, OK. However, I didn't realise that they would need replacing almost every week. I mean I have this weird relationship with plants where I love 'em, buy 'em and then mercilessly water them to death. At the apartment, I'm not there to do that all the time, so I thought they might survive at least a little while. I was wrong.

During an unseasonal warm spell in October, many of the plants wilted and fell by the wayside. Later, the lavender I bought started (heavily) wilting from too much water. The veronica stopped flowering and went a ghostly yellow. Then the other week there was a small fire in the communal cellar. One of the smoke vents is just below the window box and tow of the plants decided it was a good excuse to wither and die. The tow succulents in the bathroom went all weedy and limp. This is not good.

So, once again, I've been down to the Quai de la Mégisserie (admittedly not far) and tried to choose between the multitude of shops and plants available. Here's the latest batch...

The bathroom's got hyacinths because they smell lovely and cost peanuts. Downside: they don't last long. Upside: means I won't have time to kill them..

Fern-type affair. Even I would be hard-pressed to overwater this baby. However the one I bought the week before looks a little ropey because I haven't been drowning it every other day (poor baby).

Hyacinths outside too because it's the season and, er, see above.

Add to this fantastic selection a luminous green pointy thing that I wasn't very keen on but some people seem to equate with posh. Each to his own...

And finally, the most expensive of them all but-I-love-it-to-bits, a mini arum lily. I once had one that lasted over a year, something of a personal record. Let's see how well this one will do...

As for the cut flowers at the top of this post, don't ask me what they are. I haven't the slightest idea. However, I do have a rock solid excuse for them expiring next week.

Getting upstairs (otherwise known as "you say tomato, I say tomahto")

I always worry when I tell people that our place is on the first floor. It's an anglo-american thing. The English half of me wants to say that it's a flat on the first floor. The (hypothetical) American half of me is trying to get used to saying that it's an apartment on the second floor. Get what I mean?

Either way, the chronically lazy awfully tired amongst you will be glad to hear that if one flight of stairs is too challenging, the building has a brand new lift. I mean an elevator. Oh forget it.

I suck at Photoshop

Yes, I am very sucky at Photoshop. Luckily, the program has some automatic functions for the graphically-challenged like me, and one of them is Photomerge. It is, to cut 'n' paste the Adobe site, a "feature for creating a single composite image from multiple source images."

Sounds like exactly what I needed for taking a shot of the living room of the apartment. I don't have a wide angle lens, so I couldn't get the lovely sofa and the lovely wallpaper into one single photo. Enter - ta-dah! - Photomerge. I stood in one corner of the room, took about twenty photos, thrust them into Photoshop and it spat out this beauty:

You can sort of see it's a cheat because the wall's a bit curvy. I do clearly state on the Flickr page that it's a photomerge, and that our living room is not a panoramic ballroom of epic proportions. I do however love the result. Pretty seamless (apart from something dodgy going on at the window).

And it inspired me to go further. I wanted to get a big shot of the kitchen, which happens to be ⅓ the size of the living room. To make sure the photo stitching would be absolutely perfect I took a lot more photos, many many more, 119 in fact! Trembling, I fed them into Photoshop, expecting a beautiful sweeping vista to be produced. Photoshop coughed and whizzed, and five minutes later it pooped out this:

What the...? That's not the kitchen. That's what the kitchen would look like IF I HAD A MIGRAINE AND TOOK LSD.

So, computers are great, Photoshop is pretty cool, but it's comforting to know that sometimes a simple point and click is the best solution.

More (better) photos coming soon, thank goodness.