Joy vs Disappointment

( Part 4 b )

 

Happy with the new purchase, I went to Poland. Walking through the shops, I found beautiful furniture for our new apartment. I was so delighted with it that I took a picture and sent it to my husband, what did he say? Luckily, he liked it too. As I mentioned in the first post, this extra trait helped here 😉. I ordered furniture right away and arranged delivery to Dublin. My joy was huge 😄. We had to wait a bit because the furniture was coming all the way from Malaysia. Well, that’s what we wanted, or rather me, but I think it was worth it. But why? Let me explain. Everyone in Ireland had furniture of a very similar style. Because where would they get it from? From Ireland or England only. That’s why I wanted to have something different than everyone else, so I bought furniture in Poland but from Malaysia 😜. Why not! In addition, furnishing my apartment always gives me a lot of pleasure, which is why once in a while I like to rearrange something from place to place, to make it look different. It’s a bit like re-furnishing 🤭. 

We felt wonderful in our own new apartment. Finally at home, calm, no one complains, quiet housing estate, new schools. Everything was great. By the time. Wintertime has come but it was hard to name it winter unless it was a calendar winter. Oh, sorry! The second thing that made it possible to call it winter was the famous winds that were blowing non-stop at that time, and were causing the apartments to cool down. Not that it was especially cold, simply the flats were built out of “paper” as per standard. That was the time when we started to get to know the other side of the coin of our dream apartment.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the first problem in our apartment was the wet wall between the bathroom and the hall upstairs. Fortunately, the problem turned out to be trivial. Bad connection of pipes, but fixed. Phew. Problem solved. Now it’s time for the next one. How could it be otherwise? The winds began. These are not such light gusts as some people think, but concrete ones. The standard ones were 25-30 km/h where we lived. Of course, we also bought a flat in front of the hill, so that we wouldn’t necessarily shake our hand with our neighbour 😉. We thought, “We have a beautiful sight. Buildings in the distance, only a green hill in front of the windows”. Honestly. A view almost dreamed up nowadays. When you strain your eyes, you could see the mountains in the distance during the fine weather. But this beautiful space was creating the best way for the winds to blow freely right into our torn windows, especially when it was accompanied by rain. At that time, not only did our apartment cool down quickly, but we also had wet walls, because the experts forgot to seal the holes and all this rain was pouring into our apartment.

The worst is yet to come. As the wind grew stronger, our roof began to creak. And not in one place, but all over the flat. It could be heard everywhere. In addition, it was loud enough to wake the children at night. In the evenings, you could imagine being in some old house, walking on an old wooden floor. (There should be some dramatic music in the background, so you can get a better sense of the scene 😉). Now imagine an old abandoned house. It’s late evening. You walk into that house and the first steps you take immediately make your body goosebumps. But why? Because every step you do on the old wooden floor makes a terrible creaking sound, and there are cobwebs hanging around and dust rises everywhere. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a bat flies out,  somewhere through the window you can hear an owl. You got that? Congratulations to those who have made it! You felt like you were at our home 😆. Let me remind you that in a newly built house if someone forgot, we only lived there for about 3 months. To add special effects, when we turned on the heating, something started knocking and tapping on the walls, and if that wasn’t enough for someone then when we opened the tap in the bathroom the pipes were knocking too. Full blast!

Irish professionals, specialists, and engineers after their debates, cutting holes in ceilings, walking on our roof, sealing those holes, and cutting new ones saying they would make it look like new again 😂😂😂😂. Some joke! You will not believe it!!! After some debates, they decided that everything was done according to their standards and nothing could be done about it. Normally hands drop 🤦‍♀️. I thought I was going to explode when I heard that. Not only did we overpay twice after so many sacrifices for a flat made out of “paper”, but the specialists also claim that everything is fine. Fortunately, there was a very nice man working on this construction site, who was already counting down the days to his retirement, and probably God sent him to us. He was the only one who thought, he put some beams in this roof and somehow reduced the noise. Thanks to this gentleman, the water stopped running down the walls, when it rained, our window sills were swollen, because of course they were made of “paper” 🤷‍♀️.

 

Here you can see the photos I managed to find of these “miraculous” repairs:

 

 

 

 

The architect didn’t really prove himself either. Entering the apartment, the parents’ bedroom was downstairs and the rest of the apartment upstairs. And now the best! There was one intercom for two floors. Can you guess which one? 🤔 Downstairs!!!! Who needs an intercom downstairs when entire life goes on upstairs, I’m asking?! Imagine now, children playing in the yard, and I have four of them, and now and then they stand by the intercom and call because one wants to drink, another one wants to eat, a third one wants to pee, the fourth one wants something else… over and over again. You could go crazy 😫.

Finally, let me add that the roof was overtaken by the sink in the bathroom downstairs. The specialist who installed it should receive a medal for installing a drainage pipe from the washbasin. I am curious if any of you would come up with the idea to put a wider part of the pipe at the top and a narrower part at the bottom, and on top of it without any silicone? As for me, Master of the Masters!!! It is a pity that he showed his talent in our apartment 😉.

In addition to the roof, these and other things over time managed to somehow fix or reduce the inconvenience. Unfortunately, the roof has remained the same as the retiree left it, but the good news is that the weather in Ireland is changing for the better, so the roof will not be such a nuisance for the next tenant. The only thing that remains to be repaired are large gaps in the front door, and there are two of them (top and bottom), but fortunately, that’s not our problem anymore.

Now, when I think about it, I don’t know which was bigger. Our disappointment, or the joy for which we fought so bravely and poured out “sweat”.

 

 

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