A Bigger Balcony

Filling the newly created alcove

One thing you can rarely do when you live in an apartment is to build an extension onto your living space.

In Israel there have been and still are, a number of programmes whereby the whole building is encouraged to get together and build an extra room and/or a balcony for every apartment. There are a number of reasons for this: they want every home to have a reinforced-concrete room rather than the communal bomb shelters of old, every building should be up to date with earthquake regulations, and they want to create more housing by building additional floors on top.

In my building we got in early and reinforced the building according to earthquake regulations whilst acquiring an extra bedroom and a balcony. We were too early to get the bomb shelters or for the building-up programme, so in emergency situations we're still running down to the communal shelter and we didn't get it for free by selling the building rights to the roof.

When they plan these extensions they have to work with the space available. Thus, we ended up with three big bedrooms but one accessed through one of the other bedrooms, and a balcony that was just slightly too narrow for four people to sit around a big enough table and dine comfortably. The bedroom problem was easily solved by building a wall to create a corridor to the third bedroom. Luckily the doors to both bedrooms were aligned.

Starting work

The balcony situation was irritating. Had I been more savvy about things back when we did that building work almost 20 years ago, I would have fought for less bedroom and more balcony at the front. Back then I might have lost because there were strict laws about how near the property boundary one could build. Now it seems that other buildings are renovating right up to the pavement in front of them. Who knows. It was what it was and I was stuck with it. Or was I?

I needed new balcony doors. I'd decluttered so much over the past two years that I have minimal furniture in the living/dining room. I'd got rid of an enormous sofa and replaced it with two smaller love seats. By building one wall 50 cm into the room on one side of the balcony doors, I could increase the balcony space by a whole square metre (0.5 x 2 sq m). There's no getting away from the fact that that the room would be smaller. You can't have both. I chose a slightly smaller living room and a more usable balcony.

A bigger balcony (before the cabinet arrived for the alcove)

Whilst I was at it, I had the electric blinds removed. They blocked a lot of light from the room and I'd rather just have fabric roller blinds inside. You can get very thin roller blinds that take up almost no space when closed.

The newly created alcove in the corner is the perfect size for a white Billy bookcase with Oxberg glass doors from IKEA. This was by far the cheapest option for a display cabinet to fill that space and as you can only see the doors, there was no reason not to buy a cheap IKEA unit.

Obviously everyone has their own considerations and preferences. For me outside space is paramount and it was very satisfying to find a way to increase our capacity for a mini-garden, eating alfresco, and a place for drying the laundry in the sun.

Minimalism and IKEA - R2BC

I've been very quiet on the blog for a couple of weeks. It's that time of year when teachers are writing reports, marking exams, planning and attending final parties, recitals, concerts, and presentations for everything (that goes for mothers too), and for me, setting up my summer course to start the day after school finishes. I'm finally, not finished but up to date with everything as of last night.

Today I went with two friends to IKEA. You have to understand that 1) there is no IKEA in Jerusalem. 2) I don't have a car. 3) Outside of IKEA everything in Israel is very expensive. And 4) the last time I went there with a car was five years ago! Now you see why this is my Reason 2B Cheerful this week.

We were three of us in the car so there was no big furniture buying, but boy did we stock up on other stuff. We left Jerusalem at 8 after the kids had gone to school, and arrived in Rishon at 8.50. First stop was coffee and a pastry. Apparently coffee is free between 08.30 and 09.00. I suppose because shopping only starts at 9 and the tills only open at 9.30.

We compared lists. Then, having warmed up with coffee, we went to the starting line. Two of us turned right and headed for the furniture displays. The smaller items were to the left.
"Hey, where are you going? We don't need any furniture!"
We looked at our friend in disbelief. "We want to walk round and see everything."
"But we have lists!"
I suggested she go have another coffee and meet us at the end but she threw her hands up in resignation and came with us.

Yesterday a colleague asked me how I can reconcile IKEA with minimalism. Well, most of what I bought was to replace stuff. One in - one out. You do need a new shower curtain, toilet brush and non-slip shower mat every so often. The plastic stool in the kitchen was 16 years old and looked it. The sheets for DD's bed are the sets that my mother bought me when I left home 30 years ago. There's nothing wrong with them but they're primary coloured stripes and DD wanted something pretty and flowery. (Bring back your chintz your chintz - oh the irony.) I bought nice storage boxes to replace the old plastic vegetable rack drawers I'd been using in my wardrobe. New kitchen scissors, a new frame for DD's painting, new place mats, and two rectangular storage boxes to replace the round plastic bowls in my fridge that I use for fruit and vegetables.

Entirely new things included: a big white pot for a tall plant in the now empty corner of my living room, two pyrex dishes and three plastic food containers, all with lock'n'lock lids. A small salad bowl for when I want a bigger salad than a soup bowl but smaller than a serving dish. Ice-lolly molds, And a few little presents for DD - some felt pens, paint brushes, a tablet holder, and I gave her the purse I was given for making a donation to charity.

I don't count the serviettes, the plastic straws, or the light bulbs as they will be used and thrown out. So actually I didn't buy too many new things. But if you want to nitpick, I also threw out or passed on (eventually - some items are in a holding pattern) 21 items this week in addition to the things that were replaced from Ikea.

There are 17 things in the photo but I took back the wok and one of the four broken watches. Also the scissors don't count as I replaced them. However, I gave away a book and another photo frame as gifts and put a bag and a purse in the 'donations' box. And three more serving bowls didn't make the photo. So that's 21 items which takes the 1000 Clutters Challenge to 945. Only 55 items left to find and I still have all my cds and loads of dvds.

I am very cheerfully joining the Reasons 2B cheerful linky over at Becky's Lakes Single Mum.

But Is It Chutzpah?

One loose screw and you begin to doubt everything you believed in. 

Google the word 'chutzpah' and it tells you it means, 'shameless audacity'. Yup, that just about sums it up.

A recent example in my life was when a student asked to start the online summer course early because she has three weeks off in June but will be working through July. As the course is not available yet online, I have to send her batches of assignments and instructions by email - a task I agreed to out of the goodness of my heart (and because the Head of Dept. asked me to). She sent me her latest submissions the day before a four-day national holiday and four days later, before I'd even got back to the office, she emailed the Head of Dept. that I wasn't answering her emails. That is chutzpah.

A more well known and used example is the person convicted of murdering his parents who asks the judge for leniency on account of being an orphan.

So now we're on the same page, I have a question. I wrote yesterday about how long it took me to screw 20 screws into my new IKEA table with nothing but my trusty old screwdriver. I wrote how it took me all day to do it in increments as it was tough going and I was getting blisters on my hands. An electric drill/screwdriver would have done the job in about two minutes.

I happen to know that my upstairs neighbour has an electric drill/screwdriver and normally I'd have no problem asking a neighbour for a small favour like this. However, my upstairs neighbour is a handyman by profession. And therein lies the problem.

He charges a reasonable amount of money for an hour's work and then slightly less for subsequent hours when needed, plus the cost of materials used. Last month I asked him to come and help me shift big furniture - beds that had to be dismantled to be moved into different rooms and a large bulky and heavy piece of furniture to be taken down three flights of stairs to the rubbish. It all took about an hour, I paid the money, everyone was happy.

But now I had a two-minute job that you would ask a neighbour to help you with but you wouldn't ask your handyman to come and do for free. I could probably get away with it once but he'd be thinking, is this going to become a habit? He told me last time that I should wait until I have a list of things to be done so that the first hour's payment is comfortable for both of us.

The trouble is that most people don't need a handyman to screw in a few screws.

I tried to think what would happen if the tables were turned. What if he asked me to teach his daughter. If she wanted a few lessons to bring her up to scratch for an English exam I would expect him to pay for it. But if she knocked on my door one day (she's only 3 btw but for argument's sake) and asked, "please can you help me, I have to do this homework on the 3rd conditional and I don't understand it." There is no doubt that I would tell her to come in and I'd spend the 10 or 20 minutes it would take to explain it to her. No doubt whatsoever. And I'd not for one second think of this as a chutzpah.

Likewise if any of my former students were to call with the same problem and ask if they could pop round for the same explanation. No problem at all. Maybe the difference is whether they pop round to me or if I have to go to them? Who knows? All I know is, one loose screw and everything you believed in about neigbourliness and helping others falls apart.

Am I lacking in confidence or just too nice? I regularly countersign passport photos for friends who are renewing their British passports as I'm a UK qualified teacher. But when I needed my request to have my degrees accredited by the Israel Ministry of Education signed by lawyer, the lawyer's secretary signed on his behalf and used his stamp, and charged me 50 shekels!

Otoh, another lawyer friend wrote a number of letters to another neighbour for me, when there was a problem with a leak that they wouldn't resolve, and she didn't charge me anything.

It's a minefield of professional etiquette versus chutzpah out there. I'm covered for the next IKEA episode as my lovely friend Yael offered to bring her electric drill round next time for the price of a cup of coffee and a chinwag. Meanwhile I'm nursing my blistered hands and wondering what others would have done.

What would you have done?

Upgrading from Harrods to Ikea

This post about hand-me-down furniture is one of the most popular posts I've ever published and I didn't even write it myself. It fits in with my snobbish notions of interior design having once read that the aristocracy don't buy furniture, they inherit it.

Harrods, London 1974

Today marks the end of an era as I sold my dining room table after 20 years. It wasn't a new table when I acquired it. It came from my friends N and T when they upgraded. Her mother bought it for them in a Harrods sale when they got married 41 years ago and it came with them when they moved to Jerusalem.

I always got a kick out of the fact that the table came from Harrods. I usually buy a pencil in Harrods just to get the bag. However, the truth is that it fit better in my old apartment which had a wider and longer dining area. This apartment really needs a different shape table. With the arrival of Ikea in Israel, a new table has been on my wish list for a couple of years now. Can you call it upgrading from Harrods to Ikea? I think you can.

The table has gone to a young couple of newlyweds who are looking forward to entertaining family and friends on shabbat and festivals. I hope they enjoy 20 years of great meals and wonderful company around the table just as N & T did , and then I did. And then they can pass it on.

Meanwhile I haven't actually got the money to buy the new table yet so I'm using this vintage Ikea kitchen table that I was given by friends when they moved to a smaller apartment in Jerusalem. It also came with them from England where it had been the table in their morning room in Liverpool since some time in the 1990s. The first Ikea shop in the UK opened in Warrington in 1987. They tell me that the table was bought from Ikea in Warrington a few years later.

Vintage Ikea, Warrington 1990s

I'm in no hurry to purchase a new table. I'm enjoying the space and the lighter atmosphere of the white table. Did I tell you that I'm a bit obsessed with the Tiny House movement and Minimalism? I watch TEDx talks about less being more and I'm fascinated by people who can fit everything they own into two boxes. Whilst I still want a separate living room and a bedroom for each of us (no climbing up ladders to a loft space) and a fully plumbed shower room and toilet is essential, I find myself looking around to see what else I can sell or give away.