Setting Up a Kitchen In a Foreign Land

Everyone Knows the Darty

We ended up with an unequipped kitchen by chance and by default.

While we would have preferred to have a completed kitchen, we eventually decided buying new appliances for our kitchen here wouldn't be a deal-breaker.

As it happened, we saw a ton more apartment than we originally thought and, once time ran out, we went with the best apartment for us, location and space-wise. And it ended up not having any appliances. So there we are. 

A Darty, the French Best Buy, just happens to be located down the street from our apartment and once we had measurements and pictures of the spaces, we hit the store and hoped we'd find a salesperson who spoke a little English. With luck we did (limited, but he was patient) and we quickly bought a set of the necessary items. 

The upside is, they're new and modern. They'll be easy for us to figure out (not like the ancient washing machine in our temporary flat) and we know who to contact if they breakdown. The downside, our language skills are limited, so when the washer and dryer didn't fit in the space intended, even though our salesman said it would (Arggh!), there wasn't anything I could say. Or when oven didn't include "feet" so they refused to install it. Why?! 

Current Status

The other challenge is our apartment doesn't have internet hooked up and, like everything else, is taking a while to set up. That's the theme of this whole move, everything is taking more time than we planned. So, the day the appliances were supposed to be delivered, I sat in an empty apartment with no idea when (or if) they'd show up. And ... the delivery was late. It made for a frustrating day. 

And we're still, at this moment, missing a fridge. Sigh.

I keep thinking that in about a week, I'll be sitting in a fully-equipped apartment with internet and all our things from home. It's just this set-up/transition time that's challenging my calm.

But, my current mantra plays in a loop in my head: "If it were easy, everyone would move to France." 

Enjoy your weekend!




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