Why Can't Appliances Just Come With the Apartment?! GAH.

Apologies for our hiatus from posting. We've had a busy couple weeks (details of which will be in a later blog post).

When we were looking for apartments it became clear that we were going to need to buy appliances for our apartment. This is very common in Europe, when people move they take their kitchens with them. We counted ourselves lucky that we had cupboards and countertops so needing to buy appliances was no big deal. Or so we thought.


Our appliance shopping adventure started with a trip to a store called Darty (France's Future Shop). We were joined by a fellow expat who speaks French that was able to help us communicate with the sales representative. After about an hour of comparing appliances we finally made our decisions, we decided on a Samsung fridge, a Thompson washing machine, an Indesit range and an Electrolux dishwasher. Note: we didn't buy a dryer, we just don't have the room for one, hang drying for the win!

Once all decisions were made the sales representative starting inputting the sale into the computer, everything was in stock... Except for the fridge. Unfortunately, this was the only fridge we wanted so were able to buy it, the delivery date was just going to be ten days after everything else. I thought this would be no big deal, just need to go grocery shopping every day. Which to be honest, ended up being a massive pain. I had to buy the EXACT amount we would eat that day as we had no fridge for leftovers.

We got our first delivery two days after we were moved into our apartment. Unfortunately, none of the delivery guys spoke English, I managed myself through the phone call when they called to inform me they were here but that was the end of my French. They brought everything up and started the install. When they were installing the washing machine (which naturally lives in the kitchen) and the dishwasher they realized that there was only one water drainage port. This was a problem. After some hand signals and some less than Louvre worthy sketches they were able to communicate the problem to me and some potential solutions. They finished installing the washing machine, and the range, and left the dishwasher for us to figure out.

This then took us to our local hardware store with more called Bricorama. After a couple of trips we collected the random bits of plumbing needed to complete this job. It's not pretty but it seems to work. It's pretty obvious we are home improvement novices.

After this plumbing job was done it was time to move the dishwasher to it's home. Jason pushed the dishwasher and then it wouldn't go in. We realized that the top of it was a TINY bit to wide to fit in, no big deal, we removed the top. We tried to push it in again, to no avail. This is when we realized there were some brackets on the floor, and the screws stuck up just enough just to make it impossible to fit. We decided those needed to come out. After some blood, sweat, and tears we managed to get those out and finally our dishwasher fit.

Lastly, it was finally time for our fridge to be delivered. We were VERY excited about this, I was starting to get sick of the daily trips to the grocery store, we were both sick of never having anything cold to drink, having to eat every bit of every meal, and most importantly, not having ice cream. Darty called us about 30 minutes before our delivery and again, they didn't speak English, and our French wasn't good enough to be able to communicate with them. What followed was panic, I thought they were calling to say they were here, Jason ran downstairs to see if they were there, and they weren't. I was starting to think they had called to say they wouldn't be coming or something. I really didn't know. But, half an hour later they showed up with our beautiful, much needed fridge. We figure they must have been calling to say they were on their way.

This story was longer than I was expecting it to be. I guess our next adventure (getting internet and general stories of living in Plessis) will be in the next post!

Thanks for reading!