I am now feeling a sense of relief. Nearly everything has been paid and/or ordered. Now its just waiting for the workers to do their magic. It has definately not been an easy process. I never thought id complain about having too many choices. Cairo definately is the place to go if you want to let your imagination do the talking. EVERYTHING can be changed. When you walk into a shop you might find a sofa you like, but you would like to change a few things. You ask if its possible to change the fabric, the feet, the shape, the colour, maybe make it a bit shorter. The answer to these questions are all YES! This makes choosing ANYTHING in Cairo very difficult. I therefore had to make the though decision of walking into a shop and buying the product i see infront of me. Having the possibility to change everything on a product just means i would never make a decision.
The colour theme i started with was white, lavender and turquoise. This has now changed. I found the most beautiful sofa, that was made for my apartment. Im not kidding it was especially made to fit the tight place i gave the sofa and curves slightly exactly where the wall comes out! It fits like a glove. Hard to explain how perfect this sofa is but i will be posting a picture soon! It is grey which shifted my colour theme. Now the colours are grey, lavender, turquoise and of course a few white walls. The floor was one of the first things we bought. White wooden floors, very fresh i must say. I know it will be a problem having so much white in my apartment in such a ‘dirty’ country but ill just have to clean a little extra. The worst is actually the reaction every seller has when i ask for the product in white. I get a little shocked stare, the colour is repeated with a question mark at the end as to make sure they heard it correctly. When they receive a yes they look a little wierdly at my boyfriend, shake their head, he shakes his head and says this is what she wants and they both look at eachother like im crazy…. But wait and see they will all be super jealous when they see how amazing it looks. They will probably laugh in my face when the first dirty mark appears.
The kitchen is being made, all white and grey! I think the end result will be amazing, even though it was VERY difficult convincing the kitchen designer that my choice is the correct one. EVERY single comment i had about the kitchen got a little hmmmmm and a sigh and then a ‘maybe we can change this’. It really taught me to be stubborn, because if i would of listened to the kitchen designer i would have the dishwasher beside the tv in the living room and 3 water heaters located all over the apartment, apart from the kitchen. All i have to say about this guy is at least he is excited about my kitchen, he is full of ideas too, but unfortunately most of then are completely useless. He definately has never made any food in his life!
No offence to Egyptians but many have VEEEERY bad taste. This is why designing my own apartment is even more fun. I love interior design so to be able to completely renovate my own apartment to my taste is a dream come true. But the best is the reaction on the sellers faces when i tell them what i want. Most of them are men, so that might explain their lack in interior design and taste.
A good example was my issue with water heaters. Here in Egypt its normal to have a huge ugly round water heater stuck to the wall in both the bathroom and kitchen. This completely destoys my dream of having a beautiful kitchen and bathroom because of this ugly thing that is too big to even be covered in a decent way. I explained to the kitchen guy that i wanted one water heater that gives hot water to the kitchen AND the bathroom. This is to save my beautiful bathroom from a hideous water heater. Uff this was amazingly complicated because of all the extra pipes that would have to take the hot water from the kitchen to the bathroom. Maybe it helps when i tell you that the kitchen and bathroom share one wall, so a pipe would maybe be a total of 1 meter. I mentioned several times to the person responsible for the whole renovation, to the kitchen guy, to sellers at the bathroom store, that i wanted a small heater and not a monstrous water tank. This didnt exist, and it was not possible, bla bla bla. I had even seen it in another apartment i rented before! When we went to an electrical store we found a small electronic heater that was exactly what i wanted. We bought it and told the kitchen guy to keep in mind that this water heater would be in a cupboard in the kitchen. Oh no, this is a problem because we dont have enough space and maybe i can put it in the bathroom. This is when i realised that the kitchen guy didnt want to listen to my ideas at all. He had his own ideas and this is the way its gonna be! How does that work when you are building a kitchen for a client. Well the point of this story is that ive had to be very stubborn with all these men trying to change my design ideas, claiming its stupid. But in fact its just them thats stupid!
Femieshe 