Putting up Curtains in Cyprus

 We  have new curtains in our dining room. 

It sounds so simple. But somehow things are never quite as easy here as one might expect...

Way back in 2006 when we moved to this house, we installed blinds over those windows. There wasn't space for the wooden pelmets that are everywhere else in the house, and we found some wooden slatted blinds that fitted perfectly, and for fourteen years or so they were just fine. Well, except for a broken slat (courtesy of one of the cats) on one of them. And the thing to turn the slats up or down had broken on the other. But we hadn't seen wooden blinds anywhere else - the shop where we originally bought them is long gone - and they were basically okay...

Then, towards the end of last year, one of the strings broke and we had a very lopsided blind. We managed to manoeuvre it into a horizontal position, but there it was stuck. We couldn't move it up, or down. So it was a bit draughty, on chilly evenings, and couldn't let sunshine in during the daytime. Not a huge problem in the fairly mild winter we've been having, but I knew that, once summer starts, I will want that window blocked from the morning sunshine. 

We had an identical blind in the kitchen, but that one broke a year or so earlier, and we replaced it with a basic white blind from Mr Bricolage:

It's functional, but not attractive. So we didn't want something like that in our dining room.  And there really wasn't much else available. There are very thin blinds that are a bit prettier, which are fine for blocking sunlight but not so good for keeping the cold out. And they didn't come in the right size anyway.

So we started thinking about using a pole rather than a pelmet, and hanging curtains, which we like better than blinds anyway.  We looked in a few shops and didn't see anything that we liked. But, early in January, right before the recent lockdown, we were in the Larnaka Thrift Store, and saw some that were in good quality fabric and the right width, in a pattern with colours that we knew would go well in the dining room. They were also at a good price. 

I knew I would have to make them shorter, but that wasn't a problem. So we bought them, and I put them through the washing machine, and we hung them on the back of a chair in the dining room so we wouldn't forget about them. 

Meanwhile we went back to Mr Bricolage, where we knew we had seen curtain poles and other necessary fixings. We headed for the light pine-style wood, as it's our default choice, and bought a couple of poles of suitable diameter (albeit a bit long), as well as matching end pieces, and curtain rings and so on.  

The poles balanced nicely against two of our bookcases: 

We knew another lockdown was imminent, but it seemed like a good project for an evening when we couldn't see friends and didn't have any other plans.  

It did occur to me, after a couple of days, that although we like light wood, and usually choose it, our dining room is full of dark wood items.  But we didn't really feel that we could take it all back and ask to replace it just because we weren't thinking when we bought it. We shrugged, and decided it probably wouldn't matter.

A couple of days into the lockdown, I realised something was missing.  We had forgotten to buy suitable pieces to fix the rods to the wall.

Oops.

So for the whole of January, when all non-essential shops were closed, the curtains stayed on the back of the chair, and the rods - except for one incident with the cats, which rather scared them - stayed against the bookcases, and the rest stayed in the bag.

The lockdown started easing slightly on February 1st, with retail shops re-opening a week later, on February 8th. 

So we went back to Mr Bricolage, found four pieces to fix rods to the walls, and brought them home. 

We then discovered that although the poles were 28mm diameter, these fixings were for 20mm poles.

Oops again. 

And although the lockdown is eased, we're still limited to just two outings per day, after sending text messages to the government. One can't just pop out at any time. So the following day, we went back to Mr Bricolage, and explained our problem to the helpful young woman at the returns desk.

Unfortunately, there were no fixings for 28mm poles. The return desk woman came and checked too.  She called the manager, who also checked, and then told us that these were end of stock, so they didn't have any alternatives. He didn't know if they would be stocked again, and all he could suggest was that we returned the poles and other fittings that we had bought before the lockdown, and look elsewhere.

We did look in a couple of other shops, but to no avail. We could possibly have gone to various other curtain shops, and might eventually have found fixings for 28mm poles. But instead of spending potentially hours doing so, we decided that we would do as the manager suggested. And then we could legitimately look for dark wood poles and fixings, which would undoubtedly look better.

Mr Bricolage was extremely efficient and friendly, so we returned everything a couple of days later, and were given a refund.

But then we were back to square one. Or, perhaps, square two, as we did still have the curtains hanging on the back of a chair, so much part of the scenery that we barely noticed them any more.

A few days later, our friend Sheila said she was going to Ikea in Nicosia and asked if we wanted anything from there. We checked their online catalogue, but they didn't have any curtain rods that we liked. However, very close to Ikea is another DIY store called Leroy Merlin. And their online catalogue showed curtain rail 'kits', in dark wood, the right length, and a good price. Most importantly, the parts to fix them to the wall were included.  So Sheila brought them back for us, and at last we had everything we needed. 

Richard was very busy at the time, but just over a week ago, on Monday evening, he felt like doing something different. So he decided to put the curtains up.  

He took down the first blind.  He started drilling holes... and his drill stopped working.  Evidently it wasn't going to be simple... 

The fuse was fine, but the drill - which is probably five or six years old - was not.  So after we had eaten, in the midst of tools and a taken-down blind and some dust, he called Sheila again and went to borrow her drill for the evening.  By that stage with nothing on the window he didn't want to stop.

What a great moment it was when the first curtain rod was in place!

And even more so when the first curtain, with the hem very roughly pinned, was up!

Compared to the previous problems, the disruption caused by Lady Jane when I was trying to pin the hems in place was almost irrelevant...

The second one went up more quickly, and at last we had two curtains in place:

Yes, the colours look different in the photo, due to different lighting, but they are the same, bluer than either of them look.

For the next week, I admired them, and enjoyed them, and felt very thankful. 

Then yesterday I decided it was time to sew the hems. And I wanted to do it properly, not just roughly while the curtains hung in place.  So I took the first one down, and extended our dining room table to its fullest length, and measured the hem exactly, ensuring it was the same all the way along. 

Lady Jane usually sleeps in the morning, but decided that what I was doing was far more interesting than a nap: 

Despite her 'help', I finished pinning, and cut off the excess material.  Then I got out the iron, something I haven't done for at least a couple of years, probably longer. It was a bit dusty, as was the ironing board, but thankfully the iron still worked. 

Hemming is one of the few useful skills I learned at school and still remember.  So I carefully ironed and re-pinned, and then sat down again to do the sewing. It wasn't quite 'invisible' - my needlework teacher would have tutted a bit - but with such a strong pattern, the tiny bits of thread didn't really show. 

Of course, Lady Jane thought that sewing thread was another game, and I spent as much time moving her as I did sewing...

But, at last, the hem was finished, and I hung the curtain up again. 

And one corner drooped.  

I thought perhaps I needed to pull the curtain strings a bit tighter, or that it would hang out... or maybe that the radiator wasn't properly square so it was an optical illusion. After all, I measured so carefully.  

When I showed Richard, and explained what I had done, he said that it might have made more sense to measure from the top of the curtain, rather than from the bottom.  And when he did measure, one end was about 3cm longer than the other. 

Yet another oops.

I was not happy. But I followed his suggestion with the other curtain, in the afternoon (when, thankfully, Lady Jane was asleep) and when I hung it up, it was much more even.  So I sighed inwardly and took the first one down, and measured from the top.  One end was the same length as the middle, so I only had to re-sew half of it. I really didn't want to. But I knew that if I left it, I wouldn't get around to it. And we'd both look at it from time to time, and find it irritating. Much better to get it right at the start.  And it was a great deal quicker hemming without feline interruption.

And so, just eight weeks after finding the curtains (and probably four months since the blind broke) we finally have completed curtains.  

In a slightly ironic postscript to this saga, the other job Richard needed to do was to fix quite a major leak in the pipes under our kitchen sink. Not a job he looked forward to, as the old pipes were in a tremendous muddle. Hanging curtains, he had thought, would be much more satisfying and straightforward.  

But in the event, the plumbing took him about half an hour. He had all the pieces he needed, including some special cement.  And it worked perfectly, first time.

A few more Cyprus quirks...

Although we've lived in Cyprus for twenty years now, there are still occasions when we smile, or roll our eyes, and mutter, 'This is Cyprus!' It's a phrase used by Cypriots as well as ex-pats, often with a sense of pride in the way the island functions. Below are three recent examples:

1.  Central heating pump

Our main floor and the upstairs have separate pumps in our central heating system. About a year ago, we weren't getting any heat on our main floor. Not such a problem in Cyprus as it would be in, for instance, the UK; but some days are decidedly chilly. Our builder recommended a central heating engineer who came to have a look. He said we needed a new pump, so we asked him to fit one. However, instead of buying a new one, he found one that was being discarded by a school, and fitted that. The heating worked - mostly - for the rest of the winter.

But by the time it got cold again a few weeks ago, it was obvious we needed another replacement. Richard decided we would buy one ourselves, and then just ask a plumber to fit it, rather than risk another poor quality one. We went to a suitable local shop, where we were told that yes, they could sell us the exact same pump as our original one but that they recommended another which worked the same and was half the price. We would have bought the most expensive one if they hadn't been so insistent that their own brand was as good (and guaranteed). It was a positive 'This is Cyprus!' moment.

So we asked the shop if they had a recommended engineer who could fit it; preferably one who speaks English.  Yes, they told us, we should speak to George.  I don't know how many scraps of paper we've seen over the years with a phone number and the name 'George'.  Richard phoned him, and he said he would come later that day, or the following morning.

We waited, but nobody appeared. So Richard called, and he said yes, he would come later in the day.  He didn't.  He had many good reasons for not coming when he said he did, but after about the fifth day we were starting to feel rather frustrated. It was a not so good 'This is Cyprus!' experience that is all too familiar.

However, he did eventually come, fitted the pump efficiently and quickly, and even told us why the gas-powered part of our water heating has never worked.  He looked at a drip on the roof and said that one of our water tanks was faulty.  He then looked at a toilet which was very difficult to flush, and made a quick adjustment.  He was competent, quick (once he got here) and charged us just €30 for his time.

2. Curtain track 

Most of the curtains in our house have pull-cords.  And for about ten years or so, they worked just fine to open them in the morning, and close them at night.

Perhaps it's not obvious from that photo, so here's a close-up of the bit we pull:

In the past few months, however, first one curtain and then a couple of others started to jam. They wouldn't open - or wouldn't close - using the pull-cord.  We thought perhaps the cord needed to be replaced, as it looked a little frayed in places, so we bought some new cord. But quickly realised, when we took one down to try and replace the cord, that the problem is in fact with the mechanism at the end of the track that guides the cords:

There are two little wheels at each end, in a metal enclosure, and they were stuck. One of them broke off completely. We realised that the pelmets with the curtain rails have probably been here for thirty years or so... and the little wheel mechanism things needed to be replaced.

So Richard took the track off, and we went to a local shop that sells curtains and fittings.  The person on duty shook her head, and said it was a 'very old' fitting, one that could not be replaced. She said we would have to replace the entire metal track with a new fitting, and that each one would cost at least €25.  Since we have ten of them in all, which will need to be replaced eventually, this seemed a bit steep.  Moreover, the new track which the shop assistant showed us was exactly the same size as the one we have already. "Couldn't we buy just the new mechanism and fit it in the track?" we asked.  No, they insisted, it was too old.

Another oddity of Cyprus is that similar shops tend to congregate in the same area. So we thanked the shop assistant, and went to the next curtain shop, a couple of doors down the same street. We asked the same question.  They, too, said that our mechanisms were too old to be replaced, and that we would need a new track.

But they said it would only be €10 for the replacement.

We were startled at such a price difference, but thought we might as well pop into the third curtain shop that was in the same street, just another couple of doors down.

This time, however, the assistant assured us that yes, 'of course' we could replace the old mechanisms. They don't have them in stock right now, she said, but they could get some in. No, we don't need to make an order, just come back next Friday.  The cost?  €5 for two.

Yes, 'This is Cyprus!'

So, we'll go back there next week and see if they really can provide an exact replacement.

3.  Airport parking

Larnaka's old airport was replaced many years ago with a new, improved and mostly pretty efficient airport.

Unfortunately,  they have never really sorted out how the parking works.

At first, when dropping someone off or meeting a flight, there was twenty minutes of free parking in the short-term car park. If one parked for longer, there was a parking cost, but it wasn't too excessive. Of course, we, like many of our friends, would sometimes go back to the car after fifteen minutes, drive it out of the car park and then park somewhere else, so as to avoid paying - but in most cases, twenty minutes was plenty.

Then they started charging for all parking.  So people started not using the car park; instead they (and we..) would drive around while waiting for a call, or have one person get out to meet arriving guests, while the driver would find somewhere to stay temporarily, until a phone call alerted them of the arrival. But more and more people did this, and the roads around the airport became clogged, and then the authorities started putting up barriers, or cones, to stop even temporary parking.  They blocked off some of the car parks completely... but the main short-stay car park really isn't big enough.  So at times when we do want to park, sometimes Richard drives around for five minutes or more, just looking for a space.

On Wednesday morning we took Tim to the airport.  We decided to go in with him for half an hour or so, and were there in plenty of time. As usual, the car park looked absolutely packed. So Richard dropped Tim and me near the entrance while he went to look for a parking space.  We thought the airport would be heaving with people, as it often is, given the number of cars that were parked.

To our surprise, it was extremely quiet. There was no queue at all, so Tim checked his luggage in immediately.  Apparently the flight was almost empty.  We sat down and chatted for a while, and during that time saw very few people. Evidently December 27th is not a popular time for flying out of Cyprus. There didn't seem to be many arrivals, either.

So we were not just saying, 'This is Cyprus' in a frustrated way about the lack of parking spaces at the airport, we were genuinely puzzled:  why, with so few people in the airport, was the car park as full as ever...?

We wondered if it was long-term parking, for people who had gone away for a week or two over Christmas, but thought that was unlikely, as there's a separate covered long-term car park.  Could it be for staff?  No, they too have their own separate car park.

Then I discovered that instead of the long-term car park being better value than the short-term one for more than 24 hours of parking, it's more expensive. Indeed, the airport site actually suggests that people consider long-term parking in the short-term car park.

No wonder there's such a problem.  But... 'This is Cyprus!'

Preparing for the Onslaught of Summer in Cyprus: cleaning curtains and air conditioners

Here's what I had been saying to various people:

- Every year since we moved to this house (almost exactly ten years ago) we have cleaned our air conditioners before using them for the summer.
- We had not, however, had them properly serviced, even though one is supposed to do so every three or four years, so they were well overdue.

Apparently, however, memory - as so often - is faulty. Searching in this blog for previous posts about air conditioners, I discovered:

- We didn't even find air conditioner fluid in the shops until the Autumn of 2008, and then only sporadically used it for the next couple of years
- We DID have our air conditioners - most of them, anyway - properly serviced in the summer of 2009

I wrote a lengthy post about the service, including the way we use air conditioning, and mentioning that a couple of them were very dirty and full of gunk, so we were glad that we did have them serviced. The one in what is now Richard's study was not working well, and was topped up with gas. The one in Tim's room had not been very effective, and had to be cleaned very thoroughly.

But although I remembered the study one being topped up (subsequently we replaced it with one from Richard's office when that closed) I didn't remember that we'd had any of the others serviced.

Still, that was seven years ago, so it was more than time for a repeat. And this time Richard knew of a firm that does this kind of thing regularly. He phoned on Friday, and they arranged to come yesterday morning at 8.00am.  We said that we would do the initial cleaning, so on Monday we went around the house, including our guest flat, taking out the filters, washing and spraying them, and running them to check if they were working. If anyone reading this would like to know HOW to clean air conditioners at home, then I wrote a post about that four years ago.

We have eleven air conditioning units in all, which might seem rather excessive for two people, but we both have studies, and our guest flat has two bedrooms, and is used extensively, plus an edit suite for Richard's work, so it's not unreasonable. Some are used far more than others, of course: the ones with computers in use are often on for several hours per day in July and August, and we run our bedroom one for an hour or so each evening during those months too.

Since this post is getting rather wordy, I thought I'd pause for a moment to show a picture of the air conditioner in my study:

...and the one in the living room:

...and the one in the dining room:

Yes, that's three entirely different designs. The one in the kitchen and in the two upstairs bedrooms are the same as the dining room one; the one in Richard's study, and two in the guest flat are yet another kind.  We have no idea if some are better than others, but several of them are considerably more than ten years old, so we wondered if we might need to replace some of them.

The men arrived promptly and set to work with a kind of power washer, catching the liquid (and dirt) in a trough which they strapped to each unit in turn. It looked a bit worrying (and we did ask them to cover the TV when they were near that) but was surprisingly non-messy.

We have no idea what chemicals were used, but the smell was quite overpowering at first. We opened all the doors and windows, and have done so today too, but it still lingers. It's not unpleasant, but gave me quite a headache yesterday afternoon.

We were surprised to learn that the air conditioner in Tim's room was very dirty and full of fungus, since it's not been used for the past couple of years, and not extensively before that. It was so bad that the service guy asked if we smoked in there! (No, we don't, and nobody in the house smokes). The one in the guest flat front bedroom was also very bad, but that's the room where we've had mould on the walls. We hope to have solved that problem by installing the damp proofing that I wrote about a few months ago.

Happily, none of the air conditioners needed to be replaced, and the only one that had to have some extra gas added was the one in our bedroom, so evidently the others are well-sealed and seem to be working well.

With that job out of the way, I decided to start my annual curtain-cleaning.  Probably more necessary than usual this year, due to our recent bathroom renovation. I don't know why I usually do this in June; perhaps it's an in-built need to spring-clean when it's clear that Summer will soon be upon us.

So today I laundered, hung out on the line, and then - about an hour later - re-hung back in place, all our main floor curtains:

Tomorrow I hope to do the upstairs ones. It's not a major job, though it felt that way when I first started doing it. It takes a couple of minutes to take each curtain down, slightly longer to re-hang them at the end, and the washing machine does most of the work. They don't need ironing at all, which is good because I don't iron in general.

On Monday I sprayed the soft furnishings with 'biokill', against summer insects, something I do once a month from the end of May until the end of September.

About two weeks ago I switched from jeans to shorts for the summer, and started drinking lunch-time frappés rather than hot coffees.  And yet my coconut oil still hasn't fully melted; the temperature in the house is around 24-26C during the day, and there's almost no humidity.  We haven't even put our duvet away for the summer yet, and I'm still - so far - going out for early walks.