Our Luxor Flat Improvements 1st April 2011

It seems that the people who look at my blog are rather peculiar!

I'll tell you what I mean: Here we are the 1st of April 2011, and Egypt has just come through an exciting and troublesome time. The Egyptians have been (some would say "always have been and always will be") revolting! BabaMu, the President for 30 years has finally gone, although many still look upon him as a national "father figure", he has been ousted in an overwhelmingly peaceful uprising.

Those of us who have been here throughout the period have been undoubtedly privileged to see history in the making, and it's not all over yet! There are still the elections for the new parliament, and the new president, to come. The world is waiting to see what the people of Egypt will decide!

So what are my readers most interested in reading on my blog? That's right, you got it first time, the "2009 Refurbishment at Our Luxor Guest Apartment".

I have to admit that I find it a bit strange that work we did over 18 months ago can be found more interesting than events which will probably change the lives of 80 odd million Egyptians! But who am I to judge? Ever mindful of my readers demands, I thought that I'd better let you know that we haven't been standing about since October 2009. In fact, we are, at this very minute, having a major shake-up of our A/C systems. See if you can "Spot the Difference" in these two pictures.

They're before and after! Ever since we bought the A/C for the guest livingroom, it hasn't been right, when the temperature is below about 44/45 degrees, it seems to work admirably, but once it got HOT, it didn't want to know. We've had Ahmed, Shaeb, Ayman and "Old Uncle Mohamed And All" out to see to it! (The "Old Uncle Mohamed And All" bit will only mean anything to the British readers, I keep getting wrong for doing this, but old habits die hard.) And, they all charge me enough to buy several new ones, but fail to get to grips with the problem!

At last, I've been introduced to a chap who, I think, actually knows what he's doing, and not just bluffing his way to con money out of unsuspecting foreigners.

The pic above shows the empty bracket where the outside unit of the offending item used to stand. It's now GONE! As has the pretty "high wall" fan unit which was pictured on the first photo above.

Below is the first shot of the "Man's Fan Unit" which Mustafa (our new A/C engineer), has decided should be mounted further down the wall, away from the heat which comes from the ceiling.

The outside pipework is s bit of a disappointment, however. Mustafa has a perfectly good, and quite new, pipe bender, which he used to make the tight bend where the pipes come out of the wall inside the livingroom and into the fan unit. Naturally (how stupid am I after all this time?) I thought that the bends which would have to be made to negotiate the corners etc outside would be just as neat. But, I had to have a cup of tea, so left Mustafa and his boy for about 10 minutes, and came back to this!

The raggy holes; I expected. The dirty handmarks which won't wash off; I expected. What I didn't expect was having to spend the next week or so boxing -in a load of unsightly pipework!

Never mind, eh? The sun still shines every day, and the rain only comes once a year! I hope our current guests from Australia won't be put out by me hammering and drilling during the night, when it's cooler, hehe!

We're always on the lookout for articles of furniture or fabrics which might help us to improve or renovate our guest apartment. Of late we've replaced curtains in the livingroom, bedroom and hall, we've fitted blackout curtains on the balcony, for when the summer sun comes around. We've improved the lighting in the bedroom and bathroom by fitting lovely chandeliers and also provided some pretty new table lamps in the bedroom and livingroom. We've painted throughout the apartment, changing some colours for a more vibrant effect, we think it's an improvement and we hope you'll agree.

Here's my new home-made pastiche of pictures, just to let you see what you get in the way of style and comfort at "Our Luxor"! It takes a while to load, so just click play and then pause and give it a few minutes. Enjoy!