Call me Mr. Bricolage

I've spent the last few days doing "bricolage", which is the French word for Do-it-yourself. Since our kitchen came stripped, I've had to install kitchen cabinets, shelves, etc, as well as curtain rods for the curtains.

Keep in mind that the walls here aren't drywall, they're solid cement. Well, actually, the walls that should be strong enough to support the weight of cabinets are drywall, and the ones which don't really matter are solid cement, but I digress.

Fortunately, our building's "gardien" (caretaker), who is a nice Portuguese fellow, has lent me his power drill, ladder, saw, etc. The power drill was particularly important: I had to make lots of holes in the cement. We hope the owner doesn't mind if we fill them up with toothpaste when we leave! The gardien also helped me put up the kitchen cabinets and find the right sort of anchors so they could be put on drywall without crashing down from the weight (we hope).

The funny thing is that since I really haven't done that much DIY before moving here, I have now learned a series of French terms for tools and equipment that I simply don't know how to say in English. I imagine someday I'll be at Home Depot at Mall of the Americas asking for chevilles or boulons a expansion. That's OK, the people who work at Home Depot at Mall of the Americas probably don't speak English either. (¿ Y este pa' que me habla en haitiano?)

I must say, though, that after a few hard days' work, I'm quite proud with the results, which I will share with you in these before and after pictures.