A commonly used sound effect in horror movies is someone walking upstairs with a cane, when in fact there is no one. For us, it was reality for three years. When we bought and moved in our apartment in Île Verte, Grenoble, we had no idea that the apartment above was not occupied. We kept thinking we were very lucky to find a lovely and quiet apartment in such a central location. It was actually a couple of years later, when we had a leak in our newly renovated bathroom and the contractor claimed that it came from the apartment above, that we found there was no one living above and the water was not even turned on.
Everything changed when the apartment was sold and fully renovated, and an older couple moved in. First, it was just dragging the furniture and slamming the door, but those noises ceased after we complained several times and they finally agreed to put felt patches under their chairs. But with time the monsieur’s mobility deteriorated and he used two canes or a walker practically all the time to move about. And the things kept falling or being knocked over … That was like in a horror movie. And the complete lockdowns in 2020 did not make it any easier for us.
So, in the early Fall we started looking for a new place, either a house or a top floor apartment. We viewed a few places in and around Grenoble: a couple of nice apartments in Domène and a couple of terrible houses in Crolles and La Tronche, but it was the old village house in Bernin (17km North-East from Grenoble) that really had the WOW effect. It was completely and tastefully renovated 10 years ago and there were no immediate works foreseen, and the top floor living room offered a splendid view both on the Chartreuse mountains and the Belledonne range. After four months and several complications, mostly due to errors by our bank, we bought the house and moved in. Even if the house is attached to the neighboring ones we can’t hear a thing from our neighbors. And there is no garbage truck on our small alley waking us up at 5am.
After living in our new house for four days, we started to see that we might want to do some changes anyway: first, like in our previous place, to get ride of the bath tub and shower cabinet, and replace them with a Roman shower, and move toilet to the bathroom, and make the former WC a walk-in closet; and secondly, get rid of the massive kitchen island and change the cabinets; some of the doors are quite damaged and the drawers are way to large to store anything efficiently.
The house has some of the charm of our former Grandhill apartment on Pasir Panjang Hill: instead of the container port lights we see the lights of the houses and ski resorts on the opposite side of the valley.
