The word that best described CHM's apartment, in my opinion, was dingy. Not dirty, but not cheery or welcoming, for sure. But all that is just cosmetic. It could have been made into a very nice place.
The basement (photos above and below) was another story. It would have required a crew of professionals and a big truck to get it emptied out. And then a major rebuild to make it habitable. Still, I'm convinced that it could have been made into a fine and comfortable bedroom/bathroom suite. But no regrets. I'd love to know, out of sheer curiosity, if it has been sold, and if it has, what it has been made into.
At the time when we were considering buying the apartment as a viager, leaving CHM a lifetime right to live there, we hadn't even imagined that we would be moving to France so soon. Retirement seemed to be years away. But between the late 1990s and they year 2002, many things happened that made it clear to us that it was time to move on. We were burnt out.
OMG, what a terrible mess downstairs...!
ReplyDeleteI can't disagree!
DeleteWow! The upstairs looks pretty good, but what a mess below. I bet someone has cleaned it all out by now. I wouldn't want to tackle that problem.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the notaire will or already has just contracted with specialist in the area of cleaning out such messes. Once that's done, I guess the notaire will list the apartment for sale and divvy up the proceeds.
DeleteUggggghh. Way too much manual labor right there--ha! Didn't you say that CHM had some nieces? I seem to remember that they came to visit you at some point after his death. Perhaps they were the next in line, legally, and filed suit through whatever the French version of probate is.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about contacting CHM's nieces down in Grenoble to ask for an update. If I read the information about cases where the owner of a property left no legally valid will, I think they might be his closest relatives, since his parents and his brother are all deceased. There are probably other nieces and nephews. I think it is up to the notaire who is handling CHM's affairs to seek out and find such relatives and heirs. The taxes on such inheritances are very high, I believe. Each survivor might get a small check....
DeleteI'm sure it looked that way because nothing had been done or freshened for decades. It was just left as is.
ReplyDeleteCHM never lived there year-round after 1969. The people he let live there had no motivation to clean up the mess, and it's possible they added to it. But it was also in CHM's nature to let things pile up this way. For example, he "collected" empty cardboard boxes, he told me. His living room in Arlington was full of them from floor to ceiling, he said. He also said one day that he was clearing out the mess in his living room and found his piano under all the mess. He thought that was hilarious.
DeleteBack when I first saw this mess, I wondered about the danger of having a fire that might burn up all the apartments in the building, since CHM's was on the ground floor and there were five or six stories above his.
ReplyDelete