I had big plans on my girls Paris-Reykjavik trip in October. I had researched a bunch of housewares/antiques stores in Paris, and had plans to flit from shop to shop, buying a few things, and planning to put a few others on my Christmas wish list. Possible shopping included the Parisian flea/antiques market Les Puces de Saint-Ouen (https://www.pucesdeparissaintouen.com/en/les-puces/), maybe an antique dishwares store that’s part art (Au Bain Marie Galerie, https://aubainmarie.com/), maybe a housewares store like Verrerie des Halles (https://www.verrerie-des-halles-paris.fr/), the dept store Le BHV Marais (https://www.bhv.fr/e1/vivez-bhv/actualites/bhv-marais), and a kitchen supply store (E. Dehillerin, https://www.edehillerin.fr/). This was in addition to the Louvre museum shop, possible champagne purchases on our Champagne region day tour, and our planned stop at Louis Vuitton (because I needed a b’day present for myself, right?).

However, the reality of our Paris shopping was much different, especially because we had freaking TINY carry-on suitcases (with the bare minimum amount of clothes) for our getaway! It was an exciting whirlwind because we had some things scheduled, and that left us limited time for the art of doing nothing.

Our planned shopping day was on the Sunday after our Louvre and Champagne trip days, which was my b’day! I had already been serenaded just after midnight at a cafe, because my girlfriend is awesome and there was a lot of wine. While my girlfriend went to get cappuccino and croissants for our breakfast, I looked up the stores, and was disappointed to realize most were CLOSED on Sundays (grrrrrr) or were a pain to get to (Paris is more spread-out, and with lots of traffic it took a while to navigate)! But, soon we were in a taxi to Le BHV Marais dept store, and wandered around until I found the escalator to the basement (where the hardware and home goods were). After about 10 minutes of my home-shopping-bliss, my girlfriend realized we needed to split up for a few hours to do our own exploring. She went sightseeing near the Louvre, at a few of the Emily in Paris (Netflix series—we’re both into it) locations, before we would meet up at LV that afternoon.

I was in heaven in the basement housewares and hardware dept.; it was like Target and Ikea had a baby, but it was a fancy baby (being at a dept store) who only spoke French. Le BHV was where the French shopped for their own homes, and I knew there were some things I needed for mine!

First, I wanted one of those enameled house number signs that are on French buildings, because they have very nice colors and fonts. My house needed more style with its numbers, and they had a blue sign with white numbers, which I knew would match my front door. I also got a small white enameled sign for the bathroom, which I knew would be funny but also very classy.

Then I meandered, finally stopping at the aisles of door hardware, mesmerized by all the unique and beautiful brass door levers, wishing that I had space in my tiny suitcase so that I could buy some of them (but it was already packed full of champagne and other souvenirs). I could envision redoing my outside doorknobs with scrolled brass levers, so I took lots of pictures to help plan. And I took pics of some of the tiles they had, because they were rustic and beautiful colors.

Then, I looked at the drawer knobs, and picked out one design that I thought would look good on my bathroom cabinets. They’re satin nickel (which matches my bathroom fixtures), with a bit of molding on the base, and nicer than anything that I had seen at HD or anywhere else near home.

After that, I wandered around Le Marais, a pretty charming area, but didn’t really go into any shops, just wanted to get to a boutique purse store, which also turned out to be closed on Sunday (though their own website had said otherwise). Soon, we met up at Louis Vuitton for shopping and drinking champagne (because my girlfriend is good at getting us extras)!

The other thing is that what I DID buy, I haven’t completely installed since returning from the trip. When the weather is warm enough, I’ll attach the enameled house numbers sign to my front yard fence (which will be a future blogpost). I did attach the powder room sign in my bathroom, right by the light switch, and it makes me smile all the time. Not sure others notice it when they are visiting, though one of my girlfriends asked me if I was serious about it (since it tells everyone they have a 5-minute limit!), which was funny!

I installed 2 of the cabinet knobs on the bathroom sink cabinet, currently secured with a childproof lock so the puppyraptor can’t get in there. But, I couldn’t get the other 2 cabinet knobs installed on the standing cabinet, because they have REALLY WEIRD screws that look like medieval torture devices, and I kept trying other screws in them but NOTHING will work! It’s really odd. Apparently these are made in Italy, but maybe the Italians rejected them and the French had zero quality control for these cabinet knobs? They were cheap, but I am determined to make them work (maybe with wood dowels and glue?).

Also, I have photos from my trip that I want to print out and hang up at home. We went to the Champagne region and to Reykjavik, and I have some gorgeous pics from there, including when we did a Northern Lights jeep tour.

I have since looked on the Le BHV website, and they DO have lots of housewares items for sale online. I believe they do ship internationally, though their website doesn’t have an English translation version so I guess I’ll be using Google Translate to help me shop. I’ll need to start measuring the doors for these fancy brass door handles, along with the fancy metal faceplates, because I need the ones on the left in the photo, in my house!

Next week, I’ll start talking about my plans to redo the kitchen…. MYSELF!