Close the garage windows so I can glue my furniture back together!!

It seems Paris is having a heat wave.  I hear from my friends in London that it is hot there as well.  So coming from Houston, what do you ask is a heat wave?  We are accustomed to temperatures up to 100 degrees (F) and above with that same amount of humidity--surely Paris temps will never top that, right?  Right!!  But, it has been in the 80-90 degrees (F) range since we have moved here, which to Houstonians, is COOL, actually, we pray for 80 degree days....BUT, there is no air-conditioning here.  BIG difference than in Houston, which is known as "The Most Air-Conditioned City in the World", at least I read that somewhere.  So, after sitting outside at swim team practice totally dying in the heat and humidity, you jump in your car with the A/C turned on high, and cool off.  By the time you get home, you and your wet swim team kids walk into your air-conditioned house and are freezing.  So, you get what I am leading up to:  we have no air-conditioning in our new home and we have been sweating our butts off for two weeks now.  This week it finally rained (Thank you Lord!!) to cool us off.  In fact, it's very nice in the evenings and especially the thunderstorms in the middle of the night.  Windows are open, rain is falling and you don't want to leave your bed.
During this heat wave, I noticed that my neighbors have these heavy aluminum shades that look like garage doors to me.  I wondered why they need this, there's no hail here, right?  Ahhh, finally figured it out--it is for shade to keep your place cool--I know, I'm kinda slow, right?  I wasn't sure I had any of those garage-door window shades, but voila`! Paul found the crank for them this morning!  I think we may now survive the heat wave!  Viva` la difference`!  and, the neighbors can't look right into my apartment.  Which is nice because I don't like having an audience while I'm trying to glue my furniture back together....which brings me to my next subject:
Company Furniture
When we moved, we could only bring an air shipment, which means for my non-ex-pat friends, not very much stuff.  No furniture, not many dishes or heavy things.  Basically, clothes and some personal items.  We could bring 2 big boxes weighing no more than 610 kg.  Our company bought us furniture, which our real estate agent described as "extremely basic".  Good description!  We have 2 chairs, a couch, a table, 6 chairs, a "china" cabinet, beds and several dressers & wardrobes.  (Most places don't have closets over here).  The furniture seems all very "Ikea-ish" but since I don't want to slander Ikea, let's say I don't know from where it hails, but it's not great.  All the dressers are falling apart with drawer fronts falling off.  So what to do?  We went to Castorama (the Home Depot equivlent) and bought wood glue.  Shopping tasks like this are fairly easy compared to getting cell phone service because there are pictures and French words, which are actually quite similar to English, again, Thank God!
So all in all, it was a pretty good week:  got the shades down, glued the furniture together and we've survived another week here in Paris.