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When everything goes right.
Oct. 24th, 2010 08:57 pmOn Friday, I found out I had a new job.
On Saturday, we got a new apartment.
Let me put it this way. The place we live now costs $535 a month, heat and hot water included, though we round that up to $540 because the landlord insists on being paid by a money order, which costs $5 to get each month. It's got central heating that works only about 50% of the time, and we can't control when it's on or off. It's presented as a 2-bedroom apartment, though the "second bedroom" is half the size of the first, not connected to the heating system, and uninsulated. It has four windows, only one of which opens. The ceiling has leaked about 10 times in the past few years. The floors slant. The back door has no lock. The bathroom is set up in such a way that one has to sit on the toilet at an uncomfortable 45 degree angle.
Given that I just got the new job, which is on the same side of the city Rei works on, we figured it would be best to try to move closer to their if we could. So on a whim of Friday night, I looked on Kijiji to see what might be in our price range. We found one place that we had a good feeling about, that was in our price range, but that wasn't as far west as we were initially hoping. Still, we decided to check it out.
This Saturday, we made the agreement to take the apartment. We both loved it, and all things considered, it felt like fate. The landlady's brother lived in it before he recently died, and she'd kept putting off cleaning it out and renting it, but finally decided to take that step. She'd put the ad on Kijiji on Thursday. She got her new tenants in less than 2 days.
What's the new apartment like? It's got windows in every room, including the bathroom, and all but one opens. It has a sunroom just off the very large bedroom. It has a little room to the side that could be a den or a second bedroom, but that we plan to use as a office/storage/craft room, since Rei and I sleep in the same room anyway. It has a large kitchen, and an even larger dining room. It has a fireplace that's been blocked up, but still has the mantle. It has a large storage room in the back. The bathroom's not huge, but I can sit straight on the toilet, and that's a blessing! There's a lot of shelf space all over, and the bedroom closet is quite large. (Not a walk-in closet, but still pretty good.) There are washer and dryer hookups. The place has a view of the Saint John river from the living room, and is perfect for capturing the sunset lighting. It's a good 30%, possibly 50% larger than what we've got right now. There's a little back balcony are, with steps leading down to the garden that the landlady doesn't mind us sitting in, even though it's primarily used by her. It's in a quiet neighbourhood, known for being pretty good, and there's a bus stop right in front of the door.
How much is this awesome apartment? $600 a month, heat and hot water included. For only $60 more than we're paying right now, we're getting all that. There was no way we could pass up that deal.
And to make this whole moving thing easier on ourselves, we did something that most people would think we're crazy for. Since I'm going to be making steady money from now on, we used what's left of my tax return to pay the rent on both apartments for November, so that we can move things over slowly and not stress ourselves out. If we moved everything over one day, we'd have to do it on a day we both worked, so that would leave us about 5 hours to move everything from one apartment to the other, and last time that happened, people put couches in the bedroom because they blocked off the living room door with boxes and couldn't be bothered to follow our instructions. We'd also have to spend November cleaning everything here while having no real room to move anything around while we did so.
This way, we may be paying more money, but when we both will be working a lot and we both have health problems that can get in the way, it'll be so much easier. We can take a few boxes or bags of stuff over each day, on the bus, after work, and start setting up little things and clearing things from this apartment so that we've got more room to move other things around as we clean, sort things out, get rid of them, all that stuff. No rush, not nearly as much stress, and we won't have to rely on other people as much, except to move over some of the larger things like bookshelves and the bed and whatnot. To us, it's worth the expense.
Especially because the landlady said that she doesn't care about a damage deposit right away, and doesn't even expect a full month's rent as the deposit. She suggested that if we wanted to pay around $400 for it in January, that's fine by her.
Also, having everything moved out of this apartment will allow us to do some last-minute repairs to let us get our damage deposit back, like replacing the wallpaper in the bedroom, and repainting some of the doorframes where the cats have scratched.
So come December, or possibly the middle or the end of November, we'll be all moved in to our new place. We're really excited. I'm hoping to take some pictures of it once we get the keys, so I can put them online and show people where we're going to be living. Especially the view of the river from the living room windows!
This has been an exhausting weekend. Finding out about the job on Friday, finding the apartment on Saturday, going to a show that night (I'll have a post about that soon, I'm sure), cleaning some today, and then tomorrow I have to get up at 6 in the morning to get to work. The next five weeks will be busy as anything, but it'll be worth every bit of hard work, and I'm beyond happy about it all!
On Saturday, we got a new apartment.
Let me put it this way. The place we live now costs $535 a month, heat and hot water included, though we round that up to $540 because the landlord insists on being paid by a money order, which costs $5 to get each month. It's got central heating that works only about 50% of the time, and we can't control when it's on or off. It's presented as a 2-bedroom apartment, though the "second bedroom" is half the size of the first, not connected to the heating system, and uninsulated. It has four windows, only one of which opens. The ceiling has leaked about 10 times in the past few years. The floors slant. The back door has no lock. The bathroom is set up in such a way that one has to sit on the toilet at an uncomfortable 45 degree angle.
Given that I just got the new job, which is on the same side of the city Rei works on, we figured it would be best to try to move closer to their if we could. So on a whim of Friday night, I looked on Kijiji to see what might be in our price range. We found one place that we had a good feeling about, that was in our price range, but that wasn't as far west as we were initially hoping. Still, we decided to check it out.
This Saturday, we made the agreement to take the apartment. We both loved it, and all things considered, it felt like fate. The landlady's brother lived in it before he recently died, and she'd kept putting off cleaning it out and renting it, but finally decided to take that step. She'd put the ad on Kijiji on Thursday. She got her new tenants in less than 2 days.
What's the new apartment like? It's got windows in every room, including the bathroom, and all but one opens. It has a sunroom just off the very large bedroom. It has a little room to the side that could be a den or a second bedroom, but that we plan to use as a office/storage/craft room, since Rei and I sleep in the same room anyway. It has a large kitchen, and an even larger dining room. It has a fireplace that's been blocked up, but still has the mantle. It has a large storage room in the back. The bathroom's not huge, but I can sit straight on the toilet, and that's a blessing! There's a lot of shelf space all over, and the bedroom closet is quite large. (Not a walk-in closet, but still pretty good.) There are washer and dryer hookups. The place has a view of the Saint John river from the living room, and is perfect for capturing the sunset lighting. It's a good 30%, possibly 50% larger than what we've got right now. There's a little back balcony are, with steps leading down to the garden that the landlady doesn't mind us sitting in, even though it's primarily used by her. It's in a quiet neighbourhood, known for being pretty good, and there's a bus stop right in front of the door.
How much is this awesome apartment? $600 a month, heat and hot water included. For only $60 more than we're paying right now, we're getting all that. There was no way we could pass up that deal.
And to make this whole moving thing easier on ourselves, we did something that most people would think we're crazy for. Since I'm going to be making steady money from now on, we used what's left of my tax return to pay the rent on both apartments for November, so that we can move things over slowly and not stress ourselves out. If we moved everything over one day, we'd have to do it on a day we both worked, so that would leave us about 5 hours to move everything from one apartment to the other, and last time that happened, people put couches in the bedroom because they blocked off the living room door with boxes and couldn't be bothered to follow our instructions. We'd also have to spend November cleaning everything here while having no real room to move anything around while we did so.
This way, we may be paying more money, but when we both will be working a lot and we both have health problems that can get in the way, it'll be so much easier. We can take a few boxes or bags of stuff over each day, on the bus, after work, and start setting up little things and clearing things from this apartment so that we've got more room to move other things around as we clean, sort things out, get rid of them, all that stuff. No rush, not nearly as much stress, and we won't have to rely on other people as much, except to move over some of the larger things like bookshelves and the bed and whatnot. To us, it's worth the expense.
Especially because the landlady said that she doesn't care about a damage deposit right away, and doesn't even expect a full month's rent as the deposit. She suggested that if we wanted to pay around $400 for it in January, that's fine by her.
Also, having everything moved out of this apartment will allow us to do some last-minute repairs to let us get our damage deposit back, like replacing the wallpaper in the bedroom, and repainting some of the doorframes where the cats have scratched.
So come December, or possibly the middle or the end of November, we'll be all moved in to our new place. We're really excited. I'm hoping to take some pictures of it once we get the keys, so I can put them online and show people where we're going to be living. Especially the view of the river from the living room windows!
This has been an exhausting weekend. Finding out about the job on Friday, finding the apartment on Saturday, going to a show that night (I'll have a post about that soon, I'm sure), cleaning some today, and then tomorrow I have to get up at 6 in the morning to get to work. The next five weeks will be busy as anything, but it'll be worth every bit of hard work, and I'm beyond happy about it all!
