If I Were The Landlord Series - Part 2

This apartment has 1 window in each room and they're all  very decent sizes. The bedroom and bathroom windows face west so we get a lot of evening light in those rooms, especially in the winter when the leaves have fallen from the huge tree in our neighbour's yard. The living room has a HUGE east facing window, which brings in fantastic light in the morning. This room is where all my plants die live. But the kitchen. Oh the kitchen. This window has the most ideal orientation - south! There's just one problem, about 3 feet in front of our kitchen is our neighbour's house so all we see from that window is green siding. What a waste! 

There are so many issues with this window:

1. The view sucks
2. It always seems like night in the kitchen because this window lets in NO light
3. Our neighbours have a window, that if you were to draw a straight line from their window through to our window, it would lead straight into our fridge. I'm pretty much always walking around in my skivvies in the morning while I'm eating breakfast or making lunch and cringe every time the fridge door light shines on me when I open it. Those guys are either going to celebrate or be very sad when I'm gone in a week... 

Kevin's mom gave us a baker's rack (fantastic gift!) that we use to store our microwave, toaster, cookbooks, etc. For the longest time, we hesitated in putting it where we wanted (in front of the window!) because we didn't want to block what very little light came through. We had it on the wall to the left of the fridge and had our kitchen table in front of this window, but it was really close to the oven this way. Last year, Kerry and her boyfriend, Aaron stayed with us. I was making them pancakes and left the room for a minute. I came back to find Aaron flipping his own pancakes...while seated at the table!! LOL At that moment, I was like, "To hell with this window!" and we moved the baker's rack to the window and the kitchen table to the wall.

While this new arrangement made things in our apartment flow a lot better, I was still very unhappy with the lack of light in our apartment. Especially because the kitchen is the first room you walk into upon entering our place. I always used to think, "Wouldn't this room be so much brighter with a sky light?" Our landlord put in pot lights when he renovated this room, but a skylight would've made so much more sense! Especially if it was one that could open to let hot air escape. We literally always have the lights on in the kitchen so a skylight would've saved a lot of electricity and if it opened, we'd be able to let the hot air escape in the summer. It feels like a furnace in here if I dare turn on the stove in the summer months. 

Since I'm a friendly tenant and chat up all my neighbours, one of our neighbours, Pam, invited me to her house one day to check on the renovations she had done. Her house is semi-detached and ours is detached, but they're mirror images of each other. Guess what she had upstairs in her tenant's kitchen? A SKY LIGHT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I couldn't believe it. It was amazing. It was so BRIGHT. She was in the middle of redoing the floors so the place wasn't looking how it normally does, but I was blown away by how much better that room looked with some natural light coming in. I took some pictures :-) They're not the best, but it'll give you some idea of what we're missing.  

This photo was taken at about 4:30pm. This room is a mirror image of our kitchen; the window to the left is the same one that I took a picture of above. See how much BRIGHTER her kitchen is? I'm so jealous. Pam says the skylight is what sold her on the house when she was buying it!


If I were the landlord, I would definitely have put in a sky light - one that can open. It would cost a bit up front, but I really think it would be a great investment.