If I Were The Landlord Series - Part 1

This series of posts is going to be a total bitch-fest for me. Several things in this apartment have bothered me during our 2 year stay here. I want to use this series to talk (re: bitch) about them, but also give suggestions of how I would change them. Feel free to give your input! I would love to hear other people's suggestions :-)

Let me start by saying that our apartment is a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom, detached 1920's house in Toronto that has been split into 2 units. The second floor (where Kevin and I live) has 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, an eat-in kitchen and a living room. The wall-to-wall measurements equal 500sq ft. And we have 9 foot ceilings in each room except the living room (8 foot).

This is our refrigerator. It looks skinny in this photo, but it's a standard size. This "nook" that houses our refrigerator used to be a closet because our kitchen was a bedroom before the house was converted into 2 units. 

If you're thinking, "That awkward empty spot beside the fridge (that is in desperate need of a storage solution) looks awfully familiar..." it might be because you read this at Young House Love. 

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Imagine their stackable washer/dryer are my refrigerator. This is exactly the kind of storage I would've added if I were the landlord of this house. Some time last year, I even checked Craigslist for some upper cabinets (you can always find them for cheap from people who are renovating their kitchen and want to get rid of their old cabinetry), but I didn't want to spend the money or time working on a project that I couldn't take with me. I considered asking my landlord to foot the bill and I would have done the work, but I don't have enough tools to make this from scratch.


Don't you think Sherry and John's storage solution would've worked so well in my space? What would you have done if you were me? As is stands, we didn't make use of the space at all and just kind of stacked items on top of the fridge and in the space between the fridge and the wall. 

My Ass Has A Name...

And it knows how to spell it!

My friend, Kim, and I went to a screening of The Help last night. Go see it! I read the book and it's awesome. I biked to the theatre downtown and sent her this text when I got there: 

"I rode my bike. I'm here. Coming up to the theatre now"

Then I put the phone in my pocket and my butt texted: 

"Ass"

WTF?!! LOLOLOL

It's like it was feeling neglected and wanted to remind me it was there. In all seriousness, this is probably a case of autocorrect fixing "Aaa", but nonetheless, I laughed my spelling-bee-champ of an ass off when I read it :-)

Almost all asses know how to dial, but does yours know how to text??

How I Doubled My Counter Space in a Rental

My apartment has 24 inches/60 cm of usable counter space for food prep. Pathetic! I don't know how I didn't notice the lack of kitchen storage and lack of counter space when we came for a viewing...

When we first moved in, I wanted to get a counter height kitchen table, which would have doubled as extra counter space. I scoured Craigslist for one, but the best value and best designed one I found was the UTBY table from Ikea. 

Kevin was not into that idea at all. He wanted a more traditional table (re: 30inches high or so with regular height chairs) so my UTBY table was scrapped. We ended up with a "regular" four person solid wood espresso table that we NEVER use... am I bitter I didn't get my UTBY? Just a bit!!

Anyways....

I still needed extra counter space, and one day I noticed that my baking sheet rests perfectly in our single sink and my cutting board rests perfectly in my baking sheet. It doesn't make for the most stable surface (re: don't use it for cutting hard vegetables!), but it added about an extra foot of space. I mostly just used it to rest food on.

I also bought the NORBO wall-mounted drop-leaf table from Craigslist for $10 and added that to the end of the counter.

 

It's a little deeper than my counter, so I asked my Dad to cut it to size. Ultimately, we ended up just leaving it as is - this way we can bring it to the condo with us and use it there as a laundry folding surface or something. The one I bought came in black-brown, but it's no longer listed on the Canadian Ikea website.

With the baking tray/cutting board and the folding table extended, my total counter space adds up to 66in/167cm...that's 42in/106cm more than I had before! 

And it's all easily removable :-)

When we move, we'll have to fill in a couple holes at the side of the counter, but that's easy to do. I admit it's not the most elegant looking solution, but it's pretty functional, can fold away out of site, and I can take it with me! That's the most important part when it comes to rentals: Don't spend money on items you can't take with you.

Do you have any creative ways to add counter space? Or do you already have huge counters? In which case I'm jealous!

Bargoon Hunting

I saw an advertisement in the Toronto Star for a store-closing sale at BB Bargoons on Keele (just north of highway 7). I work not too far from there and knew I'd have my sister's car that week, so I stopped in on Tuesday to check it out. 

Going in that store bummed me out that the condo isn't going to be ready for at least another year because the fabric prices were phenomenal. If I knew my future window dimensions, I would've bought fabric for curtains. But I got over it because I love buying home goods! I'm addicted, actually. I picked up this glass apple that I'll use for candy, which will make it my candy apple :-) Yes, I'm lame like that.

  

I picked it up for $14.50 and the original price was $34.99.

 

I also saw this mirror. I loved the design and was immediately drawn to it. There were 2 of them. No price tag - of course not! Sigh.

There was a smaller apple green-framed green mirror beside it - Regular price $119, sale price $79. With the 50% off, the apple green mirrors were $39.50 each.

I left my camera at home that day, so please bear with my MacGyver-ed version I made in Paint. I liked the shape of this green mirror, but not the colour and I knew taping off circles so I could spray paint would be a pain in the ass. I was mostly just looking at it so I could estimate the price of the black mirror - it was definitely going to cost more. I brought one of the black mirrors up to the register so the cashier could check the price. She told me to walk around the store and come back in a few minutes because she had to manually look it up in the system. I was hoping it would be less than $100, then reduced by 50% making it $50, but it seemed unlikely based on the price of the smaller green mirror. When I got back to the register a few minutes later, the woman told me it was $59...plus 50% off!!!!

YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!

I may or may not have jumped in the air with excitement like this girl, and then ran across the store to get the other one :-) Each mirror ended up being $29.50 each and I could not have been more happy with my purchase. I'm pretty sure Kevin was impressed with my deal... okay, maybe "impressed" isn't the right word, but he was at least satisfied!

As we're moving at the end of this month, I won't be hanging these up in our apartment, but maybe they'll make an appearance in my new place. We'll see!

Realtor Photos

My landlord's realtor came by this evening to take pictures of our apartment. I rushed home to do some quick cleaning up before he came because Kevin said he couldn't find his August metropass and tore the apartment apart this morning looking for it. I thought he was kidding - he was not. It literally looked like we'd been robbed when I came home. Like the apartment had been RANSACKED! If I hadn't been in such a rush to clean it up before the realtor arrived I would've taken a picture.

This isn't our place, but if you replace the baby toys with flyers and clothes it's pretty close to how it looked when I got home!

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I had planned  to use this opportunity to take pictures of the apartment too... but then I asked the realtor if I could see his pictures (because he had a very fancy lens on his very expensive camera) and they were waaaay better than any pictures I would've taken! His lens was super wide so he could practically get the whole room in one shot. I asked him if he could send them to me - he (begrudgingly) took my email address, so I'll share those once I get them.


Also, the Realtor tried to tell me our apartment is 650 square feet - Ha! Yeeeeah RIGHT! I've measured the unit, room-by-room, wall-to-wall and it came out at 504 square feet. That's including non-usable space like where the counters are, the stairs, closets, etc. He said square footage is calculated by measuring the maximum length by the maximum width of the dwelling. Is that true? If it is, that sucks!