Wednesday, October 31, 2007

New apartment

Signed the lease on my new apartment today. I'm looking forward to moving in as the new lease allows me to have one cat as a pet. There are some other advantages:

- A real kitchen. A goodish amount of counter space along with lots of storage cabinets. Now, the cabinets aren't in their best shape, but they are functional and sturdy.

- Gas stove. I prefer gas over electric because it's easier to see when a gas stove is turned on (and the burner cools off faster).

- All one one floor. The old place was spread over two floors, which meant climbing a set of steep and creaky stairs (making a racket) to get to the upper two rooms. As a result, I rarely went upstairs.

- Individual electric and gas meters. In the new place, I pay for my own heat (gas-fired boiler forces hot water along pipes in the baseboard). So I can decide how hot/cold to make the apartment. One of the places that I looked at (down in Levittown) I'd have had to deal with the other tenant(s) all the time to settle up on the water/oil bill. I much prefer to have direct control over as many utilities as possible.

- Rooms that have doors in logical places. The old apartment was a pain because of door location. It made it difficult to layout a room. As an example, my old office had doors in opposite corners, which meant that you lost a lot of wall / floor space due to having to maintain a travel path. Even though it was a 12x10 room, it felt a lot smaller. My new office (what would traditionally be the dining room) is a 14x10 room where the two doors are on the inner end of the room. So the travel path is restricted to the southern 3' of the room, leaving me with a 10x11 area for office stuff.

- A big living room. Definitely larger then my old L/R. It's probably 16x14 with a bay area that is about 24-30" deep on the front overlooking the street.

- I'm not in the city. When I look out my window, I see single-family houses and lots of trees. The nearest shops are only about 1/2 mile away though, and the grocery story is about 2 miles.

- Off-street parking (a big help).

- Hardwood floors or tile. The kitchen/bath are linoleum / tile. The hall / living room is hardwood flooring. The office / bedroom are a decent shade of medium / dark blue carpet.

- Lots of windows. And they've all been replaced so they are the dual-pane, weather proof, easy clean type. There's very little draft off of the windows here.

Things that I don't like (but can live with):

- Small bedroom. The bedroom is only about 12x10, with a 24x36 closet in one corner. I can fit a queen sized bed in there, but it's going to be cozy once I add in a few chests of drawers for clothes storage.

- Only two small closets. Fortunately, I have the option to store stuff in the (insecure) basement. We're far enough outside of town that nobody is likely to go rooting through the stuff down there. So I'm going to buy some more Nexel wire rack shelving from Global and carve myself out an area.

- Noisy heating system. As the hot water rushes through the pipes you hear that, plus you'll hear constant popping and clicking as everything expands/contracts from the temperature change. For some perverse reason, the noisiest section is in my bedroom. So I may have to create some sort of white noise generator in there (a fan, or a PC, or an actual white noise generator).

- No cell reception. Which is a common issue across most of Long Island. The cell carriers were very skimpy when building out their network here.

- Floor creaks. Some of the flooring (hall / living room) is in very good shape and is hardwood. But the kitchen floor is definitey not level, and there's a section in the office that creaks every time I walk over it.

Pictures of the kitchen:













Pictures of the office / dining room:











Pictures of the bedroom:

Labels: 2007, Apartment

posted by Wuphon's at 5:25 PM