Vikytickytembo's Profile

As a New Yorker currently looking for a new apartment: I kind of hate both sides in this article. When I first moved into my studio apartment, my rent was $1700. I like the area, I like the unit, and I haven't had any reason to move. Every year, my landlord has jacked the rent up, while refusing to do any upkeep to the apartment beyond painting.

(Well, no, I did come home one day to find that they had pulled down the perfectly functional wooden fence in my small back garden and replaced it with a chain-link and vinyl one, and in the process razed all of my flowerbeds (about $400 worth of plants). And of course they installed it incorrectly and it has since fallen over and cracked all of the concrete of the patio, and is now supported entirely by planks of wood screwed into the side of the building. And they did fix my air conditioner. By installing a new one. And not removing the old one. Twice. So I have two permanent non-working air conditioners in my wall. Like modern art! And they did replace that chunk of my ceiling where my upstairs neighbor's pipes burst and the water from her toilet poured through...after I threaten to take them to court because they were originally going to just paint over the water damage.)

The result is, if I had signed another year's lease, I would be paying $2400 (an amount that would afford me a 2 bedroom), while the identical until next door would pay $1800 because he's only been here a year. Also, mine is the only until in the building without a dishwasher, because they'll only work on kitchens after a tenant moves, but! I do get the added bonus of one of my kitchen cabinets slowly turning to sawdust a little more each day because the previous tenant set it on fire, and silly me, I thought they'd fix that when I made a note of it, but no: they WILL NOT touch that kitchen.

This ended up being incredibly long, but my point is: I don't understand why my landlord wouldn't rather keep a quiet tenant who always pays on time, and would rather price me out of the place, and then put it back on street easy for $1700 and start over with an unknown tenant, who they will proceed to do the same thing to.

I'm surprised at myself, but I really like this after. And I found the before so hideous I can't even picture it as a usable piece of furniture. My gut reaction to the before is honestly not even "maybe some paint could help", but "let's just set fire to that", so I applaud Liza for even seeing something in this piece. And I personally see it in her after: the details look fresh to me now, and the whole thing seems lighter. I'm particularly surprised that I like the high gloss, because it usually turns me off, but I think a flat paint would have pushed this too far into shabby chic territory. I'd like to see what it would look like with metal knobs on the drawers, but I also don't mind them painted: they echo the feet.