pukeko's Profile

The SF rental market is such a bear that I've decided to stay put in my place for another year. It's tiny and in the East Bay, but it's cheap and I don't have to make the rounds of open houses where I'm one of 30 jockeying for the place -- done it twice before, loathe to do it once more. Maybe the SF market will settle down again (a girl can dream).

The times I was successful, I had a rental resume and a pet resume and after many disappointments, I started skipping the apartments with cattle call open houses.

After living in New Zealand for 5 years, I'm happy to be back in clean, green California! No more uninsulated houses with no central heating. And there's nothing like windowscreens so you don't need to shield your food indoors with netting. (I did love the switches at the outlets, though - I only wish they had had more than one powerpoint per room!)

I ordered the square pouf online and was pleasantly surprised when it arrived. While it's not heirloom quality, it is sturdy for the price ($79) and looks great in my studio.

Where pets aren't allowed. Where you can't walk to anything. Everything else is negotiable, although apartments with those terrible early-eighties off-white melamine kitchen cabinets, aluminum-frame windows, vertical blinds and god-awful mushroom/taupe/pinkish colored carpet get shuffled to the bottom of the list.

I really like the bathroom as it is now. Ditch the shutters and replace the pebbled glass tub enclosure with something a little sleeker and simpler and I think you're good to go.

With old, water-hog toilets, can't you just put a couple of bricks or something in the tank to reduce the water used with each flush? I think I've seen that done before.

I guess I'm in the minority here in that I love a high-ish bed. My current bed is about a foot higher than your standard mattress boxspring, and with heaps of bedding, much of it involving goosedown and flannel, it makes going to bed feel like an event. So cozy!

I read the website. It's some truth mixed with a not insubstantial amount of horse crap and marketing spin. I live in New Zealand. I have never heard them called paihamu here, it made me laugh. I guess it's harder to charge $2,800 for a possum blanket -- it probably would be impossible to do if your potential customers saw the species as roadkill.

Argh! Flashback to milk crate furniture in college.

I think sealing the gaps on the stairs is going to give you the biggest improvement. I'm not so big on the grey in stairways or corridors - too much potential to look dingy and low rent despite your best intentions. I like the idea of the Flor tiles, esp. the bluish ones.

OK, I'm going to swim against the tide on this one. I love it. My dog would never sleep in it (he's way too big and he likes spreading out flat on the floor), but I love it. Maybe better for a cat?