Sunday, June 14, 2009

The what?

Approximately every ten minutes, a broker comes by to show the apartment. This has made me regret my plans to work at home, where all my books are, and where I can make lunch without having to leave and go fetch it, blah blah. It's necessary but yes, kind of annoying - while I'm happy to answer questions along the lines of if there've been any major problems, just because I happen to be home doesn't mean I've prepared a 15-minute monologue about my emotions towards this apartment over the past two years. Is the place small for two people? Um, yes, obviously, but the place we'll head to next will in all likelihood be smaller. Is the fire escape a balcony? This could certainly give brokers ideas, but no, it's not. And yes, the bathroom is huge in proportion to the rest of the apartment, but I've never figured out whether that's supposed to be a selling point. In what's either good news in terms of our fall apartment search or just plain evil, the visitors have informed us just how much lower the rent they'll have to pay is than what we'd spent the last year, even the previous one. Gar.

Anyhow. A broker just came by and told a potential renter about the dishwasher in the kitchen. The dishwasher. In the kitchen. So I was like, the what? Apparently the apartment downstairs is identical in every way, except that it has a dishwasher under the sink, so the broker had just assumed... (No news on whether one's being installed, but we're moving either way, and if they do decide to install one, I don't want to know.) Armed with that information, the woman looking at the apartment quickly apologized for interrupting my lunch and ducked out, allowing me to do the dishes from lunch in some semblance of peace.

6 comments:

Matt said...

yes, the bathroom is huge in proportion to the rest of the apartment, but I've never figured out whether that's supposed to be a selling point.

I had a studio for a while with a very big bathroom. The bigness was mostly long-ness, but it was big. I always wished there was a way to transfer some of the space into my tiny kitchen, or at least make use of the space, but no, a big bathroom, while nice, is only of limited use and often seem mocking in an otherwise small apartment.

PG said...

A big bathroom is an upside when the apartment is shared, though.

Matt said...

I'm sure that's true. (My current bathroom certainly can be occupied by two people only with great inconvenience), though the particular one I had that was so much wasted space was mostly long- a sort of long hallway leading to tub, toilet, and sink, all crowded down on one end, so even the large total square footage wasn't much use. It was the result of a less-than-ideal cutting up of a house into apartments.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

The bathroom isn't big in a 10-people-can-brush-their-teeth-at-once sort of way, but in a let's-store-the-towels-here-and-not-in-a-closet one. As in, it's neither good nor bad. But everything must be presented as a selling point. Including the exposed brick, which has a way of shedding thick dust over everything, but which looks sort of quaint.

Anonymous said...

I spent much of a recent weekend morning on my knees, winkling the plastic cover off the sump in our dishwasher and scooping out the glunge which had accumulated there so the pump could get the water out. AND it leaves little black specks on cereal bowls.
The comparison between the real dishwasher you ultimately get and the Platonic ideal dishwasher of your dreams will be jarring for you. dave.s.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

No. I had a crappy but (mostly) functional dishwasher in my previous apt., and can safely say a crappy one's infinitely better than none at all.