Xanadu

I've received several requests to post pictures of my house and to post something in my blog. I know it's been weeks, but I've been really busy.

That's not an exaggeration. Up until I found my apartment I would leave work, go to the apartment broker and look at apartments until 8 or 9 at night. After I found my apartment, I would go home, clean, put IKEA furniture together or paint. I usually did this until 10 or 11 and then crash.

Saturday was my last painting day. There are a few areas that need to be touched up (painters tape never works as advertised). And I need to hang some curtains and buy a sofa. But for the most part, the big stuff is done.

My apartment is perfect for me. I really really love it. It's a railroad style apartment. This means that all of the rooms are in a straight line and connected to one another. The only down side to this is the bathroom is in my bedroom. So when I have guests, they'll have to come into my room to take those midnight pee breaks.

The place is about 4 blocks to the Broadway stop in Queens. I either live in Long Island City or Astoria. It depends on the utility. According to Time Warner cable I live in Long Island City. The electric company isn't sure if it's Astoria or not. It's very strange.

The rooms aren't gigantic but they're larger than what you'll find in Manhattan. In fact, if I were to live in Manhattan I would get a place slightly larger (but not much) than my living room. The rooms are about 10 - 11 feet wide and 10 - 13 feet long, with 10' ceilings.

I really like the exposed brick walls in the kitchen and living room. The kitchen and bathrooms were renovated 4 years ago, so they have nice tile and new fixtures. The apartment is in really good shape. I've seen a lot of places over the past two months and am pretty lucky to be in this one. The building itself is very quiet. Most of the people that live here are older (40 and above) professionals. So I rarely, if ever, hear anything.

When I first moved into the place it was trashed. The previous tenant left a bunch of trash behind (a really nasty rice cooker and toaster oven, some clothes, food, etc.). She was also obsessed with hooks, nails and shelving units. So there were a billion holes in each wall. Plus there was a really tacky track lighting system that was affixed with some sort of peel off glue thing. The lighting went halfway down the wall and had this big honker of an electrical plug dangling.

After seeing this mess and hearing the words (this place is uninhabitable come from the lips of Shawn - as relayed by his boyfriend Mason) I called the landlord and complained the following Monday. I told him he needed to fix the holes and paint. Or he could pay me to do it. He was apologetic and explained the super told him the apt. was fine. He asked what I wanted to happen. I told him I wanted to paint so I could choose my own colors. He was fine with that and cut me a check and put it in the mail.

I spent a week, taping, painting and all that fun stuff. It sucked at times but the results are pretty decent. The only crappy part was having to buy paint supplies and gallons of paint, then walking a few blocks to the subway, getting on the subway and then walking a few blocks to my apartment! But I managed. :-)

The colors all turned out well. Shawn helped me choose the colors. The only hiccup was I asked for Newport Blue for my bedroom. When the guy gave me the paint can, the paint dot on the top of the can looked green. At the time I chalked it up to being wet paint.

However, when I painted my room it was obvious that this was Sea Foam Green and NOT Newport Blue. But I like the color anyway. It's pretty.

Now I have a lot more free time and I'll blog more often. I have a lot of funny stories to relate.

Here are the pix....