Turn-Key
Some days you don’t want to wake to the landlord outside your bedroom window.
Newly renovated apartments look so seductively turn-key. But turn the key (note the lock is missing the base plate), and you become a test tenant in a land of drying paint and missing doorknobs.
Outlets not work? Or need to be moved four inches to accommodate the new oven … which also does not work?
Radiator leak? Faux chimney leak? Ceiling leak? Can you see into the basement around the cold water pipe?
Today’s agenda: Fix doorbell. Install permanent sink legs. Discuss options for floorboard gaps. Schedule a time for the landlord to return … tomorrow.
And yet I love this apartment, for all its daily foibles. I loved it from the moment I saw it, a wasteland of dry wall and sanded floorboards. The places you fight for, these are the places that become home. Plants nod from the windowsills, my favorite chair looks just-so in its corner, and in the spring there is room for squash and lavender on the patio.
And maybe, one day, the landlord will not be a daily visitor.
