Sui Generis

Kelly and I have been working on our new apartment for about 5 weeks now. Actually we only work on the weekends and have been working a total of 8 days all together. The place needs a lot of work.  In the Kitchen the stove was covered in grease and black charcoal and only one of the burners worked. The walls were equally bathed in grease and spaghetti sauce which Kelly spent 4 hours cleaning off. The sink was rusty and very dirty. Yuk. There was dirt in side the sink and the base cabinets. The flooring had mold and water underneath it. A bunch of food participles were found in the cracks along with a coupon from 1971. The coupon read, "Now you can save 5 whole cents!" I don't even know what it was talking about, but it looked good.  The wall cabinets were made out of tin something I hadn't seen before and they had plastic to cover them inside. The plastic was moldy too. Gross.. But they were in far better condition than the refrigerator. That poor refrigerator looked as though it had been a P.O.W. from Vietnam. It was so mistreated and dirty that even the ants formed a conveyer line going around it, probably for health reasons. Okay maybe the fridge wasn't that bad but it was still really gross. Once I took off the wall cabinets it was obvious that many mistakes had taken place in the installing process. There were a lot of holes in the wall and no paint at all. The refrigerator itself had a left a mark on the wall some how.. we didn't even know that was possible. 

When we began sanding the window sills I found that the frames had been poorly installed. There were spaces between the wall and the windows which were filled with paper and small pieces of wood to compensate for the mistake. This spacing allowed moisture to enter in and riot the wood. I learned about window frames in California since I work there for the summer in a neighborhood construction site. 

When we moved into the bathroom to our horror there was toilet there. I mean, it would have been better if there wasn't one. The toilet seem to have rusted on the wall some how and when I tried to unscrew one of the bolts on the toilet seat, the bolt burst because it was so rusted due to the urine.

  The bathroom sink was rusted as well and the faucet had this green sulfur like substance (probably called calcium) on it that made the handles hard to turn. The shower had mold coming through walls and it didn't even have a shower-head. All it had was an expansion hose that reached to the top and made it look like a shower-head. 

My favorite part was when I turn the faucet in the kitchen I heard the shower turn on. I thought that maybe once we were married we would have to have a string tied to the kitchen faucet and have to pull it every time we wanted to take a shower. 

But we can understand that the apartment had all these problems because it was over 50 years old. The previous renters just hadn't put too much care into the place. 

Outside the apartment was a different story. The view was absolutely amazing because the house was right next to the bluff-trial on the side of the mountain. There was also a big yard with several beautiful trees and flowers that you easily could have a picnic anywhere and enjoy it. The drive-way is not concrete but gravel adding to its beauty. 

Needless to say, though the apartment had a handful of issues to fix, Kelly and I are very thankful to the Lord for providing this wonderful place for us. 

 

We began to work on apartment every opportunity we had.