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September 25, 2006

Yippee!

How to make this long story short?

We got news about 10 days ago that the rent on our teensy-weensy-itty-bitty apartment would go up almost 20%. The first call I made was to our condo broker. Please give us a realistic expectation of closing, because if it's still 3 months away, we might move. She said we could reasonably expect to close before the end of the year.

My second call was to our apartment broker, whose ears I filled with a general thrashing of expletives. A waste of enery as she apparently had a list a mile long of people who want our matchbox apartment. At first, we decided to extend two months to mid-December. Then, I got clever. I called a broker that we had met while condo shopping, and asked if she had any finished-but-as-yet-unsold inventory. Sure enough, she did. We came close to doing a deal to move, then discovered that we can get back all of the occupancy tax we have paid on our apartment (apartments with leases for less than 6 months are like hotels) if we stay put until November 8. I called the apartment broker back and said we would extend only 1 months instead of 2. She flipped (apparently the mile-long list had shortened in just a few dozen hours).

Meanwhile, several weeks ago we had gone to our condo to take some measurements. We are shopping for a sofa and thought we had found the perfect one. When we laid out the measurements on paper, the walls didn't join up. And the couch wound up in the kitchen.

Having decided to extend our lease to Nov 8, I called the condo broker back and asked to take some better measurements. We went on Saturday afternoon after yoga.

This was the first time we entered the building through the lobby, not through the service entrance on 20th Street. And the new elevators were in and operational. We got to the entrance to our condo, and expected to see little progress. My chin hit the floor. The newly installed hardwood floor, that is. HUGE progress. All the trim, the crown moulding, and doors were in. The tile was down in the two bathrooms. The sinks, vantities, toilets and fixtures were all in. The kitchen cabinets were all in. The hood vent was installed and the dishwasher was shrinkwrapped waiting to be installed. The granite counter in the kitchen was on.

I was dumbfounded! I couldn't believe that they had made this much progress! With the creeping delays in construction, we had begun to expect further delays. But when we saw the apartment, we realized that it is very close to being finished.

My heart raced. I was excited.

We took our more accurate measurements, and laid them out again. This time, the walls joined. But our chosen sofa was still half in the kitchen. The couch was just not going to fit.

Off we went to the store, and luck would have it that they will make a smaller version for us! Having now confirmed that it will fit nicely in our plan, I will head back to the store today, and order it. 8-10 weeks they say. That puts it right around Christmas. Perfect.

Now, we have to manage our way through our temporary living arrangements.

Oh, I didn't tell you the other part. We bought a 40" Samsung flat-screen high-definition TV and a blu ray DVD player. Anything to make the matchbox feel a little more like home!

Posted by dave at September 25, 2006 10:11 AM

Comments

Posted by: JoÅnne Mulligan at September 29, 2006 09:58 PM