I worked hard on the apartment to make it liveable. The fridge was dead and the stove wasn’t working so I called a scrap dealer to take them away. A friend bought me a vintage stove for a housewarming present. I bought a terrible $ 30.00 woodgrain bar fridge, which I promptly painted. Even though the landlord was legally obligated to provide appliances, I had little faith in what he would do.
I fixed the holes in the plaster, and painted every single room, including the trim. I painted the kitchen cabinets, bought new knobs at Dollarama, and painted the stained countertops. I attempted to scrape off the offensive popcorn ceiling, too, but it wouldn’t budge. The vintage VC tiles were filthy. I washed and stripped them, and scraped off as much of the 60 years of paint spatter as I could. While I couldn’t enlarge the apartment, at least I could make it look better. The apartment felt less appalling with fresh paint and a clean floor. I could kind of deal with a retro apartment.
Meanwhile, the renovations happening in the salon started close to 7 a.m., and sometimes involved a jackhammer and other extremely loud tools. There was also a shouty dude, who did most of his shouting at the start time. This went on for MONTHS.
I wondered if I should stay in Toronto ? There was a four year program I was sort of interested in, but did not apply to. Even if my rent was frozen (extremely unlikely) I would pay $ 72,000.00 in rent alone. I hated considering this.
The kitchen and bathroom both had baby blue ceramic tiles, probably from the 50’s. The cabinets had been replaced with garbage melamine ones, probably early 80’s Ikea. Whoever made the cabinets didn’t put shelves in half of them, so I had to use milk crates to keep my pots and pans organized. For $ 1500.00/month, this is what you get !
Black Picket Fence 