green eyed

[brightbluegirl]

I am SO jealous of our next door neighbours new apartment!

It's in the same building (i.e. ours), but it's on the 3rd floor, faces AWAY from the busy street, has 2 SKYLIGHTS and a HIGH CEILING in the living room, a bathroom that's twice as large as ours, and an awesome little storage room that could fit a LOT of stuff. Including their new deep freeze, which I'm also jealous of (but which they insist they'll never be able to fill, so they said we can use it too - the best of both worlds!), which they bought from the previous guy to live there, along with a queen mattress, for $60.


Ah well.


I'm just going to have to make the best of an already pretty good situation, you know? I'm thrilled to be living where we are, it's just not perfect, which ought to help us stay motivated to do what we really want to do... I guess?

Anyway, I still love our apartment. We don't really use the patio, though, since it doesn't feel private, looking out on the street as it does.

Things that would make me love our apartment more:

• Screens on the little windows


• A screen on the patio door (but that would cost something like $100!)


• New bathroom floor tiles


• A new light (possibly with built in fan) for the dining room


• Some sort of privacy screening on the patio (like maybe garden lattice or something? But I don't know if that's allowed, I'll have to talk to the super... mind you, I could just do it, that way she can't say no...)


• Chairs and a table for the patio!

These all cost money, though. I pretty much wrote them in the order of importance, I think. We'll have to talk about it when he gets home...

Comments

[malaka.livejournal.com]

Maybe the landlord will put screens on patio door and windows? I'd ask about hanging any kind of screen/lattice outside, it would suck to spend the money and then be told that you can't do that.

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

Screens are not something landlords take care of in Vancouver, oddly. We had to pay to get screens put in our old place, too.

I mean, hell, this building's owner wouldn't authorize new tiles on the bathroom floor even though there is a missing spot bigger than my hand just when you walk in the door!

I think I am going to ask about putting lattice up - however, if she says no, what I think I'd like to do is buy a stand alone privacy screen, that can be put up and taken down, you know? So that we can put it up when we open the curtains, or when we go out there, and then take it down at night. They can't tell us not to do that...

[malaka.livejournal.com]

geez, that's weird. The tiles in the bathroom should be relatively cheap to replace.

you could do a rolling screen, like one of these:



And roll it up when you're not using it (where it can't be seen from the street?)

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

I like that idea... unfortunately, the patio has nothing we could attach that to, on the outside edge of the patio (um, this isn't making sense, I'll show you a picture when I get home), because those will need a wall/ceiling, so it still wouldn't allow us the full use of the patio.

But, if we made or bought something like this:



We could put that right out at the edge of the patio, and feel a bit more private...

[pennycuts.livejournal.com]

I like THIS idea alot.. its cute and you can even get some kinda oriental one and do a little oriental theme on your patio??

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

Yes, I thought of that too! Wouldn't that be cute!

If we're allowed to put something semi permanent up, we could still do something like this, but something with lattice (whether oriental style or no), and then I can get a bunch of climbing plants too... I would really feel we were using our patio then!

[pennycuts.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah that sounds great!
Does anyone else have any stuff up?

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

I don't think so... I'm going to look more carefully when we go home tonight. If I can, I'll sneak a few pics later!

[pennycuts.livejournal.com]

yay good idea!

[loesaurus.livejournal.com]

Do you have a reclamation/lumberyard bargain barn type place near you?
The reason I ask is that a couple of packages of hinges and a couple of secondhand sets of folding closet doors and some paint/stain and you can have a great and inexpensive privacy screen!

[estrojenn.livejournal.com]

in chinatown (here in toronto) they have cool stand alone screens made of bamboo. they arent very expensive (a really big one was 20 bucks...i almost bought it because of the price!)

also, we have a building supply store down the street that always has super-cheap tile on sale. we bought some for our kitchen at it was 1/4 of the price of the other tile and it was just as nice.

do you guys have freecycle in vancouver? im on the list for toronto freecycle and if you post stuff like what you are looking for (screens etc.) there may be tonnes of people with stuff to give you for free! check out freecycle on yahoo.ca...

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

ohhh freecycle is BAD here. We were on it for a while, and it was extremely heavy drama, and lots of "rules" for getting stuff - you had to have a sob story, you had to 'prove' you didn't have money, people offering broken/dirty shit I wouldn't give to the salvation army, etc etc etc. Very bad vibes. Thanks for the idea though!

Oh, we are DEFINITELY going to retile our bathroom, I've been eyeing some cheap tiles at the local home depot.

And thank you SO much for the mention of chinatown. I am definitely going to take a look there for screens.

[estrojenn.livejournal.com]

huh...there is some freecycle drama in toronto, but not much really. and loads of awesome stuff that gets exchanged. but, we also have another off-shoot group call freeTOrecycle which is less rule heavy. i mostly just give stuff away, but im sure stuff will pop up that we would need and im hoping because i have given so much stuff away i'd be up to get some stuff.

[zaftigvegan.livejournal.com]

i agree about the drama, though it has calmed down a LOT in the last few months. but i've gotten lots of great stuff through freecycle, as you know, and i've never had to post a sob story for it either!

that sucks that you've had such bad experiences. i can keep my eyes open on the list for anything you're looking for, though.

[freakykitten.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you haven't had to go through what we went through! I do know you've gotten some great stuff, like your table, and stuff, hurrah! I'm really glad it's not useless to all, nowadays.

Right now we're pretty good, and I will let you know if there's anything we need in future...