Housing Hunting
Jul. 24th, 2005 11:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnessHere’s the long and sordid tale of my expedition to find an apartment (hopefully with embedded pictures and not lj-cut sorry. I tried embedding and cutting and it wouldn't work)
Mom and I rent a car and head for Ohio. Oddly enough the bulk to the drive will be in West Virginia. We make a pit stop at the Wheeling Island casino for breakfast and well, you know. It pours the whole way to OH. We get to the Historic Lowe Hotel in Point Pleasant WV, yes the home of the Mothman. I’ll tell you about the hotel later.
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So we go to the first place recommended at the school where we have an appt for 2 pm. The apartments are very cute and well kept but tiny. The landlord told us yes she has a place to rent we get there and her husband says no, they’re full up but he has a beautiful property near by. We ask to see it and he says ‘it’s full up too’ So why the hell did you tell us about it?
We give up here and notice that there are some really cruddy townhouses next door but we don’t bother, too cruddy. We go to the school and I do what I have to there. My fellow new teacher (she was there last year doing what I’m doing now and was transferred into a different portion of the program) says she’s living nearly 40 miles away because she can’t find anything and the secretary is offering me a dorm room because there’s no housing.
I preserver and head for Tara Town apts. Now no one can give directions in this area (nor can they drive) we eventually find these town houses circa late 60’s built on old farmland with the gorgeous old farmhouse still there. The town houses have seen better days but they aren’t bad. Princess Valium is showing me this place (I don’t know what she was on but it was something narcotic). The townhouse opens into the dining room and the kitchen is between it and the living room, which has a sliding glass door and a patio. Upstairs is two bedrooms, a bath and the tiniest closet known to man. ALL of the former tenants furniture is still here except in the dining room. Photos, glass-fronted bookcases, exercise bike, clothes, purses, suitcases. Even the soap and razor are still in the shower. Mom and I ask the same question, ‘are you sure she moved out?’ Princess Valium says she stopped paying rent a month ago (which is when this place told me 304 was available which means they have NOT come look at the property since then since Princess Valium didn’t know it looked like this)
Me and mom both asked, ‘are you sure? Maybe you should call the police. No one leaves everything when they move.’ Princess Valium says no one reported her missing. So we go back to the living room while Princess Valium is telling me all about the place. I notice the screen door is missing and the sliding glass door’s insulation has fallen out and the lock is broke. There’s a book on the couch like the girl just got up to go. Princess Valium insists on showing the kitchen. Mom opens the fridge and there’s groceries. When I see that I check out the veggies on the counter. I thought they were decoration. They were fresh and real. I said ‘ma’am she’s STILL living here.’ ‘No, she doesn’t have a key.’ I said she had one made. Princess Valium insists no one could live in a place where it’s 80 degrees inside. I actually laugh at this woman and said I did it for 3 years. She’s IN HERE. She went out that broken back door. Veggies cannot last three weeks without spoiling.
I said you need to fix that door and change the locks before I’ll take it. Princess Valium says it’s safe in this area. That’s not needed. Now I’m looking to escape. That’s when my potential next door neighbor pulls up. He has a 2X4 as a back bumper and clear plastic wadded up as the driver’s side windshield. The worst part, this is STILL the best place we’ve seen around.
We have the street addresses for the places we’re going to see the next day so since it’s late, we decide to look these places up just to see if it’s worth it. We look at the ‘great little trailer’, which was anything but. It’s up on blocks on the main road with a pea gravel yard and some of the glass is plastic mixed in with other trailers. We thought they were just selling them from that lot at first. Found the apartment complexes, which were all HUD (as is almost every apt around). We found the house that Jay had. It’s got cute old homes on that street with it (the next block is cruddy) but it’s next door to the florist shop (Jay owns it) and the Exxon station across the street. Jay’s nice enough on the phone that we decide, okay we’ll at least look tomorrow. We find the last place we have an address for and it’s way out in the country, which is no big deal, but it looks like someone took a doublewide trailer and subdivided it into threes and all the cars on the lot should NOT have been street legal. I decide against even bothering with this.
Out of desperation we grab some free ads from the Foodland and after dinner page through them and circle some to call in the morning. We return to the Lowe Hotel, which is right across the street from the Mothman statue. This has been a hotel continuously since 1901 and it’s still quite pretty though the carpet obviously hasn’t been changed since 1901 and neither has the electricity. In fact, I’m not sure HOW it didn’t burn down with a tv and a window a/c and all the lamps plugged into one old knob and tube electrical outlet. The heavy wood doors have transoms on the top and there’s SILK wallpaper on the walls, it’s that old and at one time wealthy. The beds were the old metal frame kind and it had the lovely radiators in it. There's lots of stained glass and marble. They upgraded us to a suite since it was mostly empty in the place but they gave us the key only to the living room side door. Mom cannot get this place locked up. Finally she gives up and goes in to lock it from the inside and come out the suite door. She manages to lock herself IN and can’t get out even with the key so she comes back out the other side (I’m still laughing at her) and we just leave the damn thing unlocked when we go out. At this point Mom’s like, why don’t you just see if you can live here. I’m thinking you know…it’s cute and it’s giving me story ideas and how hard it is to live in the Hyperion Hotel. Mom looks up from Stargate and asks, “Doesn’t Angel live in an old hotel like this?” Yes Mom he does. I guess if it’s good enough for a fictional vampire it’s good enough for me.
The next day we ask the hotel owners about rentals and they have some but no available ones and they suggest Boardman’s Furniture since he rents. We go to the diner first and ask more locals. They warn us away from two more HUD apartments and also suggest Boardman’s. We go there. Now we can see lots of apts above the businesses as was the wont at the turn of the last century. I’d do that, no problem. Boardman’s above the business is all boarded up. He says he’ll have an opening soon…above the store. Um you mean where the windows are all boarded up? He directs me to the copy shop next door. All this guy has to rent is a trailer on the other side of Point Pleasant and that’s too far away.
We go to meet Jay the Harley riding florist landlord (Um talk about the mixed signals). Jay’s cute, didn’t even mind the potbelly. Jay’s very nice. He bought this house with all the furniture in it and I can have it all if I want it. The house is circa 1900-1910. It has a big front porch and a little grass but it’s right on the road otherwise. The living room is nice with a fireplace. The main bedroom has a window onto the porch and one looking at the florist shop parking lot. It needs to be said that the windows are ancient and about 6 feet high. This bedroom only has a narrow closet (from a time when wardrobes were used only) and opens into the other bedroom which overlooks the dumpster. Gack. This bedroom opens into the bathroom (all the bedrooms are furnished at this point) Claw foot tub…no shower and a toilet that’s falling in and a sink that’s probably original. Seriously, he should have spent a few bucks (yes he did huge amounts of labor taking up ancient rugs and wallpaper and opening painted shut windows but damn, spend a few hundred and replace a sink that nauseates people looking at it).
It had a huge closet here with a vanity inside it. The dining room is off one bedroom and the living room. The only heat is the gas furnace in the floor between the living and dining rooms (used to be an old coal furnace. He didn’t say so but I know so) There’s a huge dining set in here and a window a/c (he’ll put in another). The kitchen has an old electric stove in decent shape and an old farmer’s sink and counter top that also really needed fixing or reporcelaining or something. It was bad. There was a pantry off of this and a mud room with a back door. Somewhere was a hand dug cellar as well.
I like Jay. The house has problems but I’m considering it. My fear is the electricity couldn’t handle the computer and the a/c at the same time and the on street parking put me off. Jay’s like take your time look around call me back.
So…we go to Jackson Estates, townhouses that were next to the first place that screwed me over and the cruddy townhouses. These townhouses look okay. The office isn’t marked anywhere so we go in and poke our heads into an open room. The insides suck compared to the outside and these people have a handwritten sign on the door, ‘the hallway isn’t an ashtray.’ We still go to find the office but the person showing the place isn’t there and I decide this is so obviously HUD that we just go.
We find the trailer we set up an appt with. The landlady is about 100 years old with a husband who has been paralyzed for 50 years. Sweet old lady and the trailer is on a nice lot close to the school. Unfortunately scumbags lived in it. They broke the door. They broke EVERY window, tearing some out of the frames, the cupboards are ripped open and this poor old woman is trying to fix this up because the only other person who wants it is such scum she doesn’t want to rent to him. The other scums stuck her for months worth of rent and so much damage she ought to burn the place down. If I were handier I might have said yes (it was all gas and since she pumps her own it was free!) but as it was it’s not livable…at least not by me. I felt so sorry for her.
We go to look for the last 2 bedroom apartment near Jackson, about 20 miles northwest of the school. We can’t find the township road but we are in Jackson. We ask for directions at a gas station to the apple farm this apartment is on but no one knows. They tell me to go two blocks down and there’s apts there and some on top of the hill behind the gas station. The apts down the road are HUD and we go behind the gas station and it’s a damn cemetery. We go into it anyhow (no outlet so we have to to get turned around) We SEE the apts but can’t get to them. We go out and take the first road to the left to go back up the hill. This time we’re east of the apts with no way over.
We give up and head back to tell either Tara Towns that I’ll take the townhouse with the squatter or the person who murdered the other resident living there….or tell Jay I want the house. As we’re debating this heading back to Rio Grande I spot the damn apple farm. We whip off the highway and over the hill next to the interstate are these new apts. They’re not much to look at from the outside but the people are friendly and the cars are decent. They’re only one year old. It has a front deck and a back porch. The living room is nice and the kitchen is kick ass in comparison to everything else (no other place had a nice kitchen and I have to have a kitchen). We tell them yes even if it is expensive for the area (485, yes I know that’s cheap for anywhere else but here that’s a fortune and electricity will run me about 100 for the heat pump/a/c).
There is something strange here. NO LEASE. In one way that’s good because if I take another job in May I can just leave. On the other hand I can get kicked out at any time (time to keep in touch with Jay). What I didn’t like is the person who rented the place before me was thrown up because the landlord didn’t like that he wasn’t clean. I don’t know if there were complaints but it sounds like the landlord just walks in every so often. I’m Ms Clutter. This could be a problem. Then again if he starts walking in on me, he’ll find out a little about renter’s rights (and I’ll be living in that dorm) They already gave me the key to the place.
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Date: 2005-07-25 04:22 am (UTC)So, I was right about your typical luck in housing, huh? And the Valium Princess and the missing tenant...whew. That sounds like a story that could be used somewhere or other.
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Date: 2005-07-25 04:23 am (UTC)and yes, the missing/squatting tenant is a story waiting to happen...in the curiousity shoppe
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Date: 2005-07-25 04:31 am (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2005-07-26 02:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-26 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-26 06:21 pm (UTC)You know, Bryan (of Melissa and...) would be so thrilled. He loves that show. I just loved Bill Bixby.
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Date: 2005-07-26 06:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-26 06:43 pm (UTC)Of course, that's just me, y'know.
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Date: 2005-07-26 06:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-26 06:57 pm (UTC)Go check out my recent post. Do it, do it.
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Date: 2005-07-26 07:04 pm (UTC)Oddly I loved Quincy which is so inaccurate it's not funny and yet I won't cut Crossing Jordan half that slack.
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Date: 2005-07-26 07:06 pm (UTC)Yeah, I knew you'd find that highly amusing, that Quincy verses current stuff commentary (it is just vaguely in the review but struck me as very funny).
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Date: 2005-07-26 07:10 pm (UTC)Like I said we were I don't know less sophisticated then or more willing to be mindlessly entertained and didn't demand so much accuracy
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Date: 2005-07-27 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-27 02:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-07-25 07:02 am (UTC)I was thinking the same thing when I read it!!!!
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Date: 2005-07-25 01:53 pm (UTC)no subject
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