Tuesday, March 20, 2012

The Beauty of Renting

We live in a big city in a rented apartment. We do this by choice having spent years weighing the pros and cons of renting vs. owning a home. Not everyone understands our decision, but after calculating the costs of home ownership we figure we come out ahead in the long run and we like our apartment and we love our neighbourhood.

This week we experienced one of the great benefits of renting – a fully renovated bathroom without us having to talk to any contractors or spend any money. Before we went away on vacation we suggested it would be a good time to gut our bathroom and now we have a brand new bathroom as well as a fully painted hall and bedroom closet. Sure we had to live through a few days of disarray and drywall dust, but relatively speaking that isn’t much to put up with.


Before



After



Only those who have lived at The Americana with a brown, yellow, turquoise, pink or even multi-coloured bathroom can appreciate the beauty of an all-white bathroom. We love our white tile, white sink, white bathtub and white toilet. Of course, they did leave us with the brown toilet paper holder as a reminder of the décor that once was.

5 comments:

  1. VERY nice!!!!! I never questioned where you live - just so you know. Totally respect your choice! Although it would be great if you lived in Niagara Falls - I would like that better - but whether you rent or own - your call.
    Love the new bathroom!
    Our place has changed a lot since you were last here - but we have to deal with cost, contractors, and Layne doing some of the work while I place games on Face book - so it's rough. *sigh*

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  2. It must be rough for you when your Facebok time gets crowded out. You should go on vacation and let the renovation magic happen in your absence. It is a wonderful strategy.

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  3. You also get a white bathroom when the ceiling falls in. But I digress -- very nice of them to do this for you while you were out of the apartment!

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  4. Kim - You will appreciate one other part of our reno story.

    When we returned from our vacation at 2:30 am on Sunday morning there was a note on our toilet that said "do not sit on the toilet for 48 hours". There was no indication of when the 48 hours started and stopped.

    Thankfully, the last tenant of apartment 704 turned out to be a bit of a nut job and pulled a midnight move last month. We were very happy to be able to use your old bathroom. It is wierd to walk into 704 and see that you aren't there.

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  5. What happens if you like the brown better? Ha! Only kidding... I have a story about renovations. When my son was in kindergarten we put in a kitchen expansion, with a new kitchen, replaced the roof and siding of the house and did a couple of other littler things. One day I brought my son home from school and he saw that they had started ripping off the GREEN plastic siding on the house. He was in Hysterics!! He kept crying and yelling "Nobody consulted me!! I LIKED that GREEN siding, who said you could rip it off!!!!" We sat down when he was calmer and patiently explained that he was NOT in fact the third adult in our relationship and that when he got a job he could buy a house and plaster it will all the green siding he could afford.

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