You wanted to see where I reside, well, here you go!

So…I needed a place to live after I finished my project in Massachusetts last year. I wanted a place close to the airport, not too expensive [this is Boston after all] and takes pets, simple, right?

Not quite. It may sound unreasonable, but I wanted to find something about $1000 per month and I have to tell you, anything in that range would be a roommate situation. You can’t really move into a house with other people and ask them to watch your furry kids. So, alone it is. I found a place, it was perfect, well perfect in the way it was what I needed.

Do you remember your first “POS” apartment? It was the worst, right? Falling apart, missing things, but you loved it. Well, this is not that, ha ha. I am almost 45 years old and I had that first POS apartment, I’ve owned a home and now I’m where?

Truth be told, it was a wee bit scary when I first saw it, well, scary to others, but I saw potential. The agent told me that a young girl, about college age saw the place and walked out.

It’s the basement apartment in a house in East Boston, I just found out the other day that makes me “an Eastie”, ok, I’ll take it. It reminds me of being called “a Slopie” when I was still in New York.

Being a basement apartment, you hear everything!  I would love to know what those people upstairs are doing all night and sometimes into the morning, on occasion, joining me in my insomnia.

When I first walked in, I was less than pleasantly surprised. The baseboard heaters were falling off, the walls were that lovely fake wood paneling, cabinets had to be from the 80s, if I was lucky, counter tops are fake marbling, glued down in some places, coming off in others and burned through in some places and yellow and sticky. Doors falling off the hinges, the ceiling in the bathroom was falling off, the dishwasher…1980s PINK people, PINK and sticky, on the outside. The range and refrigerator were fine, at least I hoped they were.

So…I told the agent that I would take the apartment if he fixed the issues and he would have three weeks to do it as I was going to be out of the country for that time as you may remember. He agreed.

Did he fix everything? Not exactly, but big things were done. Walls are now white, the baseboard heaters are re-attached, the ceiling in the bathroom is now in one piece, shower is re-tiled, new carpet in the front room and there is a new fridge and dishwasher.

The cabinets, not replaced and still falling apart and VERY icky, sticky, storm door can’t stay open, some windows don’t have screens, some of the existing screens are ripped. The only closet is the one under the stairs by the front door, there is a set of stairs to no one where and they added a giant shelf. Shelves or cubes would have been better, just saying.

First, I don’t know if you remember me telling you about my dad selling the summer house and me getting a lot of stuff to furnish the apartment, I didn’t have to buy much to furnish the apartment, which was great! My dad’s first set of dishes, a table and chair my mom used to use as a makeup table, a table from my grandmother’s house, among other things.

I took the doors off the cabinets and used Greased Lightning, bleach, whatever I could think of. When I sprayed the Greased Lightning, his yellow stuff just started to drip and drip and drip, it was kind of, well, grody! I put the doors in the shower to drip, drip, drip, didn’t help..they were all still sticky and gross. There was one door I couldn’t get off because they hinges were rusted solid. Even the drawer pulls were nasty. What did the people who lived in this place do?

Ok, I wasted enough time trying to clean the cabinets, so I decided to forget the cleaning, I’m going to paint. I went to Home Depot and picked out a nice blue, after asking the landlord for permission, of course.

I started with primer and moved on to paint. I painted inside and outside the cabinets, the roof of the cabinet, under the cabinet, pretty cool. I cleaned the drawer pulls as best I could and decided that I was not putting the doors back on and after they were dry and I loaded them up, I seconded my decision, I love the way it looks.

After I got the bed set up, I was no longer sleeping on the floor, have my fabulous new comforter set that my dad got me and I’ve made this space my own.

Do you love the pillow my mom made when she was pregnant with me?

She loved this doll, it was at the summer house.

The entrance to the shower looks bigger in the picture!

The area where my clothes are is ffffreezing!

I even put in a closet rod so my clothes stay a little warmer.

See, open cabinets, love it!

See…special artwork on my fridge!

See my Starbucks mugs on the windowsill?
Something to put my paintbrushes and colored pens and pencils in!

Found a place for my medals and race bibs.

The dishes look great!

So, that’s my place, now you’ve seen it and where I hang out when I’m off the road. What do you think?