new apartment – KNWBOOKS

I got my first job at the beginning of this year. 11 months later, I moved out into my own apartment…and let’s say things didn’t go smoothly.

Application

I found a reasonably priced apartment complex near my job (a difficult thing to do, since almost everything here is overpriced), then submitted an application. I was accepted almost immediately and placed onto the waiting list.

Hiccup #1

A few months later, I got the call that an apartment would be available starting November. I was excited. I began preparing for moving out.

Then I got more news: the old tenant had changed their mind. I was no longer getting the place. Even worse, all the apartments for November had already been given out to people further down the waiting list. I’d be placed in early December.

Hiccup #2

Finally, December came around. I paid the first month of rent, signed the lease, and got my keys from the office. Then I drove over to my new apartment, cleaning supplies in hand. As I walked around my apartment and turned on the lights, I stepped in something wet in the kitchen. I looked closer. Water—a huge puddle of it, smack dab in the middle of the kitchen floor. Maybe it was leftover water from the cleaning they did before I moved in, I thought. Upon closer inspection, I realized that wasn’t so. The water was seeping up from underneath the vinyl. If I stepped down on the boards, water seeped out of the edges.

I called maintenance immediately. They determined it was the fridge, shut off the water connection, and called in water extraction.

Water extraction came the next day and placed four huge fans (that were excruciatingly loud) over my kitchen floor. They must have also accidentally turned the fridge water connection back on, because by the time the next day came around, the water was a lot worse, making its way into my carpet. The carpet was squishy. The water wasn’t contained to the kitchen anymore.

I decided to take the apartment anyways and move in. I’d already packed everything up and drove it to the apartment. My parents wanted me to stay at their house until the water was figured out, but I decided to move in. The water would be sorted out anyways.

Maintenance came back and shut off the water connection again. Where the fans hadn’t been doing anything before, now they were able to start drying out the floor. The next day, someone came to fix the fridge, and all that was left to do was let the fans roar.

And roar they did. They were super loud. I could hear them from outside my apartment with the door closed. I let them go for as long as I could, and when I deemed the floor manageable without the fans, I unplugged them and stacked them neatly against the counter. They disappeared one day while I was at work.

Apartment Conditions

First thing I noticed upon moving in was that the apartment stunk of urine. I opened the windows, scrubbed everything down, turned on the fans, and that seemed to get rid of the bulk of it. However, the bathroom still smells. Maybe it’s soaked into the wood.

Everything else was in pretty good shape. Unless you count cosmetics like the vinyl coming up in places, the bathroom baseboards coming off the walls, or one of the stove burners not working. (Just kidding, that last one isn’t a cosmetic.)

Management isn’t good, and it takes forever for stuff to get done. They don’t care about you or the inconveniences of your flooded apartment. But I knew what I was getting with prices hundreds cheaper than everything else in the area.