The Three Bedroom, One Bathroom Death Trap with Working Fireplace and Hardwood Floors.

Evidently I’ve moved into some sort of slum without knowing it.

When my roommates and I first walked through our apartment we were blinded by its charming woodwork and working fireplace. We loved the location, it had plenty of space, and it had off street parking! I love old buildings, so I was smitten and absolutely had to live here.

I’m writing this post so I can look back on it next August when it’s time to move to a new place because I guarantee I’m going to fall head over heels for another old building and think that it’s a brilliant idea to move into a place that is falling apart around me.

This whole fiasco began on the day we moved in. The previous tenants didn’t clean at ALL after they moved out, so we were left with grime everywhere. They also left nails in the walls and peeling paint. How sweet of them to make it as shabby chic as possible, right? But I still loved all the pretty woodwork and the awesome fireplace.

Then our landlord informed us that he would be having the parking lot ripped out and repaved so we would have to park on the street (like peasants!) for two weeks. Again, just a minor annoyance that I was willing to get over for the sake of my cute apartment.

Then on Sunday morning whilst I was sleeping in after long night of drinking, I heard a loud crash in the dining room. Being the paranoid person that I am, I assumed someone had tied a death threat to a brick and thrown it through the window. But, being still drunk I decided to wander out and see what the heck all the commotion was. It turned out the light fixture in our dining room decided to spontaneously fall from the ceiling and smash into a million pieces. I have no idea how I managed to avoid getting broken glass in my bare feet, since I walked around the whole damn dining room (a drunk Kayla is a stupid Kayla) before realizing that I should probably go put shoes on. Luckily, Boyfriend helped me clean it up. And when I say he helped me, I mean that he really did everything and I just kind of wandered around and tried to make the Swiffer Wet Jet work. I don’t know why he puts up with me.

Upon closer inspection (I like to Sherlock Holmes the shit out of everything) I discovered that the fixture was being held on by nothing more than two rusty screws and some tape. Our upstairs neighbors like to stomp around like elephants and crank up the bass every weekend, so it was only a matter of time before SOMETHING fell. I’m just hoping the ceiling continues to hold up.

When I arrived home from work the next day the ceiling fan had been replaced, which was delightful but puzzling because I had yet to email him about it breaking. I’m going to hope that one of my roommates emailed him first because the only other way he could have known is if he had the place bugged. I’m so not willing to delve into THAT theory.

The cherry on top of this whole thing is that after I discovered the new fan, I also discovered that our toilet no longer flushed. Our indoor plumbing had been reduced to what amounts to a chamber pot.

I can handle shit falling from the ceiling, but DO NOT mess with my plumbing, sir!

I always have to try to fix things, even when I know NOTHING about how they work, so of course I had to open the toilet tank to see if I could tinker with it. Lo and behold, I discovered that the flusher was being operated by none other than a STRING and a PAPERCLIP.

I’m not exaggerating. That’s all there was to it. And the string had broken, leaving our flusher inoperable.

Being the MacGyver wannabe that I am, I immediately found a string and rigged it so we can flush and not have to live like heathens until this new little problem is fixed. Unfortnately, the string only works with the tank lid off so we now have the most ghetto looking toilet situation ever.

At this point, I’m just waiting for total catastrophe. What’s going to happen next? Will our windows fall out of their frames? Will our couch fall through the ceiling and into the basement? It’s like a fun guessing game except everyone loses. Except our landlord of course, he’s laughing all the way to the bank.

Oh, and now we have murderers in the basement. Probably.