![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishSo, after all that ... I have a condo.
Woke up too early on Thursday morning, drove to the airport, flew out. Hand-delivered the signed and notarized documents to the lawyer, got "breakfast," and meandered over to Rainbow House where I proceeded to nap for three hours.
On Friday I went over to the new condo to get the keys from Rhonda and poke around inside.
It started snowing as I left the house, which was lovely. Northern snow is better but I like most any snowfall. Unless I'm driving through it, I guess.
Rhonda ended up being about 45 minutes late due to traffic / accidents / Vancouver-can't-drive-in-snow, so I wandered around the area a bit. It's up a short but significant hill from the closest Skytrain. There's an Indian place around the corner and a couple of bubble-tea and/or Chinese joints nearby. Should be far enough from the train tracks that the nighttime start-stop kaCHUNK-kaCHUNK-kaCHUNK won't keep me up.
I also poked in the thrift store, and scored a nice green shirt and a 4-cup old (borosilicate) Pyrex measuring cup. So that was pretty great.
Eventually Rhonda got there and gave me the keys, and we went on in. I noticed that next door has a "Roll For Initiative" doormat, which is promising.
And ...
Okay, look. I saw this place once, a month and a half ago, in the middle of a very busy day of looking at a half-dozen condos. I liked what I saw but it's all started to blur together at this point. And since then I've been looking at measurements and low-quality photos, and generally getting more and more nervous about it.
Everything about it is better than I remembered. Not as much better as I might like, in some cases, but better.
The first thing I noticed when I got in was a tiny pantry, hidden behind the door. I am not kidding when I say "tiny," I cannot really stick both arms into it at once, but I expect it will provide sufficient food-storage space for my needs. So that solves some amount of the kitchen problem right there.
The bathroom is big for an apartment bathroom. There's no medicine cabinet but the big mirror only goes as far as over the sink, there's space over the toilet to mount one. And as a tiny good thing, the shower-curtain bar is one of the curved ones you sometimes get in hotel bathtubs, to make the shower feel a little bigger.
The bedroom's pretty good-sized. If necessary I can probably put a bookcase or two in there, along with the bed and dresser. Hoping it won't come to that; there's a decent amount of wallspace in the main room. We shall see how that all shakes out.
As for the kitchen itself, I will have to be extremely space-efficient. But: there are two (narrow) drawers, so one for silverware and one for Weird Implements. I'll have to figure out something for Long Rolls (tinfoil, clingwrap, etc) and for Random Stuff (ye Junk Drawer). And I expect I'll end up putting in a magnetic knife strip next to the stove, and some sort of hanging rack for pots & skillets. I believe my mixer will, barely, fit under the cabinets, which is a minor miracle in itself.
And the light. It's northwest-facing, and the day was cloudygrey, and there was still a frankly ridiculous amount of light coming in through the windows. I am kind of astounded by this.
I wandered through the place with Rhonda for half an hour or more, talking through various ideas for how to make it work. And then she headed out, and I ... hugged the pillar at the end of the breakfast-bar for a bit. It felt really good.
I spent probably another hour and a half in there, taking measurements of everything I could think of, thinking through what could go where, and just existing in the space.
I finally left at around three-thirty and had a much-belated lunch at my favourite poutine place a few blocks away. And then I went over to Mya's to drop off the keys so she can check in on it a couple of times a week as required by insurance.
And today I showed up early at the airport and snagged a flight that leaves at one PM instead of ten PM, so I get to drive home in the daylight. And snow, apparently, so maybe I'll stay the night in Prince anyway. We shall see.
Now to futz with numbers and measurements, and possibly cut up graph paper and scoot things around. See how much stuff I can fit in 500sqft, and how much I'll need to store or downsize.
I'm feeling mixed and complicated about leaving the north and about going back to the lower mainland. But ... I really, really like my condo.
Woke up too early on Thursday morning, drove to the airport, flew out. Hand-delivered the signed and notarized documents to the lawyer, got "breakfast," and meandered over to Rainbow House where I proceeded to nap for three hours.
On Friday I went over to the new condo to get the keys from Rhonda and poke around inside.
It started snowing as I left the house, which was lovely. Northern snow is better but I like most any snowfall. Unless I'm driving through it, I guess.
Rhonda ended up being about 45 minutes late due to traffic / accidents / Vancouver-can't-drive-in-snow, so I wandered around the area a bit. It's up a short but significant hill from the closest Skytrain. There's an Indian place around the corner and a couple of bubble-tea and/or Chinese joints nearby. Should be far enough from the train tracks that the nighttime start-stop kaCHUNK-kaCHUNK-kaCHUNK won't keep me up.
I also poked in the thrift store, and scored a nice green shirt and a 4-cup old (borosilicate) Pyrex measuring cup. So that was pretty great.
Eventually Rhonda got there and gave me the keys, and we went on in. I noticed that next door has a "Roll For Initiative" doormat, which is promising.
And ...
Okay, look. I saw this place once, a month and a half ago, in the middle of a very busy day of looking at a half-dozen condos. I liked what I saw but it's all started to blur together at this point. And since then I've been looking at measurements and low-quality photos, and generally getting more and more nervous about it.
Everything about it is better than I remembered. Not as much better as I might like, in some cases, but better.
The first thing I noticed when I got in was a tiny pantry, hidden behind the door. I am not kidding when I say "tiny," I cannot really stick both arms into it at once, but I expect it will provide sufficient food-storage space for my needs. So that solves some amount of the kitchen problem right there.
The bathroom is big for an apartment bathroom. There's no medicine cabinet but the big mirror only goes as far as over the sink, there's space over the toilet to mount one. And as a tiny good thing, the shower-curtain bar is one of the curved ones you sometimes get in hotel bathtubs, to make the shower feel a little bigger.
The bedroom's pretty good-sized. If necessary I can probably put a bookcase or two in there, along with the bed and dresser. Hoping it won't come to that; there's a decent amount of wallspace in the main room. We shall see how that all shakes out.
As for the kitchen itself, I will have to be extremely space-efficient. But: there are two (narrow) drawers, so one for silverware and one for Weird Implements. I'll have to figure out something for Long Rolls (tinfoil, clingwrap, etc) and for Random Stuff (ye Junk Drawer). And I expect I'll end up putting in a magnetic knife strip next to the stove, and some sort of hanging rack for pots & skillets. I believe my mixer will, barely, fit under the cabinets, which is a minor miracle in itself.
And the light. It's northwest-facing, and the day was cloudygrey, and there was still a frankly ridiculous amount of light coming in through the windows. I am kind of astounded by this.
I wandered through the place with Rhonda for half an hour or more, talking through various ideas for how to make it work. And then she headed out, and I ... hugged the pillar at the end of the breakfast-bar for a bit. It felt really good.
I spent probably another hour and a half in there, taking measurements of everything I could think of, thinking through what could go where, and just existing in the space.
I finally left at around three-thirty and had a much-belated lunch at my favourite poutine place a few blocks away. And then I went over to Mya's to drop off the keys so she can check in on it a couple of times a week as required by insurance.
And today I showed up early at the airport and snagged a flight that leaves at one PM instead of ten PM, so I get to drive home in the daylight. And snow, apparently, so maybe I'll stay the night in Prince anyway. We shall see.
Now to futz with numbers and measurements, and possibly cut up graph paper and scoot things around. See how much stuff I can fit in 500sqft, and how much I'll need to store or downsize.
I'm feeling mixed and complicated about leaving the north and about going back to the lower mainland. But ... I really, really like my condo.
Congrats!
Date: 2021-12-18 09:54 pm (UTC)Re: Congrats!
Date: 2021-12-20 07:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 12:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 01:59 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 07:21 pm (UTC)Yeah. I lived in Vancouver for seven, eight years when I first got to BC. Then at the end of 2018 I was flailing about trying to figure out where to live, and my partner Erin said "you could move up here," and I figured, sure, I'd try it out for a year or so. So I did, and at the end of 2019 I came to the conclusion that for a variety of reasons it wasn't working for me. And then the plague hit and I a) lacked bandwidth to deal with moving etc and b) decided I was better off weathering it up north, more isolated from most people but still with someone close by. But two years of that is about all I can take, and the plague situation is ... better? More well-defined, anyway. So... back to the city.
At least for awhile. It's not like (some of) the reasons I left in the first place have been fixed, Vancouver is still a rich people's playground squeezing out its middle-class and lower. But it'll be a good place to land and catch my breath.
no subject
Date: 2021-12-19 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 12:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-20 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-12-18 11:18 pm (UTC)