So it begins

After (literally) years of talking about it, G3 the boyfriend and I all of a sudden decided to get an apartment right now this second.

When this process began in earnest in August 2008 (then immediately fizzled under our respective workloads, a bout of pneumonia and a total lack of cash), I intended to live in a luxury doorman building in the FiDi so I could walk to work. The lovely people at D-bag Realty said we were "priced out of the city" if we couldn't go up to $2500 a month to live in a closet with concierge service.

Five months and 4 hours a day of commuting later, the economy has imploded, the world is ending, and G3 and I have a joint bank account and a mission. We went from "we should get on that apartment thing eventually" to "what color should we paint the second living room?" in about 72 hours.

This is how it's been going and why there are pictures.

We saw a handful of tiny no-fee places on the UES and met some very kind and personable brokers who seemed to offer sincere and helpful advice. We found an epic loft in Spanish Harlem but were concerned we wouldn't live long enough and probably couldn't run fast enough to enjoy it. We saw apartments with living rooms so small I did not know we were standing in them until someone else pointed it out. I saw an apartment with a palatial living room and a bedroom so tiny a full-size mattress would probably have to be stuffed in there diagonally. I saw a building that reeked of gas in the most BackDraft way imaginable, but when I brought it up to the super and the otherwise awesome woman showing me the apartment, they both said "I don't smell anything." We saw a duplex with a spiral staircase so violently steep and narrow that I could not fit my average size hips and purse up the stairs at the same time. We saw an apartment that advertised "massive king size bedrooms" into which Gui and I could barely squeeze shoulder to shoulder, Gravatron style.

Then we found something.

Right in the middle of the UES we found a fifth-floor walk-up: railroad four, eat in kitchen, two living rooms, enormous master bedroom. The building is owned by five Hungarian sisters from whom we currently await final approval.

Our current plan, should we be approved, is as follows (yes, painting rider in the lease): we're painting the master bedroom high gloss black and keeping the molding and all trim white. We're painting the office dark silver (Ralph freaking Lauren makes silver interior paint) and the furniture will be dark wood and a dark brown futon. We're painting the living room charcoal and have no idea what we're doing with the furniture. We're painting the kitchen navy, covering the Harvest Gold fridge from the 70's with patterned contact paper, and replacing the existing shelves with something sturdier and not covered in twelve tenants' worth of paint. We're only using the harsh overhead light fixtures in their ceiling fan capacity - everything else will be about gentle ambient directional lighting. We're talking about making our own art (just "art," not "ahhhht." This is not Two A-Holes Do Reprehensible Things to a Gigantic Pre-War Apartment. Ok it kind of is. Whatever. I want to go to Hogwarts).

Fun facts about this apartment:

• It has one bathroom, spread over two rooms. One contains only a toilet and an uncovered lightbulb. No sink. The other contains a shower and a sink. By themselves. Half an apartment away.
• Epic parque floors.
  
• It is OLD. Pre-Civil War old. Pre-Xenu old.
  
• No dishwasher but it has one of those double sinks you see every so often in "Dexter" after something very, very bad has happened.
• My parents, who are well aware of the limitations of my physical prowess, are convinced the fifth-floor walk up situation is going to lead quickly to my demise. I think it's going to lead quickly to me developing an ass like Beyonce.
• I had that Harvest Gold fridge when I was a kid. When we replaced it with a white one, the difference was shocking.
  

I can't figure out how to post pictures in Blogger at this late hour but here's a link to G3's Flickr set of the apartment in its current charming state.

So say a prayer we're approved. For better or worse, the apartment will be unrecognizable when we're done.