Friday, October 14, 2011

Things in Our Apartment...

... that keep not working and/or are killing us:


The wiring.

Light bulbs always seem to be burning out but actually you can just fidget with the bulb in the socket and suddenly the bulb works fine again for weeks. We have a lamp post in our front yard that didn't have a bulb in it when we first moved in. So we put one in and it was awesome. We didn't even need to use the porch lights cause it was so bright. It was like a street lamp, which our street would know nothing about. Then it suddenly shorted. And now no bulb works in there. Sometimes outlet don't work. But for very short periods of time. I'll plug rechargeable batteries in over night and the next morning they won't be charged. But I can take it to a different outlet and plug them in and the light goes green! Which makes perfect sense.

The plumbing.

For god's sake. The plumbing. Right now, the cold water nozzle in the bath is all loosey-goosey and you have to spend two minutes trying to actually turn off the cold water without just spinning it back to on, and you can seriously turn it in either direction to get water. Righty-tighty lefty-loosey is not a term recognized by the appliances in our apartment. Also, the toilet will start running even if no one has flushed it in over three hours, the bathroom sinks takes at least as long to drain, and recently the kitchen sink started backing up. It'll fill up, drain, I'll clean down the residue (horrifying), and then come back later and there will be a new and interesting ring to clean up. As though the dog were using the sink while I was out.

The mold.

We have black mold in the basement. I stay out of there. Also, something terrifying seems to be happening with the shower walls and the caulking, as well as right outside of the shower. The wall has like this swollen look to it, like the plaster got wet but never dried. It's been there since day one, we even took a picture of it. When we move out, I expect our full security deposit. Or I'll burn this mother down.

The windows.

Every single window has a crack in it. Every one of them. We finally stole some storm windows from when the landlord put in brand new windows on the upstairs apartment so we can pretend we're keeping the heat in in the winter, but I think we're going to need some plastic this year.

There's other stuff, (the porch, the garage, the basement stairs) but I'm getting ready for a weekend trip with some crazies (yo, brother and sister-in-law) and I need to get a move on.