When Life Gives You Lemons, Dream About Building A Roof Deck

After transferring boxes to their respective room, we spent the first days at Kawama painting. It's good to paint for a lot of reasons, not least of which being the pure aesthetic goal of making your walls look nice, but I think it's also helpful to be able to look at every square foot of wall up close to see the history of the structure. With any luck, you'll notice nothing out of the ordinary, but if anything's there, early on is a good time to notice it.

Here's something cool none of us realized about getting a mortgage: Because mortgage interest is paid in arrears, you don't pay what you owe until the end of the month. And since the prorated first month's interest is figured into the closing costs, you basically have over a month until you start having to pay the mortgage. Se we used our security deposit from our apartment as the last month's rent there, we had three months to replenish the coffers. A very small benefit of buying a house.

We also spent the rest of the month of April waiting for the tenant to move out.

To be honest, at first it wasn't that strange to be living with a tenant. It just sort of felt like we were renting an apartment somewhere. And since she was out of town for the first week or so, it didn't feel like we were living with anyone at all.

After the tenant came back, however, it was different. I'd hear the tenant turn on the shower, and the oil furnace would come on, and the sound of the oil furnace is less like a furnace than a jet engine, and every time it comes on the only thing you think about is how expensive oil is.

Oil heat is bizarre enough but using oil for your domestic hot water will drive you crazy. One of the worst things about it is that the stupid tank in the furnace seems like it's only large enough for an RV; the water would take forever to get warm and run out faster than I feel like it should.

And knowing there was a tenant up there who didn't have to pay for the oil was crazy-making. I don't think I could ever be a landlord. I would hate it.

By the second or third week of April we had no idea when the tenant was planning on moving out. This became quite a concern for Michael, who absolutely needed to move out by April 30. If the tenant didn't move out by then, Michael would have to move his stuff into the basement and sleep in our unit, which he didn't want to do, and which he wasn't going to do.

Both Jen and Michael texted the tenant to make sure she let us know when she was moving out. She said she was working on it but that she might be delayed a few weeks.

Michael was very unhappy about the whole thing. We were unhappy about the whole thing. At some point I was just thinking, "Lady, get the fuck out of our house." Because this was now our house. And why would someone want to live in someone else's house?

Because the seller never gave the tenant a month's written notice, we would have to give her written notice by May 1. That didn't mean that we expected her to leave at the end of May, just that we had to protect ourselves in the event that the tenant didn't move out, in order to start an eviction process. The agreement we worked out with the seller was that they would be penalized for every day the tenant was here beyond April 30: $250 a day. Part of me sort of wanted to squeeze the seller for some money — not the entire $15,000 but maybe just enough to build, say, a roof deck. Obviously Michael did not feel the same.

As the month of April wound down, we didn't hear anything about when or whether the tenant would move out. We had to go up into the unit a few times to fix some stuff and it certainly didn't look like the tenant was anywhere near being ready to move out. It was harrowing in the same way we were harrowed when we didn't know whether we'd be able to close on the house in the week before we were supposed to close on the house. Michael was stressed. We were stressed for him. We were wondering if we'd have to evict her. It wasn't good.

The final weekend of April was fast approaching. Michael made arrangements with the movers. Michael told the tenant that he was expecting to show up at the apartment at 1 p.m. on April 30. And yet we still didn't really know when she was leaving.

Then things started happening. The tenant was up half the night the day before she was supposed to move; it sounded like things were being moved around. Early in the morning on the 30th, vans arrived. Things exited the apartment. It seemed the apartment was being vacated.

At noon, the doorbell rang. It was the realtor. I was surprised to see the realtor. The realtor explained that he was there to make sure the tenant's move went OK. I didn't realize he could be roped in to having to do that, too. He said we should take a look at the upstairs apartment.

"You can hand this to her," he said, handing me a check. I didn't fully comprehend what the check was for. My first thought was that it was some sort of deposit but then I saw that there were several zeros.

The tenant handed me her keys. We looked around the apartment. It looked fine. I asked her where she was moving. She said that she was moving to Manhattan but couldn't move in for two weeks. She apologized for any strangeness that ensued from her continuing to be in the apartment after we closed on the house. I said I understood, that it was a weird situation. She said good luck and she left in a small U-Haul van.

It seemed that half of the apartment's contents were piled against the retaining wall in front of the house, filled in black plastic bags or just left out on the sidewalk there. It was as if they threw out most of it instead of packing it, as if they made a quick escape. I asked the realtor what happened.

"Look, let me tell you something," George began. Everyone has one verbal tick, and "Look" followed by some revelation of some sort was his. It could have been "Look guys, here's the thing" or "Look, let me level with you" — whatever it was, he liked to say it. So right now it was, "Look guys, I can tell my wife about a situation and she'll tell me what to do, you can tell Jen about a situation and she'll tell you what to do and she" — talking about the tenant now — "will tell her friends about a situation and they'll have all sorts of ideas about what she should do."

Which is to say, if you find yourself in a position where a landlord is trying to fuck you, they're probably doing something wrong. Especially in an urban environment like New York City, which has all kinds of protections for tenants. George thought that the tenant's friends probably encouraged her to dig in and not just accept the seller's short notice. And it paid off for her.

Rather than have to pay us $250 a day while the tenant dithered about deciding when to leave, the seller paid the tenant $4000 to leave by April 30. As the realtor said he explained to her, she either left by April 30 and got $4000 or left May 1 and got nothing. Which was why half the apartment lay strewn about on the sidewalk in front of the house. I dug through some of it and made sure we wouldn't get a ticket for not recycling this or that, and threw the bags in the planter until we could legally put them out on the sidewalk. I found a "I [Heart] NY" refrigerator magnet in one of the bags; I kept the magnet; it seemed funny.

Michael moved in later that afternoon. Everything worked out in the end. He was relieved to finally move but he was (and still is!) a little miffed about the rest of the story.

"You just don't do that," he insisted. The whole process focused his sense of righteous outrage. I don't blame him — just like I don't necessarily blame the tenant for doing what she did. Or the seller, for that matter; no one knew what would happen until it happened. And then it happened. And of course Michael got fucked, because, as the younger sibling, he always gets the short end of the stick. Which in a way is funny, and in a way is not so funny.

But now the three of us were all finally living at Kawama, and the era of Kawama finally began in earnest.

The Norton Anthology Of Poetry, Fourth Edition (Paperback), Is At Least Three Pounds Of Book; You Do The Math

Saturday we pulled up the carpet, packed the last of our remaining things and went to bed so we could be up early enough to greet the movers.

A word about movers: You might think, as I did, that paying young men to move your belongings is a luxury that should be reserved for those who can truly afford it. I'm here to tell you that it is not a luxury, and is well worth it. Our previous move took most of the day and necessitated some creativity on my part trying to figure out where to park a commercial vehicle overnight. We enlisted two friends who didn't deserve what we put them through, and I couldn't see putting anyone else through that again. On a more selfish note, I didn't want to be on the hook for any favors, especially considering our unnecessarily large collection of books, 96 percent of which I couldn't bear to part with, for no particular reason other than I'm enamored with artifacts that don't deserve it.

"Do you cook?" one of the movers asked me at one point. I knew what he was getting at: Jen's collection of cookbooks. "Because this is a lot of books."

Another word about movers: They don't need your "help" unstacking boxes and placing them closer to the door. In spite my help, they had our stuff loaded into their van within 45 minutes max. Every once in a while the head mover would have to get a verbal stipulation that would go like this:

"Excuse me?"

"Yes?"

"This item," he would say, pointing to something entirely crappy and useless, like, say, an IKEA CD case that was handed down to me from Goober, who got it from someone else, "This item is a little . . ." He trailed off, indicating that it was entirely crappy and useless and might fall apart in transit.

"No, it's OK, it's OK," I assured him. I tend to repeat myself when I'm attempting to be "accommodating."

Anyway, these guys moved us entirely into the new place within two hours, including smoke breaks and a circuitous route up the BQE. It was really impressive, and like I said, totally worth it. Nothing broke. I think our tip was reasonable enough, though it's hard to tell at the time.

One cost-saving move that Jen thought might be wise was to have the movers deposit the full breadth of our belongings on the first floor, on the theory that they'd spend less time lugging stuff up the stairs and we'd save some amount of money that in retrospect we probably should have spent. I guess that was our nod to living ninja. We spent the better part of a day or two allocating boxes throughout the house.

And now a word about how much shit you own. It's common knowledge that the volume of a gas is equal to the volume of its container. This law also holds when it comes to stuff you own. Our belongings filled our first apartment (480 square feet) to the gills. Our belongings filled our second apartment (maybe 600 square feet but probably closer to 500 square feet) to the rafters. And now it seemed that our belongings would similarly fill our portion of the house (I think about 1225 square feet).

With gas, the variable is pressure. There's a similar pressure going on with your living arrangements. Characteristics like separate rooms and doors become important. It's all of a piece.

We unpacked enough on Sunday to make our bed. After living over a 24-hour market for nearly six years, that night was the quietest night we'd experienced in some time. We even heard birds in the morning. It was heaven.

On Monday we painted and continued to unpack. Later in the day I decided it was time to stop off at the old apartment to pick up the cable box, return it to Verizon and head back to the apartment to do one final cleaning.

Now I'm a leave-the-campsite-better-than-you-found-it type of guy. And we took care of the apartment while we were in it, but it was way after dinner time and getting late and at some point I was thinking to myself, "What does it matter now if I drain three years of iced condensation in the freezer?" I thought this. I cleaned anyway. I spackled. I swept up as much hair-dust bunnies as I could, which is harder than you think on industrial carpet. I dumped a bag of books on the corner and lingered long enough to watch a few people poke around and took one last look around the neighborhood and the old apartment before I left the keys on a shelf in the kitchen.

And then I went to our new home.

And God Saw The Hardwood Flooring, That It Was Good: And God Divided The Awful Maroon Carpet From The Hardwood Flooring, And Removed Those Horrible Tack Strips From The Floor, Which Cut Up Your Hands If You're Not Careful

Now that we had the keys to Kawama, two things happened: One, we understood the meaning of Kawama; and two, we set out to make Kawama a home.

The first thing we did was tear out the carpet in Kawama. Actually, the first thing we did was eat lunch on the carpet; we were happy to discover that the sandwiches from the closest all-night market tasted just as good as the sandwiches from the closest all-night market at our old place.

Every square foot of Kawama's floors were covered by something, whether it be carpet, carpet and paint or these self-adhesive vinyl tiles. The tiles and paint would have to wait, but we needed to get the carpet out before the movers arrived the next day.

We already noticed that it could be advantageous not to buy a house that had stayed in one family for many years. As a rental property, Kawama had to be pretty well maintained, or at least maintained enough to rent it out to someone. The electricity had to work, the plumbing had to accommodate flushing and showers and the roof couldn't leak. I mean, what else do you need?

On a related note, the guy taking care of the place that the owner believed the carpet and tiles served to protect the floors. In one's primary residence this would be silly — sort of the equivalent of plastic cushion covers — but we were quite pleased to have the floors protected for so long. (Then again, carpets are one thing and self-stick vinyl tiles are quite another.) If you pulled back the carpet, the floors seemed to be in very good shape, relatively speaking.

I'm not sure what kind of wood it is; a friend believes it might be chestnut, as there was a chestnut blight that hit trees in the region in the early part of the century leading up to 1930, when, as we know, every single house everywhere was built.

Sure enough, the floors looked good. Or at least good enough. After living in an apartment with industrial carpeting for nearly six years, the floors could have looked like the back of an IKEA bookshelf and we would have been happy. And after renting for so long, it felt great to tear up shit. I wasn't quite ready to break down walls, like those nice-looking folks do on those cable shows when they take sledgehammers to perfectly fine looking cabinets. And of course now that we owned the place, and were responsible for it, it was important to be judicious with our edits.

Fortunately, editing out carpet is not only uncontroversial but also rather easy to accomplish. It's only held down by a few staples and that nasty carpet tack strip stuff. We took one of the trash cans from the front and threw away what we could, rolled up the rest and put it out back until we could determine when the sanitation department came around.