Before Photos

Here are photos our new (to us) apartment!  This is the apartment as it was left by the old tenant, dirty, smelling like cigarettes and cats, and begging for someone to take care of it.

Front door from living room

 

Living room

Living room again — look at the horrible carpet!

Living room again from the other side, I love how open the kitchen is to living room.  It makes everything feel bigger and airier.

The kitchen from the one side

The kitchen from the other side. (Man, does that stove need to be cleaned or what?)

The first bedroom.  This is the only picture we have of this room because it will be our roommates, and we won't be doing anything with it until she moves out in a year.  As far as this blog is concerned, we live in a one-bedroom apartment for the time being.

The bathroom.  EW, what is in the shower?  I believe it it is an old paint tray left by the people who supposedly repainted the apartment prior to us moving in.  They did a terrible job.  This bathroom needs a serious cleaning.

But, ahhhh (sigh of relief), at least the sink and medicine cabinet are new and clean.  How nice.

The second bedroom, which will be mine and Steve's.  It is pretty small, and doesn't have any windows, but look at that beautiful brick!  (We're obsessed with brick, probably the reason we were so charmed by this apartment when we first saw it)

But wait!  What horrible thing did someone do to the brick on the left side!?

For reasons I can't understand, someone painted that wall a god-awful red.  And badly, I might add.

And here is our teeny-tiny closet.

No!  Not more of that horrible painted red brick! (And don't ask me why, but the tiled floor doesn't go all the way to the wall.  Seriously, wtf?)

And I've saved the best for last - we have a backyard!

Well, half of a backyard to be exact.  Everything to left of the white line is ours.  Yes, like the rest of the apartment, it needs some love (and a lot of cleaning up) but outdoor space in Jersey City is hard to come across, so we are thrilled.

The best part is that the previous tenant planted a vegetable garden! (Thanks Sharon!)  It needs a lot of help, but we're excited to have a starting point.

And a grill!

Just imagine the possibilities.

Steve found these bad boys in the shed, perfect for when we have our housewarming barbecue!

So there she is, in all of her dirty, dusty, in-desperate-need-of-TLC glory.  We're excited to get started.  We hope to be here for a few years until we've saved enough money to buy a place of our own, so we're really looking forward to doing what we can to make it feel like us.

We begin tonight with painting that awful red brick a nice warm white in the bedroom.  We'll post in-progress pictures as well the end result when it's finished.  It should be entertaining at the very least, as neither of us have painted a wall before (much less a brick wall).

See you later with pictures of our (hopefully-not-too-pathetic) brick painting escapades!