Philadelphia Apartment Tour
Welcome to my first installment of home tours! I thought my Philadelphia apartment tour would be a good place to start since I moved out 1 year ago. I apologize for the photo quality in most of these posts. Blogging was not on my radar at the time! Who am I kidding? I still don’t know how to take home pictures. Oh well, here we go!
Philadelphia Apartment Tour Background
First, a little background on the apartment (actually a row home, so let’s start calling it a row home). In May 2017 I interviewed for a food science position at my current company. I was working at our US headquarters in Chicago, but the R&D center is located in Pennsauken, NJ, across the river from Philadelphia. I told myself that if I got the job, I would make the move. It was a good time to try something big since I was unattached. As you might have already picked up, I got the job. They sent me on a 2 day house hunting trip in mid-June where I was expected to get a feel for the city, find an apartment in my budget, and sign a lease. Cue anxiety!
I spent hours on Craigslist prior to the trip – looking through neighborhoods, emailing landlords or rental companies. Philadelphia has some cute neighborhoods, but those neighborhoods are notorious for difficult parking. And as I would be crossing the bridge into New Jersey every day, I had to have a car and at least street parking. I settled on the Fishtown neighborhood NE of downtown. People told me it was “up and coming”. AKA it was in my price range.
I saw quite a few apartments on the house hunting trip, but there was only one place that could potentially work for me. It was the most disgusting place I had ever been in, but I figured it just needed to be cleaned. (HAHA YOU WERE WRONG, more on this later). The landlord was also incredibly shady. So much so that my friend took a picture of his license plate in case he ran off with my deposit money (Thanks Chris, hi Chris!). Desperate times people! I was just so relieved to have someplace to live.
I moved to Philadelphia on July 15th and started my job on July 17th. Quick tip for anyone moving cross country – don’t do this. Give yourself at least a week to transition. The previous tenant had left the house a mess and even though my landlord “shampooed the carpets”, the whole place stunk like cat pee and cigarettes. It was uninhabitable according to my mom. The walls were slick with grime, the kitchen had been pieced together with THREE different types of cabinets, the bathroom vinyl was peeling up at all sides, and every closet had mouse poop. I cried so much that first week. Like so so much you guys.
Cleaning and Painting
The only way to make the situation better was to start cleaning. I started with the walls. Using this mop, I ammonia’d the heck out of every surface possible. I like green cleaning products, but this job needed the hard stuff. I mean, look at these kitchen cabinets. People are so gross.
After everything was as clean as possible, it was time to paint. I didn’t ask my landlord for permission because if he had the audacity to rent the place in that condition, I had the audacity to make it liveable. Painting was quite an undertaking since literally the whole house needed a fresh coat, trim, doors, and all. My wonderful mom flew out for a weekend to help me. She is a master trim painter and made the work so much easier.
The bathroom was painted first since I’m a big fan of feeling clean after showering. Novel feeling, I know. I went with SW In the Navy for the top half of the wall and SW Extra White for the bottom. If you want to see more from my bathroom upgrade, I wrote whole posts about it here and here.
Next was my bedroom and the second bedroom. I’m still in shock as I write this, but the previous tenant had used the second bedroom as a ferret room. Yep, you read that correctly. A FERRET ROOM. That thing had full reign of the room for whatever a ferret does all day. And you better believe it used the carpet as a litter box. Do ferrets use litter boxes? I don’t even know. It doesn’t matter because, FERRET ROOM. At this point, my mom was begging me to replace the carpet. I still thought I could shampoo it and throw rugs over it. (I was wrong again lol).
The color in my bedroom is SW Spinach White. These pictures are a perfect example of how paint can brighten a room! The guest bedroom was painted BM Simply White because I had a lot leftover from the living room. You’ve probably heard this before, but this is the best white paint ever. It’s so clean and warm and lovely.
As I mentioned, the living room was also painted in BM Simply white, as was the kitchen. I was getting lazy at this point and just wanted to be done painting. The accent wall in the living room was painted SW Cascades. I am IN LOVE with this color. Seriously, if you’re looking for a dark greenish blue paint, this is it. Get it and thank me later. I also painted the kitchen door a happy yellow because it really needed some happiness. And added some black kitchen hardware in an attempt to make the mismatched cabinets look less hideous.
The Carpet Nightmare
After painting the entire house, cleaning multiple times, lighting candles whenever possible, and leaving all the windows open for weeks, it still stunk. Bad. It is so disappointing to walk into your home and be bombarded with a stench that you can’t control. Mom to the rescue again. When I told her that I was going to replace the carpet, she offered to pay. I had already begged my landlord to do it, but he refused saying that they were fine. What a POS he was. I’m still fuming even as I write this. But hopefully this will help prevent one of you from ever renting from a garbage human being.
I initially tried to use Home Depot for carpeting. It started out smoothly. I went to the store, picked my carpet (the cheapest stuff available), scheduled my in home inspection, and paid a down payment. The inspector came on a Tuesday at 2pm when he was supposed to be there between 10 and 12. No big deal because it’s not like I work a full time job or anything… But it got done. We scheduled the installation. It was also on a weekday, so I took the day off. Here’s where things really went downhill.
I was given a window of 8-12 for the installation. At 8am I called the carpet guy and asked if everything was still on track because I would go to work if there were any issues. He said yes. Great! I spent the morning putting things in closets and covering furniture to make their jobs easier. By 12, they had still not arrived and I hadn’t heard from them. I called and they told me they were on their way. At this point I put on a movie and not so patiently waited. They got to my house at 3pm. I giddily pranced out of the house, ready to forgive their tardiness because I was about to have a stink-free house and new carpet. (HAHA I was wrong again).
The installation guy asked me to come look at my carpet in the van. When I got outside, he told me that there were issues with my roll of carpet. The carpet had not been manufactured correctly and if they tried to install it, the carpet would pull away from the backing. I might have blacked out at this point because I don’t remember what I said to him. It could not have been anything nice. Something along the lines of why didn’t you tell me this when I called you at 8am or 12pm? Why did you make me wait around all day only to disappoint me? Why didn’t you go back to the store and have them switch out the bad roll for a good one? Except with more expletives and screaming. Much more expletives and screaming.
I cried a lot again that night. Then I called Home Depot. They gave me all my money back after about two hours on the phone with customer service. I wrote a detailed review on their website but never heard a thing back. I was so upset that a store I loved so much would disappoint me. And I still needed new carpet. A friend of a friend eventually installed the carpet for me. It was such a relief to have a clean house. I am eternally grateful to my mom for that new carpet, even though I only lived with it for a year.
Bye Felicia! Philadelphia!
Decorating this row house was hard. I hated it. It’s hard to make a place you hate feel nice. I mostly used items from my Chicago apartment with a few new things here and there. By March, I was thinking about moving out of Philadelphia. It wasn’t for me. Sometimes you don’t fit in somewhere and it’s best to move on. I couldn’t have known that I wouldn’t like Philadelphia until I tried living there. My last mark on this house was painting a backyard mural. You can read more about that in this post.
I’m proud of myself for taking the leap. I moved across the bridge to “South Jersey” in June 2018 and never looked back! Thanks for sticking with me through my Philadelphia apartment tour. This was a doozy of a post. Stay tuned for my Chicago and NJ tours coming soon!
