The Apartment I Never Wanted
Last Updated on June 7, 2025 by
I did NOT want to move into this apartment.
Honestly, you wouldn’t have wanted to, either, if you had seen it in it’s pre-Sarah state.
(I’ll gladly toot my own horn here, though it’s not saying much since the pre-Sarah apartment was a cockroach-ridden bachelor pad.)
Let’s back up a bit.
Sometime in the 80s (?s) my husband’s adoptive grandfather signed a lease for this apartment. At the time, Peterson was living in the Dominican Republic. When he and his family eventually came to NYC, his [adopted] dad’s name was also on the lease, while grandpa went back to DR.
And that’s how it was for years, until…he proposed to this cute girl he met at church. (Oh hey, that’s me!) NYC rent prices are notoriously, well, notorious, so he was super practical about the whole thing: “A 3-bedroom apartment for less than $1k? Let’s get our names on this lease!” And as much as I love a deal, I hate cockroaches even more, so I was very hesitant about this whole thing.
Well, fast forward to him convincing me, doing the work, and getting our names on the lease. Now we’re on our honeymoon in Bora Bora and he’s emailing back and forth with the landlord, telling him he hasn’t done any work on the apartment in years (and why would he? He’s losing money by having us there; gotta love NYC rent stabilization laws!) so he needed to at least do a few things for us. (Like, for example, put a kitchen cabinet on the wall where the previous one had rotted through.)
Peterson sent him this whole list of things–kind of a wish list, kind of a “let’s just shoot our shot and see what happens” type of thing, and the landlord replied with: “I’ll do the kitchen and bathroom, and you can do whatever else you want. I don’t need to know about it.”
So basically a green light on a gut renovation of our pre-war 3-bedroom New York City apartment with lots of natural light and paying less than a thousand a month. WHAT?!
And that’s where it all began. I hope you’ll stick with us to see where it’s gone and where it’s going. A lot has changed over the years, we adapt as our family grows, and I can’t wait to share it with you.
