The other duplex we saw before was beautifully renovated because the guy living there was a handyman and he could do all the work himself... I was really looking forward to finally having such a lovely kitchen to play with... unfortunately, the apartment we're getting is a rundown MESS, and I hesitated to commit to it. But they don't care what we do to it as long as we're improving the place, and there really isn't anything we could do to make it worse... I looked around some more and realised that the building has good bones, it just needs a lot of work to make it better. The screened porch is much larger than I imagined, and the kitchen and living room are large enough that the wall doesn't make them seem claustrophobic. It's just that the kitchen and bathrooms are antiquated. I also like the his-and-hers closets in the master bedroom (one in the bedroom itself and another right next to it in front of the bathroom) and one of the windows has been replaced with a 'cottage-style' glass at some point (the others are big-panel louvres).
They were just going to touch up the paint but it needs a complete redo (one of the bedrooms is dark blue!), so I have until Friday to choose my colours and their painter will do the job if we pay for the extra labour.
I think we need to just redo the bathrooms entirely, at least the bits that we can change without requiring major work. The bathtubs are okay even if we can't put a hand rail on them because they're white fiberglass moulded to the wall... but the toilets are pretty awful and I think it would be simpler just to rip them out and put in ADA height ones. They also need new lights and mirrors and hardware. The medicine cabinets are plain awful too, but they go into the wall so we can't really do anything about fixing them. The only real question is how are we doing to pay for this? I'd counted on spending a hundred bucks on the bathroom for a new shower head and a safety rail for the toilet, but they need major work.
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