No bitchin' in the kitchen!

Following on from my previous post about looking for a place to rent, I'm now on to discussing Dealbreaker #2: The Kitchen.

Now, a kitchen doesn't have to take up half the house. It doesn't have to be completely new. But it does need to have a certain amount of bench space. It does need to look like it isn't falling apart. It really needs to not look grimey and like it's just waiting to sprout mould.

I'm talking about the difference between this:

And this:

For the sake of argument, lets ignore the fact that kitchen 1 has people actively using it. In that image, though, you can see that the oven isn't great. You can also see that the wall next to the oven/stove is damaged. The added shelf for the microwave just looks extremely... Cheap. Can't think of a better word for it. The second kitchen also has more bench space and a visible pantry. The surfaces are nicer. It doesn't look grubby.

Now, that first kitchen is not the worst I've seen. I've seen kitches with less than half the bench space and mould visible in the corners of the place. You could still work in a kitchen like that. But these two properties are charging about the same amount in rent.

I think the preference is pretty obvious.

You need a ruddy big shotgun.

So, Oolon and I are on the hunt! For a place of our own! It's all very exciting and the ADHD-part of me that obsesses over things has latched on to one specific property that we viewed. The part of me that knows this is ADHD-related is doing its best to reassure the ADHD part that it's a lovely place while at the same time reminding it that we may not be offered it and to not be too upset if we don't get it.

So, I've now got something to blog about. I have, of course, thought about getting my own place before this week and have done some considering over what I would and wouldn't want in a property. I've narrowed down three or four deal breakers, and I'll talk about the first one today.

A landlord who cares about the property.

Don't get me wrong: I don't want someone who is obsessive about the place and wants everything exactly perfect and as they'd envisioned it from the start and can't handle a place looking lived-in. I wouldn't last a week with a land-lord like that!

But I do want someone who clearly gives a damn about something that they own. For instance, there's the first house that Oolon and I had a look at. It was spaceous, had wooden floors. A bit old, but potentially nice, despite the small kitchen (a topic which I will get to in a later post). What killed the deal for us wast the peeling ceiling. Well, not the peeling itself, but rather the response to the peeling ceiling. We asked the agent who opened the place about it, who reassured us that the leak which caused the problem had been fixed. She also told us that she didn't believe the landlord had any plans to fix the cosmetic damage, but that we could say on our application that we would only take the property "on condition that the ceiling was repaired". And that was just the most obvious problem with the place.


So we decided not to apply for the place. I want a house that I can be proud to live in and where it's easy to care about its upkeep. It's a lot harder to care a bout a place that is grimy and not nice to begin with, and I wouldn't want to live in a house that I don't feel good about at the outset.

Of course, there is the factor of previous tennants (some of whom are still occupying the place while it's being inspected), but I can look past that.

So, Landlords! Here's a tip: Show that you care about a place that you own, or you won't attract the sort of tennants who will care about your property.

Oops.

So, this is a bit late. I was meant to post something yesterday.

Unfortunately, I am so exhausted from work and trying to learn physics at the same time that I'm just not feeling very bloggy.

I'll start posting again when I have something more interesting to say.

Finally, pics of my bike! (and some notes on female anatomy and saddles)

Ta-dah!!! Here she is!

That's my husband's bike in the background :-)

You'll have to forgive the quality of the photos; I took them in a hurry at Melbourne Central station with a camera that I'm unfamiliar with (borrowing my husband's while I try to figure out where my little one got to), so they're not as good as I'd normally like to take. But, I got to play with a different camera so that's always a good thing!

As you can see, it has the basket with the lining that I sewed for it a few weeks ago. Here it is from a different angle:

 

I also got a new seat for it about a week ago. I was finding that the seat which came with it was particularly uncomfortable when I leaned forward to go uphill. It basically came down to bunching of flesh in my groin. Not good. This seems to be caused by the fact that the original saddle rises slightly at the front:

My husband's seat: He has no problems with it (lucky person)

So when we went to the shop to get our bikes serviced, I asked about their selection of women's saddles and which might best deal with the issue. They recommended a saddle and suggested I try it. OH MY GOODNESS that thing was comfortable! I bought it on the spot. Here is a pic, for comparison:

 

The key differences are that this one is flatter, firmer, and has a "cut-out" in the centre of the seat, which you can't see from this angle. All in all, much more comfortable for a female body. There were, unfortuantely, a couple of trade-offs:

1) The tip of the seat isn't as tapered as the previous one, which will result in even greater wear on any pants that I have on while riding. This may be solved through thinner thighs (which I will hopefully get as I cycle more), but I may have to resign myself to cycling in cheaper, spare trousers until I find something even more suitable.

2) It's not as wide as my old saddle, which can theoretically be an issue given a woman's wider pelvis and the upright position of the bike. I haven't had any problems with it yet though (it's still a fair bit wider than a racing saddle), so I think it'll be fine.

I love my bike!

On a less fun note, it's time for me to go AWOL again. Full-time work plus a physics course plus a whole bunch of stuff I agreed to before I enrolled in said course is keeping me very busy and very tired, so I just can't guarantee I'll be able to blog regularly. I'll start blogging again weekly on September 5th, then see how I go until after exams.

Wish me luck!

Phillip Island

Phillip Island is one of those places that you need to visit if you go to Victoria. It's where you'll find the Penguin Parade, for one thing! A bit further away from the penguin parade is a place called The Nobbies, or Seal Rock. I didn't see any seals, but here are a couple of pics I took with my awesome new camera: