...that living in this flat is a pain. I don't want my blog just to be about negative sorts of things, which is why I haven't moaned regularly about life in this apartment, but since we are moving away at last (well, we will move away as soon as we find an alternative), I figure it is time to talk about why.
First off all, this discontent has been going on from the very beginning, starting with the water situation; and at the time, I pointed out some positives about why I did not want to throw in the towel just yet on this address, which you can read about
here.
In no particular order, the some of the problems are:
=WATER=After 7.5 months, we have yet to have a normal, "agreeable" shower in this place. This is due to
3 4 5 6 reasons:
1) the water temperature. Either your water is hot, or it is cold. Warm does not exist. Tepid is out of the question. Our water temperature gauge does not go above 99 degrees CELSIUS! so I cannot give an exact number for the scalding water that we have had to deal with before our landlord shielded some of the captor tubes; however, the water still regularly gets up to 72 C.
2) it takes forever for the hot water to arrive, like 15-to-20-liters-of-water-down-the-drain forever. (Which also means we never have hot water for washing our dishes unless we want to boil it. This could be its own separate point). We obviously do not let the water just go to waste. We keep it in buckets/bottles for flushing, watering plants, rinsing off... But the landlord says, "Water isn't expensive! It doesn't matter!" ARGH
3) We can't use the shower in our own bathroom because some genius left a huge gap between the shower lip and the door, so water floods the bathroom while you shower no matter how many towels or sponges you try to cram into the gap to sop it all up. So after you shower you, you have to clean the floor...
4) AFTER you have squeegied all the water down the drain because the genius masons did not plan proper slope in the Italian-style showers, and so the drain is actually a tad HIGHER than the surrounding tile, meaning it will stagnate in the shower unless you scrape it all down the drain yourself.
5) The bathroom we are forced to use smells permanently of sewage because of the plumbing system. I do not now how much cleaner I have poured down it, just trying to disguise the reek.
6) The water pressure has a mind of its own. For some reason, in the guest bathroom, we can no longer get more than a trickle out of the sink faucet, and in the shower, when you try to put only cold water, it does the same for several minutes before finally blasting out.
For the sake of brevity, I will not go into the hoops that we had to jump through to get water to arrive at our flat on numerous occasions because of system failure (which in many instances was landlord failure to have gotten his system straight from the get-go), the many trips to the roof to try to figure it all out, the entire day I spent sweeping goop out of the reservoir...
=ARCHITECTURAL IDIOCY=Aside from the aforementioned poor drainage in the shower, we have windows and doors that will not open all the way because of poor placement in regards to built-in furniture, radiators, ceiling cornices, and supporting beams. There is also no apparent switch to turn on the light on the balcony... Even the landlord couldn't figure that one out. He has never lived here.* Just bought the place as an investment. Also, in order to turn on the light in the dining room, you have to go upstairs because there is not a switch downstairs...where the dining room is.
=SERVICES/EXPECTATIONS IN ACCORDANCE WITH RENTAL PRICE=This is one of the most expensive rentals we've ever lived in. Because of that we actually expect some value for our payment, like a parking lot that isn't serving as a dump. There is a literal dumpsite taking up a large part of the lot and a pile of sand/dirt that is now growing weeds and enough cat excrement to make one gag.
When we moved in, the elevator was working. Two days later, it stopped. The landlord said that was too bad and if we wanted to use it, we would have to shell out the money. Um. No. Not OUR building.
Also, we now have a new
natour (concierge/building janitor), after 5 months of having no one, whom we pay who does NOT do his job and while the foyer occasionally looks clean, our stairs are never properly washed.
The community lighting is never on in the building (we would be willing to pay) instead we have to walk into a completely dark building every night and use our phone flashlights to climb five flights of stairs that have no windows/skylights to aid us. These lights do work, but NO ONE can tell us how to turn them on or where, but they were mysteriously in use when our never-there-next-door-neighbor wanted to move some stuff into his daughter's apartment on the floor below. OK, we live with this, but it is a nightmare for our guests, especially little kids who are afraid to come to our house because of the lack of light.
There is double glazing on the big windows in the dining area, and one of the outer panes was busted** when we moved in. It is taped over; it is very ugly, but it is high up and not a window we can open, so we didn't make a fuss about it. However, the latch on the window behind our bed was broken and condemned with masking tape. Yes, masking tape. Not even willing to put 10-20 bucks into fixing a latch for his tenants. Remember all the heavy winter winds I spoke about? Tape doesn't hold up, and the window constantly blew open. Thankfully, J brought some vices from France that we have been able to use to hold it shut in a more permanent fashion.
=LANDLORD'S DISHONESTY=He has repeatedly made out that he had no idea about the water situation prior to our moving in. We have spoken to the previous tenants--he had tried to make out that they left because they went back to Korea, which is not true--and they told us that he refused to fix the water for them, forcing them to boil their water for cleaning, etc. Yet, he keeps bringing up to us his responsiveness and his goodwill in fixing all the problems, making it sound that everything is trying to thwart him. We continue to hold this card, letting him tout his own goodness, blah, blah, blah.
He
is trying to make has made us pay for "breaking" his "new" washing machine. Now, when you break something as a renter, it is normal that you should pay for it. However, in our experience and in that of other Lebanese people we have talked to, when it is an appliance that is in the flat that breaks down because of normal wear, it is up to the owner to fix it. This is why we pay higher rent. We did not break it; we used it. And from day one it has made a weird noise, but being unfamiliar with the machine (and seeing that it was not new), I just shrugged and kept using it.
Turns out the bearings and spider (whatever that is) were totally broken and had been on the way out for some time.
Seeing as our landlord was obviously going to interpret the contract in such a way that we are going to have to replace his appliances one by one as they fail to function, we told him we are leaving. He was flabbergasted and said he would pay for the machine after all; he had only been upset before because it was "new." When J called him on that, he said it was only 3 years old, then finally said "from 2016 but there were some moments when the flat was empty so it was practically new." The repairman said it was definitely older than 10 years.
J told him we are not trying to bargain or get something from him, so thank you very much, we will pay for the machine ourselves but we are leaving because nothing in the contract says we can't. However, we want to go on good terms. The landlord went away sad, but he called back the next day and offered to pay for half of the repairs (remember he was going to pay for ALL of it before) but he wants us to stay until the end of the year marked out on our contract.
We paid for the machine ourselves, did not answer his message about staying, and have continued looking for a flat. But now sickness has once again struck the family, slowing things down. We are paid up through September, so we have time, but like I mentioned, we are traveling to France for the last 3 weeks of September. I would have liked to have everything settled by then. :-/
I think that is enough for now. *sigh*
___________________
* This will be our advice to him when we give him back his keys: Live in the place yourself for a couple of weeks so you can see how uncomfortable and annoying these things are to put up with.
** An amusing what-do-you-take-me-for aside: The break was blamed on the port blast; but there is absolutely no way, I mean NO WAY, given the distance, direction, any possible ricocheting, etc. that a projectile from the blast could have hit that window. It is kilometers and kilometers from the site, we are hundreds of meters higher above sea-level, and the building faces the wrong way. Just own up and say it was broken, and you don't EVER plan on fixing it.
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