I moved into a new apartment last weekend! And if I say new, I mean new! – brand-new!
The construction of the building finished about two weeks ago. The owners of the apartments got their keys on May 13th and even they were not allowed to access the building before that!
As nice and colorful my old flat was during the past summer months: it just sucked on cold, windy or rainy days! The place was like a terrible draught and the glass roof leaked so that we had to be careful not to slip on the wooden stairs. As my flatmates were looking to move out as well, I kind of had to leave my place and since Barbaras flatmate didn’t want to live with a couple Babs and I started checking out a few flats and houses over the past couple of months to move in with each other. We decided to get a 3-bedroom flat because they seem to be more affordable with three people paying rent than just the two of us in a two-bedroom apartment. One of the flatmates of my old place (Isla) moved in with us.
Even though it’s a brand new building, there are several things I just cannot understand (I’m probably used too much to German accuracy & efficiency….?).
Coming into the building (it’s called Piermont Apartments by the way) through the ground level entry hall, you have to go three steps down to access the elevators..!? As inconvenient this might seem carrying furniture while moving in, this really gets a problem for mothers with strollers or people in wheelchairs! They have to use the underground car park level to access the lift. The best thing: There’s no apparent/obvious reason for those 3 steps.
Insulation: Double glazing seems to be almost unknown for Kiwi windows. The resulting temperature in the (of course unheated) apartment (as central heating also is kind of unknown over here), is almost identical to the outside temperature. Everyone uses those small (or sometimes rather large) portable heaters – electrical or gas. Problem with those: They heat up the air in the room – but the walls/building itself stays cold (and moist).
City regulations state that you can’t open the windows (more than 15cm wide that is). No way to really air the place. That’s proably the reason why we have 2 ventilation systems: One blowing air inside (in the bedrooms), the other one (in bathrooms and laundry) sucking it out. Too bad though that both systems are a all-on/all-off system, so that the ventilation in our bathroom will be switched on even though you would just need it in the laundry on the other side of the flat….
Sometimes I wonder which genius minds designed the electrical wiring: Our hallway/corridor is about 12 meters long – and has no windows. Lightswitches are only on either end, so if you are living in a room off the middle of the corridor you have no way of switching on/off the light and are wandering through darkness in the middle of the night. Same thing when you come into the flat: There’s a light-switch for the small entry corridor, but to switch on the light in the main hallway you first have to walk to its end.
And as long as the main hallway is, as narrow it is: Only 86 cm wide!! Not quite ideal for moving furniture… King-size beds officially don’t fit into the apartments. Lucky us: Barbaras bed is just queen-size… But poor her: she had to saw off about 1 cm off the legs of her almost new (and really valuable) desk to even get it into the flat. Other people moving in, had to order a crane to get their couches inside their living room via the balcony! (And that’s the only place you can use the crane for as you can’t open the windows in the bed rooms – remember? Funny enough, there’s nothing preventing me from jumping of our balcony….
Ok. now it’s enough! …..those Germans…. aaalways com-plai-ning…!? Can’t they stop it for a change? ;)
Yes I think I’ve complained enough, right? To be honest: the apartment also has its nice features:
A quite neat sea-view for example! Overlooking the marina with all its Yachts, you can see across the bay up to Petone! (At least if it’s not raining or foggy…). The location is REALLY central and you can watch millions of tourists going into Te Papa.
Did I mention we have two bathrooms? One for Isla, one on-suite bathroom with walk-in shower for us. And ours even has underfloor heating (that’s the only room which is heated).
Enough text. Here are some pictures. Remember that we just moved in and don’t have any pictures on the walls.
