We have a rental!

After much agonizing, consternation, stress, and some more stress, we signed a year-long rental agreement on an apartment in the west side of Reykjavik (called ‘West Town’ or ‘Vesturbærinn’) today. Not surprisingly we heard of this apartment through a friend how works with the previous occupant, and not through the regular online rental-sites. (In retrospect we should have taken out an ad in the paper, apparently that works also).

Anyway, the apartment isn’t fantastic by any means, but it is really really really close to where I will be working for the next year. It is also very close to Bjarki’s daycare (that he will be starting later this month) and hopefully close to Anna’s school next year (we’ve yet to sign her up properly). So bottom line: we decided to give up creature comforts for a non-existent commute, although many people will argue that the capital area is too small to call driving from one end of it to the other a ‘commute’…

So, regarding the apartment itself… On the good side it is large for a rental in this part of town. It has three bedrooms, two of which are pretty big by Icelandic standards (particularly by West Town standards). The living room is big, and there’s a dining area off of it where our big table will fit. The floors are covered using ‘plastic wooden flooring’ (Pergo?), and tiles. Not a carpet in sight – yay! Also, the rent isn’t terrible, and in fact it’s the least we’ve paid for rent in about ten years (since our first year at Stanford).

Now for the not so great parts: The kitchen is slightly above terrible. It’s the original kitchen, built when people were smaller, so the counters are at least an inch too low. In fact, the counters are about an inch lower than the newish stove that comes with the apartment. The sink is also the smallest sink I’ve seen in a while. It is not big enough for us to lay a dinner plate flat. Why it’s a double sink, (a double teeny-sink) I do not understand. We’ll have to buy our own (smallish) fridge, and dishwasher. And it has a space for a small table, plus some chairs, which I find less optimal than having our dining table sitting right next to the kitchen.

Another annoyance is that the landlord didn’t want to paint the apartment after the previous owners. Since we’ll only be there for a year (we’re SOOOO buying a place next year) it’s a hard call whether to paint or not (the walls are slightly dirty), so I think we’ll start by spotting all the holes left by the numerous nails the previous occupant put up. The landlord has mentioned that he’ll “help” us pay for any paint we buy, but it’ll basically be free manual labor for him. He did fix the broken electrical sockets and window closers, but that’s about it.

And why is he so lah-dee-dah about it? Well, apparently his contracting business bought up most of the apartments in the house before the crash, intending to renovate them and even add to the building. But then things went belly up and now they’re just holding steady, weathering out the storm.

So anyway, we have have a place to stay, triple hurrah for that! Now we just have to wait for the container to arrive, and for it to clear customs before we can call in the troops and start the fun business of jamming it full of furniture. 🙂

Here are some pictures taken on July 12th:

The next week will be spent cleaning and painting the place, plus getting the internet up and running.  There’s no home without internet!! 🙂