Undoing the Landlord Special: A Beginner's Guide
A little over a year and a half ago, I moved into the most gorgeous, 1920’s apartment in Los Angeles. I’m completely obsessed with it: the tall ceilings, the huge windows, the beautiful wood floors.
The only problem? It’s been given the Landlord Special approximately several thousand times in the 100 years of apartment life. To be fair, it’s in fantastic shape for a century-old building, and I love it dearly! But sometimes looking at all the paint gives me an aneurysm—crusted and crumbling on cabinet hinges, layered so thickly on the baseboard that it’s dripping down, so thick on the doorways that the doors won’t close or lock.
I come from a fix-it family; growing up, I can barely remember a time when there wasn’t some sort of project in the works. For better or worse, that impulse to observe and refine has stuck with me.1 So after the move-in chaos subsided, the key furniture (bed, couch, dinner table, desk) was acquired, and the routine was established, I started to feel a little restless. What’s next?
The answer, I’ve decided, is making slow and small changes to the apartment in the hopes of making it the best possible home it can be.
What I’ve Done So Far
One (1) singular door plate in my boyfriend’s office to test how difficult it would be to remove, strip, and replace the door plates in the apartment.2
Cleaning the oven, which is an original O’Keefe & Merritt from the ‘50’s.3 It’s so charming! But was actually disgusting inside. With a lot of TLC and elbow grease, it’s looking pretty okay now, but there are still some rusted parts (some that have created huge holes in the metal!) that I definitely need to get replaced. But antique oven parts are expensive and it’s probably okay, so that might need to hold off for a little while.
Under-cabinet lighting in the kitchen, done with a Philips LightStrip.4 It made a massive improvement to the vibe, especially after we finish “closing the kitchen” but still need to pop in and out to refill water and such. Unfortunately, I bent it while installing5 and the red part of the LED stopped working in one section, so we’re probably going to return it & replace.
Un-pictured, but I put faux-frosted glass on one of the windows so the neighbors couldn’t see directly into the bedroom. We left the top clear to get a nice view outside in case we wanted to spy on people in the alley behind the apartment. Great success!
We also got a dishwasher, organized the under-sink area, set up some smart bulbs in the bedroom to act as a light alarm, and have been steadily filling the apartment with furniture for organization and fun.
The Plan
I’ve got a few top to-do’s on my list:
Turning the old ironing board hole into a spice rack with shelves
Cleaning the “fly light”6
Stripping the paint off the doorknobs and plates
Cleaning up the hinges on cabinets & doors
Cleaning & organizing the garage
Adding sliders to drawers in the kitchen
Somehow fixing the crusty, impossible-to-open windows in the kitchen and bedroom
Looking at the list, I’m thinking, “Wow, this actually isn’t that bad!” But these are only the biggest, most urgent tasks; I’m sure other things will wiggle their way to the top of the priorities as we move forward.
So… wish me luck, I guess!
Our unofficial family motto, “gotta make it happen,” crops up in my internal dialogue near-constantly.
Not the most efficient task of my life—I think it took about 2 months to actually make it happen, and I still haven’t even replaced one of the plates. whoops!
At least, I think it’s from the ‘50’s. I haven’t been able to date it exactly, but that seems to be about the right time frame based on the research I’ve done.
That, and copious amounts of double-sided mounting tape to make up for the awful adhesive that came attached to the strip.
The instructions said I could bend the strip 90 degrees! The instructions lied!!!
The “fly light” is the overhead light in the kitchen, inside which are dozens and dozens of (very visible) dead flies. I can’t even think about it, it grosses me out so much. Yuck!