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Fixing up a 'Crappy Apartment'

By Justin Rocket Silverman, amNewYork Staff Writer
More stories | jsilverman@am-ny.com

December 13, 2007

Cindy Gatto thought she had found an amazing deal when she saw a listing for a one-bedroom apartment in Astoria renting for just $650. The place was by no means immaculate, but with a little elbow grease, she figured she could make it shine.

Instead, Gatto found herself living in one Crappy Apartment.

"There are a lot of structural problems here that I didn't know about when I moved in," Gatto said. "My landlords don't believe in fixing things properly, so they just patch stuff."

A case in point: the apartment above them has a leaky radiator. Instead of repairing or replacing it, workers merely patched up the rotted floorboards, which were sagging into Gatto's living room, she said. Each winter the radiator turns on and begins to leak again, and her ceiling begins to crack once more. This has been going on, Gatto said, for the entire 11 years she has lived in the apartment.

During this time, she has been too preoccupied building her business, a ceramics studio on Manhattan Avenue in Williamsburg called The Mudpit, to find a new place to live.

Yet although the rent is low, Gatto said she has paid in other ways.

One year she decided to paint the apartment. The walls looked fine for about five hours, until workmen put up new mailboxes outside. They used nails that were too long, and punctured the newly painted walls.

On her 36th birthday, a terrible crash came from the kitchen. She rushed in to find the dish cabinets had broken free of the wall. All of her dishes, including antique Italian wine glasses brought by her grandmother though Ellis Island, lay smashed on the floor.

So why not sue the landlord for damage caused by the faulty cabinetry?

"I can't," Gatto said. "I never signed a lease."

Does your domicile leave something to be desired? Share your story with us and be featured in amNewYork. E-mail mycrappyapt@gmail.com

Interior Designer Kein Cross offered some inexpensive ways to improve the appearance of Gatto's apartment.
- Paint the doors brown to match the carpet. This will play up the traditional feel of the rooms.
- Get rid of all the faulty cabinets. There are units for sale at Lowes for $250.
- Invest in a smaller stove and refrigerator to create more space in the kitchen and get rid of the worn-out appearance.
- Install a downward-facing light on the ceiling to hide chipped paint and other imperfections on the walls.
- Apply outdoor deck paint to the kitchen floor. It will hide the worst of the damage.