<p>That’s an interesting alternative I’d never heard of. But I’m not sure I’d want to spend a lot of money buying and installing something like that (even if the woman who owns the apartment permitted it) when the sublease has only enough renewal options to allow me to be there a total of five years. If I knew that I were going to be buying the apartment someday – which I guess is a possibility, but who knows if it’ll happen – it would be a different story.</p>
<p>I will definitely take measurements when I go back on Friday, to see how much counter space there is. I wouldn’t want to leave myself with none whatsoever.</p>
<p>I don’t know how much cupboard space there is below, either. My general impression was that the kitchen looks like it hasn’t been renovated since the 1950’s or 1960’s, except presumably to replace the refrigerator.</p>
<p>At least the bathroom looks reasonably modern, although it still has a built-in metal cabinet with shelves in the corner that probably dates from the building’s construction in the late '30’s! It’s shaped sort of like a miniature pot-bellied stove, and I had no idea what it was until I opened its door.</p>
<p>The apartment has way more than enough advantages to make me willing to overlook these little quirks.</p>
<p>And it’s in way better shape than my current apartment, where the wooden floor tiles almost always popped up during the summer from the moisture, and there were leaks in the walls from the cooling system, and the air conditioning was out for extended periods in several summers, and there’s no freight elevator, and the regular elevators are always breaking down, and the kitchen cabinets definitely date from the 1960’s – the wood is warped and most of the doors don’t even close! And all this in a building that likes to call itself a “luxury” doorman building and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars renovating the lobby a few years ago!</p>