The Joys and Downfalls of Living in an Old Building

Edinburgh is filled with beautiful old buildings and I am fortunate enough to live in one.  I live in a tenement building (multi-occupancy building) in an area of Edinburgh called Newington.  If I crane my neck out my bedroom window I can just see Arthur's Seat and Salisbury crags.  Not too bad on a student budget!

When we went looking for our flat a couple years ago we looked at quite a few flats.  Put our name down for some and never came up successful.  When we toured the flat we live in now we knew this was the one we really wanted.  The landlord was a little hesitant as she had never rented to anything but professionals and post-grad students.  But after some assurances we were very mature and studious, she decided we were who she wanted for tenants.

Our flat is on the third floor (North American fourth floor... What we would call a first floor in North America they call the ground floor and so a North American second floor is their first floor).  Moving into the flat was quite the workout.  Down 48 stairs from my other place, luckily just down the road a few blocks and then back up the 63 stairs to this place (yes, I counted...).  We are on the top floor and because of that we have beautifully tall ceilings.  The floor plan of our flat is quite small but having the tall ceilings makes it feel much bigger than it is.  I promised pictures of my flat a long time ago so I figured it was time I finally delivered!

Our Kitchen

Bedroom

My lovely fake fireplace (but it does light up and produce heat!)

Snowy view from my desk window

While living in this old building has its wonderful perks there are also some downsides.  Two weeks ago we had quite the roller coaster of a week.

Tuesday afternoon our toilet stopped working.  The tank wouldn't refill.  So as long as we refilled it manually using a bucket and a sink it would flush.  But everything else in our bathroom seemed to be working.  Water outages are quite common (in September we had three separate incidents where we had no water due to water mains bursting) so we decided to wait until morning to sort it out.  When I showered the next morning part way through the shower the water pressure dropped.  The cold water to the shower had stopped working.  Over the course of the day we lost cold water to our bathtub and bathroom sink.  Throughout it all though, we always had hot water in our bathroom and normal running water in our kitchen.  We were very confused.  One of the evenings I was in our utility closet to see if somehow we had managed to turn half our water off.  Thats when it occurred to me:  We didn't have cold water in the room adjacent to our next door flat.  And next door they were doing construction and no one was living there.  They also started working again after Christmas the day we lost water.  Had they turned the water off in the flat next door and also managed to turn our water off?    We approached the neighbour with our problem and she talked to the construction workers.  They had in fact turned the water off Tuesday, the day we lost water.  But the workers were adamant that it was definitely not related.  It had to be something within our own flat.  But it all seemed too much of a coincidence for me.  We lost water the day they turn the water off, only in the room adjacent to that flat and only cold water (we have an on demand hot water heater that was supplying the hot water).  After another day of discussions they finally agreed to turn the water to the neighbours flat back on for the weekend.  And when we returned home from class Friday evening we had running water!  It turns out we share a water supply with our neighbour... So that's something our landlord will have to sort out at some point.

As if losing water for four days wasn't enough, the Wednesday of the same week we had a gas leak.  I came home from grocery shopping and the whole flat smelled of gas.  We turned the gas supply to the flat off and opened all the windows.  To confuse things further I was cat sitting for a friend who was having her flat inspected.  In the UK windows don't have screens.  So when you open the window it is open to outside.  That meant we had to put the cat in the carrier while we had the windows open to prevent it from jumping out a window.  That cat was not impressed to say the least.  The gas company sent someone out promptly and he worked around in our utility closet.  After a while he came out, said it was fixed and left.  So we have no idea what was wrong but it's fixed and we haven't had a problem since then.

I do love our flat, but this has definitely given me an insight into living in an older building.  Maybe when I go to buy my first place I will look for a newer construction...