Yesterday, the folks who have been working on the elevators in my apartment building finally finished. It's been five months (actually, almost six now) of having only one elevator in service at a time. You're probably wondering why having just one would be a problem. There are thirteen floors to my building and twelve apartments on each floor (eight of them are two-bedroom apartments). That's 156 apartments, most of them occupied, many of them by more than one person, sometimes by entire families. One that I know of on the first floor has eight people living in it. (And the bottom floor is called the Main Floor, not the first floor. How very cosmopolitan and vaguely European of us.)
During peak times, like the morning and afternoon rush, those elevators get very full. Everyone is trying to go to work or trying to come home. Many times over the past few months, the door to the elevator has opened to reveal a dozen people crammed inside and no room to add just one more. I have climbed six flights of stairs more than I care to remember, including a very memorable day when I had to make the trek three times with my laundry. And you probably just shouldn't ask how much fun we've had on the days that people moved in or moved out. Imagine trying to squeeze in between the mattress, box springs, bedside tables, lamps, boxes, and everything else someone has crammed into that small enclosed space. It's a good thing I'm not claustrophobic. And no one is in a very welcoming mood, frankly.
The repairs have been necessary, I suppose. The elevators haven't been upgraded, pretty much, since they were installed in the late 1940s-early 1950s. They needed to be modernized. They are far more sleek looking inside, compared to the carpeted walls we had before that always made me think of a rumpus room. We now have a lovely voice telling us in gentle tones which floor we have stopped on, no doubt for those who are visually impaired. And the buttons are easier to read, thanks to the larger size. Yeah, I know I'm getting older when I appreciate "large print" elevator buttons.
Not everyone has caught on yet, by the way. We all still wait beside the one that's been working the past couple of months by itself. When the "new" one opens up, people are reluctant to step inside because they aren't sure it's truly fixed. I've been in it twice now, and I have to say it's a smooth ride up to my floor now.
Just as an aside, I should mention that a couple of the guys working on the elevators the past couple of months were model-handsome, well built young men with attractive faces. We get some of the hottest people here to take care of and fix stuff. When the rewiring project was going on last summer, one of the crew members stopped traffic when he walked around the hallways. He was just that good looking. Even the two young guys who haul out the garbage bins from the basement each Friday could be working the runways. I don't know why that is. I'm just grateful for it.
I'm also very grateful to have both elevators working again. I've been hoping they'd get finished in time for me to buy a new set of living room furniture before summer school starts in mid-June. The current set is very shabby, having been used now for the past thirteen years. It's white-ish (white adjacent?) and shows dirt far too easily. I'm ready for a change, but I wouldn't have dared to have any furniture delivered when we had only one elevator in service. So it looks like I'll be shopping in the next few weeks for a new, smaller, darker couch or sofa (still don't know the difference) and chairs. It's going to look like a whole new apartment when I'm done, hopefully, and now I have brand new elevators to ride to get to it too. Such small pleasures in life, sometimes, I know, but aren't they worth it?
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