Grannies, Cookies and Duplexes

My first major task since arriving to Seattle has been to locate and secure a suitable apartment. This was following a disastrous decision to secure an apartment close to the University without having seen the building. I have no wish to revisit this sorry episode but it is sufficient to say my apartment did not have the views of Lake Washington as depicted on the web. The apartment had a more graceful vista of the rooftop of a nearby burger restaurant equipped with visually stunning extractor fans and muddy puddle textures.

After dropping the apartment I then began the search for another. This involved many days of my Converse and I clocking up the mileage on foot through the Seattle suburbs. I learned a few valued lessons during this period: Firstly that converse trainers were not made for walking further than 4 blocks. Secondly, scanning through the rental listings, that lots of Americans have basement duplexes available for lease. In terms of a definition, a duplex is a house comprising of two units on two different floors with the second unit in either the basement or sometimes in what is known as a Mother-in-Law apartment (otherwise know as a MIL). So the basic principal of the duplex is that your landlord will generally own the house and in most circumstances live in the unit above you. In my search for a suitable apartment I excluded all MILs simply on the basis of the name, as I could not live with the shame of renting a Granny flat.

However, I was intrigued by the basement duplex concept and my first introduction to them transpired when I answered a rental ad placed by a very nice lady called Judy. Now Judy owned a big, traditional American home and to save money to send her grandkids to college, she had converted her basement into a two bedroom ‘apartment’ to rent out specifically to graduate students and ‘fine, young couples’. As if to emphasis her grandmotherly and trustworthy credentials as a prospective landlord, she had freshly baked cookies for me on arrival.

There were a number of striking features to Judy’s basement apartment, which will hopefully provide some insight. Firstly, every light fitting in the entire apartment had been switched on, which considering it was a bright and clear late summer morning, struck me as a tad odd. However, the reasoning behind this decision became apparent the moment I switched off a light, as it was darker than the London Underground. This was more poignantly illustrated by a collection of the sorriest looking spider plants I have ever seen, which were not a good advert for the presence of natural light in the ‘daylight’ basement.

Secondly, there was a large garish purple curtain covering a doorway in the lounge, which revealed a pine staircase leading upwards to a door. In my naivety I asked Judy what lay behind this door and she simply stated that it was her home (I guess stupid questions…). I think the shock on my face, drew Judy into reassuring me that she hardly ever used the door except when doing her laundry or to pay her tenants a visit. The next obvious question was to ask whether as a tenant, I would be provided with a key for the door. Judy laughed at this and stated that for her own security she had the only key and that the door was kept locked with the exception of laundry day.

Now I appreciate that grannies need to maintain security in their homes, I really do, but what about my security? Judy seemed like a very nice lady but whose to say that she was not a danger to me also. Just because she has grandchildren does not mean I will not wake up one night to find her standing over me offering more cookies. Plus do I really want to be interrupted during dinner by a granny descending the stairs and passing through the purple curtain to wash her nighties?

Suffice to say thanks to my hyperactive imagination and the less than satisfactory first impression of the basement duplex – I did not rent Judy’s place. It is a sad, sad world in which you cannot trust a granny, especially one offering cookies…