Or, rather, the jungle escaped.
Management finally got around to painting the new balcony this week. As you may recall, we had to clear everything off two days before Halloween, filling a corner of our living room with plants, gardening supplies, and patio furniture for what was supposed to be a three-day construction project. They tore everything out that Monday or Tuesday, and had the new balcony up by Wednesday…but then they didn’t paint it until two weeks later. (The leasing office told me that the paint was being shipped from Texas, so they had to wait for the paint to show up.)
It’s nice to have the space back. And it’s nice that we’ll be able to water all the plants without balancing acts worthy of tightrope walkers, or stretches worthy of Plastic Man. And the new balcony does seem to be better constructed than the last one.
When we moved in, we had a rickety, termite-infested balcony. The apartment complex changed hands, and one of the many things the new owners did was to replace the balconies. Of course, they told us to clear everything off in November, then changed their minds and decided to wait until January to do anything. And when they did put them up, they didn’t bother with things like properly-treated wood for outdoor use, and sap oozed out of the floorboards for months. Then the complex changed hands again. And the new new owners decided the balconies needed to be replaced again. They seem to have used the right materials for the structural elements. The floors feel more solid, and the boards are placed more closely together. But we think they reused some of the boards on the non-structural parts. We saw sap oozing from one of the railings as we placed our bench against one side.
The more things change…