Adventures in Manhattan real estate: Renovations

One of my full-time jobs during the past two weeks has been to get our apartment ready to sell.

The minute we knew we were going to sell, we hired our favorite agents, Amelia Gewirtz and Andrew Phillips of Halstead. We met this duo eight years ago, when we were looking for our present apartment. We walked into an open house for an Upper West Side pre-war co-op apartment* that had never been renovated. The kitchen still had a basin sink from the turn of the century. But the living room looked like there was a cocktail party going on in it. There were at least thirty people there, all eyeing each other competitively. "We'll take bids until Wednesday," they said. We put in what we thought was a fair bid, but they sold it for $50,ooo over the asking price.

We had been trying to sell our small apartment by owner all summer, but in New York, it's just hard to get momentum without an agent. So we hired Amelia and Andrew, and within a week they sold our apartment for over the asking price. With a dead mouse in the refrigerator motor. (It took me a while to find the source of that funny smell.)

This year's market is not the same as 2004's, but Amelia and Andrew still know what they're doing. Amelia breezed through the apartment a couple of weeks ago. "Lose the stack of pillows in the closet," she said. "You need white stunt towels in the bath. And a new floor--Your tile is cracked. And new countertops, white marble ones. This apartment is all about the light."

I flinched, but I obeyed and called the contractor she recommended. A week later Joe Pesci's twin, voice and all, showed up at our apartment. His name was Eugene, and he was shorter than I was (which is saying a lot). "Nobody can renovate your apartment in one week," he practically shouted at me. "But I'll take care of you. I want you to sell. I loike you!"

I got to know Eugene quite well over the next five days, at least if I can believe half the things he said. He claims that he's going to be the lead in a reality TV show next year, that he has stock tips, that he is seventy-years-old, that he got in a fight with Donald Trump in a restaurant, that Calvin Klein won't let anybody else do work in his home, that his Sicilian father owned a whole chain of grocery stores but never sent him to school, that Osama's execution was a cover-up, and a million other things. His favorite exclamation was, "They cheated ya!" This was directed at the people who did the last renovation.

CZ liked Eugene, which is saying a lot, because she doesn't talk to just anyone. "You know, you look like that actress. That actress on TV," he suggested the last day of the renovation. Of course we had no idea what he was talking about; we don't even own a TV. But she nodded dryly, "Oh, yeah. That might have been me..."

"I loike you! I loike your style!" shouted Eugene.

Amazingly, Eugene was true to his promise, and the renovations were complete by Tuesday morning. We cleaned furiously for the rest of the day, finishing just in time for the photographer's arrival on Wednesday. The result: Totally worth it, especially the entertainment.

Our kitchen, with new countertops

*This is New York real estate-speak for an apartment built before WWII. Most of the apartments in our neighborhood, in fact, were built around 1910, just after the subway was constructed. A co-op means that everyone who lives in the building owns shares in it and the building is managed by a resident board.