The White House Next Door

Ever since we moved into our apartment work has been going on next door converting The White House Hotel into "luxury" apartments. Though there is still a bit of work to be done on a few of the apartments, the building is now open for show and I've heard that four of the eight units have already been sold. My curiosity about the former hotel has certainly been piqued and yesterday I was given a tour by the construction team's foreman. The Victorian facade, painted stark white, is rather striking and when you enter the building you walk into a beautiful wide hallway with lovely tile work on the floor and detailed plasterwork on the ceilings. The renovation work in the individual apartments was quite nice with lovely hardwood floors, neutral walls with period plasterwork on the ceilings and walls. Even so, I was curious about the layouts of the apartments. The White House is not a very large building and I couldn't imagine how they would fit eight apartments in the given space. I soon got my answer. The apartments were rather on the smallish side. Some of the units are one-bedroom, while others have two bedrooms. Each unit has a different layout. Some of the layouts were bizarre with odd angles and narrow passage ways. Most of the bedrooms were small. Many units had one room that served as kitchen/dining room/living room. The so-called penthouse was actually in the attic of the building. The entire unit has steeply sloped ceilings with only skylights as windows. I was amazed to notice that none of the units has built-in closets, all bathrooms had pedestal sinks (i.e. no under-sink storage). No linen closets. No coat closets. I was astounded to think that the renovators did not think of including those kinds of amenities. And these apartments are expensive (I think we would call them condominiums in the States, as they are for sale). One of the basement units is going for about £265,000 (about $473,000). Well, at least the new neighbors should be well heeled.