One NYC Tennant Has the Experience From Hell and People Can't Stop Talking About It
Living in NYC is not for the faint of heart. When one person’s kitchen cabinets just fall, is it worth it to live there?
Published May 6 2024, 8:11 a.m. ET
As we grow up and move into our own homes, certain problems arise that we never realized we’d have to deal with. From appliances breaking down to uncontrollable mold, being a homeowner or long-term renter has its challenges. But when a TikTok video shows off an apartment with cabinets that just fell, our worries amplified.
A video posted to TikTok on April 29, 2024, went viral when it shared the story of an apartment renter in New York City whose kitchen cabinets fell off the wall in the middle of the night. Thanks to them, we have no greater fear. Luckily, social media pundits were able to have a sense of humor about the whole literal mess.
A TikToker’s kitchen cabinets fell down in the middle of the night in their NYC apartment.
We’ve all heard horror stories about NYC apartments. From tiny studios at exorbitant prices to places filled with cockroaches, NYC doesn’t seem like an ideal place to rent an apartment. Sometimes you get lucky and find a diamond in the rough, and other times, that diamond turns out to be a piece of coal when your kitchen cabinets fall off the wall.
When Christine Covode shared a video of how her kitchen cabinets fell in her NYC apartment at 5 a.m., commenters took to the platform to share their biggest fears and jokes related to the incident. Christine shared that she “woke up to a crashing sound at 5 a.m., walked out, and saw this” referring to a bunch of broken cabinets on the floor.
The landlord is taking care of the kitchen cabinets, although the solution isn’t ideal.
Christine and her roommates reached out to the landlord immediately to handle the problem. Luckily, the landlord was relatively responsive (compared to some other landlords I’ve dealt with in the past) and sent in a team to clean up the cabinets and the mess. Once that was handled, however, Christine had no idea what to expect as far as compensation and a replacement.
What would you do in that situation? Because Christine doesn’t own the property, it’s unlikely that she put the cabinets up in the first place, so this would be the fault of the landlord. Since the incident, however, Christine has gotten a ton of attention from online magazines like People about how she’s handling it and the amount of comments and views her initial video received.
She and the landlord went back and forth via email and phone, and the landlord instructed her to “give a number” for compensation. Jokingly, Christine posted a follow-up video in which she claimed that the landlord gave each roommate $6,000, an all-expenses-paid vacation to Cancun, and a meeting with Beyoncé. By the Beyoncé point, we knew it was a joke, but at least she has a sense of humor about the whole thing!
Commenters, however, are sincere with their advice. “Might be worth documenting everything,” one person wrote. “The damage, the cost of items broken, the time waiting for it to be fixed (assuming you rent), and get the landlord to reimburse or take to small claims if they refuse.”
Alternatively, others are happy to spread joy by making jokes akin to the OP’s sense of humor. One pointed out that at least they have an in-unit washer and dryer, which is incredibly rare for NYC. Another asked, “Hey, can you grab me a glass (shard) of water?” making light of all the broken dishes.
But for now, it seems that the kitchen cabinets falling may have been a net positive for Christine, who’s a working artist in NYC. She got some more attention on her solo show and her landlord seems to have taken care of the situation.
