If you are not interested in the travails of housing in Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, then skip right past this item.

After a few days less a year in the Teeny Apartment, we completed a move today to a bigger place, for less money … around the corner from where we were before.

We didn’t quite get what we wanted, on the expense side, but for ease of transfer, well, that’s worth something.

Looking back to a year ago, when we moved in to the Teeny Apartment … well, I seemed to like it then. Hmmm. Worries me, because I like the new place, too. At this moment.

Hope it turns out better. I believe it will. We have one year of hard experience behind us.

To recap: We withstood most of the Biblical plagues during our time in the Teeny Apartment. OK, several, anyway. Floods, gnats, ants, gushing air conditioners and mold. And more ants. We also had a gecko come and go, but that hardly seemed to count.

It was one issue after another. The place itself … the room … it was tiny, but not quite Hong Kong tiny, and the two separate rooms, even if they were small … and the very efficient bathroom (with a real, standup shower!) were plusses.

But with the market declining, we figured we could take a step up in space and pay less … and we did.

I mentioned this a week or so ago, and here is how it turned out:

I caved to the landlord on the price. Remember how I said I thought/hoped it was finished but feared it was not? Well, it wasn’t.

My last conversation with the landlord had concluded with him saying he would need to “check with my partner” on the price I thought we had agreed to — which was Dh5,000 (about $1,360) less than his previous asking price. After that, I sent to him a copy of the old contract, with a note about how we had agreed on a new price, and please take this forward.

After a few days of ominous silence, I went looking for Mr. Masul to see if I could get a key for the other place … and he said it was already rented.

Now, I was worried. It was December 1 or so, and we had to be out of the Teeny Apartment on December 9. We had been through 3-4 other place on the property, and disliked/loathed all of them. It was that one specific apartment … or bust.

Also, almost no time to find anywhere new, plus this is a very busy time at the newspaper.

First thing I did was call the landlord. So, is that place we looked at — ground floor, private entrance, about half-again as big as the Teeny Apartment … is it rented, or not? “No, the landlord said.  It is not. But we cannot give it to you for the price you mentioned.”

So, what to do?

1. Play hardball. “This is what we’re offering. We know the market is soft, you know it’s soft, plus Leah wants to move into a just-opened tower with a pool and a gym that costs the same price I’m offering you.” He’s got 3-4 other vacancies. Can he stand another?

2. Stay in the Teeny Apartment. We didn’t mind several aspects of this place. And we would have paid about 20 percent less in rent than we did in the previous year. A nice, significant decline in by far our biggest expense, in-country.

3. Find someplace completely new. Another neighborhood. Maybe move into a hotel for a week or so in the interim. Then go somewhere else.

We thought about this for an hour or so. I was firing off messages from the apartment to Leah at work, trying to sort this out …

And we caved.

I called up the landlord and said,”OK, we will pay Dh5,000 more … the price you quoted … for the place around the corner.”

And that was that. After I found Mr. Masul and had him stand in the place we wanted, and called the landlord and handed the phone to Mr. Masul … and we all agreed it was THAT place that I was paying for, and not one of the ragged other ones. No chance for confusion, right? Right.

Our excuses/explanantions:

1. I always feared this would happen … negotiations would get strung out, and the landlord knew that even though he risked losing us entirely, the later it got the more likely we were to stay in the little place or take his price. We were out of time.

2. To go someplace else would involve an agent, and we would pay that same Dh5,000 in agent fees.  So we’d need to find someplace Dh10,000 less to beat the deal we finally accepted. And we didn’t see many one-bedrooms for that price … or none, actually, in an area we wanted to be.

3. The hassle of packing up and moving, and maybe having to store some stuff … was just too daunting. Plus, we actually liked the place around the corner.

4. If we found someplace new, we faced furnishing it. From start to finish. Our entire store of furniture is one coffee table and two rattan chairs. The end. We would have to buy a bed, couches, tables, chairs, dressers … How much would that cost? Way, way more than Dh5,000.

So, here we are. No agency fees. No movers. No new furniture, yet. Just dragged/carried/rolled everything around the corner to the opposite side of the property. About a 50-yard trip about 30 times.

We will post some photos soon, once we get everything picked up or put away.

It was astonishing how much stuff we had packed into that tiny place. I mean, it was good, in the sense that we didn’t acquire even more things — which I fear we might do here, simple because we have more space.

It took us chunks of two days to get everything out. I worked both days, and Leah was ill both days, and it was more of a hassle than we anticipated. Luckily, filling (over and again) a big suitcase with wheels eased things, a bit.

Now we are in the new place and I am typing this from … a dinner table! What a concept. Haven’t had one of those in a year.  And it has six seats, too. Behind me is a real kitchen, with actual storage space, and pantry room. Way more space than we had in the old place. A bigger fridge. A little washing machine that also has dryer capability.

Ahead of me is the same couch and two little couches that we had in the other place. (I didn’t realize that the furniture in the 16 or so units here is essentially the same. The nasty couches are blue this time, and missing the sand-papery covers, which are being cleaned, allegedly.) On the far wall is a flatscreen TV that will show us nothing useful without paying more money for an upgrade. But we know it works.

This one extended room, kitchen/dining/living — is as big as the whole of the Teeny Apartment.

The internet is already in, and that’s critical, of course.

Beyond this room is a hall on the left with a bathroom branching off on the right. Not well-lit, not well laid-out, and it has a tub for a shower — which I hate. I already miss my tiny shower. But it works.

And behind the bathroom is the bedroom. One big armoire, but not much other storage. A bed that is similar to the moldy one (the leaking AC, remember?) we left … but the mattress isn’t as rock-like.

So, bigger place, much brighter,  no apparent history of floods, a hint of some mold but nothing like the little place, which felt sick. Much airier.

We also have a patio, again, except it’s about 33 percent bigger. It actually could absorb a table or a barbecue and we still would be able to get by and go out the big wooden double doors between us and the street.

And about 10 percent less than we paid for the past year, and with no agents fee.

So, we’re satisfied. For now. I guess from this moment on is when we find what is wrong. But in terms of space and room and ability to even have someone over and give them a place to sit … we’re ahead of the game.

And it’s over. That’s a big, big part of this.