Our First Apartment Hunt

While I am away this weekend celebrating my last moments as a single lady - Hooray Bachelorette Party Weekend - I thought I'd give you a peek inside our apartment hunt... Enjoy!

Last weekend Hunky and I went on our very first apartment hunt! We were both giddy and thought it would be pretty simple to find our very first home together.

Other than the choice of :

walk up/brown stone vs.

high rise building I personally didn't anticipate the search being much more than A or B...

Man - was I wrong.

On our first day here are the places we saw...
A very bizarre and open loft-esque place...

With a super tiny kitchen.

Super open floor plan with strange split levels. Notice open balcony with no rail...

This cute staircase was really the only saving grace for this space...

The creepy back alley to get to the entry... not a selling point at all.

So the second place we went to see was quite possibly the smallest/darkest place I've ever seen.

This was the living space.
The closet was really the only thing to write home about - but you don't really live in the closet - oh and there were windows in the bedroom with bars over them on the inside... Yes, the inside...

It was lovely looking from the outside - but too dark for us!


I really think this sign below is truly out of proportion...
Turn that dog into a something like our little Mocha and the rats are just her size... I really hope that's not true!

The next place was the 2nd story of a house - it was my favorite, because of the light and space, although the house was pretty much the junkiest looking in the neighborhood...
Great u-style kitchen with a double stove - pretty grimy looking - but the biggest and in my opinion most functional, for us, that we had seen all day.

A view from the kitchen through the hall and into the living/dining space. So much natural light - Love it!

The 1st closet organizer that I hated so much --- I need more space on the rod for hanging things... people have dressers for drawers!!

The second closet organizer that I hated slightly less than the first... Keyword being slightly. When the Realtor asked the owner if he would remove these he sounded shocked that someone wouldn't want something so great... Where do you hang all the clothes with those shelves in the way!? Also - there were no closet doors...


By this point I was ready to move into the junkiest looking house on the block and call it good...
My hair was 2 to 3 times its normal mass and I was pretty much spent for the day...

But we decided to take a look at one last place. A place that we called on our own, without the help of a Realtor, I'm pretty sure we won't be doing that again any time soon... The place that had me convinced for the rest of the night that I could just live in Michigan and Skype John every once in a while because there was no way I was living in Chicago...

You know the show Hoarders? Well - we walked through a place that was a prime candidate. 10 gallon buckets of cat poo all over, junk from floor to ceiling that we had to climb over to see the rooms. Also - the man showing it was a real creep and told us about where every past tenant would change their clothes. That was the point I pretty much made up my mind to never live in Chicago...

Needless to say I second day was a bit more successful and we did indeed end up finding a place in a high rise building. It was a relief and because of the trauma of the first day I didn't even bother to take my camera along as I was planning on being disappointed. There are no photos to show of our new place --- but, we are very happy and super excited to be moving to the city in a little over a month!

Moving is almost on the same level of stress and work as planning a wedding. What will we ever do if/when things calm down around here!