Giddiness

Yesterday had horrible weather. ew. like legit -- worst day to be running around a town by walking around.

BUT we did get to see two great apartments. I think the strategy right now is -- don't get a broker, see as many places as possible, hope that they don't get sold as the summer months set in, have the owner freak out that it's not sold yet, make a super low ball offer, buy the place after knocking down a few grand off the listing price. Thank god I have my parents to help me along in this process -- I realized that over the past 15 yrs, my parents have bought about 7 properties. holy cow!

We saw two properties yesterday -- both in the same area. I think I'll plan to post about each of the apartments that I go to view but I'll have to create nick names for them to keep track of them all.

Apartment #1 -- The Frat House There are currently two guys living there. Both seem rather fratty with the paddles and composite pictures.

Frat house is a little out of my price range -- a two bdrm with an open kitchen to the living room. The two bedrooms are maybe about 130 sq ft and a good square shape. The kitchen is about 12 ft long, which gives me decent counter space. And there's a dish washer -- but I don't like how openly connected to the rest of the place it is... Call me Asian, but I just don't want my living room smelling of stir fry when I cook -- especially b/c there's no window in the area. But it also has the opening to the fire exit which is pretty cool too :)

Fire escape terrace is actually like 10 ft long -- at least. They guys who currently live there have a grill out there which is pretty cool. The other pic I've uploaded is if I'm standing in the doorway of one bedroom, my limited view of the living room and kitchen. Beyond it is the second bedroom and bath. To my right is the coat closet and front door. I honestly don't think I'd have reason to personally need a two bedroom. If I did, I'd want to sublet it to a friend to live with me ;) or else -- maybe keep it as a giant closet? haha. Lord knows I'll need it for all my crap.


Apartment #2 -- STL (St. Louis) This apartment has odd archways for every doorway -- hence archs -- hence my memories of the the Gateway Arch in the great 314 -- STL -- Ole' St Louis.

STL is a one bedroom apartment right in my price range with a pretty interesting layout. Since all the places I'm looking at are in brownstones, they're all fairly 1 room by 4 rooms... long and narrow. This one's certainly no exception. The front door takes you into the kitchen. From the front door, on your left there's about 15 ft of counter, kitchen sink, and stove. In front of you, is more kitchen -- the fridge and room for a small kitchen table. All of which quite frankly, makes me feel like it's a fairly large kitchen. There's plenty of cabinet space for all of random things I've collected over the years -- mainly glass ware. In the picture, you can see the kitchen and the edge of the fridge.

To the right of the front door through an archway is the living room of about 130 sq ft. It's a pretty decent size -- with a ceiling fan in the middle of it -- kinda antiquated, kinda cute, but actually pretty practical for hot summers. Beyond the living room through another archway is the den/study room/dressing room. In the picture to the left, you can see the edge of the fridge (again), the living room, and the arch into the den/study/dressing room. Anyhow, the odd room is a 90 sq ft. room with giant double sized closets. Totally a great dressing room/place to stick that black futon from college, or even that other futon from sophomore year! To the right, the picture is taken from the odd room looking into the bedroom. I kinda really like the wooden accordian doors into the bedroom. In the bedroom, there's a wall of exposed brick and a window onto the street. My biggest issue with the bedroom is that it's incredibly narrow. And therefore means that my queen size bed probably won't leave any walking space between the bed and the wall -- I guess I'll just have to put it into a corner -- even if it does throw off the symmetry of the room.

Worst two parts of the apartment, one more pressing than the other. 1.) where's the bathroom? What if it's the middle of the night and I have to go pee? Oh right. It's allllll the way by the kichen. If I'm showering, I'd have to run through the dressing room, through the living room, and through the kitchen... I guess there have been worse things. 2.) It's actually quite bad... the floor kinda sinks by the stove. You can see my dad in the picture above looking at the floor. Apparently there are issues with the building and the foudation. If this becomes somewhere I seriously consider, I'd have to make serious complaints and get serious discounts because of the floor. It'd be horrible if the floor just continued to collapse.

Anyhow, that was day 1, with full summaries of the apartments I looked at! Eeps!