New, New Apartment

After we lived in our first apartment for a few days, one of our neighbors came over and introduced himself. He mentioned that he would be leaving soon, and wanted us to take a look at his apartment because of the upgrades he did to it. He mentioned that since we had just moved in, maybe we could persuade the management company to let us switch, since his apartment was so much better.

Skeptical, we went over to look at his place. Okay, he wasn't kidding. The space was much bigger than ours, he upgraded the light fixtures, and added dimmer switches to every light in the apartment. The living room light also had a remote control. The view was great. Um, can we say awesome? At this point, I really wanted to switch places.

We proposed the idea to our management company and of course they didn't go for it. I've learned that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, so I implemented Operation Squeaky Wheel. I made sure to mention to the company that the paint in our apartment was chipping, the plumbing was awful, the blinds were broken, etc. All of these things were true, but now they really started to bother me, knowing there was this awesome place down the hall.

The straw that broke the management company's back was when our bathtub started leaking on the apartment downstairs. I said, wouldn't it just make more sense for us to move to the other apartment so you can actually fix all of the problems in this one? And this time, they agreed.

Here's a pic. I'll add more once we get settled in. We had to move again, obviously, so that made for unpacking. Again.

Living Room w/Dining Room in Background

I really don't think we could have gotten luckier when it came to our apartment. I think it was fate. I had come up on the Metra 3 days in a row from the city and only found decrepit, gross, or terrible-view apartments. When it was basically the last day before I had to be out of my Chicago apartment, I found this building. I thought our first apartment was perfect, but then we found this one.

I'm also so grateful for our neighborhood. I knew the North Shore was nice, but this exceeded my expectations. I feel so safe (which I needed), we're within walking distance to tons of parks and beaches (which I wanted), and we have such a great view of it all from our little nook in Winnetka. I feel like we're stealing it since we don't pay that much, relative to the area, but at least I'm enthusiastic in my appreciation for it. :)

I'm just so glad we decided not to live in Chicago. From what I saw there for the same price as our current place, we would have been living in semi-sketch town, in a studio the size of our living room. Unacceptable.