Home Sweet Home

Let me start out by saying that online apartment hunting is not something that I would recommend. I found this apartment online, stupidly believed the Craigs List ad claiming that it was "BYU's best kept secret, and signed the contract. Before I go into the bad things let me tell you the good things about this place.

- I couldn't have asked for better roommates. They are amazing, clean, nice, they don't cook smelly food, and they are such good examples.
- We have a washer and dryer unit in the apartment. They are super tiny but they work perfectly and I love, love, love not having to haul my clothes to the coin laundry place.
- The kitchen is really big, with more than enough cupboard space.
- I love my ward.
- Elliot and I have our own bathroom. It is so nice to share with one person instead of five.

Ok...now for the fun stuff. Condos, unlike apartments, do not have regular cleaning checks. When Elliot and I moved in our bedroom floor hadn't even been vacuumed. There was hair everywhere, the blinds were so dirty that when I tried to Windex them clean it made mud, and I am not even going to try to describe what color the shower was. Long story short, after a couple days of deep cleaning the place was was looking ok. There were only two problems that I couldn't solve on my own...

1. The carpet. It is so dirty and gross that Elliot has yet to step on it with her bare feet. I live in these slippers. So we need new carpet, or at the very least a good carpet cleaning. 

2. The couches. This couch is broken on the right side and the arms of the couch are not cushioned. They feel like cinder blocks covered in fabric. Dirty fabric. It is so dirty and stained that we went out and bought a bed sheet so we wouldn't actually have to sit on it.

This couch is broken too, as you can see, and if you sit on it you basically fall through to the springs. I gave it a ghetto quick fix and lined the bottom with cardboard boxes so we can sit on it now...but we really, really need new ones.  So basically I am maintenance's worst nightmare right now. After two weeks of daily phone calls and messages and frustration I got to talk to the owner and he is coming by in a week and a half to investigate the matter. I'm just hoping that he isn't a super jerk in person.

The kitchen needed a little help and so in a fit of homework procrastination and determination I decided that we had to have a tablecloth and curtains. The curtains proved a lot more difficult than the tablecloth.  And Elliot and I learned that if the directions say to use a screw you probably shouldn't use a fatty nail instead, even if that's easier. About 30 seconds after this picture was taken Elli and I gave up and let Roy (her fiance) finish the project for us.

 

I think it all turned out pretty well in the end though, don't you? Now lets all just keep our fingers crossed for new couches and carpet!