Apartment Wanted: We got an Apartment!!!!!

Sorry I haven't posted in forever.  We've been super busy packing!  A week ago today, my house looked like this:

The next day, it looked like this:

Originally, I was going to leave the decorations up and just pack the things we're not using right now.  But after stuffing the room with boxes, it made no sense to keep all the decorations up since you couldn't see them anyway.  It's been super hot here in Boston which has made packing even worse but I keep telling myself it will all be worth it once we finally get moved to our great new place in Chicago.

It took almost a month but we finally got the lease for the new apartment.  It's a gorgeous space in a 3-flat building.  The landlord lives on the top, we live in the middle, and the maintenance guy lives on the bottom so we're surrounded by help.  It's in Roger's Park, one of Chicago's northern neighborhoods, and only about 6 blocks from the beach.  Like the neighborhood we live in here in Boston, it's a quiet, family-oriented area with huge mature trees and beautiful homes.  There's a bar and grill a couple blocks away that we've already bought Groupons for and I found awesome shops and a thrift store that I can't wait to ride my bike to.

The funny thing is, I almost didn't look at this apartment.  There are only 1.5 baths instead of 2 and there's no central air so I didn't even want to consider it.  But after looking at the pics the realtor showed me, I had to give it a chance.  As soon as I walked in, I knew it was going to be our home.

The first thing you notice is the MASSIVE living room full of beautiful windows and a gorgeous decorative fireplace.  Almost every apartment we saw in Chicago had a fireplace, most of them decorative...after the great Chicago fire, most builders only made faux fireplaces.  Of course none of the places we saw had a living room as big as this.  There's enough room for THREE separate sitting areas!  My plan is to build a wall-to-wall window bench under the windows and then divide the rest of the room into two areas - one in front of the fireplace and another on the other side for the TV.  I'm even going to build my own sectional sofa from scratch.  That will definitely be my biggest project ever!!!

We saw the house on a 90 degree day, but even with no central air, the trees shaded the house enough that it was still nice and comfortable.  Plus all the windows let in a great cross breeze.

 

I have no clue why this picture is so short and wide.  The bathroom is beautiful.  It's the only full bath.  The other is a Jack and Jill half bath shared between the master bedroom and my office.  The tub is my favorite part of this room.  It's original to the house but they had it reglazed so it looks brand new.  It's nice and deep so you can take a relaxing bubble bath without half your body sticking out of the water!  There's also an absolutely gorgeous built-in linen closet outside the bathroom that's the same dark wood as the French doors in the picture below.

This is our amazing dining room.  The pictures definitely don't do justice to the chandelier or the windows behind it.  We're definitely not fancy enough to even stand in this room.  I have some great ideas though to dress it down a tiny bit and make it even more spectacular!

The kitchen was clearly remodeled in the late 60's/early 70's.  There's tons of storage (a walk-in pantry, a walk-in storage closet, and 2 built-ins) plus I love the vintage cabinets, but I'm not a fan of the blue laminate floors or the blue counter tops.  Blue is one of my least favorite colors.  Other than building an island, I have no real plans for this room yet.  I'm still trying to figure out how to make blue work into my color scheme.  Another thing I'm trying to figure out is why the beautiful wood hutch is not in the dining room instead of in the kitchen right next to the kitchen hutch.  Crazy!  Still, it's a nice vintage kitchen with all the modern conveniences you need.  I can't wait to get cooking!

As soon as we get to Chicago, I'm going to send pictures of all the wonderful details of the apartment.  What do you think so far?