We have been in our current temp apartment for a little over a week now, and I figured it was time for an update.
To be honest, I nearly cried when we got to this apartment and I realized how spoiled we had been at our first apartment. The first apartment had some drawbacks - it was on a busy road so we could hear sirens fairly frequently when we had the windows open, and the couch was really uncomfortable, but overall it was quite nice, and our biggest complaint was the three story climb to get the dogs in and out for bathroom breaks.
There weren’t a ton of options during my quick scramble to line up a new apartment, but this one seemed appealing because it was the garden apartment building and we would be on the second floor. Goodbye three story climb! The joke was on us of course, because it turns out that the “garden” was terraced up the side of a very steep hill and it’s a four story climb to get the dogs to the top where they can use the bathroom. The other truly annoying thing about this place is the parking area, which the landlord claims can fit three cars, but I don’t see how it’s possible since it takes us a 15-20 point turn getting our car in and out of the place when we’re the only car in there. We can manage it with two, but I don’t think it would be possible with three.
Other than that, the apartment is fine, just not as nice. First it’s much smaller and doesn’t really seem to be set up for longer stays, so there isn’t a ton of storage or kitchen space. It also just seems like poor choice were made when it was set up — the fancy whirlpool tub overhangs the half wall it’s on by a bit and isn’t sealed; the drawer in the kitchen for the garbage can doesn’t actually close all the way or open that far and we can’t figure out why; the shower doesn’t have a shower head attached, just a hand held — probably because there isn’t really a lip at the bottom and the doors don’t seal, which makes it really easy to create a huge pool of water on the floor (ask me how I know). On the plus side, the couch is more comfortable than the last place, and it has AC.
We’re only in this place another few days though and will be moving to our fourth (and hopefully last) temporary apartment on Saturday. We have that one reserved through 1 August, so hopefully we can move into a permanent place by then. There aren’t a ton of photos of the new place available yet since we will be the first guests after renovation, but the area is really nice and it’s only a two story building right by the river, so there won’t be a ton of stairs. On the other hand, the description used the words “an old, renovated fisherman’s house with different, partly low ceilings,” so this next place could also be an adventure.
House Hunt
So far we have toured 15 apartments/houses and submitted offers for 2. In both cases we weren’t selected, in the first case because another couple was offering more money, and in the second case, we think she wasn’t comfortable with the idea that the dogs would be alone at the apartment all day. She never told us one way or another, but after a meet and greet where she asked us multiple times if the dogs could come to work with us or if we could work from home so the dogs wouldn’t be alone, she ultimately listed it again on the website without giving us a final answer.
Honestly the whole house hunt has been pretty demoralizing. Most of the other places we didn’t submit an offer for all had at least one fatal flaw that would have made living there more difficult than we wanted to deal with. In several cases our furniture wouldn’t fit very well, even though we didn’t actually bring that much of our stuff with us. In other cases the parking or the streets weren’t going to work for our car or our dogs when we walked them. One straight up smelled bad, probably because all the windows had been shut for a while, but it wasn’t something I wanted to risk, especially for a location that was only so so. One of the more recent apartments actually looked great and ticked all of our boxes, until we watched two dogs from another apartment in the building come bounding up to the patio doors because the yard was shared. We could live there, but our dogs would go nuts.
We thought we had a really promising lead for a place being rented by one of our coworkers right now, but we just found out recently that the timing isn’t going to work with them. In the meantime, we have looked at other places, but the market is a little weird right now. Our current front runner is a little dated and has some weird layout things, but it backs to the big city park, which would make walking the dogs really nice and we really like the location. Now we just have to decide if that’s enough to apply for the place, or if we want to roll the dice on several more weeks of uncertainty.


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