New Apartment!!!
Yay!!! We're getting a two bedroom apartment... YAY!!!!
For a while now, Alex and I have been talking about how cool it would be to have a two bedroom apartment. We both really enjoy entertaining, but we've felt limited by the little amount of space we have in our one bedroom apartment. With a two bedroom, we'd be able to put the computer in the spare bedroom, and that would give us an actual dining room where we could put an actual table to eat at and we could have actual dinner parties. I mean, when we have people over for dinner now, we have to move furniture around and unfold the table and pull out the chairs and everyone has to sort of crunch into the table. It's not so much fun. I've also really wanted a guest room... I just think it would be nice to have a separate space to offer someone to stay in if we have overnight guests.
So right before Thanksgiving, we noticed that there was a large jeep pulled up on the lawn right up to the apartment directly behind ours. I've always been sort of fascinated by that apartment... Whenever I'd walk by, I'd try and peer in the windows and I could see that it appeared to be a two bedroom apartment because it looked like it branched out off of the dining area where mine didn't. It also appeared to be just nicer in general... the cabinets in the kitchen were larger and a few of them had glass in the doors and it looked like the girl that lived there had painted.
I noticed after the day that we saw the jeep at the apartment, I didn't see the lights on anymore. At first, I didn't think the girl had moved out because I never did see a moving van/truck there. I thought maybe she'd gone home for the holidays or something. But after a week went by, I decided that I'd put a note to Scott (the building superintendent who lives right upstairs) in with my December rent check asking that he let us know if any two bedroom apartments became available.
Another week had passed and I hadn't heard anything from Scott about the apartment so I thought that either it was a one bedroom or the girl hadn't moved out after all. But then, this past Friday evening as I was getting ready for my company Christmas party, there was a knock on the door. I answered it and it was Scott. He said that the apartment directly behind us was a two bedroom and that it had just opened up. He showed the apartment to me right away and said that it was only $115 more than what we were currently paying.
I fell in love with the apartment right away. The hallway that you walk into opens up to the adjacent rooms with adorable curved archways. The spare bedroom is small (about 8 by 13) but it's adorable and just the right size for my desk and a futon or pull out couch (a twin sized bed or daybed would be even more adorable, but not so practical since we'd most likely be having couples over as opposed to singular guests). The living room is about the same size as our current one, but will seem a little larger because there'll be no closet to try and not block. Speaking of closets, there are 2 more closets in the new apartment than there are in our current one. And they seem bigger... and more logically placed.
It's all very exciting. It's going to be an easy move... just slide everything down the hall. But then, it'll all be a lot of work... and will have to be done in a short time. He'd like us to have the move complete by January 1st. I'm sort of an impatient person and would like to have it done as soon as possible anyway. But there's some painting that I'd like to get done first. I figure that since we have the luxury of almost a little over 2 weeks to complete the move and full access to the apartment that whole time, we should not pass up the opportunity to paint. We've already picked out the colors... We toned down our color choices from our original plan... We were going to do chocolate brown walls in the living room with a red ceiling, but decided to go for a lighter brown instead. All the colors we picked came from the Martha Stewart Everyday colors line at Kmart. I figure Martha's colors are all pretty non-controversial and apartment ok... So here's what we're thinking:
Raw Silk walls with Muslin trim.
For the spare bedroom:
Book Binding Green walls with Raw Silk ceiling and Muslin trim.
For the living room:
Coffee walls with Hollyhock Red ceiling and Muslin trim.
For the bedroom:
Cornflower Blue walls with Ice Water ceiling and Muslin trim.
This is the current kitchen/dining room:
We've decided to just keep the kitchen/dining room the way it is for now because the girl who lived there before us did a decent job of painting/applying wallpaper. The bottom cabinets on the other side of the kitchen are a deep red color. I'm not a huge fan of the dark flowered wallpaper, but it really could be worse. And now that I look at all the rooms collected like that, I think that I really might stencil on the bedroom walls because compared to all the patterns/textures going on in the kitchen/dining rooms, they look pretty boring. But that can be done after we move in, so I won't worry about that now.
It's all very exciting! I'm hoping to buy the paint by Thursday and to start painting Friday night... and I'd LOVE to have the painting done by the end of the weekend. That way we can start moving stuff in next week. It would be awesome to be able to be in by Christmas, but I don't want to wake up Christmas morning in an "unsettled" apartment, so I think that most of the moving will have to wait until after Christmas... but my goal is to be pretty much settled in (not just all the stuff out of the old apartment and into the new, but put away as well) by New Year's eve because I was sort of hoping to have a little get together before all this moving "nonsense" started up... we'll see...
Must go to bed now so that I can get my lazy butt up and go to the gym in the morning. We spackled the rooms we intend on painting tonight, and I won't be doing any more work in there until Thursday because tomorrow night is girls' night at Meredith's (yay!). But it'll be back to work Thursday... Oh, and I'll accept any help anyone wants to give this weekend with painting! ;)
