I Will Not Be Homeless, Come July

I have an apartment.

(Oh, also, the date last Sunday was highly enjoyable, so he totally made up for his initial misstep. Just FYI.)

Although I originally wanted to stay within the 610 Loop - and thus close to work - I quickly figured out that if I wanted to have 24 hr access to a washer and dryer, a dishwasher, and more than 550 SF, I was out of luck.

One of my major concerns has been finding somewhere with a rent that would financially allow me to:

1) Join a gym so I can work on getting my physical strength back up (because I can't have a post without mentioning my health, can I?)
2) Save money for a rainy day, aka a down payment for a new car (in the future, because I'm driving the Civic until it falls apart), a down payment for a condo, etc...
3) Have a little bit of mad money so I can do things like slipcover my sofa.

I ended up finding a place close to my sister and her family, however, which will make my commute 20-30 minutes in the morning. Not too terribly, and plenty of time to down a cup of coffee and eat some bacon, en route to the office.

The place I found is also HUGE. It's 960 square feet, on the second floor of a 2-story building.

I am ecstatic about not having someone stomping around overhead at all hours of the day and night.

And I have vaulted ceilings, a wood-burning fireplace that will never get used, and washer/dryer connections, so I'm reclaiming my washer/dryer from a friend who's currently using them in Dallas.

Earlier today, I put the floor plan into SketchUp so I could look at furniture arrangement. I quickly realized that the difficulty I have in my 660 square foot apartment will not be an issue in my new apartment: namely, I will have more space than I can handle.

My dining table - an antique gateleg that sits unused and unloved, folded up against a wall, at present - looks absolutely tiny in the dining room, which is 150 SF. That's twice the size of my current dining area, which is occupied by my desk and a buffet.

My living room will be over 400 square feet - it's 23' by 22', approximately. Fortunately, my desk and computer and computer chair and bookshelves will all be able to fit beautifully in the living room along with my sofa, end tables, TV and console, and chrome chair.

My bedroom is approximately 14 feet by 17 feet (all the measurements are approximate, because the floor plan I have has no dimensions, so I scaled off the width of the queen-size bed shown). That's more than enough room for my Scottish chest of drawers, queen-size bed, and bedside table.

Essentially, my apartment is going to be palatial.

And I need curtains. And possibly a bigger dining table, because it's seriously tiny, on the floor plan.


The dining table can wait, but the curtains...

See, the thing is, I already have curtains that I can use in the dining room. But the dining room is open to the living room. I can no longer buy the curtains I will use in the dining room, so that means I have to either buy curtains that intentionally don't match, or I will have to buy all new matching curtains.

What's a girl to do? Especially when she's a girl on a budget?

So I have a decision to make about the color direction in which my apartment is going - because you can't be a designer without being OCD. It looks like I'll by poring over the design scrapbooks for a few days, and probably wrangling my sister to get her opinion, while I'm at it.

At least I have two months to make a decision, right?

Right...