Journal Entry

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:: Home Sweet Bungalow ::

The other week, Joe and I went to see the X-men movie, and it was during the previews that I realized the screen had more square footage than our apartment. Of course, the screen was more or less two-dimensional, so I suppose it would be sort of cramped. But you get my point.

A few days after the movie screen epiphany, we went to our friend Zach's place for a barbeque. His and his wife's place is gorgeous — a beautifully restored apartment with an attic-turned-enormous bedroom with palacial bathroom. The jaws of all of us visiting for the first time had to be scooped off the floor like guacamole. What's more, they own the place!

That incident confirmed what Joe and I had already more or less agreed upon: we have got to stop renting. It still probably won't be for another year, but the wheels are turning faster than ever. And what we really want is a single-family home, which is expensive to come by in the city. So we'll have to evaluate how far into the burbs our egos will submit to moving in order to find
something we like and can afford.

We are probably going to move in a month or so, anyway. We love the apartment — adorable two-bedroom with nice hardwood floors and all the old fashioned trim and a wall hutch — but we don't adore our neighbors. It doesn't help that no one told us when we moved in that there's a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" policy in this house, i.e., we can't ask them to quiet their party down at 2:30 AM because they've never told us that it sometimes bothers them when Joe plays his drums for a couple hours in the early evening.

Yeah.

So I've been returning to the housing classifieds and housing search services. We'll probably go through Apartment People again, as last year's search with them was so successful. In the meantime I'm catching on to some of the Chicago housing lingo:

Three-flat, two-flat - A three or two story building, respectively, with one apartment per floor. But usually there's one more unit than floor because of the garden apartment.

Garden apartment - Basement cave.

Townhouse - An apartment that extends to more than one floor. Townhouse does not imply nice.

Condo - An apartment that you are lucky (?) enough to own.

Coach house - From all I can gather, this is a polite term for a converted garage. Chicago is crowded, but not quaint; I can't trust the term "coach house" to mean anything romantic.

L-shaped or courtyard apartment - One of many apartments in a blocky, brick building.

Bungalow - A single-family, usually single-floor home. Ideally, this is what we'd like.

Wish us luck...