![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
More Chicago stuff
Sep. 1st, 2013 09:59 amGetting here turned out to be...interesting. Literally just as we were leaving Tucson (the flight attendants had done the safety check and we were about to taxi to the runway) a huge thunderstorm came and squatted right over Chicago; after an hour with no change they de-boarded everyone and had us all wait at the gate. Fortunately, as we had no connections to make and nowhere to be until 2:00 the next day, it wasn't a super-stressful thing; my biggest worry was getting in super-late and forcing our Airbnb host to wait up for us. (She did end up having to, as between flight delay, baggage claim, and the mile-long line for cabs we didn't even make it here until nearly 2 AM, but she was very gracious about it.) It wasn't so awful; one of our friends was also delayed heading to San Francisco in the same batch of gates, so we got to have a drink and he gushed about how much we were going to love Chicago. As the delay stretched on, I ended up doing an impromptu concert of sorts for several of the wriggly/tired/grouchy/impatient toddlers and their families; it got me many a grateful glance from the parents. Hurrah for having a travel guitar and knowing lots of old hippie music.
Yesterday was the walking-all-over-town-to-showings day, although we actually only got to two; I ended up canceling the one with the dude who was trying to sell his condo, and another guy texted me to let me know that he'd rented out his place (but since it was the one we were most iffy about, we weren't too fuzzed). We ended up looking at a place in Edgewater that was good-if-not-great; it had a nice kitchen and was on a nice street in a nice neighborhood, but it didn't quite have that "oh wow this is perfect" feeling. (Though we discovered a fabulous local coffee place just around the corner from it - Brian liked their logo so much he bought one of their travel mugs.) I gave the guy our paperwork just in case (he and his partner were nice dudes, and we certainly wouldn't have minded renting from them!), and then we headed to the long-awaited Andersonville condo.
It isn't quite perfect - the decor is very early-aughts yuppie, with white walls and stainless appliances and not a whole lot of personality. (A colored accent wall or two would help a lot, I think.) Also the side windows in the bedrooms have literally no view - brick wall, ahoy! Still, the kitchen is amazing as advertised, and while the front room's a touch on the small side (I'm going to have to see about shipping our wonderful oak and granite table back to Mum, as there's quite literally no room for it), the master bedroom is huge for a condo, and has a lovely large back deck off of it. The view from the front, while nothing amazing, is pleasant enough, and it's on a lovely tree-lined street all of a block and a half from Clark Street (Andersonville's main commercial thoroughfare - we already found a pub there with the most amazing food and a craft beer list about three miles long).
We put it an application pretty much immediately. The guy told us he had a few others in as well, but when I pulled out our credit reports, two separate letters of reference, and Brian's job offer, he looked a little overwhelmed. When he asked me what I did and I gave him an impromptu rendition of the first bit of "All That Jazz", he looked a lot overwhelmed. I was a little worried I might have overdone it; he struck me very much as a twenty-years-older version of the guys I used to intimidate the hell out of in high school. But I guess it worked, since after a slightly nail-biting wait I got a text from him that he and his wife had decided to rent to us! (I suspect he might have left the song-and-dance bit out of the story when he told it to his wife. Or maybe not, who knows.)
I'm very pleased; as I said, the place isn't quite "want to live here forever" perfect, but it's a good rent price for the area and has a fireplace and a tandem parking spot (hurrah! We can offer our friends parking when they come over!) and that fantastic kitchen. So I think it'll do quite well for a few years until we either move again or decide to stay in Chicago and buy a condo of our own. And in the meantime, we have the rest of our trip free to explore and enjoy without worrying about apartment-hunting! Hurrah!
Yesterday was the walking-all-over-town-to-showings day, although we actually only got to two; I ended up canceling the one with the dude who was trying to sell his condo, and another guy texted me to let me know that he'd rented out his place (but since it was the one we were most iffy about, we weren't too fuzzed). We ended up looking at a place in Edgewater that was good-if-not-great; it had a nice kitchen and was on a nice street in a nice neighborhood, but it didn't quite have that "oh wow this is perfect" feeling. (Though we discovered a fabulous local coffee place just around the corner from it - Brian liked their logo so much he bought one of their travel mugs.) I gave the guy our paperwork just in case (he and his partner were nice dudes, and we certainly wouldn't have minded renting from them!), and then we headed to the long-awaited Andersonville condo.
It isn't quite perfect - the decor is very early-aughts yuppie, with white walls and stainless appliances and not a whole lot of personality. (A colored accent wall or two would help a lot, I think.) Also the side windows in the bedrooms have literally no view - brick wall, ahoy! Still, the kitchen is amazing as advertised, and while the front room's a touch on the small side (I'm going to have to see about shipping our wonderful oak and granite table back to Mum, as there's quite literally no room for it), the master bedroom is huge for a condo, and has a lovely large back deck off of it. The view from the front, while nothing amazing, is pleasant enough, and it's on a lovely tree-lined street all of a block and a half from Clark Street (Andersonville's main commercial thoroughfare - we already found a pub there with the most amazing food and a craft beer list about three miles long).
We put it an application pretty much immediately. The guy told us he had a few others in as well, but when I pulled out our credit reports, two separate letters of reference, and Brian's job offer, he looked a little overwhelmed. When he asked me what I did and I gave him an impromptu rendition of the first bit of "All That Jazz", he looked a lot overwhelmed. I was a little worried I might have overdone it; he struck me very much as a twenty-years-older version of the guys I used to intimidate the hell out of in high school. But I guess it worked, since after a slightly nail-biting wait I got a text from him that he and his wife had decided to rent to us! (I suspect he might have left the song-and-dance bit out of the story when he told it to his wife. Or maybe not, who knows.)
I'm very pleased; as I said, the place isn't quite "want to live here forever" perfect, but it's a good rent price for the area and has a fireplace and a tandem parking spot (hurrah! We can offer our friends parking when they come over!) and that fantastic kitchen. So I think it'll do quite well for a few years until we either move again or decide to stay in Chicago and buy a condo of our own. And in the meantime, we have the rest of our trip free to explore and enjoy without worrying about apartment-hunting! Hurrah!
