Let the apartment search end!

So....time for an update! So, people have been asking me for weeks if I have an apartment, and they always seemed surprised when I seemed relatively calm about the fact that, no, I did not have an apartment 2 weeks before I was to be moving in. Call it a sixth sense or just sheer laziness, but I knew that Taylor and I could find something relatively quickly if we put our minds (and feet) to it. Well....I WAS RIGHT!!

Taylor and I have found an apartment and I couldn't be happier! All the credit for the find goes to my fantastic fiance who scoured Craigslist like it was his job last week (it kinda was) and found this gem of an apartment with a really great management company. Before I go into too much detail on this particular place, let me tell you just a little about how the search went down.

So, we had found a place that we wanted to check out last weekend. The place was on 110th and 2nd ave, squarely in East Harlem. But the price was REALLY good ($1,200) and it looked pretty big. We didn't want to wait too long to see it, so we set up a viewing on Thursday night. Since we were going to be looking anyway, Taylor also set up to see 2 other places and I arranged to check out an apartment in a building I used t live in. All of the apartments besides the original one we wanted to see in Harlem were located in the high 70s and near 2nd Avenue.

So, our first stop was with this guy named David who showed us 2 TINY apartments at 77th and 2nd. They were both $1,600 and he kept telling us that in order to find what we were looking for, we would have to spend $1,750. I said PSHAW. Then, we rushed up to 110th and 2nd to see the apartment we had originally been interested in. It was in a nice building in an up-and-coming section of Harlem. We really liked the owner and the apartment was a decent size for the money. The only problems were a) there was no true living room. The bedroom and kitchen both had a lot of space, but not enough to make a separate living area from the bedroom, and b) it was really dirty and yucky. The guy promised they were replacing the bathtub, re-painting and re-staining the floors, but with just 2 weeks to move-in it seemed like they wouldn't get it all done in time.

So, we left there, putting the apartment as a "maybe" and headed down to this apartment viewing that Taylor had set up. The woman showing the apartment was very sweet and had her daughter with her. We went up to the apartment and (for me at least) it was love at first sight! And it was so surprising because Taylor had just found this apartment on Craigslist and it had no pictures or anything. Usually that means its a dump, but this place looked great. Here are a few photos:

When you enter the apartment, the kitchen and bathroom (shown above) are on the right and the living room and bedroom are on the left. We really like this setup because it makes it feel a lot more open, but since the kitchen faces in, it feels separate. We saw many apartments where the kitchen was just one wall of the living room, which we didn't really like.

This is the view from the bathroom looking out through the living room and into the bedroom. Most likely, we'll have a couch on the left wall and a TV mounted on the right wall of the living room.
One of the best things about this apartment is all the storage space, and the fact that that storage space is in the bedroom! Many apartments have really small bedrooms and don't have closets in the bedroom. This one has a full-size closet on the left and a door-sized one on the right. Both of them have storage space above, too! I love the mirrored closet doors on the left because they make the room look so much bigger. And since they slide rather than opening out, we have a lot more space. The close on the right is money because it can serve as a dresser too!

This is the bedroom from the door. It's hard to get the whole thing, but you can tell from this photo that it's decent size and has lots of light. Also, the floors are really nice.

Finally, the bathroom! The bathroom has lots of space. You can see from this picture that, for some reason, our toilet will be about 6 feet down a tiled hallway. In the foreground, you can see the corner of the sink, which has lots of flat space, and then you can sort of see how next to the sink, there's a fair amount of space for more storage, which is great! The tub isn't full length, but it isn't just a square shower either, so we're ok with it.

So there's the apartment! We'll have to get creative with our space, that's for sure, but we are so happy! Oh, and they allow dogs (one might be on our way in the next 6-9 months!) and I met the super and he was really nice. The apartment is not in a doorman building, but there's a florist next door who is apparently willing to accept packages and hold keys if you have guests coming. It's a really great arrangement!

So anyway, we did go out looking at apartments on Saturday. The first two people we met with took us to apartments only to find the doors locked (and apparently they didn't have keys). So, we only ended up seeing apartments with one broker. There was one that we liked, but it lacked the closet space that this one had, so we're going to stick with this one.

So, I am speaking a little out of turn here, because I am actually in the process of trying to get all of my application materials to the leasing company as we speak. Hopefully, if they deem me worthy, we'll be signing the lease this afternoon!!! :)