Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Apartment Hunting

So I realize that the pictures that I put up have nothing to do with the post that I'm writing. I just find these pictures funny.

It's been a great weekend. We didn't have classes yesterday because of the holiday and Ashton didn't have work, so I got to have Ashton home for 3 whole days. Since we spent Saturday doing absolutely nothing, I felt like we needed to do something. Obviously the first thing we decided to do was to watch a movie. We headed off to the dollar theater to watch Enchanted, but it was sold out until 10 pm. We decided that we could just watch it a different day. So instead, we decided to spend our day looking at apartments.

While we like living in the Bunny Hutch, we feel the need for space and we can't live after I'm no longer a full-time student, which would be about May or June. We're looking to move out end of April/beginning of May though for convenience and sanity. We did a search online for apartments, turning up some plausible ones in Pleasant Grove, which, for those of you who don't know Utah geography, it's only a 10-15 minute drive north of Provo.

Since we'll still be going to school for a while, we considered staying in Provo area for all of two seconds. Provo is kinda crowded with all of the students and because there are a lot of people looking for apartments, the prices are kinda ridiculous for the small, often rundown apartments that you get. Besides that, Ashton works in Draper, a good 30 minute drive, and so living closer to where he works would be beneficial.

So, we headed to Pleasant Grove after getting some addresses. We plugged the addresses into our trusty Garmin, who has only lead us astray once or twice, and we were golden. The first one had an income restriction that we didn't know about so we couldn't live there (Oops). Apparently Ashton makes too much money (We weren't too sad to discover that).

We headed off to the next one. Although the neighborhood wasn't very pretty with its dirt piles, warehouses, and railroad tracks, the apartment complex looked nice. We got a tour of one of their apartments and I liked what I saw: walk-in closet, storage space, dishwasher, washer/dryer, and big bathroom. Everything that our apartment doesn't have.

We got some applications just in case we wanted to live there and drove off to check out some more. Well, we vetoed those next ones in just a drive around the complexes. One of them was a senior community and well, Ashton's not that old yet.

After exhausting our list in Pleasant Grove, we drove up to American Fork and drove around there. Yeah, there wasn't anything worth seeing. There were some apartment complexes there, but they looked a rundown. We're not that desperate.

At the first complex we had checked out in Pleasant Grove, They had given us a book of apartments throughout Utah to look at. I flipped through it and found some ones that didn't look too bad in Orem, which is right next to Provo. Although we were going to look at them, we were getting tired of looking and I was starting to feel carsick from all the reading I had been doing. So we decided to save it for another day. So, we headed home. Gotta spread out the fun.

Once home, I checked out the website that the catalog had on its front cover. We found several other complexes that looked pretty good. One of them is in Lehi (further north) and several of them were in Orem. To me, Orem is pretty much the same as Provo so I'm not too keen on living there although it'd be closer to school.

After talking about it with Ashton, we decided that since we're looking to stay in Utah for about another year. So we'd want to make sure that this new apartment is a place that we could handle living in for that long (don't really want to move twice). So we decided to check out the one in Lehi and decide between that one and the one in Pleasant Grove. Orem is our backup if those don't work out.

I'm excited about moving past the whole school phase. I'm hoping to be done with classes this June and graduating in August. What better way to celebrate than to move?

3 comments:

Tara said...

I support you moving, but only if that extra room is for me until the next addition weeds me out! hhahah. Deal? I promise, I only talk in my sleep a little bit and I wont drool on the pillows! :)

Zarah said...

haha I'm all for you using our extra room. I don't mind the talking in your sleep as long as it's something intelligible. Ashton just makes weird noises.

Stinson Family said...

I must say love the pic. I have been in the same boat looking for apartments or even a house. We may have to move depending on what the government does with the housing in our village. Although, the up to our move is that they will move us if we decide to go. Please keep us posted and I would love to see inside pictures of your new apartment!