The Apartment

I know everyone has been wondering where I live now, so here's my virtual tour of sorts:

Here she is, 3848 N. Janssen Ave. #2, 60613. Just about all of the houses on this street look like this, and most are duplexes. Before I got here, I didn't really understand how this could be a duplex, but now it makes sense. The two doors open to two different apartments and one is on the first floor and the basement, while ours is directly up a staircase, on the second and third floors.

This is our street. You can't really see the houses because of the trees, but it's very residential, and there's an elementary school on the left in this picture. Also, ice cream trucks and apparently ice cream buses make frequent runs down our street, and that's what that bus is doing there. I'm gonna have to check that out in a minute.

So that's our front door from the inside. I was so confused when I opened the door only to find a huge staircase, but now it seems natural. I really like this entry, and I'm so glad we're not on the first floor and basement.

The dining room is right at the top of the staircase, with that little nook letting in a lot of natural light. To the left of this picture is my roommates room, while my room, the kitchen and the bathroom are to the right. I really like our dining room table, and I'm glad we have dining room chairs now because we didn't for a while. It's kind of a mess in this picture, but it's much cleaner now that we've gotten more and more settled.
 

This is the view from that nook. You can see the mess much easier in this light. So the room to the left is my bedroom and the stairs both up and down are in that doorway to the right. We'll go upstairs in just a minute.

So this is my room. It's the smallest of the five, but I don't mind, and my rent is cheaper than everyone else. I really like the green color that was on the walls, but I'm going to have to get rid of that curtain. There's my new IKEA desk with my laptop, XBOX and TV on it. That chair is really a dining room chair but I'm borrowing it for now because I haven't gotten a desk chair.

There's my closet, my IKEA dresser/nightstand and my inflatable mattress I used for about a week. Luckily, my actual mattress came in yesterday, so I've been sleeping a little better now. I have to say though, that air mattress was really comfortable, and it's tall, which was nice. My boxes are on the left... I need to get those out of the way...

Here's my closet. It's pretty empty because I'm low on hangers, but it's the largest closet I've ever had so I have absolutely no complaints. It's also pretty tall, so it's got shelving around the top.

The hallway to the bathroom and kitchen. There's a little bookshelf to the right, and I'm not sure what we're going to use it for.

The bathroom! Nothin' much to see here. The tub is kinda cool though.

Here's the kitchen. Two things that I'm not used to are the fact that there's no garbage disposal and that the dishwasher there on the right is on wheels. After you're done loading it, you wheel it over to the sink and hook it up to the faucet and plug it in. That's so weird to me, but I mean it's not a big deal. Apparently that's common in Chicago. Also, with 5 people living here, our refrigerator is pretty packed, but we make it work.

Oven, stove, all that, plus the back door to the deck.

Here's the deck. I haven't really spent any time out here, but it's actually a pretty cool spot.

So here's upstairs. This is the view from the stairs. There is so much natural light in this area, and we're using it as a living room. I'll take another picture once we get all of our sofas, tables and rugs up here, but this is how it was when we got here. This space is huge, and to the left is another area a little lower than this part. It's a really interesting design, I think.

Probably my favorite part of the house. The windows in the picture above are directly behind me now, with the stairs a little to the left of this picture. There are two stairs leading down to where the table and chairs are, and these huge windows flood the room with light. Such a cool little area with a nice view of the street. I can't wait til we actually start using this room.

Now the big windows are behind me, and the stairs are to the right. The door on the left is the second bathroom, the one directly forward is the largest room and storage area, and the room on the right is another bedroom. I didn't post pictures of that bathroom because honestly I don't even really know what it looks like, I've only seen it like once. This living room is going to be so cool when we get it all fixed up, and we're really almost there. I'm extremely happy with the house, and I'm excited to make the most of it!