Home

Shane and I hate where we live.  We hate everything about our apartment, in fact.  It is getting to be too small for us the longer we are married because it seems the longer we are married the more crap we gain.  The apartment is falling apart because of shady construction, we've had leaky faucets, broken washer and dryers, a door that doesn't fully close, a fire place that emits heat even in the summer, and a failing thermostat.  We've had a hit and run accident with our car, a man walk into our house while the door was unlocked, a rock thrown at our windshield, and countless robberies and police events outside our doors.  Because of all of this, we decided we were moving.  We found a beautiful place, bigger, new city, brand new, and stringent living guidelines.  It seemed perfect and it was.  But we just couldn't bring ourselves to leave our wonderful ward right now.  We just knew we were in the exact place we needed to be at this present time.  Heartbroken that we would have to stay awhile longer, we set about making our place work for us.  We have lived in our home for 2.5 years now and we never fully settled.  We always thought we'd be temporarily setting up quarters until we could get into our first home and we thought that would only be a year max but then the economy happened.  We opted for financially security because we never knew if we'd both have jobs having both been working in the car business and signed a new lease.  Now that we are signing our fourth lease, it is time to settle.  We used the money we had planned to spend on security deposits and purchased a second TV and some organizational furniture (i.e. behind the toilet shelving, dresser, tables) and set about remodeling.  We pulled our washer and dryer out of our under the stairs closet for more storage space first.  We had every intention of using our own set and asking the apartments to remove theirs, but as that didn't work, we lived with a washer and dryer in our very small kitchen for over two months!  We moved our elliptical machine into our bedroom and put the second TV along with it so that we could make it more functional.  We set up our second bedroom as a fully functioning guest bedroom (queen bed and all so come visit) and we organized the bathrooms.  It's taken a long time to finally get it all back together.  We sold our washer and dryer and they were picked up yesterday and so we even have a kitchen again.  It feels like all of our hard work paid off as we are a little more comfortable here for the time being. 

The above two pictures are the before pictures while we were living with a washer and dryer in the kitchen.  (It's actually taken as we were removing them)  The second is the finished product and it feels (and looks) so much better!