When we visited the pacific Northwest in January for Lesley's 8 job interviews, we also visited 10 apartments in Seattle. In the case that Lesley was offered a job, we wanted to make sure that we could also arrange for a place to live without making an additional trip or move into a hotel for a couple weeks until we could find a place to live. Unfortunately, none of the apartments were overly impressive. We knew we'd be paying a lot more than we did in Texas, but even $900/month would only get us a place 70 years old with no dishwasher, garbage disposal, or washer and dryer, and old fixtures and cabinets. Of course, all of that stuff mattered more to Lesley than it did to me, I was most interested in living conveniently to everything, but I also wanted a view from the window and hoped that we wouldn't have to spend most of our income on an apartment every month. It was hard to find something that had everything we wanted - you usually get what you pay for. By our last day, we had found a place that seemed like a good choice - pretty good location, reasonably priced compared to other options, and the apartment itself was pretty nice - we both expected that we would live there. But, we had some time left on our last day and figured we'd look around some more in case we found something even better. We found another place to look at, which was even newer, and it happened to be a LEED-certified building, which basically just means that the building was designed to be more environmentally-friendly and use fewer resources. And, there would be a unit with a view available. Lesley loved the fact that the apartments were so nice and new, with built-in washer & dryer, nice cabinets & fixtures, new appliances, and tall windows. It definitely was the nicest place we looked at and the pricing was in line with some of the other top choices. After seeing this place, Lesley didn't even want to consider anywhere else, and I was excited enough about the view that I wasn't too upset about it being in a more deserted neighborhood and farther away from a lot of restaurants and other places. So, we decided to go for it.

After our first week of living here, I'm definitely pretty happy with it. One concern we had early on was finding a place large enough. Since we were basically looking at studio apartments, many places had one large living/bedroom area without a lot of room. Our apartment has had enough room for all of our boxes and furniture, and now that we've unpacked, there seems to be plenty of room to put everything. And, it seems well-designed; the layout makes great use of the 555 square feet, with a separate sleeping area that makes it seem more like a one-bedroom than a studio, none of the rooms are too small to move around comfortably or too large with wasted space, and the closets are large and convenient. Plus, there are the design elements that led to the building being environmentally-friendly, like steel-framing (rather than wood), fewer toxic chemicals in the paint, and energy-efficient windows. Not only was it well-designed, but it also seems pretty well built; I guess the fact that it was built in 2003 means that there hasn't been much time for things to fall apart, but the construction just seems more solid - the building hasn't shifted like at our old place, the cabinets have smooth-operating and sturdy Italian-built hinges, and the carpet is stronger.

And, so far I've loved the easy-open windows that let the air from the bay and the sounds in from the neighborhood - we haven't had to use our heat yet and if we want air conditioning, we just open the windows wider. Even better is our view. The Space Needle may be cliché, but it's still a very neat looking building and a beautiful thing to look at from the kitchen at night. Furthermore, the opportunity to look out the window at any time and notice something new (other than noticing a new blade of grass or brick in wall, which is what we could see out of our old place) is great. But the best part is that there are no bugs (so far), unlike at our old place where we found roaches (living and dead) all the time. Overall, the apartment itself is better than expected, it's probably the nicest place I've lived.

The biggest drawback so far is that there isn't much in our immediate area. When looking for an apartment, one of the things that was most important to me was being able to step out of the front door and get wherever I needed to go on foot. This place is definitely better in that regard than our place in Irving was; we've walked to almost every meal that we've bought out so far, and there's a lot of places within walking distance (depending on how far we're willing to walk). Unfortunately, though, our immediate area is still rather industrial, though there are several apartments, condos, restaurants, and bars around. But, unlike other parts of the city, there are quite a few warehouses and other miscellaneous places, which means that we have to walk farther to get somewhere we might want to go, and it also means that there are fewer other people out. The area still seems pretty safe and it's not bad, but after 10 minutes of a walk on our way to a department store yesterday, we passed one of the other apartments we looked at, and I thought how nice it would be to be 10 minutes closer to everything. Still, though, I'm pretty happy with where we're living. While I may eventually tire of the noise across the alley (turns out there's a recording studio there), the dogs we run into in the elevator, and the high rent - for now it's great.