Home Sweet...Apartment?

We finally sold our house, moved, and are now surrounded by boxes in our new apartment in Chapel Hill. It is much more fun to buy a house than to sell one, but we're very glad that the contract made it through closing and that it's all over with. Of course, it's a bit extra bitter-sweet since we are now in an apartment for the next little while. Here is the comparison:


In regards to the house, its single greatest thing we will miss is definitely the yard. When we moved there I didn't think I would do much with it, but boy was I wrong. I put in 6 or 7 different planting areas and just loved working out there (well, in spring, before it got too hot to bother) and having fresh cut flowers that I grew. So we will miss the aesthetics, the space, and the feeling of reward from such projects. In sum: lots of work, but lots of yard.


In regards to the apartment, I don't have to weed anything now, and right now it's so hot, I don't want to be outside much anyway. When the sun does go down, the mosquitoes have been just terrible this year. In sum: no yard, but no work.


Another significant plus of owning a place is that we could do whatever we wanted in terms of projects (like re-doing the kitchen). The kitchen in the apartment is so terrible compared to our house. The layout is all wrong, and whoever thought it was a good idea to have the eating area be carpeted forgot that this was family housing and kids eating over carpet is a really bad idea! Then again, it's not my carpet. And the down-side of a house is that you have to pay for not only the fun projects but the disasters (like last year's new HVAC unit). Now if anything breaks, we don't have to fix or pay for it. And since we're on campus, the campus staff come even to change light bulbs. We already put them to work when we flooded the apartment because the washing machine wasn't hooked up correctly. All we kept thinking was good thing we're on the first floor, and good thing we don't own this place!


Noise works both ways. I was really worried that no one would sleep, but then again somehow we slept in NJ with a freight train going right behind the bedroom and in downtown Baltimore with all sorts of noise. So far it's been really quiet here. We'll see once more people are back in the fall. Another new noise adjustment is that Ainsleigh and Rippy have to share a room now. They used to sleep until 8:00AM. Now Ripken wakes Ainsleigh (and the rest of us) up around 7:00, sometimes earlier. Not cool. Also, we haven't had any of out our afternoon dance parties anymore, because who knows how that would go over with the neighbors. I'm sure at some point they will make a come back.

So far, so good. Not the best use of space and some major design flaws in regards to kids, but we will adjust, and we won't be here all that long anyway. We'll try to get some pics up soon--still a little too messy to share :)