This Old Houseblog

What’s a houseblog?

Houseblogs are online diaries written by folks who are building, improving or restoring their own homes. Like other blogs, they are updated regularly and show the work unfold in real time.

If you’re interested in reading houseblogs or starting one of your own, head over to Houseblogs.net, where you can:

- Find people with similar homes, taste, or challenges via their community.
- Follow along as people renovate their homes by reading the latest blog entries.
- Get help with a DIY problem by asking a question or searching our discussion board.
- Show off your own house by adding photos to your member profile.
- Share your own home improvement adventures–start your own houseblog!

Not-so-obvious things to look for when Apartment Hunting

If any of you have kept up with me, you know I’ve moved a couple of times recently. I was lucky and my first apartment choice in Austin, TX was exceptional. However, when I recently moved to Dallas, I was in a hurry. Never one to do things in the correct order, I took a new job before I had a place to live and living in a Motel 6 gets really old really quickly. Unfortunately, I was not as fortunate with my second apartment choice… there were some tell-tale signs but I wasn’t paying attention. Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20 so let me share a few of the observations I’ve made that should have been obvious to start with…

Take a good look around the outside when you’re looking at apartments. Signs that the neighborhood ain’t so good could be burned out car bodies on the side of the road. Signs of potential maintenance problems could be baby oak trees growing from the rain gutters (yep, I speak from experience). Signs of old age could be outdoor air conditioning units made by companies that no longer exist.

Taking a good look inside an apartment would seem like a no-brainer but I’ve discovered that there are some subtleties to apartment living that a simple, cursory walk-through won’t reveal… for example, how noisy is the place at different times of day? Can you hear the neighbors conversing (or worse)? Can you hear every time someone else in the building closes a cabinet or their front door? Can you hear the plumbing? Visit the place after hours – I even encourage this for house shopping. If you want to get a real feel for the “neighborhood,” then you need to be there when the neighbors are there and this usually means after five or on weekends.

Then there are the specifics of individual apartment you settle on. Are the appliances old or new? Is there a microwave? Does the refrigerator leak cold air? Does the stove work correctly? Does the patio door work smoothly? Do the electrical switches work correctly? Are the window sills stable and solid? Is there mold on the lower window frames (which is more likely in older building with poorly insulated windows, where condensation leads to mold)? Does the bathtub faucet work properly? Can you see through the peephole? Can you feel air leaks around the doors and windows? All of these things add up to future frustration and possibly higher energy costs for you.

There are some other items that you might not even think to look for (or ask about), like smoke alarms, secured entrances, on-site laundry, adequate and convenient dumpsters, access to high speed internet services and cable television, convenient sidewalks. You might want to ask about their pet policy too, even if you have no pets – it would be nice to know what sort of pets you might run into while you’re out and about on the grounds.

My Dallas apartment, hastily chosen for it’s location and reasonable rent, is comfortable – I’ve been there for 6 weeks worth or March and April and have used my AC/Heat unit five times. The shade trees make things pleasantly cool but they also drop pollen, and seeds and other “tree trash” all over my car and my porch (which my dogs walk through and track into the house.) There’s also a lot of bird poop around… yuck. The windows and doors, quite plainly, suck. It would take an amateur (like me) about 4 minutes to jimmy the patio door because it’s literally falling apart. The plumbing is so noisy that the first night I tried to sleep there I was kept awake by the sound of the upstairs neighbor’s toilet running every 2 minutes. After the sound of the water running finished, the plumbing pipe in the wall would knock. My first maintenance request was for someone to fix the toilet flapper in the apartment upstairs. Most of the summer, I was kept awake until well after midnight, even during the week, by unsupervised children in the pool - my patio opened right onto the pool and during the middle of the day, in February when I was looking at the place, it was peaceful, and the sound of the fountain was calming - but when the weather warned up, the place turned into an unsupervised day care where people let their kids whoop and holler until someone bigger than they were threatened to drown them if they didn’t shut up and go home…

Keep in mind what’s important to you during “your” time at home - if you like cable television, make sure it’s available. If you like watching the sun rise with your morning coffee, make sure you have an easterly window at least. If you like peace and quiet, check the place out at various time of day to see what goes on “after hours.” Don’t let the leasing agent strong-arm you into a year lease if you’re not absolutely sure you like the place - it can get expensive to try to get out of a lease early. And few things are more annoying than knowing you have 11 more months of listening to the neighbor’s noisey plumbing!

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