Our First Place

Not long after Jason and I got engaged, we went apartment hunting. We quickly found a "perfect" place- new carpet, washer and dryer, dishwasher, vaulted ceilings, recessed lighting, crown molding and underground parking... as well as a hefty rent tag, all utilities paid by the tenant, and an outrageous deposit. Since we still had about 4 and a half months until the wedding, we decided to keep looking.

One day we decided to search for the cheapest apartment we could possibly find. Our parameters were simple- a place for a bed and preferably on the northeast side of Center and University Avenue. The first place was a "studio apartment"- the current tenants had a kind of crazy look in their eyes as they swore that it was "everything they needed". Jason describes it as the kind of place where you can cook eggs in bed while brushing your teeth. We passed.

The second place was painted all white- walls, doors, cabinetry. The place had a lot of light and seemed nice. The couple was nice and VERY athletic- the husband told us all about how the ward was leading in the BYU softball intramurals. They told us the walls were very thin. We passed.

The third place was on 100 North- far enough away to not be considered "south of campus". It was a one bedroom/one bath with a big living room and kitchen, a hall closet and a linen closet. No washer or dryer, no dishwasher, no air conditioning or ventilation of any kind- the heat came from electric coils in the ceiling (with burned plaster to prove it) and the kitchen counters were mustard yellow. It was perfect. I felt like Brigham Young- This was the place! We signed a contract the next day.
And it was the perfect first place for us. The rent was $445 a month, and we got another $40 a month knocked off when we started taking care of the lawn- raking leaves, mowing the grass, and clearing the snow. After a particularly heavy snow, we spent an entire morning shoveling the parking lot with two shovels and a hoe (for chipping apart ice). A kind neighbor brought us hot chocolate because we looked cold.

We moved in with a couch, a step stool to rest the old TV on, and a wood-paneled microwave that work a good 75% of the time. We didn't have a bed and thought that would suffice until we got back from our open house in Denver. Ha! Even newlyweds need a little more wiggle room than that, and we bought a bed the next day.A few months later, we went to Hollywood Video to splurge on a movie, and came home with our red couch instead. We also had a piano in this apartment for a while- I loved it, but I have no idea how we got it to fit.

We saved up all of our Christmas and birthday money that first year and bought a 36" TV. A tube TV (this was before the days of affordable flat screen TVs, sonny). We bought it a few days after Christmas, and there was no one around to help Jason get it into our apartment except the scrawniest neighbor we had. I don't know how heavy that TV is, but I do know it took the two of them a good 30 minutes, several breaks, and the use of a rug to slide the TV the last 10 feet up to the door to get it in our place. And I know when we moved, it took Jason and my brother-in-law less time and less props to carry it half a block down to our new place.Our first fight as a married couple was over closet space. Jason ended up with one-third of the closet, I got the other two-thirds and the hall closet. He was also kind enough to unpack and arrange the kitchen one day while I was at work. When I got home I promptly rearranged the whole thing to suit my liking.

More than once, we locked ourselves out of the apartment and I had to crawl in through the bathroom window to unlock the front door- once my church clothes, in the dark.

As I mentioned above, there was no ventilation in the apartment, except for the bathroom window that we kept cracked open (which helped for all the times Jason made me crawl through it). One day I was cleaning out our bedroom and moved the dresser, only to find a WALL FULL OF MILDEW GROWING IN OUR BEDROOM. There is no feeling as disgusting as realizing that you are sharing your bedroom with MILLIONS of tiny microbes, multiplying and replenishing themselves on your BEDROOM WALL.

There was a bush outside our front window that turned a beautiful shade of fire red in the fall. I still have some of the leaves of it mod-podged into a Valentine's Day decoration.
Jason wheeled his bike into the apartment every night, for fear it would get stolen or rust. It had a place in our bedroom right next to him. That probably wasn't such a bad idea, since one night someone broke into our car. The only thing of value that was taken was a cheap softball bat, and it cost us probably triple the price of the bat to replace the broken window. I think we would have given the bat to the thief, had he asked, just to spare us the cost of replacing the window.

There are many more memories to come, but I'll stop here for now. We loved our first place. It was was the picture of a 'poor starving college' couple's place, and it was perfect for us.