It's been a long couple of days. We met with the owners of the house on Friday evening and they gave us their proposed lease. It was a little bit funny to get a lease for a place that is still a long way from being finished. We still intended to help out with the additional work but when the issue of rent came up and the owners said they wanted to get market value (which they set at $1600 a month) for the place we realized that this was not going to work at all. It wouldn't be worth our time and effort to get a place that really wasn't as nice as other places we could get for less money and a lot less of our own labor. Plus, the landlord's lease went against a lot of the original verbal and written agreements we had so our level of trust was now very low.
After the meeting, we talked about what we should do next. We had already put a lot of work into demolition and painting and such, not to mention the mental effort of how we were going to get Jeff's family there as soon as possible, but was it worth continuing with landlords who changed their minds on things like rent and finishing the basement etc.? At first, the majority of the group said yes, it would be worth it. But the next day, some of us weren't so sure anymore. It took some heated late-night phone conversations to re-affirm our commitments to live in the city together somehow even if this house thing fell through.
On Sunday, we decided to look into other living options, just to see what we could get for the same price the landlords were asking for their unfinished house. We set up a bunch of apartments to look at for Monday. Monday morning, on our second apartment visit, we found a perfect place, a somewhat new duplex that would accommodate a family of four and another couple living in their own space upstairs. We submitted our applications and security deposit and, kid you not, by Tuesday night 3 households worth of material possessions had been moved out of storage in Lansing, IL and the Logan Square house and two were moved into the new place by Wednesday afternoon and one was moved into our band rehearsal space.
And just like that the rehab-ed rental idea that we had agonized over since last spring was a thing of the past. As Grant and Jeff closed up the house late Tuesday night and drove off in the U-Haul truck, the place looked very desolate. But we were relieved to be able to get on with the business of the band without having all the stress of trying to make the Logan Square property work.
Last night, we were sitting on the deck of our new place in Humboldt Park, talking about recent events and celebrating the comforts of a working shower with hot water, a functional stove etc. The new place is filled with the clutter of the late-night moving session, boxes are everywhere and we're slowly sorting everything and putting things in their place.
We are so sick of moving.
This Saturday we will move Nate's stuff again from our practice space to his new apartment in Roger's Park. And then hopefully we won't have to move anything again, except band equipment. Well, Joel will have to move out of his space soon too, but he doesn't have too much stuff. After that, no more moving. Ok?
One other thing happened that's worth mentioning: we got the cd's on Friday! They look great! We took a couple of pictures of us joyfully bathing in the piles of cd's. The image is a striking contrast from the feelings we had after the meeting with the landlords that day. We can't attach it yet because we don't know which box or bag contains our camera. So, enough blogging. Must unpack. Ok?
