My Husband and I, recently married, and never having had our own place before decide to set out on an apartment-hunting expedition. “Expedition” being the operative word!

Well of course any search like this would require some serious planning – like budget, space and all that jazz. Obviously our budget was “cheap” or so we thought to start out with and cheap doesn’t really quite fit into that space aspect of things either!!

Looking in the paper wasn’t all that helpful – I mean really!! A large two bedroom apartment turned out to be a large two bedroom apartment…for two of the seven dwarfs.

So needless to say we embarked on a driving trip to the suburb we had set our hearts on.

A few for rent signs caught our eye and after knocking on a few apartments and calling others we managed to get inside…

To be frank…I wished I had worn closed shoes and bought a breathing mask for several of our ventures. Going into some of the places was seriously daunting. I know now what questions to ask before even stepping into the place.

Firstly, “Do you have cats?” and most importantly, “Do you have male cats?”

One apartment actually had a block of wall that would have to be removed because the cat had sprayed in the same spot for the last who knows how many years. This resulted in the a floorboard removal requirement as well, as it had seeped down there too. I bet if we asked the landlord if he wouldn’t mind sorting that out for us, his response would be, “No Problem”. Hah!!

Secondly, “Are there or have there been smokers living in the apartment?”

This can pose several scenarios. One apartment we figured out the tenant was actually leaving because she was struggling to breathe at night due to the fact that all the walls and carpet smelt so bad of smoke from the previous tenants. Perhaps she could take it up with her landlord – maybe he could re-paint and re-carpet the entire place at his own expense.

And if that smell is not prevalent take a look at the walls. They are probably not painted yellow, but white instead. And then there is the burn holes in the carpet which means strategically arranging ones furniture, resulting in some interesting fen sheu arrangements.

So we finally found one into which we are moving at the end of the month. It looks great. There have never been any smokers in there and current tenants can attest for that as they have their baby in right now.

The two large rooms really are two large rooms, and there is no chance anybody who lived there could have had cats. The landlord who lives below us is quite strict about that as she is highly allergic.

The one room is not correctly insulated as it is an addition but that is really the least of our concerns right now but perhaps it will be in a few months time.

You see, I’ve quite had enough of apartment searching and am quite looking forward to not doing that again any time soon. If it means having an electric heater going all winter, I think I can survive it!!

And then there’s also the issue of the floorboards. We are newly married so let’s hope for our landlords sake they don’t squeak!!!!