Maki's Future Playground!

For the past month we've been religiously scouring craigslist's "for rent" postings. Our lease ends in May and we would really like to find a cute, affordable house with a nice yard for Maki. It was a mentally tiring exercise due to the fact that we we're either looking too early and no one wanted to hold the house for a month or the majority of budget-friendly homes were in the "murder zone" of Oakland. We did view a couple homes that were in the nicer, lower crime zones of Oakland but the prices were on the high end of our budget and we'd rather not stretch too far.

After our return from the Mitten vacation we became more liberal in our search and started to consider the fact that we might need to look at multi-unit dwellings or stay in our current location. However, we really would like to move out of our current "Jr. One Bedroom" apartment and by Jr. One Bedroom they mean studio with a extend-o wall. Not very conducive to people who have varying morning wake-up hours. We also wanted to move away from neighbors on the other side of the wall as Maki's barking was previously a concern and the lady below us is less than pleased with our noise level at times.

We looked at a real walled one bedroom within our current community but it was previously inhabited by a smoker and smelled horribly. Our current apartment was once inhabited by a smoker and the closets continue to leech smoke odors into my clothes.

Our search was becoming more and more dismal and we began calling any decent looking ad in craigslist that we happened upon. One add was for a small one bedroom house and "small pets negotiable." Maki is small for a dog so we called and went to the showing last Monday. The house was indeed very small and below highway 580 (which puts in slightly within the "murder zone") but it had a large yard and the neighborhood appeared safe. The house had just been renovated with new carpet, cabinets and appliances and fixture so the interior was clean and appealing.

We discussed it and decided that it was a good match for us and sent in our applications. There had been 3 other interested parties the day of the showing but we won! The landlady is very nice and agreed to have the yard mowed down and fix the portions of the fence that had fallen down so Maki would not escape. She agreed to allow Maki with only an extra security deposit which was nice compared to our apartment which charges an extra $300 in rent for a pet.

Here's a link to the floor plan that I designed. http://www.floorplanner.com//projects/18501848/floors/18525102/designs/19835598?guest_pass=dtmgfa

Even better she is going to give us the keys early so we can begin to move things in over the course of the next 3 weeks! We stopped by on Saturday to take picture of the yard to share with Maki and friends. I put together a couple panoramic shots!

-Elizabeth