Yes, we definitely moved a lot while in Chicago but as you read the previous entries you can see there were legitimate reasons each time.  As I stated in the 640 West Wavelend entry, the owner was selling right around the time we were getting married and we moved to avoid having to worry about finding a place to love as soon as we came back from our honeymoon.

The bottom line is we hit the jackpot on our last residence in Chicago.  Thanks to a friend who had forwarded me the ad for this house from his company personal ads, we wound up renting the top floor of a beautiful 100 year old house that had been kept immaculate.  The owner lived on the main floor and half the basement.  The other half of the basement was a common area we both shared for laundry and storage.  The house still had the exposed wood trim and wood floors so it looked very nice.

This was our first experience with not having to hoard quarters for the laundry and we haven’t had to do that since.  I don’t miss the whole Laundromat Experience or even the shared laundry machines in apartment complexes where clothes can go missing or are dumped on top of the washer or dryer by other residents.  Even worse was when neighbors forgot about their laundry and your own total time doing laundry was expanded by hours thanks to thoughtless or forgetful neighbors who left their clothes in the machines.  No longer was this a problem and we couldn’t have been happier.

Our landlord was a Chicago fireman and his live-in partner was a cop.  She was great because she decorated the house for EVERY holiday and always kept an eye on the place when Megan was by herself.  There was one time when the cable guy came by for a service call and she saw him walk up the back stairs.  Before he was even to our deck, she was right up there asking Megan if everything was ok.  It was a house of civil servants except for me – a cop, a fireman, and a nurse.

The pluses of an anal landlord far outweighed the minuses.  He kept the place in spotless condition and it was a showcase for a house of its age.  There were new windows and central air which made the place even more enjoyable to live.  If there was a problem with our apartment, he was either immediately fixing it or he made service calls right away.  Had we stayed there instead of moving to Atlanta, he also said he never raised rent on existing tenants so we could have live there for $1,100 a month (2 bedrooms) for as long as we wished.

All of the above attributes weren’t even the best part of that place.  It was all the amenities close to us that made living there a treat.  Yes we were now more than a mile from the lake but that was a quick bike ride to get there.  I was also still less than 10 minutes from the El train.  A Jewel grocery store was 2 blocks away, Blockbuster (we were still in the ancient pre-Netflix, pre-rental Queue days), and Southport Avenue with it’s multiple restaurants and bars was a block to the east.  We fell in love with Thai food since there was a place called Sweet Tamarind a half block away.  The food there was cheap, plentiful, and healthy.  I have no idea how they stayed in business as the place was generally sparsely populated whenever I went in there but maybe a majority of their business was take-out.  If not, then it was a front for some other shady business but we didn’t care.  As long as they made a kickass Pad See Eu and Pad Thai we could care less.

While there was a nice neighborhood bar one half block to our north, there was an even better one just a half block to our south on Greenview.  It was an Irish pub called Kelly’s on the Green and it was literally in the middle of a residential block.  As you walk down the street you see house, house, house, house, pub, house, house, house, you get the idea.  The service there was great, the owner, Tim, spoke as though he just came off the boat, the Guinness flowed freely and the place was never packed elbow to elbow like other pubs in town.  Best of all, with it being a half block from our house, we could get piss drunk and just stumble home.

They made a killer platter of tater tots there and if you ordered them with your burger your plate would be overflowing with crunchy spudsy goodness.  The wings they served were spicy enough to make you down even more beer and the Irish breakfasts on the weekend were a great hangover cure.  On Saturday and Sunday mornings you’d see entire families in there having breakfast.  It truly was the perfect neighborhood hangout.

Anyway, the neighborhood was picture perfect and was already out of our price range.  The next door neighbor, who lived in a house that was renovated on the inside but the outside had yet to be updated, had bought his house for $46,000 eleven years prior.  As of 1999, it was valued at $500,000.  If I had to guess, the house we were in was worth twice that.  In the year we were there, they tore down a bank across the street and built townhomes that started at $750,000.

That was the breaking point when it came to us being tired of renting and wanting to own our own house.  This is where Atlanta came into the picture and the rest is history.  But this house on Diversey was my favorite house I’ve lived in yet.

Notice the beautiful built-in original glass and wood china hutch.  Pay no attention to the dork in jean shorts.  In his defense, jean shorts were still in style in 1999.

This is a partial view looking down from our 2nd floor porch to the backyard.  The landscaping couldn't have been nicer.  A true urban oasis.