making a bad thing a little better

Finding married housing in Provo is literally a search for the holy grail. Our decision to live at Wymount came at sort of a "Quick! Let's grab a cheap apartment!" moment. Although we weren't crazy about living at "the bunny hill" we found that Wymount had a few things going for it.

Close to campus. We save gas and get our excercise by biking to school/work every day. Not to mention we don't ever have to worry about parking/BYU ticket nazis. In the winter when I student teach, Wes can still get to and from school and I can have the car.

Cheap. Also difficult to find a DECENT apartment in Provo for under 600.00. Now I know I shouldn't be complaining (all you "back East" people) but our budget struggles. Our 2 bedroom Wymount apartment 615.00, utilities included.

Ok, so those are pretty much the only good reasons to live at Wymount. And we figure, our first apartment can be the worst because we are just married and so in love and it doesn't really matter where we live. That's what we keep telling ourselves. Well, that's what I keep telling myself. Wymount sometimes feels like "Whyme?mount."

Nevertheless, we have tried to make the best of our cinder block, industrial warehouse carpet, fluorescent lighting, 40 year old plumbing situation. And so I'll show you a few things we have done to improve the situation.

{Problem 1} Everything looks like a barren prison. Especially the front doors. Hard to know if an apartment is occupied or not.

{Resolution} Do something obvious. We bought a welcome mat, put a hook on our door (which we'll never use, but still helps with the welcoming effect) and a giant orange magnetic flower.

{Problem 2} The lighting. The lighting is terrible, even when we replaced all the light bulbs with uber wattage ones.

{Resolution} We bought a few extra lamps for the office. However, the bedroom was still dingy. So we placed 9 1' x 1' square mirrors on the wall opposite the window to reflect light. They work great and are so stylishly modern if I do say so myself.

{Problem 3} The blinds. I really don't like the blinds in each of the rooms. They are just so... blah. Functional yes. Eye candy no.

{Resolution} Tear them down and replace with cute IKEA curtains. We found a silver curtain rod from Home Depot (thank you gift card). It works great. Then we cut the curtains down to fit our window.
We bunched them all up for a layered effect that looks so much better, and gives some privacy.

{Problem 4} The heat. Wymount is without air conditioning. I know. Can you believe it?!

{Resolution} Have a good husband who is faithful about home teaching. He will go the first time and return with a free AC unit. Then have him build and install a frame to hold the unit in the bedroom window. I don't think you are technically supposed to do this because you have to pull the screens out... but we don't care. Shhhh. And don't we think that Wes could totally pull off the Ty Pennington thing?

{Problem 5} The lack of sheet rock.

{Resolution} Wymount puts in up to 4 anchors in the cinderblock in each room. The catch is, they don't take them out. Ever. So we are stuck with anchors from the couple that lived here 20 years ago (and terrible placement I might add!) We have resorted to command strips. Wes has become the king of command strips. I think just about everything in our apartment is hanging
on one.

The place looks so much better! We're grateful for our home and I shouldn't bash it so much because the ward makes up for it. We have really great neighbors. And as a Relief Society, we always try to collectively be grateful for Wymount in the "Good News/Missionary Moment/I'm grateful for minute" every Sunday.