Slum Lord Rental Turned Cute Apartment

Before:

Living in Milwaukee is awesome and underrated (see Buzzfeed's 10 Incredible And Underrated Cities To Live In),  but renting near UWM campus is not exactly fabulous. Picture an abundance of brown, bland, boring buildings. To top it off, the closer you get to campus the higher the prices are, yet the quality of the properties decrease. Generally, prime real estate comes with access to culture-rich neighborhoods. The Milwaukee upper east side area boasts prime access to house parties, beer pong playing bros, and access to mediocre public transit via bus. But it's really not the area I hate, it's the land lords.

As you can see by the second 2 photos, my room looked like a DIY disaster before I settled in. For some awful reason, tons of Milwaukee Land Lords get away with renting out properties that look less than appealing. If I wanted a place near campus I knew I'd have to deal with some ugly property. 

It wasn't just a bad paint job that makes this apartment slum-lord-esque. The ceiling sinks in from water damage, there was a moldy non-functiong dishwasher, a window made of plexiglass (um are you an idiot?), and some windows didn't even shut. Oh, and the fridge opens by itself so either it's broken or ghosts, both of which were not agreed upon in the lease.

Now to the happy ending of the story! Obviously college students are going to pay the extra money to be near school, and just suck it up because we aren't exactly high-rollers. Condo living is too "little boxes made of ticky tacky" for me anyway. Dumpy can be transformed into delightful with a little effort. Each wall needing sanding and 3 coats of paint, and the molding needed a paint job too. After hours of taping, patching, painting... Nasty Slum Lord apartments can clean up pretty nicely :D

Now if I could only solve the mystery of the opening fridge...

Happy blogging!

xonatasha