On housing in Seattle

I’ve been in temp housing about a month now, and want to have my own place so I can take my things out of storage: my hi-fi set, my flatscreen, my bike, books. I’m nothing without these!

The search for a place is so far less stressful than it was in New York (everything here is less stressful), but very frustrating: it’s almost impossible to find places with hardwood floors in the area. It’s always carpet wall to wall, apparently for noise damping as well as economy. I’ve only seen hardwood in a pair of condos in concrete-and-steel buildings. Some of the places I’ve seen that advertise hardwood floors turn out to have hardwood only in the kitchen. The kitchen? That’s where I would NOT have hardwood. What is wrong with these people?

The places I’ve seen tend to go cheap on the materials - carpet, vinyl floored bathrooms - but expensive on complements - sauna, in-house gym, conference room. Methinks they got it backwards.

I also looked at a couple of places in the suburbs that left me unimpressed, but at the moment I’m leaning towards staying in the city.

More news on this front coming soon, I hope.