A 2 story triplex in Bakersfield, Ca. It was a fantastic apartment, floor to celing windows, modern open stairs to 2nd floor, 2 br and 1 1/2 baths.

We both had soooo much furniture between us we 'had to' rent a whole house. One bedroom on the main floor three upstairs, one bathroom with an unfinished basement. I've never lived in an apartment building and I hope I never have to. Even in college I lived in a suite with it's own outside door on the bottom floor of a dormitory. I couldn't stand sharing hallways with strangers.

An upstairs unit in a 4-plex. Open concept living room and kitchen when you first walked in the front door. Then a window on either side of the fireplace with floor length gold curtains & polished brass curtain rods, gold shag carpet. My black poofy couch with a polished brass arced floor lamp. The kitchen had black and gold striped wallpaper with flowers on the gold stripe.

It was the upper story (4 rooms) of a house that had been built in about 1860, in a neighborhood that had once been one of the nicest in town but by then was severely run down. Access was via an exterior, open stair. The original stair well had been blocked off and turned into a closet - the only substantial closet in the place. The other 2 closets (one in the single big bedroom, the other in the "living room" which had been a bedroom) were small and barely deep enough to hold a hanger - I suspect they originally had only hooks and were meant for much less clothing. The bath and kitchen were probably also originally bedrooms, although it appeared that the bath fixture may have been installed around 1910. The doors still had the 1860 box mechanisms; the wiring was all outside the walls. The place was infested with roaches. No A/C, so windows had to be open in summer - back then the air pollution in my industrial town (paper mills, foundries, and coke plant for the steel mill next town over) was such that I had to wash the kitchen table before each meal, to remove the soot that had accumulated. The rent was $95/month. We lived there for about 6 months before being asked to house sit the parsonage of the church across the street until they found a new pastor - a much nicer house!

We bought a 3 br ranch house on an acre and lived there for over 30 years.

I was already living in an apartment, so DH just moved in. It was a one floor triplex unit, but mine was turned 90 degrees so it only touched the next one at one corner. So almost a little house. Maybe 700 square feet, a small living room, rather large kitchen, 2 small bedrooms and one bath. It was old 35 years ago, probably built in the 50s. We lived there together for about 6 months, then moved to a newer complex.

We lived in the same place after we married as before: a little flat with bed sitting room, tiny galley kitchen and bathroom.

We spend our first year in a rented townhouse. Not in the best neighborhood but most of our neighbors were like us -- needing a place to start out cheap. It was very green inside -- carpet, wallpaper, linoleum in the kitchen. I don't remember if the appliances were avocado green but they might have been. The really odd thing about it was, the bathroom light switch and fan switch were wired in the wrong order. (Normally, the light is the top switch and the fan is the bottom, or the light is the switch closest to the door and the fan is the other.) After we moved into our own house it took us ages to retrain ourselves which switch was for the light, and which was for the fan.

I moved into my husband's 1913 story and a half house with two bedrooms on the top floor with the only bathroom off the short landing between the bedrooms. Had a gravity furnace in the basement, means no blower, heat rose in the winter and downstairs was cool. It did have a massive window ac unit in the living room which was not used until I finally had enough and dragged the mattress downstairs to sleep on. It still had the old coal fireplace but had been converted to gas although I never remember using it. Big windows but no screens downstairs. Upstairs the bedrooms were formed like dormers with two big windows, luckily those had screens, and two side windows that latched from the top. It did have a big pantry in a back room that was added onto the original house at some time. Next to it but entry through the dining room was another small room with most of the walls being windows.

At some point in time over my husband's strong objections I purchased a window unit for the bedroom the promptly rolled it out the window down the roof. I let it set for a couple of days the finally found my energy when he was away doing something and was able to balance it in the window enough that it stayed. He later admitted it was nice. Perhaps it was being an army brat and living often in post housing he disliked nails in the walls so there were no pictures on the walls. The calendar was fine because that nail was already in the wall when he moved in.

It was upstairs in an old 4-plex. About the second week I burned the dry pinto beans that I was cooking. Smelled up the whole place. The neighbors across the hall moved out the next day. My in-laws teased me that I caused them to move.

We moved into a tiny Victorian house in a small town with virtually no rental property. It was at the beginning of a record setting cold winter. We had ice crystals that stood out from the bedroom wall. The furnace was in the floor and a feral cat lived under it that winter. You could hear him scrambling out from under it when the heat came on. He got too fat (I fed and watered him all winter through the storm cellar door) to squeeze back out the hole in the foundation he came in through (Half a brick) Nice cat. You had to stick a hair dryer in a hole next to the backdoor jam every morning to thaw out the hot water line. We had ice damming over the tiny kitchen in the add on porch. Water in the cabinets. Fun place, We moved to a miniscule mother-in-law apartment in the SF bay area all the way cross country.

a 2-story townhouse in our university town. walking distance to dining. we bought a couch and slowly accumulated more furniture. we still eat dinner sitting at the coffeetable most nights because that is what we did for a long time.

We rented what was the former maid/housekeepers quarters in a nice but aging neighborhood. The hallway from the apartment into the house had been walled off and made into a closet. Our landlady included half her double garage for our use.

The apartment had a small bedroom with two little closets. A small bath and combination kitchen w/two-seat eating area, living room. Bonus was it had a full basement with storage space and a hookup for washer and dryer, outside and inside entrances to that.

$95/mo, no utilities included. We were comfortable there and it was close to our jobs, friends. We stayed about a year before making an offer on and buying our first small house about 6 blocks away.

2 bedroom, bath and a 1/2 with a basement, 3 levels. Not sure what you call that type of apartment? Lived in that for about 16 months until we bought our house that we still live in.

We moved from a newish apt in Seattle to a tiny town near the Canadian border where there were few rental options. Ended up on a retired dairy farm in the small house intended for farmhands, I suspect. It was tiny, but clean and good enough, but right next to the 'big house' with no privacy whatsoever, which I was not used to. City kid where people planned their yards and planted things for privacy.

I was terrified one morning when we woke up to the house completely surrounded by a herd of dairy cows. They'd escaped the neighboring farm and were enjoying the tasty plants in the garden. I know cows aren't predators but they are HUGE and I'd never been so close to one, let alone 25 or 30 of them. I wouldn't leave the house until they'd been rounded up (which was not an easy feat for the owner, lol)!

Late 1800s townhouse between the C&O Canal and the Potomac in Georgetown. Three stories, kitchen in basement, open to garden. Two bedrooms, one bath, never spent much time on main floor with living room. We rented for a very long time before we were able to buy.

I loved everything about that tiny house, location, finishes, size, it was perfect for us.

We lived in a one bedroom apartment for several months until DH left his job to get more education. We moved into a small apartment on the second floor of a house with shared bathroom and rudimentary kitchen, then to a couple of better-situated rentals until we bought our first house.

we pooled our student loans and bought a dumpy trailer home on the edge of town in a trailer park.

Nh baskets, what beautiful embroidery!

My ex and I first lived on the third floor of an apartment complex in Glendale AZ. It was a one bedroom, very small. I felt bad for the movers because I had a massive shrunk I brought from Germany and they had to take it up all those flights of stairs.

Soon we moved to a rental home in Peoria. Small, three bedroom, one bath. The old, hateful woman who rented it to us refused to give us the deposit back. We were leaving soon and there was no reason for it, no damage at all. She just knew we were moving and could get away with it. We had just had our son so that was even nicer of her.

My husband had saved and saved for a down payment on a house, which he owned when I met him. He had been living in the unfinished basement, turning it into a suite. When I moved in we moved upstairs and rented the basement to an assortment of characters. After about a year of that, my sister moved into the basement suite, which was a much more tolerable situtation. We moved to our current property 5 months before our twins were born - 26 years ago.

My husband had a studio apartment in midtown Manhattan, and I moved in with him. It was on the top floor--21 flights up, which I navigated (in heels) the night of the great blackout of whatever year it was (1966, maybe?). A decorator had helped furnish the apartment before we got together, and I liked it. My tastes have changed a great deal since then, but I still have a few of the oiled walnut pieces.

The location was great--a short walk to work at Rockefeller Center for him, and a short bus ride to work at Lincoln Center for me. We lived there four years before buying a Dutch Colonial house in NJ.

Baskets, that is one fabulous quilt!

One bedroom in an apartment building. I've never lived in an apartment before and thankfully we bought our first house a year later. I need grass and dirt. Although it was nice the only redeeming quality was it was across the street from an awesome Italian restaurant. I still can't imagine ever living in an apartment again.

It was 1973 and we had moved to an old farm in WV. The house was log covered over with wood siding outside and cheap paneling inside with a frame kitchen attached with no insulation at all. Big open fireplace. No electricity and gravity feed cold water to the kitchen sink. Of course no bathroom. One window was missing in the living room and we covered it with plastic for the first winter until we could afford to put in a real window.

Of course, we were hippie back to the landers. We loved it.

We lived in a small house that was originally servant's quarters at the back of a large family home. We accessed it by alleyway. It had a large kitchen, 1940's style, a living room, bedroom and bath. Each room had tall double hung windows. It wasn't much but we made it clean and cozy. We were college students, young and broke.

Our first home was a tiny garage apartment behind the landlord's home. It had a large room which served as the living and bedroom areas. The bathroom and galley kitchen areas were separate. We were young and broke too but it was a cozy place, we were in love and together and the landlord was good to us. Since It was convenient to downtown, I could walk to the grocery, the bank and shopping. At that point we only had one car so that was a plus. We found another place a year later. It makes me sad to remember those early times since my husband has been gone four years now.

The same 4 BR ranch that we lived in before getting married. It was the house I grew up in since I was 8. I bought it from my father a few years after my mother passed and he moved up to live in Minnesota with my sister. A few years later we bought 5+ acres out in the sticks and built our current home.

I remember being in that small house back then and our stores were very close by. Although we had a car and gas was cheap, we often walked to the stores. It was just customary if you only needed a few things. I would also shop or window-shop in smaller stores and chat with people I met. A different time in society I guess.

A tiny garage apartment on the edge of Williamsburg, VA. It was on the edge of a corn field and had an enormous wisteria vine/tree right at the front door. Unfortunately, a family of black snakes lived in the roof and sunned themselves almost everywhere, which was rather daunting. I rode my bicycle into Williamsburg where I worked at the library at College of William & Mary. We only lived there one year, then moved to West Virginia.

It was 1977 and we had the cutest apartment in Pasadena. The street name was appropriately ”Pleasant Street.” I loved everything about it, including having Trader Joe’s close by. It’s also amazing to think of the $120 rent we were paying. I still think about that great apartment.

We were both grad students and, luckily, a friend who was transferred to another city for work let us rent his small bungalow for next to nothing. The housing market was depressed at that time (ha! rememeber that?!) and he didn't want to sell at a loss. He knew we'd be good renters, so gave us a deal (details are foggy, but he may have let us live there for free and we just paid utilities). In hindsight, we really were good tenants. I don't think we contacted him for anything in the 2 years we were there. We fixed things as needed on our own, and I decorated so that when it came time to sell, it showed really well. It was small but solid and well laid out.

Chloebud, Have you read Becoming Trader Joe by Joe Coulombe? I think you wouod enjoy it.

Apologies for going OT.

Similar to @laceyvail our first home was an old log cabin that had been “upgraded” over the years with siding that enclosed the dog trot. The kitchen, dining and living room were on one side of the dog trot and were heated with a wood burning stove. There was a small propane stove in the hallway but not in the bedroom. We did have a feather mattress and each other for warmth.

The bathroom was an after thought.

The home site was located on 80 acres and had previously been a dairy farm. We had an old barn, chicken house and other out buildings. We raised chickens, ducks, geese and guineas. We call it our “Egg and I” period.

Oh yeah, we also had a pool.

We moved in together a few years before we got engaged. It was a crummy fourplex in an amazing, vibrant artsy neighborhood. It was too cold, had a constant ant problem, and the coin-op W/D were located in a muddy basement. It was a total craphole, but it was also really cute and we had the BEST memories. We knew all of our neighbors and threw giant parties that would involve the entire house. We got engaged there and threw a celebration party so wild, the fire department paid us a visit! Nothing bad actually came of it so they let us carry on.

I just looked it up on Redfin-- it sold for $2 million and was recently torn down to make way for condos. The real estate in seattle is insane.

Our next apartment after -- this is where we lived when we got married. A rented condo in a fairly upscale high rise nearby. It was only $1400/month -- utilities included -- and the owner never raised our rent in seven years. We really lucked out with that place! (By the time we moved out, rents around there averaged $3000K and up.)

We.... had a lot of stuff. Our current place is not so cluttered!

I absolutely adored our floor-to-ceiling windows, which were everywhere! Just ignore the ugly baseboards, LOL.

I'd been living in a standard one-bedroom apartment in a small building (I don't remember how many units it had, 4-6 or so). The kind of small apartment structure common in SoCal where one older house on a large-ish lot in a multizone residential neighborhood is torn down and a small apartment structure is built in its place. It was a one mile walk to the cliff overlooking the beach. Great location, average place.

I laughed when telling one of my kids a few weeks ago about a stupid Duh moment I had when living there. For much of the year, my morning commute involved driving directly into blinding sunlight from the sun at a low level. Depending upon how late I worked, the drive home could also involve driving directly toward the blinding sun at a low level. Dark sunglasses were an absolute necessity. One day, while thinking about the blinding sun as a reason why many people dread getting up and going to work, and with no respite when it came time to drive home, it dawned on me that my commute difficulties were an exception, not the rule. Mine was a result of driving almost entirely due East in the morning, and the reverse to the West in the afternoon. More people than not follow different compass directions in their drives to work. Duh.

We lived in a dumpy apartment in a questionable neighborhood in Hartford. At one point in time it had been a single family house. You entered from the side and went up a flight of stairs, where the door to our place was located. You walked right into the kitchen which was the only room on the second floor. Then you went up another flight of stairs to the tiniest living room ever. You could sit in the sofa against one wall and put your feet on the other wall. There were two tiny bedtooms and a bathroom with a tub / shower that sprayed water everywhere. The upstairs was so hot. Thank goodness we were only there one summer. The kitchen had a hole in the ceiling so the heat could rise upstairs. If there had ever been a fire, we would have been goners.

Some of us have never been married.

We still live in the house we bought right after we married. We bought it because the main level is ground level with a walk-out fully finished basement. When stairs are an issue, we can just live on our main level with no problems. That was the main reason we bought it-that, and the trees and wonderful multi-level yard in the back.

True Lars, maybe the question can be expanded to -- what was your apartment or house like, the first time you felt "officially grown-up"? could be right after high school or college, or first time you lived apart from your parents, or after you got your first job and paid all your own bills, something like that. Hope that makes sense.

I was a young girl married to my then young husband who was not much older. We were just a couple of kids and I was not even old enough to buy beer. or open a bank account in my own name.

We lived in an old boarding house in the Texas border town of Del Rio. The building was old and run down and had been made into little apartments. It was basically what you might today call a "studio" .I think we paid maybe $35 a month for it. It was cooled with one of those big swamp coolers that occupied one window and it had little gas fired space heaters for heat. They were the kind that you took with you when you moved from one place to another and when you got where you were going, you just took a pair of pliers and hooked it up the the gas cocks that were there , checked for leaks with some soapy water. and that was it. There were no smoke or carbon detectors, no sprinklers, no safety measure of any kind. The whole place was probably in danger of burning down.

One thing that it did have was ghosts. We both awoke one evening and there was the figure of a man standing there by us. As soon as we called out, he simply disappeared. He just absolutely disappeared and there was only one door into the apartment and it was still locked. There was a bathroom window that was also still closed and locked. There was no other way out of the small one room apartment. But, he was gone, gone, gone!

It was a very old two story building probably from the time when this was part of the old west and had been some manner of a boarding house for a school or some such. No telling how many people's life stories happened there.

We owned almost nothing that would not fit into the back seat of a small car. I was so young that I got an allotment paid to me that was a part of his salary with the Air Force. They did that because some on the enlisted men would spend their money and not take care of their families. So they made sure that the wife had some of his salary in her own name.

Then in the same border town we rented half of a small house. The woman who owned it lived in the other half. Her family went generations back in this small town and the house had been built by her grandfather back in the days of the old west . It still had a buggy house in the back. She remembered old west style shoot outs in the yard. The road sign out front said, "Mexico, 2 miles". And , indeed it was. She collected bird songs and Nat Geo magazines and had been a teacher of spanish speaking children. She was old in the late 1960s so I guess she was born sometime may be around the turn of that century.

After a tour of duty overseas, we returned to Texas, to Dallas, where we rented a small apartment attached to a small house for $25 a month. Considering that we had no jobs or income, that was all we could afford. We had to supply our own stove and space heaters. Hook them up with a pair of pliers, test with soapy water and there was never any ventilation for the burning gas. We found an old gas stove at a flee market that was probably from about the 1930s. It had a top that you could close on it and I used it for some years. We were poor and all we could afford was a small fan for ventilation .It got really hot in Dallas. We were young and resilient and still had no more than would fit in the back seat of the car.

We progressed upwards with college via the GI bill, a career and an upwardly mobile life, with kids and now grandkids. Each house that we bought costs more than the last, and here we are. So much has changed since then, the world changed and we changed.

One irony is that now, in my later years, I am trying to get my material possessions back down to that minimal amount that we used to have. I aspire toward living a simple life for the rest of it. This time it is a choice and I have resources and much nicer options.

Our first apartment was equal distance between DH's job and mine, a 1BR 1BA ground floor corner in a new multi-building project by a cheap-o developer, in an unincorporated part of the township. Each of the two level buildings had about a dozen 1- and 2-BR units. Our upstairs neighbor was a quiet elderly woman I only saw twice in the three years we lived there. Each building had a coin laundry room with wash tubs plumbed straight into the sewer -- where I lost my wedding/engagement ring while washing our Westie. (Not really *lost*. He'd swallowed it and brought it back up in our kitchen two days before we were to kennel him during our trip to the Montreal fair.)

One of the complex's supers lived on the second floor; he relaxed in the evenings by playing the organ. One tenant kept both his motorcycle and his big, black Doberman in his unit. The cops came one evening, 'helping' a wife-beater ricochet down the stairwell -- to applause. Do I need to tell you that the walls were *thin*?

That was the kitchen where we put a pizza to warm in the oven...in its box...then opened the LR sliders and the door to the hall, the smoke bringing other tenants out into the hall fearing fire. It's also where I discovered an open flame burning on the gas line in the cabinet below the cooktop. We'd been in the apartment for months by then.

Most of the tenants in this cheap new construction were young people like us. My DM and other local realtors called the whole area "The Breeder Coops".

My decor was less striking than Nicole's black and gold ! We had white walls, drapes and lounge chairs, a black and white sofa, red plush wall to wall carpeting, a card table in the dining area, and a 12" portable TV on a cart. Most of that came from Sears because DH had a discount from his job at Allstate. We are still using the BR suite my MIL gave us as a wedding gift.

Inertia kept us there, then we rented a quiet townhouse for two years. When we were able to adopt our DS, we bought the 'starter ranch' we were to occupy for 30 years. Twenty years ago we built our current home.

@Lars Some of us have never been married.

I thought the same thing too. also pretty much every couple I know moved in together or even bought a house years before marriage.

I like @nickel_kg's question much more. I definitely remember which apartment officially felt like my first "grown up" place. I was 34, LOL.

Our first home was a rather spacious one bedroom apartment. It was simply furnished because we didn't have much money. We were young, busy and not very interested in decorating much at the time, either. It was a wonderful time and I wouldn't change anything about it if I could.

DH had taken a position in Albuquerque, NM, about 6 months before we were married, as a family practice physician in a private clinic. I was living and working at this time in Michigan, where I was born and raised. It was where I met DH, as he was doing a surgical rotation at the hospital where I was an x-ray technologist. I flew out 3 months later, and by then he'd already bought a home. A beautiful, all-adobe home in a nice housing development, right off Rio Grande Blvd. It was just a 15 minute drive down to Old Town. And, only about a 50 minute drive to Santa Fe. Another couple hours on to Taos. Ours was a three bedrooms, 2 full baths, living, dining, family rooms. A breakfast room right off the kitchen. On about 2/3 of an acre with great shade trees and 3 patios. We both had our own apartments before this, so we just combined all our furniture. Because New Mexico is a mecca for artists of all kinds, we had a great time buying art for the place whenever we had the time and money. We got our first fur kid soon after, Kiva, a black lab cross. At this time, I was working as a decorator locally. When my wonderful next door neighbor. Maria Elena, laughingly informed me that I was watering and fertilizing a lot of weeds along with our lawn, flowers and trees (they are so different out here!), I went back to school to become a master gardener. Boy, did I learn a LOT about NM plants! That was 39 years ago. As much as I loved my Michigan, I am so happy to have lived here in this beautiful Land of Enchantment all these years!

We were already living together when we got married. And I had all my kids by then.... We lived in a 3 bedroom half duplex. From there we moved into a 4 bedroom half duplex and 2 years later we bought the house we are living in now.

I can describe the place I got (with a roommate) after I got my first job after graduating from university.

This was in Austin in Jan 1973 (I was 22), and I shared a one bedroom apartment with my best friend, Michael. He had been working at The Jungle Shop, a small nursery a few blocks up the street, and he had been living behind the nursery in a building that was attached to the nursery - it was very rustic, and I stayed with him in December while I was looking for work. When I did get a job (at the UT Main Library), we moved to an upstairs apartment in a fourplex on 24-1/2 Street, just three short block from the UT campus, which meant I could walk to work in about 5 to 10 minutes.

Michael took the living room as his bedroom, and I took the bedroom. Between these rooms was a dining room opposite the kitchen and bathroom. We did not spend a lot of time at home, and we did not have a phone, in order to save money. Plus I knew that Michael would have way too many friends that would call and want to visit us and stay with us for the weekend.

My job was for a special project, cataloguing a Slavic literature collection, and I got the job because I knew enough Russian to read the title pages of books. This was a part time job from 5-10 PM Monday through Thursday, and so I always had long weekends. Therefore, every other weekend I would hitchhike Friday morning to Houston to visit friends there, since Houston had much better nightlife than Austin in 1973. Monday morning I would hitchhike back to Austin.

During the day in the summer, I would hitchhike to Lake Travis/Hippy Hollow to go swimming, and I could easily get back in time to go to work by 5 PM.

Michael set up a shrine to the Virgin of Guadalupe in his room and decorated with posters from 1950s Mexican movies that he had gotten from a friend, Enrique, in Mission, TX who owned a movie theater and the Estudios Rio art gallery there. Enrique had a huge collection of old posters stored in the movie theater, and he let Michael pick out which ones he wanted.

My decor was much more limited, but I did have a huge iron bolt that had probably been part of a bridge and that I had found abandoned somewhere. I used it as a barbell as well as a decorative item. I also had an old (but perfectly clean) old toilet that I had found, and I put a cow skull inside the bowl with a strobe light, so that the light would come out of the cow's eyes and nose. Michael was afraid that I would summon angry cow spirits when I turned the strobe light on.

I also had drawings and paintings done by Michael's cousin Bobby, who was a good friend and who had introduced Michael to me.

You can see Michael in this video to get an idea of his personality, but this video was taken in Venice, when Michael came to visit me there.