Apartments Past

Apartments Past.

There will be three installments where you can peak into my past, present & future with apartments.  I hope that from our first apartments to our future apartments I show improvements.  I'll let you make that call.

The first apartment complex we lived in was a one bedroom in a quiet suburb of where my school Sonoma State University was located.  I wanted to post floor plan layouts to show where we have come from these past four years, but apparently the place we lived in was much worse than we knew since there are no floor plans available online.  Shame. So instead of starting there, we'll graduate to Chicago, IL.

Chicago.  We traveled 2500 miles from the only home I knew to the midwest. It was my first experience seeing brick buildings - everywhere.  It was also one of my biggest challenges with apartment size.  This is the layout of our apartment's floor plan while we lived on campus at Moody Bible Institute.

Let's start from the entrance. There were two closets that got in the way of the door, but it was really the most storage we ever had.  Our apartment was flipped in that the bath and bedroom were on the left and the living/dining room with kitchen were on the right. The bedroom closet was super tiny, but the biggest plus was there was lots of cabinets and large full length floor to ceiling windows.  The picture is what is visible for the corner apartments, see the extra window for the living/dining room?  We did not have that, so we had another blank wall to work with. Here's some pictures of what we did...

When we first moved in we were still trying to figure out how to place furniture in the room. We had our dining table, futon (we walked it through the city) and the coffee table and coatrack pictured. 

This is the other side of the same room.  The tv Hutch was from my Parents.  We had our desk top and printer nearby. 

Here's the room further away.  Don't you just love the windows!! 

This was our bedroom, but you can see that we fit our dressers in here.  Again - big windows behind me. 

I just had to put a shot up of our view at night.  There are times I miss this view - the large building to the right is the Sears Tower (now Willis Tower), the rows of lights are for LaSalle Street.  The trump tower was being built - in the far left where the scaffolding is visible.  

So these were our Moody Days.  I don't have many pictures of being inside because we tried to do as much outside as we could.  I mean who would want to stay inside when you have that view outside?!  I sure didn't.

Next time, I'll show you where we live now...at least until July 18th... and then I have some ideas for our future apartment.

Til then,
A.Reed.A

3 Color Poppin Ideas for Small Spaces

Renting or even living in small spaces can be intimidating with how to make it feel like a home.
I've had to live in small spaces for most of my married life and each space I've learned from others with how to make a space pop by color.  You may be able to use paint on your walls but there are clever ways to get around it.  And accents always help too! Let's look at some examples:

1. Fabric + walls

      HGTV : Fabric on Walls Ballard Style Studios - Upholster Walls ShopRuche - DIY Wall DecorSavoring Simplicity - Curtains on Walls

2.   Shelves + Walls

Young House Love - Shelves

 Tumidei - Italian Shelves

For one, I could never afford these shelves, but the idea behind how they show off the shelves in the room is pretty awesome.  Partition a room with Shelves!  I may do this with our new space.  *Score*

 pulled from Decor8 Blog - Workspaces who saw it on frau-p

3.  Accents + Color
I have a co-worker who shared with me her secret to decorating.  If you are undecided about where to start have someone else start it for you.  What she did is have a family member pick the focal object for the room, say the zebra chair.  After you have a starting point, then you can decorate around it. I love this idea.  So, when you are trying to accent your room - keep this story in mind.  It may mean going by a theme or picking two colors and using it in the room.  Here's some ideas to get you rollin':
English Muse : Turquoise Accent
Style Files  
Large Letters and points of interest can be great accents!CB2 - Catalog - Home Accents


If you have an itty bitty space I hope these ideas will inspire you to not be intimidated by your rents rules. Have fun & make that room Pop!


A.Reed.A 

Light & Mirrors

So for my first post I thought I'd highlight one aspect on how to make a small room seem bigger: Light. I've heard that nice airy drapes can help make a small space appear bigger.  Mirrors also can help make it look larger than life.  Let's see...

This baby room's light drapes help create a calming effect

These are sheer panels  - West Elm

OOOH!! Drapes to separate a room!! - love it!

So as you can see - drapes add either a simple elegance to them or a classic feeling.  Let's see how mirrors can help with a room!

Walls + Mirrors made to look like they are on shelves.  Also love the variation of sizes. 

At first glance - I thought it was cut outs in the wall - but no, they're mirrors. Pretty awesome.

Layer your mirrors to make the wall  tall

So as you can see - there are lots of ideas for making a room look a bit brighter - even if it's smaller.  Light & mirrors. 


Next time We'll look at how color of the walls or the rooms accents can make a room shrink or pop!


Thanks for following along - And please click on the captions - it will bring you to the original link where I found my inspiration. 


.A.Reed.A.