apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Having a country home on a hill in Connecticut...we've named our house "Clouds". Has a bit of a regal touch to it.

my husband calls our place "the shitbox".

maybe it will change post-renovation.

Before we bought it, our house was vacant for a winter. Apparently a sickly deer moved in and nested in the kitchen, only to disappear in early spring.

The house, thus, is now named Fawn's End.

My mom still called our house "Our New House" (e.g. "don't sit on the kitchen counters in our new house!") until the late 90's even though we moved in in 1985!

The builder named my place "Malaga" (for the Spanish city of the same name) and put that on the front door. My friends and I just refer to it as "that white thing at the end of the street".

Our house is called "The Passyunk Palace" because it's in the Passyunk Square neighborhood of South Philly, and it had this crazy crystal chandelier when we moved in. Unfortunately we took it down temporarily and wound up not being able to get it back up. Now we're mid-renovation so the place is a disaster and the name has become more ironic than anything.

No name for my place, but if I were your friend, I'd continue to call your house Mint Grandma even without the mint. It'd be like krikri's moms's 'new' house!

"Rose Cottage". It's half hopeful planning (I'm hoping to plant lots of carpet roses next spring) and half an homage to the "Rose Cottage" dollhouse in the old TV series "Dark Shadows."

After watching "Flipping Out", my boyfriend and I decided we needed to name our respective apartments similarly. His is "Ben Affleck" (a play on Jeff Lewis's Ben Lomond) and mine was Tally Ho (after Jeff's Valley Oak).

I recently moved to Virginia, so we decided that my new apartment's name is "Commonwealth" (after 'Commonwealth' on the show).

"Mint Grandma, NIP". ;-)

I like "Fawn's End." That's a keeper.

But aren't Jeff Lewis' places called after the streets? Commonwealth is the location, same with Ben Lomond.

When I lived in England all my friends had houses with names. Somehow they could even put the house name on their address even though the names were just made up by themselves. Not sure how that worked. Anyway, my favorite was my friend Simon's place that he called "The Orangery" after his orange tabby cat. I just call my place the Pad, although I'd like to think of something better now that I see some other good ones here ;-)

Our semi-earth bermed home was named "Williams Weyr." At the time we built, we were reading the Dragonrider's series by Anne McCaffrey. A Weyr is a dragon's den so the name fit as we also collect dragons. My brother even made us a sign out of a slab of cypress. He wood burned the name in and used a blow torch to blacken the edges of the cypress arms, much like the dragon's fire flame.

I used to see houses with names and thought that would be cool to do someday, but I forgot. So in honor of this post, I just decided to call my apartment "Allison." Upon inspection, it looks more like a Claudia or Simone, but you caught me off guard.

My husband used to live in an apartment above a hardware store, so we called it "The Toolbox." Then we lived in the basement of a church-turned-residence, which we called "The Grotto."

Now we live in a house. It's an adorable bungalow, but no singular striking feature. I thought it looked like a Wendell, but my husband vetoed it, as it was the name of the nerdy kid in his high school.

We call our house Tribulation after the house int he Donna Tartt book, The Secret Friend because the trials and tribulations we've had buying and then renovationg the house have been epic.

We have property in Wisconsin that we plan to rehab someday and we'll call it Catbird on a Stick farm. That's from a Most Extreme Elimination Challenge skit.

Oddly, since there is no oak tree in the yard, my house is named Acorn Cottage. I formerly lived in a house that was called Fjord's End, since it was at the very end of one of the many fingers of Puget Sound. And when I lived in Seattle my boyfriends house was called Rosehaven, for the huge roses that climbed up the fir trees in the yard. I also have always named my cars, currently "Nimblefoot" lives in the driveway.

Why Acorn Cottage?...I had a metal door knocker that had been in my hopeless chest for years in the shape of oak leaves with acorns. I have several motifs that I have been fond of for many years(oak leaf with acorn, horses, and maneki neko). I have small, heavily curated collections of each of these things, and have had to let my friends know that I am not trying to fill all the rooms with acorn things, lest I become like the owl lady that lived down the street when I was a child.

I refer to my apartment as the "Ivory Tower" since I live on the 15th floor of a round white highrise apartment building.

We have recently christened our home "Sanctuary" because it has become just that for us. Our home now embodies everything we've always wanted (except the extension of the patio, and replacing the guest room and master bedroom carpet. Gotta have something to dream and fuss about). We love our home, and walking in the door after a time away always brings about a peaceful feeling.

The houses on Flipping Out are definitely named after the street each house is on. I drive by Ben Lemond, the street and house, on my way to work most mornings.

My parents call their house “Casa del Mar” since they live a block from the beach.

We live in a small log home in the woods. I have always wanted to name our home "Camp Bishop", but my husband thinks home naming is pretentious. I think I will eventually win this argument, but it might take another 25 years!

I casually refer to my house as "Crooked Manor"; in my renovations I have come to find that nothing is plumb or even--crooked doorframes, crooked walls, uneven floor where they added a room.... The previous owner did a fair amount of (badly done) DIY and now I get to try to straighten it out!

My friends call it the bar

We bought a mid-70s rancher on 4.5 acres of land in the middle of nowhere for next to nothing. I started jokingly calling our house "The Country Estate" and it's stuck.

@ Palmetto

Yes, but our street names aren't as fun. (Western, Elm, and Waterside). Also, we wanted them to be plays on names Jeff Lewis uses.

We call our place The Moominhouse. It's a tall, narrow San Francisco townhouse, and light-blue. I said it out loud when we came to see it for the first time and the name stuck.

(For those of you blissfully unaware of the wonder or Moomins: http://hem.bredband.net/annbet/Minis/Moomin_House/ )

I used to live in an apartment with TONS of wood paneling and a brick fireplace (in the middle of the city... go figure), so it was always known as "the log cabin." None of my other houses/apartments have had names, though. We usually just call everything by the street name.

Ghetto Fabulous

As Fall house painting weather begins here in north central Florida, I'm about to severely alter the exterior of my home from its washed out pastel blue (like the rest of my 50's 'blah' neighborhood) to a rich, cool charcoal gray. I know my neighbors will have a holy cow and refer to it as black. Privately I've renamed my digs the Pirate Ship, but I'm really more curious to know what my stuffier neighbors will be calling my home!!!

"The SeaHive"

The occupants (being myself and my partner) are nicknamed Whale and Bee; thus "The SeaHive". Corny, and so completely us. :P Also fits due to our location, a city by the beach.

We call our house "the Hobbit Hole", but that has more to do with our diminutive stature than the way our house looks.

"Brick Shit House"! It's a big, brick home, (duplex/rental), with no insulation in the walls. Gorgeous hard-wood floors, though! :)

"Grey Gardens West." Grey Gardens, as in the estate and film of the same name (I'm really bad at garden upkeep, plus the surrounding area has gone a bit downhill - though I've never actually had a raccoon problem). West, because I live in California, not Long Island.

When my family moved to Columbus, OH four years ago, I named the new house "Casa Fresa" casa being the spanish word for house, and fresa being a combination of my parents' names: Fred and Sandra.

My cousins named my old Victorian apartment "The Treehouse" b/c it has three walls of windows (likely a walled in porch) that faced my landlord's and neighbors' backyards. It was small and cozy and full of light (and a bunch of random stuff).

My husband and I have named our current apartment in Paris "The Ant Farm" or "La Ferme de Fourmi" b/c it's a weird little triplex with pretty much one room to each floor (1st floor: Livingroom, 2nd floor (or more accurately, Floor 1 bis: Kitchen & WC, 3rd floor: Bedroom & Bath) with a single wall of windows going all up the front - like an ant farm!

The name that popped into my head for that house is "Little Boy Blue" (from the nursery rhyme).

A very successful voice-over friend of mine has a second home in Santa Barbara. He named it Casa de Residuales.