This question would be much easier if we had photos of the various areas of your apartment...

Broad question! Read through old AT posts...there are so many on the subject of personalizing a less than ideal living space.
Painting is generally considered the highest-impact change you can make. A great rug or two always makes a big difference, too!

Oh, and as far as the odd layout, check out this year's small cool winner. Her place had the same problem as yours (bedroom ---> kitchen) and her layout for it was great.

For apartments, I like the idea of investments that can be moved with you. Instead of painting walls, leave them the crisp white you have and add colorful artwork. Grab a few giant canvases and DIY your own abstracts - I promise its easy (I have made a bunch for my place). Then add some colorful accessories. Prowl flea markets and yard sales for cheap finds. This way you can take everything with you to your next place. People won't notice wonky walls if they are floored by your art and accessories.

dans-le-townhouse.blogspot.com

Paint, rugs, carpet. Embrace the old, wonkiness and charm with a more Bohemian, vintage style. Trying to go all streamlined and modern will probably only highlight the things you're wanting to hide.

One rule with color - don't put a lot of contrast around areas you don't want to draw attention to. In other words, don't paint the walls a dark or very bold color and the woodwork bright white if you don't want everyone's eyes to be drawn to the drawers that won't shut. Better to make that kind of stuff blend into its surroundings.

I meant: paint, rugs, CURTAINS.

Fresh paint (keep it white) if it needs, nice bed linens, and get the landlord to mend or remove anything broken.

I think you need to change your frame of mind about the place. Instead of thinking about it as a remodeling job gone wrong by your landlord, think of the layout as "bohemian" or "european." Make it the clever place you know it can be. And start with a floor plan. :)

Aside from painting, a truly thorough cleaning can really make a dingy apartment feel so much better. Making sure all the dirty visual clutter is removed by cleaning the windows, washing miniblinds if they are up, and cleaning door frames & switch plates & baseboards can make a huge difference. Plus elbow grease is free and you can think about what changes you'd like to make while you're scrubbing.

I have a girlfriend with a similiar place, I believe its called a "railroad" apt. Search using that term for ideas. In her place you have to walk through her sons room to get to the kitchen, her bedroom is in the back so you have to walk through it to go to the bathroom.
I thought the place was odd initally (just bc the layout encourage invasive behavior) but one thing she did was put up curtains to block her sons room when you walk by giving him privacy bc there arent doors...just open rooms.

Embrace it

Fill it with cheap vintage items that are reminiscent of the time the building was built. That adds so much charm and believe-you-me, everyone will want to come over and hangout there.
<3,
Someone who lives in a pre-war, wonky floored, awkwardly laid out completely charming apartment.

I agree with the art idea. I have a tiny little apartment and the walls are all neutrals. I've been buying posters from allposters.com, then buying cheap frames at Target and painting them! I've also bought a print of my city's most prominent building from a local artists for that local touch. Check out craigslist to see what people in your area are selling. They may live in similar apartments and it could give you a good idea of how they're furnishing their places.

Play with the oddities of your older little apartment. Those little quirks make your place unique. But hey, I love old places. Flip through AT's home tours or the Small/Cool entries for inspiration. You have a lot of creative options layed out for you. Have fun with it!

I just bought an older home and I feel your pain. Although the previous owners took on the big projects of updating the bathrooms and refinishing the hardwood there are so many little agitating things! I found that artwork and paint have helped a lot in terms of making the yucky rooms look better. New hardware on everything is helping a lot too..and switching out the light fixtures was the biggest impact for me personally. Some were original to the house! They were so dim and strange, I switched them all out with nice bright fixtures that coordinate and it looks 50x better.

Trying to keep the small apartment as large FEELING as possible, I would try to keep everything in the same light and airy color palette. Everything from linens, to picture frames, etc. Maybe choose a light, fresh pretty blue hue to add a little color without overdoing it.

You should definitely plow through AT archives. They are a great resource for inspiration!

I'm about to move out of a "charming" 2-bedroom railroad apartment that was in pretty dingy shape when I moved in 4 years ago. Scrubbing the living daylights out of the floors, baseboards, etc made a huge difference, as did painting the walls a nice fresh bright white rather than the icky yellowy off-white they'd been before.

Also if your place is small, really focus on being economical about what you bring into the apartment. If you don't love it, don't buy it. Easier said than done for me :)

One more thing: when your place is old and has a lot of quirks, keeping textures simple and cohesive can really help streamline things and tie everything together, whereas having a mish-mosh of textures can be REALLY distracting. If your sofa, curtains, rugs, and even towels, bedding, etc are all sort of living in the same world in terms of texture, it will feel comforting and unified.

Hey, that's my old apartment in the picture from the 2010 Small Cool Contest.

It was a full on hovel when we moved in and it was pretty cute by the time we left- especially considering how little we spent on it.

Like everyone else is saying, clean clean, clean. We did a ton of scraping of old caulk in the bathroom. We even ripped out some horrible carpet (grosssssssss) in there and painted the crappy wood floor underneath. Plus of course the regular cleaning of floors, windows, etc. Cleaning doesn't cost anything. We did recaulk, which cost a few dollars in supplies.

We also painted a couple of the rooms, which helped. We switched out a hideous flourescent fixture in the kitchen with a painted chandelier. That helped not only the gross flourescent glow, but also made the lighting a cute focal point instead of something ugly. The paint for the walls was maybe $30 and the chandelier and paint for that was about $15.

And also like everyone is saying, try to keep the clutter to a minimum. We had a lot of cute accessories in the kitchen, but not much anywhere else.

We had a lot of great light, big windows, and pretty moldings there so we played that up with just plain white sheers on tension rods. That's about the cheapest way you can dress your windows, too.

The hooks you see in the picture were a $2 antique store fine. Hanging just jeans on them added a little decorative-ness and also kept them off the floor. I hate having clothes in the bedroom but we had to at that place, so I also had a plain white vintage armoire to contain the clothes clutter.

We never did find a way to address the carpet in the kitchen (seriously this landlord has some kind of carpet-in-the-wrong-rooms fetish (the rest of the house was awesome hardwoods). So we just had to ignore it.

We don't live there anymore because we bought a house, but in a way I kind of miss it.

Without posting several good photos (not just closeup AT-style glamour shots, but proper photos of the space) and a layout, it's really hard to give you any worthwhile feedback, other than generic tips.

Here's some of what we did. We chose this apartment even tho it wasn't the greatest looking place because we liked the neighborhood and we figured we could make it cute enough since we weren't planning on living there for very long.

http://oinkety.com/?p=452
http://oinkety.com/?p=473
http://oinkety.com/?p=484

Like other people have said, you really should check out the Small Cool Contest entries from years past for good ideas.

I agree your question is kind of broad. In general, though ...

Find the features of the apartment you love the most, and find ways to accentuate them.

Pay attention to "flow" ... where your eyes and body naturally go when you enter a room, and find ways to work with that.

I agree that a good solid cleaning and fixing anything in disrepair would help you understand what you have to work with.

It sounds like the space may be a little cramped? If it is, make use of vertical space - put up some high shelves to store lesser used items, hang things (lamps, plants) from the ceiling, etc.

I agree that you should embrace the wonkiness. Sleek, modern furniture will just make the place look sad. The Anthropologie catalog is a good source of inspiration.

I had an old brownstone rental - impossibly run down and dated - but I improved everything I could with textiles, street finds, painted floor cloths (very handy and easy to make) and when I had money found that I liked the creative solutions more than something new. Just think CREATIVE!

Plants! Obviously fresh paint goes a long way, along with decor you can take with you that makes you feel at home. But then add plants! I think they make a home feel alive, and brighter.