apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

i'm in total awe of your place! insta-finalist for sure! where did you get those shadow box shelves? i must know what the paint color names are (especially the soft green and blue)!

what an unstuio-ish studio!

I spy fabulous curtain fabric in the bedroom. ooh, where is it from?

Ok, I meant "unstudio-ish"

oops.

We need some kind of Fantasy League decorating thing here... I want this one as a pied-a-terre in Minneapolis. (One would have to adjust the colors for the local lighting, but the concept would work for me.)

love the sense of 70's toy whimsy! Candy coated walls and ice cream cones, dolls and the way you've staged your bathroom wall. is that a tower of cotton balls?
i want that miffy clock! i used to have 2 miffy porcelain statuettes when i was younger, but i think my sister stole them cos i left them at my parents house.

Ooo, this place is super fun!! I adore the colors AND the dogma. (And I want to know where that curtain fabric is from, too!)

This entry gave me a big ass smile.

Where did you get that wall mounted fish bowl? I think I have to have one.

LOVE the colors! You're bathroom has just inspired me for my bathroom!! Sewing room is adorable. And is that a fishbowl(with fish) hanging on the wall of the bedroom?? Also, if yout walk-in closet is acutally as large as it appears on the floorplan, I might have to hate you.

Greg! Em!

We'd like to talk to you about, "Small Space, Big Style". Would you be able to email us at smallspaces@brainbox.tv so we can get in touch with you?

thanks,
-sage.

A big wow vote from me. Color!!!!! Such fun. I'd have never thought of using such a bright blue. And your bathroom... I never thought I'd say wow about a bathroom.

At first, I didn't understand how this is a studio, but then, as I looked at the floorplan again, I realized your space isn't really traditional rooms at all. What's the room to the left of your kitchen in the floorplan?

I really love what you've done. WOW! It's bold yet soothing, and certainly fun!

When you someday move out, if they paint that place white, it'd be a tragedy. 5 photos don't do your place justice!

this place is fierce. i love the use of color.

buy less, buy better and buy only what you love. Werd. You guys have a sewing machine.

This would SO be called a 1 BR in some markets! Very fun. I love that you have both an office and a sewing room. I'd kill for a "craft room." That's awesome...

This space looks huge. Love the use of color and would cry for a closet that big.

Lovely! It's hot and cool. Clean, crisp, whimsical. Those colors are great. I feel so guilty liking them as a grown-up.

Well done.

The shot of the dressing area or office is my fav. The wire chair, the sunny yellow paint above the wainscottinig (spelling???) and the vintage pink curtain make everything look very clean and well-kept. Each item stands out, and looks distinct with out looking cluttered.

oh this space is so refreshing- fun, happy, light hearted, comforting and warm. just what you'd want "home" to be- kudos!!!

Great color!

I think you can get that fish bowl at postmodern pets.

What a fun a liveable space. I love the tip “buy less, buy better and buy only what you love.” So true, and yet can be so difficult right now. I am currently battling the IKEA urge because I just really need somewhere to put all the books. Kudos!

I have seen them all and this is my flavourite! I lurve this whole thing; I have been spending 90% of my time at work lately looking at every entry and obsessively reading the notes and comments. I like this studio apartment the most because of its ice-cream colours, the wonderful wood trims, the carefully placed art/collectibles and the sweetness balanced with the orderliness. This is the fine line between those places that are crawling with gnomes, and those that look as homey as a hotel room. This is that lovely fine line! It is fine. Excellent entry. Thanks for letting me look.

OH. MY!

Good to see that other neighbors of mine are keeping GR in business, you've got the best color pallet I've seen in a while.

This is heavenly, and i'm jealous of your moldings.

Thanks Chris, for mentioning the clock. Miffy, hmmm... I didn't know what it was called, but I knew I WANTED one.

I am SO loving this space. In just two days, we have now had two entrants who are both proud of and know how to display their tchotchkes. Hurray! I also want to know about the fabric in both the bedroom and especially the sewing room. Where did you get it?

Hello everyone,

Thank you for the lovely comments!

To answer some questions --

Curtains: The bedroom fabric was bought from a web site that I can no longer find :( (there are some similar patterns at reprodepot.com), and the sewing room fabric is vintage from eBay.

Fisbowl: Yes, it's from postmodernpets.com.

Kitchen layout: The kitchen is split into two parts -- one tiny room with the stove and sink, and the other tiny room with the refrigerator, hot water heater, and shelves. The kitchen has definitely been a challenge, especially since we both love to cook. We hope to show pictures of it if we make it to the next round!

So Awesome!!
Wish you could rearrange my place!! I need an apartment makeover more than anything in the world right now. What would you charge me? Would you accept exotic dance lessons or the best homemade baked goods you've ever tasted in your life in exchange for redecorating help?

Adorable space with happy colors. Nicely done! :)

This is really nice. I don't see how it can be called a studio, but it's really nice.

I spy a wall fishbowl. If so, where did you purchase that because I so adore it... :)

Sweet pad - cheery and organized. Lots of personality. Love it.

Holly

your studio apartmet looks so much larger than my 2 bdrm. its BEAUTIFUL! i wish there were some more pictures.

Love the Tom Dixon "Jack" light...and your kitchen... as well as the overall colour scheme!!

PS: Where did you buy the Jack light from?

asd: The Tom Dixon jack was purchased several years ago from the MOMA store online. I believe UnicaHome.com still sells them (but at a premium price).

Definitely a 1 bedroom by NYC standards.

MY bathroom is the same color!

It's funny how some entries are 600+ "studios" and others are 300+ one bedrooms.

Anne (and others),

It's considered a studio because there aren't separate sleeping and living areas. We use the big room as our living room, and we put the bed in the dining nook. However, I agree that it's bigger and more compartmentalized than a lot of studios (the kitchen is smaller than the ones I had in NYC, though). We love being able to have distinct "rooms" for the sewing room/library (a vanity closet) and office (an enclosed porch)!

I am really envious of this apartment. Mine is about the same size and I would never think to do half the things you guys have done. I wish you two could come to my place and give it a makeover like they do in the television programs.

First off, thanks for all the kind comments everyone...theyÂ’ve truly been appreciated, each and every one of them.

I think comments here and in other entrantsÂ’ comment sections brings up a valid and interesting topic of how interior space is perceived and described according to personal history and geographical location. Compared to the 300sq ft studio I once rented in San Francisco (where I slept in the closet), our current studio is quite spacious. Emily once living in a washroom closet in San Francisco, suspiciously advertised as a bedroom. And compared to some New York studios, our space is perhaps palatial.

In reality, we all have different ideas of what is too small and what is enough. I’ve personally been envious and admiring of some of the other entrants’ high ceiling loft spaces, where they’ve wonderfully gained valuable living space by building and organizing upward. But I think its fair to say it is not the square footage of a living space that determines whether a residence is a studio or a loft or a one-bedroom, but the architectural layout itself, since parameters can wildly vary according to rent prices and geographical location. As any renter knows, places listed as a “one-bedroom” can reveal themselves to be large walk-in closets, with the actual closet playing the part of the bedroom, while some loft spaces offer the square footage of an Aaron Spelling residence. We definitely acknowledge our studio could be deemed spacious by some, but we neither see it as either “large” nor “small”, but simply “just right” for the two kids and two cats who call the place home :)

This is my absolute favorite. The colors are wonderful. It is a happy, feel good apartment. I want this apartment. I love the crisp white with the other colors. Please tell me your yellow and white paint colors. I have view and examined all the entries and you the best for many, many reasons. Mainly for me, it makes me feel so happy.

One of my favorites so far. I like that you display collectibles without it appearing cluttered, and I love the use of colors. Looks like everything has its perfect place in the apartment, down to the tp roll in the loo; I'm jealous if you two are always able to keep it as neat as it is in the pictures!
The sewing room is also rockin.

This is so lovely! It took me a minute to reconcile the kitchen photo and floor plan. I had a kitchen with the same layout in HK and it was a nightmare, counterspace wise. All the counterspace was in the room with the fridge and all the activity happens around the stove and sink.

How do you feel about the bedroom opening onto the kitchen? It seems like the best solution but, if you do a lot of cooking...I only ask because I have my apartment arranged so that the bedroom takes up the largest, nicest room just to avoid kitchen smells and walking dinner guests through our bedroom. I am rethinking that choice now.

LOVE it! So fresh, bright, fun and unexpected. Loads of personality and a really enviable use of a great floorplan. Also, I love tchotchkes and am really inspired by how they are incorporated into each room without crossing the line and becoming (gasp!) "clutter". Well done, you two! (So, invite me over already. I'll bring the J-Pop DVDs...)

You've done really well with your space. My only recommendation: No more overhead lighting!

Having visited Japanese toy stores yesterday (there's roughly 1 per 100 residents here), I love your color scheme even more.

(My remark about adjusting for local lighting was just that -- to make the colors feel the same in a completely different region, one would want different paints. Red-tinged-russet in Northern California looks red-tinged-burgundy in Minneapolis, for instance.)

I'm not normally one to comment, but your apartment is fabulous!

If Dorothy never got back to Kansas - this is definitely what her Oz apartment would look like!!

Well done ! It's fresh, whimsical and workable!

I love the details and the space, though the colors are bit too baby-doll'ish for my tastes. Well done.

This is beautiful I would just change two things. I couldn't live with chartreuse or lime-colored walls. You are far braver than I. I feel like that room would really be improved by more artwork hanging on the walls. You have a lot of space and in comparison to the symmetry of the beautiful woodwork, it looks blobby. At least in the photo, it does. I can't tell how low the ceiling is. Depending on how low it is, more artwork would be awful.

I would also do away with the yellow curtain in the bathroom as well as the pink curtain next to the sewing machine. Some sort of diaphanous white shade like this, only slightly more transparent. In the bathroom I feel like there is far too much competition between the boxes and the yellow curtain. They're crowded. A transparent shade that let a little light in would put the focus on the boxes more fully and not take away from their multi-colored contents, which it does at this point. Maybe if the yellow curtains were made from a thinner material? Because I do like the yellow in the bathroom.

This is the diaphonous shade I referencing when my html didn't work.

http://ww1.westelm.com/cat/pip.cfm?template=8grid&pkey=crugwin&gids=p105&cid=rugwin&area=shp

lindenen: Larger sized artwork has been high on our list for the last year and a half we've lived at our current studio, and we currently have several smaller pieces decorating our place (some larger horizontal pieces not visible in the photos due to angle constriction, the several favourite friend-artists' works we do own and love are mostly of smaller dimensions). Hopefully sometime soon we'll be able to find, and afford, that perfect larger piece to really anchor our living room while not overwhelming the interior's architectural features.

Since we took these photos at night, its difficult to show how much light pours thru those orange curtains in the bathroom even when closed, as it is an east facing room. The bathroom takes on a beautiful glow through the small window, and provides ample privacy when closed. The shade is opened for the majority of the time, closed only when bathing, as our bathroom window is a bit exposed to our neighbor's kitchen (her studio mirrors ours). The orange curtains are also a nice visual cue of the sunlight that normally shines thru the windows during the daytime on overcast or at night.

If we're fortunate enough to make it into the next round, we'll hopefully have a friend with a better DSLR take the photos to better showcase dimensions and features during the daytime.

I really would love to know the paint color, the soft blue-green, in Images 4 and 5!

I love it! But studio? Don't you mean, uh ... 2-bedroom? The bedroom is a bedroom and that office could be a bedroom in NYC, at least. I'm still saying instant finalist, though.

this place rocks!!!!
what a great tone of yellow.
mellow yellow....

I'm relieved to hear that light comes through! I was a little weirded out by the complete absence of it! The place is fantastic though!

So fresh. You've mastered how to mix paint colors room by room and still have it work.

But yeah, ny NYC standards, this is A) HUGE and B) a one-bedroom, at least.

Not that that matters, though.

Greg and Emily,

Where did you get that carpet? I have been searching for something exactly like that.

Carving out a sewing room (a sewing room!! and a beautiful one too) in a 637-sq. ft apt. automatically qualifies you for the finals.

BTW, Congrats on being invited by Sage to contact Small Space, Big Style. See ya on tv land.

Love the colors, the creativity and the sense of whimsy. Did you make the bookcase in the bedroom?

I must know what the soft green paint color is as well! Love the figure shelves.

You have such a gorgeous space to work with! One thing, though -- do you REALLY use the wire chair in the sewing nook? I mean, c'mon, you can't fit your legs in there can you?

Mike, the carpet is from Target. We've found that the texture is perfect for a place with cats (no visible scratch marks).

Fred, yes! We originally planned to get a different chair for that room, but I ended up feeling surprisingly comfortable in it!

To everyone who asked about paint colours, the paints are from Behr. I'll try to figure out the specific names and let you know.

Oops, there's more!

sg, we were initially concerned about the proximity of the bedroom and kitchen, too. However, the option of having a real living room in which to entertain guests outweighs the negatives. To eliminate odors/smoke, we often open up all the kitchen and bedroom windows while cooking. And on colder nights, it's rather cozy going to bed when the oven has been on that evening. :)

LaDonna, we bought the bookcase at a vintage furniture shop in Silver Lake. I swooned when I saw the shape (including spherical legs) and the brown/turquoise/white colour combination!

Fred: The best part is I found that Bertoia wire side chair while dumpster diving when I lived in San Francisco. And yes, I too thought that chair would be too comfortable to sit in at extended times, but my better half somehow makes due (its all about the cross-legged sitting style I guess).

This is amazingly beautiful and whimsical and adorable. Would you mind terribly sharing the name of the paint colors or at least the name of the manufacturer?

Great job!!!

Hi Nicole, Emily mentioned the paint manufacturer above:

"To everyone who asked about paint colours, the paints are from Behr"

Thanks for the kind words :)

love all the little shelves thingies

Cool use of color and space. Makes me want to move in and place is twice as big.

WOW!! Your place looks great! Never thought of using those colors. It makes it look bright, cheery and even bigger.

Just fabulous. Utterly fabulous.

Very cool. Looks very designed but cozy at the same time. hey that rhymed.

Emily

you will always win at the best design contest.

someday I will see your pad...indeed!

x
jess

You got it goin on. Perfect choice of color for each room, placement, wall display and color there... it's just so well put together. Tight.
-tight as hell. Kudos.

Kitchen color oh- please, what color in the kitchen? I have 3 that I'm tossing around - which one is that? Martha Stewart "Vintage Kitchen?" or Moore Spring Mint? in that vein at least. What color is that? Pretty please???

Hi Cole,

We'll try to dig up the colour swatches to give you an exact name, but as Emily noted above, we used Behr brand paints (http://www.behr.com/behrx/workbook/) for all the rooms, so its best to check their swatch books in person since photos tend to give the most inaccurate colour representations. Even our rooms came out very different from what was shown in the swatch/photo samples book, since everyone's ambient lighting is so different.

I don't know if anyone is still reading this, but the green paint is Behr Valley Mist (460E). Hope that helps!

Are the Ice Cream cones in the bathroom actually bubbles? How Fun! I love your paint job. Was it like that whrn you moved in?

Hi Grace,

Yes, the set of 3 ice cream cones are bubbles. We got them at the 99-cent store but recently noticed that Fred Flare is carrying them for much more $! We painted the apartment outselves. Thanks for the compliments!

Greg, you and Emily's apartment is just excellent. It is also very inspiring and encouraging as well...I have my interests and my art and such and am looking for a place to live for a while...

Just wanted to let you know I really love how you converted this place to fit who you are...

Klahadore on LJ... :D

I meant YOUR apartment...XD

Hi!I really love that it looks like someone actually lives there, but not at all cluttered. So many places seem to have their books and such hidden away - to the point that it looks vacant, or it looks like they stuffed their belongings in a closet while they took photos!The colors are so fun. You guys did a great job using every bit of your space - every area seems to have a use. Good luck!

Your place is fabulous in every way! Might I ask where you found your media credenza? I've been searching a long, long time for one. Thanks!

Cute, cute, cute! I like the shadow box frames in the bath, especially that you put the TP in one. Shows a sense of humor. I do hope there is no more than a beta fish in that fishbowl, though, if there are any fish at all. Not suitable for anything more (like goldfish).

Hi alesia,

The media credenza is an original Bang & Olufsen rosewood media cabinet, for the Beosystem 2400 I bought via eBay. You can find them online occasionally; more information here:
http://www.beoworld.co.uk/furniture3.htm

that is hot!

your apartment is fabulous. Wish you could come and choose colours for my house. Please list all your other paint colours.

Hello- your apartment is so lovely. Where did you guys get those white frames in your bathroom? They are perfect for displaying those little toys and doodads.

I don't know if anyone is still reading the posts here, but as a new-comer to AT I'd like to add my thoughts.

First - Greg and Em - what a great space!! I love the colors, and how you've highlighted some of the architechural features so inherent in older structures. Having been born and raised in California, I really have an affinity for them. I also have to give you points for re-thinking and using the lay-out of the place to suit your needs.

I've had a great time looking at all the entries and getting inspired by how other people have used the space they have and the creative ways they've coped with whatever is lacking. Although some entrants weren't to my personal taste (and decorating is a matter of personal taste), I've still gained a hugh amount of ideas for my own personal space.

The comments about studio vs. 1 bedroom made me laugh - I currently live in a 1000 sq ft 2 bedroom apartment - sounds large and lavish, no? But the inefficient layout and lack of places to stash things (no coat, broom or linen closet) make it seem much smaller. It also has a ... I guess you'd call it a hall? A square space between the living room and the bedrooms that the bathroom also opens from, that's almost totally useless as there's not enough wall or floor space to do anything with, and the wall heater opens into it, too.

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks to you and everyone else for inviting the rest of us into your lovely home(s). I have to go stare at my space now, and try to see how to incorporate some of the great ideas I've picked up here.

Terrie

I know I'm chiming in pretty late to the game - but I LOVE your apartment! I am going to copy copy copy away! Where did you get those white shelves in the bathroom?
Thank you!

Charity, the shelves were from Target, but the line is no longer available. We got them when they were phasing them out, when they were selling them in their clearance endcap section.

Greg,
how comfortable would you say the case study daybeds are?
Thanks