apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

The club chair craze 10 years ago drove up prices and drove down the stock of the authentic 1930s classic Fauteuil Club. While you can still find them at the brocante or on French ebay, used club chairs are often in terrible shape -- with cracked skin and busted springs -- and require costly restoration and hassle. So many who want the look of an old club chair with the benefits of a brand new chair turn to a Paris specialist who makes custom chairs in a choice of styles and colors.

Robert and Wowa did a great job renovating their Krakow loft. But they have more space than they actually use and haven't yet put a guard rail on the interior staircase, resulting in a death-defying drop from the upper floor (which is only partially captured in these photos). What are they waiting for? They can't decide how the guard-rail should look, of course.

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Name: Robert & Wowa

Location: Krakow, Poland

Rent or own: Own

Size: 1600 sq/ft

Years lived in: 5

Robert and Wowa live on the top floor of a 19th-century building in the Kazimierz district of Krakow, the old Jewish district in the center of town that was rediscovered in the late 90s. They live in a building that once housed executives from the gas company next door, and the apartments are generously sized. "It's very spacey," says Robert, who speaks excellent, self-taught English with the kinds of endearing mistakes you hope nobody ever corrects.

There are many versions of the Paris-themed plate, most made in China or a little too cheesy to be taken seriously. This set of six knowingly kitschy Paris-themed plates by Parisian designer Mat & Jewski are a modern take, with selectively colored in black and white sketches of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and other familiar Parisian scenes.

This set of spring 2008 Pantone mugs features a new set of colors, including: Paprika 179 C, Baby Blue 292 C, Lagoon Blue 3025 C, Duck Egg Blue 337 C, Pea Green 363 C, Gray (cool gray) 10 C, Chocolate 732 C, Mustard 130 C, Grape 520 C and Turquoise 3272 C...

Why do lawn or beach loungers have to be loud and bright? To us, this sleek number from Amsterdam design collective It's All About RoMI looks just right. And they've designed a gently priced lantern and little aluminum barbecue to match...

Our recent house tour of Patrick and Julian's Montmartre loft showed a home full of high design that wasn't just for show. Like this adjustable Le Corbusier classic that the men use as a home gym in their bedroom to lift weights in style.

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Name: Marianne
Location: Paris
Rent or own: Rent
Size: 430 sq/ft
Years lived in: 5

Marianne works in a law office, but she lives in the 1 % of French public housing that's funded by corporations, meaning that she lives in an incredibly cheap rent-controlled one-bedroom apartment in a 1958 building in the 11th arrondissement. She's cheered up the simple space with white paint, bright fabrics, simple furniture and a taste for old French memorabilia.

The sliding door is a friend to those with limited space. These sliding corner doors from Kazed and Castorama allow you to create a dressing room, office or other private area in the corner of a room. You can choose from lacquered glass, beveled glass or a mirrored finish. Cote Maison Magazine did a feature this month on their website with a multitude of other sliding door options.

Magazine editors love the old publishing maxim, "three's a trend!" This leopard door (note the coordinating welcome mat, if you will) is the third example of a trend I've noticed recently while roaming the arrondissements of Paris doing house tours for AT. Many Parisian apartment buildings have anonymous doors painted the same color, without names or numbers. But in the building where Pierre and Masa live, someone on their floor has decided to break that tradition with a roar...

The roofs of these Indonesian miniature cardboard houses lift up, making them a charming receptacle for unsightly odds and ends by the bedside as seen in this recent house tour of Patrick and Julian's Montmartre loft...

New from witty online French design retailer Atypyk, the beguiling 100% wool Walk on the Moon rug is decadent, whimsical and 3,000 euros. But they also sell plenty of clever, inexpensive products for the home, like the 7-euro French cheese sponge.

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Name: Patrick & Julian
Location: Paris
Rent or own: Own
Size: 1,000 sq/ft
Years lived in: 10

Patrick is a French sculptor and design school director who moved into this old atelier in Montmartre 10 years ago to use as a workshop. The airy, open space had been converted into a dance studio, and mirrors covered the walls in the high-ceilinged, split-level loft. "I lived with them for a bit," Patrick says. "But at a certain point being constantly faced with yourself and in your own company, it gets to be a bit much." The mirrors went, and five years ago, Patrick moved his workshop and turned the place into the home where he now lives with Julian, who is British...

Those possessed of modest lawns who aspire to having an elegant French garden may be amused at this new invention by Romain Duclos. "Jardin à la Française" is a kit containing 7 stencils made of synthetic grass that allow you to tatoo your green space with the elegant illusion of a French garden.

Chances are if you're reading this, you're not the kind of person who would appreciate getting a Decobox for Christmas. A decorating kit that comes in a choice of six styles -- from Natural Green to Black and White to Pop -- each box contains 18 coordinated accessories, including throw pillows, artwork and a bucket of matching paint that the makers of Decobox claim will give your room style in less than two hours -- even if it's the kind of style that comes out of a box. See what the Decobox did to this plain room after the jump.

Fans of Patrick Blanc's Vertical Gardens, which can be seen around the world on public buildings like Paris' Musée du Quai Branly, are one step closer to having a Blanc-designed wall in their own home thanks to a collaboration with Alexis Tricoire, who designed the Folies Végétales exhibition featuring Blanc's work at the Espace Electra in Paris last year.

One of our favorite elements of Claire's London apartment is the hot pink chair that gives her pale, calm Victorian living room a shot in the arm.

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Name: Pierre & Masa
Location: Paris
Rent or own: Own
Size: 925 sq/ft
Years lived in: 2

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Pierre and Masa live in a nondescript 1960s building with a panoramic view of Paris that you usually only see in the movies. "I'm claustrophobic," says Pierre, who rented an apartment in the building 15 years ago before moving back in two years ago. "I loved the view, so I moved back in. The whole point of living here is for the view."

London florist Wild at Heart is located on one end of a striking Piers Gough-designed "portaloo" on fashionable Westbourne Grove, making it one of the most eye-catching florists in the city...

When apartment dwellers on a budget think about installing a kitchen, they usually head to IKEA. But French site CoteMaison.fr features other inexpensive kitchen suppliers in France, including a few options for the space-challenged, like this Dolcéa "cuisine d'aujourd'hui" from Castorama starting at 499 euros with an integrated dining table.

Claire has turned an otherwise plain bathroom in her London flat into a display space for artwork and souvenirs..

There's something both appealingly retro and anxiety-producing about Stockholm-based Dutch designer Christiian Postma's Calendar Wallpaper, which puts the whole year up so you can see where the time goes (and where it went)...

Name: Mirka & Iain
Location: London
Rent or own: Own
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Mirka McNeill is a Polish-born former web designer and interior design student who has recently renovated the Victorian house she shares with her husband Iain in Barnes, a picturesque neighborhood in South West London. "My passion is to adapt historic buildings or interiors into a contemporary living space with respect to its past and history," Mirka says. "I have redesigned the space (on a tight budget) to create a contemporary living in a handsome Victorian house which has got a lot of original features like cornices, moldings, marble fireplaces, original doors and windows, an an antique pine floor throughout. To achieve unity of style with the architecture of the building and create a modern living space, I have used a fusion of contemporary and traditional styles."

Wallpaper can be fun, but it can also be a pain to put up and take down once we're tired of looking at it. Géraldine decided to cut corners and simply staple some inexpensive IKEA fabric remnants to a section of her black-and-white bedroom wall instead.