apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I saw great promise in the pink hallway -- striking. But then it kinda fizzled out from there for me. Considering it's a student apartment (youth, budget, time), I'd love to see what Rebecca does with this apt in 10 years....

I love the kitchen.

I like the pink hallway.

Question-- how did you prepare your walls? I'm afraid to paint my rental because the years and years of spackle, paint, repaint make for a mottled, not-so-smooth surface, which would make flat paint look awful. From the photos, it looks like you have some uneven surfaces as well. Is this a trick of the light, or did you paint over some old drips, spackled spots, etc.?

This place is a lot more decorated than my college apartment. (I have yet to purchase art for my walls). I say, good way to start early and to get away from the standard college look.

Where's the rug from? Looks like one I saw in the window at ABC...

Who was the guy from yesterday with the flat screen panel and the bar? Is Rebecca the Yin to Frank's Yang? Should they go on a date?

In Rebecca's defense, an office colleague does say she gets points for having My Little Pony on the desk.

Is this the coolest? No. But it's fun, colorful and youthful. The perfect girlie college flat. I love the tacky poodles. My only concern is the protruding bed legs. They might prove tough to navigate after a kegger.

karen, we sanded and replastered a few of the worst spots on the walls. Now you can hardly tell there was a problem, thats just shadows in the pics. the paint is semigloss and it looks great. I'm glad you liked my rug, my mom and i actually made that! We used strips of fleece so it's super soft and feels great on bare feet!

-rebecca

Extra points for making the rug. I like this place, it has a lot of fun and personality, if not to my personal taste (I like a little whimsy, but one pink poodle would be enough ;D). However the white and black cabinet in the main room looks like it belongs in the kitchen.

I recognize that cabinet! Decorators Collection, I think the place is called. Those black diamonds are glass panes. Very cool. Anyway, the pink was a little intense for me in the photo, but I can see how it works.

Despite being very sleek and modern looking, this place also has warmth and humor. Loved the tiles in the kitchen too.

I do have to give credit where credit is due... not too many college students would put this time and effort into an apartment, and for that you are to be commended.

...I see a clown picture. Otherwise the place doesn't scare me too much. Points plus for making the rug.

...I saw a picture of a clown. Otherwise the place doesn't scare me too much. Points plus for making the rug.

Say what you will (and this definitely wouldn't be my apartment) but is sure made me smile! How can you not with the bright pink and the poodles and that cute, cute kitchen. You've got some stuff I wouldn't choose, but you also have some really great pieces. I like the coffee table, and the cabinet in the living room, and the bar and stools are pretty cool too. This is waaaaay better than my college apartment, which had no personality. As for your parents, kudos (and what chutzpah) for buying an apartment sight unseen. Glad you were able to do so much to make it your home for now!

hey, jonathan, don't trash the clown. my grandfather painted that and he was an animator for warner bros! thanks for the feedback though!

I like the bathroom a lot. Pink bathrooms rock (I used to have one and I miss it) -- you can't take life too seriously when you've got pink poodles holding up your shower curtain, lol.

Yes, I love the pink poodle hooks, too. What a fun way to start the day! It's obvious you've put a lot of thought into the details (like kitchen cab handles). Well done.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you like
1. Pink
2. Poodles

and any combination of the 2.

Whoa a my little pony...seeing as how I have a transformer I can totally relate.

If I could make a suggestion...perhaps a headboard? padded even?

The clown painting seemed a bit..something , however it has a story and anything with a story works.

It looks like you made the place you own ..and at the end of the day thats really what counts.

I'm feelin' the pink washroom, but the rest is like living in a box of confetti. Not for me...although, it is A LOT better than my college digs.

I love the rug.

I love the pink bathroom--I am personally dying for a bathroom with pink, black, and white tiles--and the kitchen is pretty cool too (black and white tiles again). But the rest--yikes, that's too many brights at once, taking up a large space in a small area.

The only thing I love is the pink bathroom --had one in a studio many years ago.

I love it! It's bright and cheery and makes me smile! The bed is very cool and fits into the style of the rest of the room so well--doesn't look like a bed stuck in the middle of a living room. Your desk is great looking, and I like all of your lighting fixtures? Great job!

I love that coffee table but, it looks like a lucky vintage find. Still, if not...please tell me where you bought it.

I like that your apartment takes a strong stand, stylistically. I'm realizing that is what appeals to me the most, in general, in this contest. Maybe it's because I'm such a ditherer in my own space, I really respect the people who have clearly made a decision about what their home should look like and gone full throttle ahead with it...I need to stop posting so much and get to work!

Great little apartment for a young woman. Lots of fun touches. Great rug and I like the clown. I agree with the previous commentator who stated your parents had to have balls to buy an apartment in NYC sight unseen.

LOVE the bath, love the kitchen, really like the hot pink hall. But you totally lost me on the baby blue living room. Regular pink (not hot pink) and black rock together. I would have loved to have seen a paler pink on the walls in the living room with your black furniture. It would have been very Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Love it!! The rug's great. Think you & your mom would make me one?

sg, the coffee table is actually from a store in Little Rock, AR called SOHO. unfortunately for me, it wasn't vintage and definitely didn't have a vintage price tag!

This apartment has wit while still managing to be stylish. The pink walls, the shoe prints, the pink poodles, the rug -- you didn't really hold back. Compared to this, the other entries seem a bit humorless.

I hope you live your life the way you decorate. Let it rip, kiddo.

PS Is your bed from Innovation?

Really love that entry hall--and the way you lined it with drawings of shoes? Please share--how did you do that rug? What did you use for backing?

i dig it!
wild applause for the hot pink entry, your lighting and the wall fixture above the couch, would be nice if you could find one or two more like it.
i'd love to see all your future homes (and your ward-robe).
if you ever tire of the light blue and black, i'd suggest re-doing it in lots of white and red, with some silver and pink accents (sort of if it mated with Frank's place).

but i'm biased becasue i too have a pink poodle toilet paper cozy, but she has rhinestone eyes, and because
the Pottery Barn aesthetic, not this, is what makes my eyes bleed.
it's always great to see some one in a space which so boldly feeds their inspiration.

I'm just delurking to say that I just don't understand all the "no ways" for your place. I think it's adorable, particularly for a college apt. It's a reflection of yourself, just as it should be.

Plus, I'm also partial to black and pink, as they're two of the main colors in my own place.

I too saw promise in the pink hallway, but upon closer inspection, it just isn't the right shade. Perhaps it's a little too saturated maybe? But also given the imperfections on the surface, a matte or satin finish might have been better so that the light doesn't hit on those imperfections so harshly. The rest I just didn't care for at all.

ps
i'm sorry, i don't mean to be preachy or snide.
Pottery Barn schemes i think are sometimes beautiful.
Rebecca, i'd still love to see where your taste is decades from now, it would be interesting if you embraced some kind of P. barn look, or similar,
but i hope you remain over the top, a divine eccentric grandmother (or aunt).

Cool. i like the humor the light fixtures the bathroom and the hallway. in that order.
Houses need to blend the structure's character with that of the occupant to work and this one does.
The floor lamp in the living room is superb *can you let me know make and model?* and all other lights are really well though out as well. Kudos if you though out the lighting scheme yourself.
I had a candy pink bathroom for years *finally gutted now but still loved it*
The hallway is your card it introduced the apartment and is wonderful with the fabulously irreverent glossy shade of pink and shoe artwork.

Soso in my opinion is the main room that lacks a focus. bed living bar and studio fit and seem functional all in there toghether but aesthetically they don't seem to work together *especially the bed which i would have tried to either separate more starkly or integrate with the living area*.
I personally an a little disturbed by the lack of a dining table but if the barstools are ok yor you its a respectable choice.

In any case i enjoyed seeing the slideshow and think you did a great job even if my place *places as i live between two cities* are very different!

ps excuse the funky punctuation but the spam guard drove me crazy with its restrictions!

Seriously, I think it's a big giggle of a gas -- you're brave and bold with color, wit and personality. I second the motion that she and Frank are similar in that way -- unabashed bachelor pad and unabashed chick digs.

The rug rocks, and I think that poodles in a bathroom are perfect. Bathrooms and kitchens can both be great places for whimsy, and in the context of your aesthetic that kitchen is actually pretty no-nonsense, actually.

I also think that parents helping you buy a place is cool and wise, because you're not gonna feel any compulsion to get married to the first guy who can afford to house you. You can either never do that, or wait until you like everything else about him. OK, that was kind of off the topic, I guess, but for me it contributes to the intrinsic coolness of it all.

No, I have to agree that this isn't the coolest, and that if you were 30, some of the touches (like all the poodles) would be too much. But you are NOT 30--you are in college--and it's a fun, bright place. I think it's great that you put so much effort into your apartment, and had some fun. The best part is that you love it so much. Most people don't manage that part.

Loved the rug, sofa and chair! Lots of color for a young girl in a small space is great.

Rebecca I think you did a great job it is so livable and warm, full of personality. You must have a flair for color, style and decoration. Good job, I hope everyone else learns from your decorating skills. Love the shocking pink and cool warmth of the blue in your living area.

good job, I really like what you have done to the place. Incredible. Good luck!

Ordinarily I'd jump down Curtis' throat for that comment, but the truth is that before I got my new place, that evil thought crossed my mind--"lucky married people, they can afford a much nicer place than this/could be putting half my rent into savings..." New York will do that to you, but only if you let it.

Now I say that if I ever get married, he has to move into my new place, and cannot bring anything of his own (This is also a joke. I think it'd be better for him to live in the other apt on my floor. There was an NYT article about that, I think.)

PS-- Curtis, I can afford to house my SO if I so chose. ;)

Liked the kitchen shot. A lot. The tiles, the stove and the draws - tres cool!

The rest is ... sorry... got distracted, listening to Muse "Can't take my eyes off You".

This apartment brought a big smile to my face - it is soooo not me, but I love it anyway.

The fact that the design is so consistent shows that Rebecca really loves her choices.

I never liked pink bathrooms, but she has done a excellent job with it and I actually liked it!

Rebecca, your place is cool!

Curtis? Okay, WHAT? I used to work in Manhattan real estate and I thought I had heard every weirdass justification for buying an apartment, but never "It saves me from marrying some big loser."

WHAT? I'm sorry, but I am totally thrown for a loop. I must go lie down with a cold compress and read some Germaine Greer.

Mia-- I think you should grab a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream and head over to Frank's place to forget all about Curtis' comment. ;)

LOL, Mia. I read Curtis's comment, started to reply, then just stopped. It cracked me up, especially since most of us seem to be in NYC, land of expensive real estate and late marriages. Ah, well. I think I'll go read some Dworkin or something myself. ;)

Its not a bad apartment, but i think the comment rebecca had about "not wanting to live in a college students apartment" was bad. it still looks like a college students apartment, just a college student with money.

Who was the realtor? I need names so I can avoid...

I'm just full of negative opinions today, sorry!

There are aspects of the apartment that are great, and those are mostly the smaller, personal touches like the pink tiles, the inset black diamonds on the cabinet, the cool bedframe, the lighting fixture in the hallway, the interesting wall detail above the sofa, the York Peppermint Patty pillow, the li'l dining area with the elevated table and stools. I LOVE the cyoot kitchen! The black and white balance is perfect and makes the space look adorable. The pink hallway is different, but cool.

The living room is the not so great part. The black and white stuff doesn't go as well in the bigger space. It looks a bit affected, especially with that rug made from Komondor pelt. The furnishings look sparse, unbalanced and not terribly comfortable. I'd go with boxy/cushiony and not middle-to-late ovenmitt or whatever that little sofa's design is called.

Maybe I'm pissed/jealous that your parents bought you an apartment. My parents would ne-HEH-ver do that for meeee... wah.

I'd find a way to brighten up the living area, define shapes a bit, just open it up with more lighting and brighter colors. Like Sharon and Matt's ship's galley of an apartment, the darkness of your place makes it look smaller.

I'm an asshole today!

I was taken with the entrance hall, and the ethereal photo of the ceiling fixture, but the rest of the apartment was very disappointing. You may get points for the My Little Pony, but they are negated by the Sad Clown. Just because your Grandfather painted it does not make it worthy of display. Just overall discordance of design makes this apartment unworthy. I thought good design was the point of all this. I am always amazed by all the wonderful things promoted by this blog, only to see the readers spaces and choices. Which leads me to believe that many people enjoy reading about design but do not actually embrace it. Clearly this space is a college student's apartment, I expect her taste will mature.

Your apartment is very nice... true, it has a very young look to it, and I wouldn't want to live with that decor myself, but it all goes together well if you like pink and poodles.

Just a quick hint about liquid hand soap bottles. Check out whether the label is printed directly on the bottle or whether it is a printed bit of clear plastic stuck on with glue. If it is a clear plastic label you can peel it off and have it gone in a few seconds, thus making for less visual clutter. Lots of packaging can be dealt with this way, some of them even going from tacky and yuck to kind of wow looking, especially things like shampoos in brilliant shades.

Ouch, xopher. Actually, I disagree. I do think that art by someone you love is worth displaying. IMO, that's like saying you shouldn't display a photo of a loved one because they are unattractive and detract from the overall aesthetic value. A home is about what you love and that includes the people you love. Your comment struck me as quite harsh.

Xopher-just take a gun and shoot Rebecca--it would be a quicker, less painful means of death than you've assigned her! I'm de-lurking to put in my 2 cents worth (maybe more), and I should let you know that I'm prejudiced because I'm Rebecca's mom. Have you never heard that "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder"? We love that clown picture, and his eyes are those of my father-in-law. Surely you haven't cared for the artwork in the homes that you've visited. Does that make them all worthless? As far as your comment about discordance of design, again I'm inclined to disagree. Rebecca carefully chose each piece of furniture to compliment her plan. The sofa's kidney shape compliments the round arms of her rocker (whose runners compliment the arches on the bed, etc, etc, etc. And all of the furniture is extremely comfortable--that was a main concern of Rebecca's. All of the apt. colors are replicated in the rug (which we hooked together), and yes it looks like confetti--she wanted it to. And, BTW Julia, it's made of fleece--not dog! To answer a few other questions posted above-- The rug backing is just the typical rug hooking backing that you can purchase at arts and crafts stores. We just pushed through strips of fleece that we had cut into 5" x 3/4" strips.--very time consuming, but not hard! All of the light fixtures came from different stores, and Rebecca coordinated them. I'm sorry that she didn't show the one in her kitchen. It's really cool too. As far as the tint of the pink wall, and the sheen of the paint--isn't that better left upto personal taste? Rebecca wanted it bright and shiny, and that's the way she painted it! The white cabinet's diamonds are glass, so she taped black placemats to the insides of the doors so that her "stuff" wouldn't show! Other additions since the photos were taken are a huge bolster made from the same material as her bedspread to fit at the top of her bed so that her pillows don't fall. It looks like an eggplant colored tootsie roll. And there's a poster from MOMA of deKoonings artwork above her bed. And Lori, to date I'm the only one who has tripped over the legs of the bed and I was sober at the time! Rebecca's friends are more nimble than I!
I'm so proud of what Rebecca accomplished in her little space. She worked very hard to earn the money to furnish the apt.,and loves living there. Isn't that really the definition of "coolest" place?

Judy, I appreciate your sticking up for your daughter, as you should. No, having earned the money to furnish an apartment and loving to live there does not make it the coolest. Hence the overwhelming vote of "No Way Jose". I am not against Rebecca herself, just her taste, I suppose my comment regarding the painting was harsh, it was just in response to the point earned comment about My Little Pony.

I do have to add that I also liked the floor lamp in the corner, and the wall sculpture over the sofa. But otherwise the apartment is an amalgam of poor design choices, no matter how much the resident likes them.

It's not the coolest but it seems to be one of the most fun. Props for having the "balls" to go with colors and not be safe.

superb! i would expect nothing less from lady of FIT. Sarah

Sorry...i think my eyeballs are bleeding!

Absolutely Adorable! Love the colors. 100% unique!

Cool job Rebecca. I loooove the fuscia/hot pink. Very cool.