apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

If you ever need to go out of town for a couple weeks, we will apartment-sit and water your plants! I don't care if we have a reason to go to Philly -- I'll make up one.

I love this place! Great style.

Well done. I love that this isn't the canned mid-century showroom that many of the other apartments have been. Don't get me wrong--I love midcentury--but it's nice to see something that is so unique.

Becoming even more interesting than the photos in this competition are the inflated, over-the-top descriptions provided by the entrants. They're starting to sound like bad winetasting parodies; any minute now I'm expecting to read "it's a frisky little apartment, playful but not jejeune." Yeesh.

I really like this a lot--color, plants, and good balance between interesting stuff to look at and clear space to relieve the eye.

This is interesting and fun and the kitchen is lovely. The window frames hanging over the bed make me a little nervous though; they are hanging too low, or at least they appear to be from the photos.

be still my beating heart... its thumping inside my chest with love for this apartment!
if i knew i could have done something like this w the cruddy little Old City apt i had after graduating college, i might have never left the city of brotherly love....
gore-gous!
makes me wish (yet again) that i was a victorian explorer, travelling around the world collecting curios and cataloging birds to bring home to my enormous country house
sigh

Bravo! I love the eclecticism. The amount of style you imbue while still keeping the space fairly open. Lovely!

One of my favorites so far. One question, though: if one of you is a student, where are the books, piles of paper, and computer? It looks like there might be a laptop on the desk, but it's surrounded by plants, so that's not a very efficient workspace. Many of the entries in this contest have made me hope for some advice from those who have managed to contain or camoflage their sprawling home offices and personal paperwork.

Yay, houseplants! Does anyone else feel that this place needs a big, fat persian kitty (haughtily having nothing to do with a broken flowerpot and mangled Ficus)?

This is my favorite entry. Bar none. And with this year's crop that's incredibly high praise. I can not even begin to count the ways in which I love this--the colors, the plants, the ingenuity. When can I move in?

I love this place, but I really hope Stephen is a fairly little guy... is that a double bed?

I love this. This looks like a place where you'd want to snuggle into a chair with a book on a rainy day.

My only quibble: the frames surrounding the bed are too low. How do you get in and out of bed without bumping your heads? Not to mention, um, other activities?

It reminds me of Great Expectations, one of my all-time favorite movies!

Sg, I initially mistook the large sheepskin throw for a big, lush Persian kitty.

Many of my students -- undergrad and grad -- don't seem to use books, so I'm not totally shocked not to see them. These days, I teach with the equivalent of one orange crate of materials, and if I didn't insist on printing out lessons in case the college's Wifi freaks, and if there weren't political reasons for me to require a physical text, I could do my repertoire of courses without anything but a laptop and an occasional trip to a library. When my husband was finishing his undergrad, I think he had one large notebook for lab assignments, and that was it.

This house has love in it! And, yes, sg, at least one cat should be mandatory!

Can all y'all get some rugs, please?

Look closely -- I believe there IS a cat sitting on the chair in the third picture!

Yup, it's a seal point. Like my other kitty.

I've thought about doing something with window frames to delineate my bed without closing light or space.

While not my style, this place is stylin'.

Having a mini excuse for a kitchen myself, I give you points for the bold stripes and chandelier! To me, its "our vision knows no limits" approach is the best design tip in your entry.

I would so definitely be banging into those window frames; they are gorgeous, isn't there a way to use them that doesn't generate such anxiety (of course your arrangement works for you, sooo...)

And sometime I hope you will post a close-up of the tiles around your fireplace. They immediately caught my eye (even before reading your narrative) and I bet they are gorgeous.

Thank you, this is a great, unique entry!

I like the uniqueness and the character of the place, although the extra hot colour of the walls and the huge plants make me think of the jungle (not in a good way). A strong contender, IMO.
I don't think the frames would get in the way of any activities on the bed, since they are not hung directly above it... Am I right?

One of the few examples of a "broken-color" treatment on walls that actually looks subtle enough to live with. Very nice job, and I think the place works very nicely, overall. The bedspread color next to that yellow is quite wonderful.

frank, you're right! Very easy to miss...siamese is just as perfect to complement the victoriana as persian would have been. Wende, at first I thought frank made the same mistake with the sheepskin.

Beautiful elements. But, I'm not in love with the brightly colored walls -- feels a little like Starbucks wall vinyl circa 1998.

the thing I love about this entry is its cohesiveness--the plants bring it all together. I'm a little surprised that college students have such enormous, lush plants--usually you have to grow house plants for a while to get them to look that nice.
do you guys have special powers?

This apartment has such mood...I love it. I think often apartments with a sort of "ethnic" or exotic flair can come off seeming thrown together with little forethought or very "I got this all at Pier 1", but I feel like this was carefully orchestrated while at the same time not appearing to be too planned. Great job! And, a breath of fresh air!

this reminds me of funky coffeeshops in the mission neighborhood of san francisco. all you need is gypsy kings playing in the background.

nice, i love the egg yolky walls and all the vintage furniture, particularly the curly planter and the whole dining table area. not so keen on the stuff hanging over the bed, seems overkill. gorgeous floors, but i second that a little rug would be welcome. i could move in happily.

Hey Kris (the one in Michigan),
Did you read Hannah's Street Find Studio, in particular her definition of a street find? My god, talk about over-inflated!

I can't NOT give this a huge wow. Love the yellows and reds, the rich old wood floors, and the super unique bedroom (I'm not sure how else to say it - though I certainly mean it as a big compliment)

WOW!

The walls are superb - including the striped kitchen, which I adore. Talk about making a tiny kitchen look large and grand. The stripes pull eyes upward - which is a good thing in that closet of a kitchen! WELL DONE!!!

And you get points for the cat - of course.

I love the colors--esp. the kitchen walls, the chandeliers/lamps, the mirror over the fireplace, the crazy windows (if they don't bother you, they're not going to hurt me). I can't believe you've done this on a student budget and a student schedule. There's a bit too much of grandma/grandpa's furniture here for me - too Victorian to be cool. Now, if you painted some of it in non-Victorian colors, that would probably make a big difference in the cool factor. Also, I find the plants to be visually clogging the space. This is all about the visuals - I love plants myself, but the plants here add to the excessive victoriana feeling for me.

Great to finally see an entry that embraces some ethnic eclecticism in the contest. (We saw a lot more representations of this vibe in last year's contest; and I found myself missing seeing these types of entries this year.) Love it. Don't listen to the detractors: your descriptions are not "inflated, over the top"; and you don't need rugs if you don't want them. The main room is the perfect space for lazy Sunday mornings (with a big carafe of strong coffee and the Sunday paper) or a romantic night in... And the plants--yes!

i love this. it's my favorite so far. it's funky and organic, but not cluttered or overdone. (okay, we share the same taste, so that probably works in your favor!)

To quote Joubert -

"You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some with you"...

Nice of you to bring some.

You've definitely captured the definition of "musty" here. I can envision Miss Havisham sitting in the white armchair of the first photo, looking out the window.

I really like this -- to me it is very lush without being claustrophobic. my only exception are those doors above the bed -- I would have one brusied head if i lived there! I esp love the stripes in your kitchen -- very delicate, a nice contrast to the boldness of the living area. congrats!

I am in love! (I'd also like to see some rugs, but I am in love!)

Beautiful use of color -- warm and inviting. I would also be worried about whacking myself with theframes (or the frames whacking someone else). but love the use of them. Maybe if they were higher....

Finally, something that's not mid-century modern is in contention! Not that there's anything wrong with mid century modern....(she hurries to add before the stones start to fly from the other posters).

This is how I'd love to do my apartment!!! I just don't know how to explain this look to my husband. I love all the furniture, and the colors (for a few years, my bedroom was a very similar marigold yellow - without the special treatment). The only adjustment I would make is to hang sheers in rich colors that cascade around the bed instead of the short fabrics, unless that's too tempting for kitty. And maybe I'd just hook together the window frames to make a "wall" just at the bed's foot, instead of hanging them around its perimeter.

dIANE -
Another possibility for those window frames would be to connect them together to make sort of a room divider. And at that, you could fill them with a variety of glass: some old-fashioned "bubble" glass and/or some frosted glass and/or some stained glass and maybe mix in some regular new glass and yes, still leave some empty altogether. That way light still goes through them, but plays very differently through each. It could be kind of like just an L-shaped thing divider, which could, instead of being hinged, just have it be fixed, but maybe you'd put some felt on the bottom, since wheel might make it roll and tip over, which would be terrible.

Does anyone else remember in the movie High Fidelity when John Cusak is over at over at Lisa Bonet's apartment and she has old windows hooked together to form a separation for the bedroom (like what dIANE was mentioning)? I always thought that was neat, and would love to see it recreated in real life here. You can watch the movie for reference. :)

dIANE -- As far as naming the style for explaining to husbands, it reminds me intensely of Victorian Revival as defined by Jim Kemp's Victorian Revival in Interior Design (1988). This book shows up used and cheap, if it helps to have more photos to point to.

There's some overlap with San Francisco: A Certain Style, too, but I think less than with the Kemp book.

too victorian to be cool? huh?

if miss havisham had been living in this apt, she'd be a sexy spinster writing novels rather than ruining other people's lives.

i really adore/envy the dining table and keep coming back to look at it.

Wow - I love this. It is original and not cookie cutter modern bland. I love the color and the plants & also that it is not crowded.

On Curtis's variety of glass for the window frames idea: and some stained glass, too!

It's a good idea, but actually, I love how they look now.

Do you have any more? You could put art in them for your mostly art-free walls.

Love the colors, too, and the plants. You must get lots of sun!

SHUDDER!

you're cool.

very charming. I like your eclectic approach very much. I particularly like the two non-matching but related scrolly bar stools. Nice color, very imaginative use of the window frames. Though I think I share the general feeling that they might work better grouped toward the end of the bed.

Never something I would do with my own space, but I absolutely love it! I would love to sit around in it with old friends drinking red wine and telling stories all night. Its filled with PERSONALITY that is completely void from so many of these entries.

I love this--it's right up my street and the use of color is wonderful. YOu've got a goodly amount of stuff in there, but it feels airy.

Wow! This does not look like a small apartment. Fantastic!

QUESTION:

Would you comment on the decisions you made in the kitchen? I want to get an idea of how you came up with such a clever design.

I think rugs would make it too busy and cluttered. Plus they have beautiful dark hardwood.

Thank you, thank you, thank you on behalf of all of us who like stuff.
JP

lovely, are you an interior designer?

I can't help but feel that the earlier MCM apartments are going to have higher rating than they later, just cause we are all getting sick of the MCM look

christy - the window room from high fidelity was the first thing that popped into my head too! anyway, go philly!

i am loving that fantastic plant arrangement, so cool!!
they're like a chorus (sorry, not, Kris toiM)

Kitchen does not match rest of the decor.

LaDonna--
Not all of us are getting sick of the MCM look.

I love this place. It reminds me of boutique hotels I have stayed at in Morocco

Too busy looking for my taste but points for making a style statement.

Wow, I love this place! Do you shop at Indigo and Ruka? It has that kind of feel. I'm also wondering where it is located-- when I did my Ph.D. at Penn, I lived in a one-bedroom on 21st and Pine. When I moved in, in 1999, the rent was $540 per month. Now I hear it's up to $1000. Rittenhouse Square studios do seem to be going for almost as much, these days.

Great use of colour!

I'm really surprised by the uber-positive response. This place is overambitious and lacks any real sense of style, in my opinion. Color is a huge problem. Since when do saffron-painted pseudo-mediterranean walls mix with dark goth-like maroon bedspread, and a faux- french light blue and white paint-scheme in the kitchen? These are all incompatible versions of the primary colors jammed up against each other, plus green accents with the plants. Not a fan. And the window display seem overly whimsical and cutesy-woo antique-y.

I love this place, looks very spacious too... and the windows, well that's my favorite part - don't change a thing!! (would like to see more pics - is the bathroom exotic and quirky also?)

Mmmmmm! Now THIS makes me happy. THIS is individual. I was getting a little weary of minimalism and modernism and other isms. I actually moaned/hummed/smiled, "Mmmmm!!!!" when I clicked on this one.

Only two or three others have elicited this response from me. I really LIKE a lot of these apartments -- in fact, all of them have some element that I admire -- but this one just grabs me.

Permission to swoon?

P.S. Forgive my ignorance, but what is "MCM"?

I like this a lot but I'd love to see some kind of rug in the living room area - contained enough so as not to clutter the beautful flooring but something elegant and subtle to soften the space a little, and create a more comfy feel.

This is a gorgeous apartment - eclectic, bohemian, individual and full of charm. I love the stripes in the kitchen and how you managed to give it a sense of space despite how many nooks and details you incorporated into the place!

Jodi -- MCM means mid-century modern (i.e. clean lines, Eames furniture, etc.)

While I like that look in several of the other apartments, I have to disagree with posters who don't think Victorian can be cool. Anything unique and individual is cool.

I love the paint job. Yellow's not my favorite color, but I love the textured look of the walls. It makes the whole thing come together.

I frickin love your plants!!!!!