apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

She has a lot of cute stuff, emphasis on "a lot". The vignettes are attractive but I wonder if in a larger view, the individual tablescapes just turn into visual noise. I'd store about half of the knickknacks and rotate the collection, like a museum does.

Pictures won't load when you click on the thumbnails.

Photos are working okay for us...

Nope, still not working on IE. Will this ever be addressed? Will we ever hear anything about it?

Glad to see I'm not alone in not getting to view the thumbnails! Argh!

interesting and vibrant. full of nice objects like a little boutique or a doll house. very sweet, inviting and cosy. super organised. and seemingly dust free! some homes have that attitude that dust just does not exist beyond front entrance, as if it's in-capsuled in it's own prettiness and cleanliness.. your home has that fresh feel even it's so heavily detailed. i'm smitten too.

I really dig this place. The vignettes are lovely -- it's not easy to have so many pieces and not have them look cluttered, but Allie manages to give each item a place. What a good eye she has! I admire the homemade furniture, found furniture, and inherited furniture approach. Looks fabulous! The stamp collection is super fun. I also love the gorgeous cat! Allie, how do you mix houseplants in with your kitty? Any problems? Thanks for inviting us in!

great storage, nice little displays, and those floors! oi my gawd! fun and bright and organized, and as with most of these house tours, i'm super jealous and inspired.

i think i used to live in this building! is it in the western addition?

what a lovely home! incredibly warm and inviting. i could get lost for hours in the stories of all of those charming vignettes. so colorful and bright and cheery. i love that the decor is a mix of so many styles that work so well together. it has a very organic feel to it. love it!

Really cute and warm.
I love all the little pictures and stuff and I am stunned at how organised it all is!

Hey folks, I'm the new tech guy around here and appreciate any feedback we get on bugs. I'm looking into the thumbnail issue on IE. So far I've been unable to reproduce the problem with IE6 and IE7 on Windows XP. We're going to be doing some work on the image gallery in the near future, so I'd like to nail this down if we can. If you can/want to provide more detail on what you are experiencing, please use the (recently repaired) "contact us" form. Thanks for your patience!

I really love nearly all of the objects in this apartment, but my favorite thing is the (almost) bare coffee table top. When I see something like this all I can see is kitty hair (and I love kitties) and dust. I'd also edit and rotate, as suggested above. Thanks, though, for sharing a creative and attractive space which has been put together from various sources.

Please fix the slideshow! Pretty please.

Wow; this place blew me away! The colors are so vibrant and even with all the details and "trinkets", it's hard to believe this is less than 500 sf! I'm especially digging that orange lamp.

I'm on IE6, Windows XP. I can see the thumbnails, but the slideshows don't work at all (though the ads show up just fine at the top).

At home on Firefox/Safari, the slideshows are fine.

This is cute overload and I just love every corner of this small apt.

Great job!

If I could have this much stuff AND have it look half as cute and organized I would be a very happy camper indeed. What a really cute apartment. Lots of personality - love it.

Cute, but at 425sf, this has probably the highest density of knick-knacks I have seen anywhere.

To Scott T the tech guy: On my PowerPC G5 mac with OS X10.5.4 and Firefox 3.0, I can click through the thumbnails and the pictures with previous/next, but the slideshow won't run. I.e. the first picture shows up and just sits there. Same result with Safari (3.1.2) on the same machine. Same result with Firefox 3 on a MacBook with OSX 10.5.3.

Added annoyance on the MacBook is that the lower third of the pictures is not visible, as they sit below the gigantic white box at the upper left (as the browser window is smaller on the MacBook than the PowerPC with 23" cinema display). I have also tried it on an old iBook (OSX 10.3.9) an iMac (10.5.3) and another MacBook (10.4.x). I have yet to find any machine/browser combo on which the slideshow runs as a, well, slideshow. Hitting the space bar brings up a little 'Play' or 'Pause' message without any further effect.

And, even if the slideshow ran, the current layout, which doesn't allow the pictures to fit in a laptop browser window without scrolling up and down, is horrible.

Finally a studio house tour!!!

There are so many things I love about this place.

i'd like to see a full view of the place. It would help assess the overall layout and composition. i agree with previous posters who think there may be too much going on. I am interested in how she has so much stuff and maintains such a neatness as I live in a studio as well.

However, the photos of individual component and section is great. lI ove the details and all the stuff. i like having mementos and objects that catch my eye displayed as well.

Adorable. Just enough controlled clutter to feel homey without being overwhelming. And I love the color palette.

She has a fabulous eye for arranging groupings of knick knacks, which is a great inspiration to me as a fellow lover of pretty little things. I'll be coming back to this tour often.

love it! very girlie, but where's the bathroom? The things is that there is a lotof stuff to dust... plus a lovely hairy cat...

I'd really like to see a floor plan.

I was wondering about the board(?) or table behind the couch, but then thought it might serve double duty as a large craft surface and a kitty deflector for the irresistible expanse of textured space!

How can you have so many things and not have the cat knocking it over all of the time? I have to have museum putty on the stuff hanging on my walls!

My God! A successful post in Firefox!!

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I absolutely love this place. It's so me! I love it! : )

This might just be my favourite house tour ever! So full of cute! I love how much colour you've incorporated. I particularly like the framed A frame ladder plate with the A underneath. Very creative. Thanks for sharing!

To Apartment Therapy: Can we get floor plans on the house tours? It would help to give a better sense of the space.

I'd love to see a wide view, too: partly to see the layout, but also to appreciate the space. It looks like the actual shape of the room is lovely, with those enormous bay windows, the two (maybe?) arched doorways, the tiny 20's kitchen cupboards and the beautiful, beautiful inlay floors (original? augmented? if so, how?)

I love many of your things: the green chair, the owl print on the window, the colour on the green painted bookshelf. And the cat, who is charming as the apartment, but fuzzy with it.

How do you manage to integrate the bed without making the space feel like a bedroom with a sofa in it?

What do you store in the glass cups that fit into the wooden 5-slot box from IKEA? I have thought about buying it, but I worry about brown sugar clumping or getting ants in my rice.

We have that same light fixture as she has in the beginning of the slideshow.

Tech comment: I really like this version, where I can click through, don't like the one where I'm forced to set the time as seconds. Some pics take more time to look at, some I want to skip!

At this one, I had to spend a lot of time looking at everything :)

Love that paint color and the slabby coffee table!

Did I just die and go to eye candy heaven? This is lovely, to say the least. I will be back to take notes.

I'm very disappointed in this House Tour. You posted the nicest vignettes first and said you were smitten, but when one takes the actual tour, one sees a lot of visual clutter. Cute, but just too much stuff.

And I'm not one who likes to criticize... Just don't call "perfect" an apartment that is so full to the brim. Needs "The Cure".

BM

Ah, but it is *elegantly* full to the brim. It's not just glut.

It's intriguing and distinctive, and I rather like it, although my first thought was "Well, someone certainly went crazy at etsy.com..."

I thought it was kind of precious. Everything you need to keep and look at all the time, childhood reminders especially, show people look at all my stuff, isn't it neat stuff? It's neat, right? Tell me how interesting and adorable I am.

I mean, enough is just right and too much is a little too much.

OK...stop shopping already! Just kidding...it really is a lovely apartment. There is a tad too much stuff but if it floats your boat...I think if I was actually visiting I would be slightly overwhelmed and get tired after a while but each object is pretty in itself.
Great kitchen!

this is one of my favorite recent house tours. while i do like the more elaborate 'complete renovation with hired architect and designer' tours, i can see them in a magazine. i originally came to this site many years ago to see what everyone else was doing, including those living in smaller spaces (650 and under).

and while this apt is on the opposite spectrum of my personal style i simply love it. i see no 'clutter' in the space, i see all her things carefully, lovingly and artfully displayed while maintaining a completely functional living space - not an easy task.

i would like to agree with others on the way the house tours are shot, would too like to see overall shots of the space, THEN vignette shots (which on this tour, i actually liked and didn't skip over).

THNKS

I think it's pretty (in the good sense), and I like the way there seem to be cozy areas everywhere, in such a small place. I could do with half or less of the tsotchkas, especially since so many of them lean toward the "cute," but I love the texture of the walls and the windows looking out onto leaves.

I guess I'm the only one driven nuts by what appears to be a corroded sword sticking out from under the rug?

duct tape

Aulaire, you are not the only one.

this apartment is very very cute. i love all of the little vignettes.

question to allie? what is the paint colour on main walls (not the nook)? it looks like the perfect creamy white...not too stark.

thanks!

At work I have Windows 2000 and Internet Explorer, which allow me to see perhaps 4-5 pictures in the slideshow before if goes blank (ads intact, of course). Then I have to backtrack to the thumbnails and click around to see which pics will appear. Frustrating.

Jen_g, that is exactly what every slideshow does to me. Even if I click through each photo one by one, after 2 or 3, the screen just goes blank. I get an "Error on page" or "Done, but with errors on page" message at the bottom of the screen. Then I have to backtrack.

I can relate to being a pack rat of sorts and knowing where each and every item came from and usually having a pretty good story behind it, but i more than agree with Palmetto, in that some editing of 'stuff' should happen here. Store 2/3's of your stuff and rotate it out. There is just WAY too much going on here. The floors are beautiful but they're covered w/ nappy rugs on top of more rugs, what's up w/ that? I think 50 pictures of visual clutter were more than sufficient w/o going the extra yard and adding 3 of your cat...

I love this place. Very personalized. I especially would like to know where this tall drawer organizer is from that is on the kitchen counter. Love this idea.

http://gallery.apartmenttherapy.com/photos/7-1-08allie/images/allie51_small.jpg

This is my favorite of all the house tours; I'm in love. It's perfection. I wish I could just move right in.

This looks so comfortable to me. Not everyone needs to be a minimalist.

@bullie But think of all the other cats we didn't see. She's probably got about 12.

Hello all! this is Allie writing in. So gald to hear that so many of you will get some good ideas and share in my love of delightful objects; Like my own use of Apartment Therapy, I hope my home will inspire others!

To answer a few questions/comments: I agree that it is a little difficult to get a sense of the larger sense of the space, the various perspectives in the spcae, and I think that simple floor plans for all the house tours is a superb idea! I did not take these photos, and though I might have done it differently, I thought AT did a great job! Their mission is to inspire and capture personality of a space they have never been in beofre or used themselves, so that is a great creative challenge, and I think they consistently deliver. So thank you AT!

Just to note: While I love Etsy, I have not yet purchased from it. I have only one lovely cat, Abbish. I do not know the neutral color on the walls, that was here, but the yellow color is specified in the text. I am required to cover 75% of my floors with rugs of some kind, and while I wish I could replace them all, alas, I am more excited about visiting New Hamshire for a week this summer, so no new rugs (and yes, that piece of tape is super unfortunate, huh!?!). And I am happy to report that the four and 1/2 years I have lived here is the longest in my entire life that I have ever come home to the same door! So, I guess my inclination is to "nest" and surround myself with the things that remind me of good friends, the beauty of the natural world, and the warmth of home and personal expression. I hope that every one's home feels that way to those that experience it.

Thank you all for your company! And thank you AT...this was really fun.

Allie again:

Oh yeah...I meant to answer: I keep vitamins, tea and spices in the Ikea little glass drawers in the kitchen. I recommend it. It is a great versatile piece that is great for desk areas or entry ways too. But you might have to look hard at Ikea...they were often broken.

The big butcher-block counter on its side is meant to become my craft table some day, for sewing and book-binding, in place of the black breakfast table. However, it does seem to play the role of room divider for the bed area from the living area and adds more raw wood texture, which I repeat throughout and enjoy. The coffee table is made out of old wood from a steel plant in Cleveland, where many members of my family worked. I love repurposed materials.

And yes! this is in the beginning of Western Addition, one block from Alamo Square and part of the Divisadero/Nopa area. Smack in the middle!

Thanks again all!

Allie - Can I ask where you got the rack/display that you use for all your stamps? I've been looking for something similar and cannot find one! Or did you make it yourself, in which case I am SOL?!

This is my first ever comment and your love for individual "things" has struck a cord in me. My local thrift stores have touched my heart and obviously yours has been touched many times as well. You are right about dusting - which I rarely do - but when something is loved, just picking it up is dusting it, eh??

The large project table- I enjoyed seeing one of the options I'd considered in action.

Kitchen-I now know where I am going to stash my dishdrainer and dishes- Yes.

What I like about this tour is that it looks like a home and though it might be, it doesn't look temporary.

I am curious Allie; in such a small and full home, how much time do you actually spend there? (considering microsizing)

I love this place! I so envy your collection of fabulous things and your ability to combine objects and colors so beautifully. This should seem cluttered, but to me, it doesn't. However, I would hate to do the dusting!

GORGEOUS! I absolutely love the apartment, it's so eclectic but pulled together and warm and full of life. Definitely one of the best studios I've seen, at AT and in person!

really beautiful... not much for collecting things myself, so it's really terrific to have a different way of life presented so beautifully

where did you get your nightstand- its super cute!

I love this space. I think the collection of lovely things is fabulous. It gives me a whimsical feeling. It's one thing to have a lot of stuff cluttered about and it's another to have a lot of stuff arranged in an awesome way. Allie, you know how to put things together. It's very inviting and inspirational. Great work!