Who Lives Here: Jessica, Eli & one brown dog
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Size: 770 square feet
What is your favorite element of your Small & Cool home? We have a lot of books (Jessica is a writer & Eli is a designer). They used to fill seven very different-looking bookcases scattered around the apartment. To minimize the clutter, we decided to use one of our small rooms, a pass-through from the living room to the bedroom, as a library. We took advantage of the high ceilings & splurged on a Rakks system that allows us to have shelves from floor to ceiling without the heaviness of built-ins. Our books are now contained in a dramatic & beautiful way.
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What was one of the biggest challenges you faced in furnishing your Small Cool home? Our space is long--five rooms in a row. From the front of the apartment, it's possible to see nearly all the way to the back, which poses a challenge in terms of the way color in different rooms relates. So, we've tried to bring color & patterns back throughout. The green of the living room furniture returns in the green of so many plants & the curtains & rug in the bedroom. The kitchen & the library are painted the same spring-green color, while the bedroom & bathroom are painted the same grey-rain color. A tiny office, off of the kitchen, is cyan, which contrasts nicely with all the green in the kitchen. In the bedroom, living room, & kitchen, black-and-white drawings in simple black frames complement, rather than compete with, the color. At some point, we'll paint the tiny hall between the living room & kitchen bright orange to match an Eames chair in the library.
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Comments (54)
every time i see that nelson bench i fall in love all over again
Beautiful! Love the floors and how well-edited the furniture and accessories are. But mainly I love how you've taken what could have been really industrial-looking bookshelves and made them so pretty!
Gorgeous! So clean and simple, yet warm. I want to sit on that sofa.
http://thesweetest3.com/
I really like the grey paint
I really like the grey paint as well, especially in combo with the green. What paint brand/color is it?
Nice!
Love those exposed bricks in the kitchen!
Okay, i know this makes me a weirdo, but every time i look at that first picture, the two pieces of framed art look like eyes and the couch looks like a mouth. That livingroom is smiling back at me! I like it!
Totally dig it, great colors. I'm in love with that print on the bedroom windows. If I may add my 2 cents, the only thing I would change is; If it were my place, I would take that print, raise it to the ceiling and add panels to cover the entire wall. The kitchen is fantastic!
Adore your kitchen cabinets and the brick walls. Refreshing to see a different color countertop. What are the wood blocks beneath your bookcase? They are fantastic and really give a much more rugged look to an otherwise sleek setup. Nice!
AnnieStuart...funny.
love the colors. so elegant. cool how the green theme is carried throughout, even in the kitchen countertops and the curtains in the BR too. love it all....
Love the colors and the shelf system!
I love your sofa! It's great to see a place that's so simple and chic at the same time.
Nice. Perfect amount of editing - nothing is "in the way". Good sense of scale too.
what's the fabric on the couch? I love it
Yes where is that couch from?!
Perfect! Look forward to see more. The bathroom, the home office, the balcony...
*swoon*
love your green sofa and chair. You have a lovely home...but I think that gray on the walls is just too dark.
Love the use of green and especially the color scheme in the living room. Really beautiful and well edited. All of these photos are going in my inspiration file!
Love this place! Can we see more please??
Very very well done. I'm jealous of your lovely library.
love your living room! the color combination and artwork are both things i would have never thought of, and they look fabulous. well done!
Simple, elegant, and peaceful. This might be my favorite yet.
I love that sofa (and it's colour) and how they've repeated the grass green around the house. Very nice!
Such beautiful, calming and composed spaces -
I'm envious of the brick wall in the kitchen and your lovely green library!
And how clever of you to color in the rooms on your floorplan with the colors from your walls! (But I wouldn't choose orange for your hall - the color is much too jarring against the other cool tones throughout your home. Perhaps black?)
"what's the fabric on the couch?"
"Yes where is that couch from?!"
The sofa and chair are 1950's vintage in the original nylon chenille fabric - My grandmother had a living room set that was quite similar.
Those couches are SUCH a dream! I dont think theres one thing I would change here. The brick wall is so cozy. The shelves and the books on it are an art piece unto themselves. It looks clean, perfectly edited, and cohesive, without looking an ounce like a showroom. bravo!
I feel strangely validated in my own home color choices after seeing your beautiful apartment. I'm all about the gray/blue walls with pops of green (and yellow). Some people seem to think gray/blue is a crazy-bold color choice, but it's really a neutral (if you consider the fact it's a color found in nature).
Lovely furniture, lovely colors, lovely home. I hope this one becomes a home tour!
Excellent! Everything...color, furniture....and the black door.....how very fung shui. Love it!
Love the concept of one massed storage solution versus lots of little one. That's actually a brilliant tip for small space living.
You picked really nice paint colors to work with your furniture, love that green sofa. Grey and green are not easy to work together, but that grey has just the right amount of blue and look great
I think having continuity is more important in a small space and I give you two thumbs up because you did it so well.
Even your kitchen looks like it belongs with the rest of the space.
beautiful! This is my new favorite, thanks for sharing and good luck...you got my thumbs up!
i'm getting on a plane and coming to steal your couch and chair. are they vintage?
sweet green couch, super cool library.. and a brick wall kitchen- awesome!
hey, thanks for all the kind words everyone.
@thorndale: the boxes under the shelves are hand-me-downs form my mother. i guess that when she was in her 20s everyone in the town that i grew up in had them. they're just super rough /super simple things that were made by a local cabinet maker from whom they get their name: "Butler-boxes". 1970s, hand-made, modular storage complete with period appropriate wine stains and dried candle wax.
- eli
So envious of all those bookshelves, that's my dream!!
I agree absolutely with TheoJ but I have to add that the library is the best part of this house. Wonderful idea executed to perfection!
great color scheme in the living room. the vase with twig on the coffee table is a bit catalogue-y, but I love the nelson bench. it can never be cliched.
Hm, I like the white rug (nice texture/pattern); where's it from? Does it feel nice to walk on? Also, like how the wall art relates to the black doors (closet?)
Hands down one of the best entries in my opinion. Enjoy your home and I want to see more!
you got that couch for $100! i'm going to cry.
Really like this, well done.
What a great home!
I don't really like the pictures in the living room or the vine or hanging plant or whatever it is over the bookshelf, but everything else is great!
I love the bedroom curtains and they seem to suit the room and the bed so well
@lepidoptery: the rug is just from ikea, but it's mostly real wool & feels plenty soft. we often play with the dog on it.
it's this one, in white:
http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/40121769
also, yes, the black door is a closet. we just replaced an ugly louvered door. ideally, we'd have something sliding/pocketed, but there are bricks in the walls, so it'd be a major undertaking.
I love your green furniture.
I joined just so I could give you my first thumbs up!
Lovely place. I love your color story and how they all tie together, it works so well. Color me green with envy!
bspsf didn't comment on the bedroom drapes...{thud}
What a beautiful library! It inspires me to update and unclutter my own.
your apartment is beautiful and so inviting...Do you let the brown dog sit on that fabulous sofa?
can i just say, i've come back to this several times to take it all in. i just LOVE it. i even went to check out your other photos and especially love the shot where you can see from the living room, through the library, into the bedroom - it gives a great sense of how it all flows.
Thanks Jessica for this amazing space! Lovely especially the colors. I never thought green can be so lovely...and the extra photos are great! Hope to see more! Am i being greedy?
Sorry to see that this place is no longer in the running -- it had my vote. Absolutely beautiful!
Does anyone know who makes those bookshelves?
WoW! What a lovely space. Are there any units in your building available???????