Name: Yvonne & David
Location: Sunnyside, Queens, NY
After 35 years in a tiny tenement apartment in the heart of the East Village, it was time for a change. What we wanted now was something bright, open, simple and peaceful, with easy access to Manhattan. A 650 square foot studio apartment in Sunnyside, Queens fit the bill perfectly.
We sold or gave away the few furnishings we had, and started from scratch. Months were spent brainstorming and researching, while we lived in an essentially empty space. We ripped out a wall, added an archway and hung mirrors, which made our three rooms feel like a loft apartment. Slowly we began to make purchases: a DWR Zero kitchen table with Eames chairs, a vintage Swedish shelving unit, a SONOS sound system in every room and an American Leather Tuscany sofa. Elegant yet sparse, just a few of our favorite things. In furnishing our apartment we followed Antoine de Saint-Exupery's maxim, "You know you have achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away."
Thanks, Yvonne & David!
• Interested in sharing your home with Apartment Therapy? Contact the editors through our House Tour Submission Form.
(Images: Yvonne & David )
Before & After: Emily Henderson Transforms a Senior's Studio Space
Monica & Austin's Charming Bungalow
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
White Enamel Four-P...
How to Make Easy 3-Ingredient Energy Bars at Home
True Greek Recipe: Paximadi Bread Salad with Tomatoes, Feta and Capers
That room divider bookshelf piece is brilliant!
GIVE ME THAT vintage Swedish shelving unit. Actually, don't; I don't have the discipline to leave it all awesome and blank as you have. Great space, and really nice use of mirrors, too.
this place has great character with the arches and floors...and yeah, that room divider is so awesome!
LOVE this place.
LOVE the Swedish shelving unit. The dining room area is great too. Love the floors with that furniture, it all looks like it was made to be together.
Love the classic checkered kitchen floor!
Interesting, calm and unique. What a great home!
Beautiful place! Looks very open and bright. That Swedish shelving is amazing! Where on earth did you find it?
Found it at an antiques shop in Saugerties, NY.
Love it. I too am totally coveting that Swedish room divider/shelf. 650 sq ft is a pretty big studio, it must feel even more spacious as a blank canvas!
Love the dark gray wall - mind sharing the paint color? Sorry in advance if it's listed and I missed it :( Thanks!
What a tranquil but lively home! Well done!
great space definitely an awesome space to live. Keep it up. :D
Congratulations on creating such a wonderful new home for the next stage of your life. It's really a beautiful space.
Benjamin Moore Shaker Gray
I must have that room divider!
Would be a shame to add anymore furniture to the place! Lol. It's fab the way it is. The rounded door frames are of course awesome. And, yes, the divider. x
Beautiful! I love how you say that after 35 years in a tiny tenement apartment you were happy to find something bright and open with a 650 sq ft apartment! How tiny was your other place?
It's gorgeous! I imagine this is a welcome respite from all of the stimulation of NYC. I adore the dining room. Love the dark wall, the table, chairs, art glass and hanging light - everything about it. The shelving unit is genius! It looks fabulous. I love that it has hanging lights and how it divides the room. I like the way the unit looks without objects. It's beautiful enough to stand on its own - and it is not empty but rather full of potential. I adore the sparseness. I've purged a lot over the last few years, but was never brave enough to start from scratch, I kinda envy that. Great job! Hope you feel happy, peaceful and contented in your new home.
I also like the divider. Curious to know what a tenement apt. is; the only thing that comes to mind is squalor. The new place looks super clean and fresh; seems a tad 'stark' here and there but that could just be the photos.
Beautiful! The checkered floor, gray wall, furniture, bookshelf...disparate and yet cohesive.
Wow. Functional, comfortable ... and, honestly, the word "pretty" comes to mind. I admire your restraint.
I love this space, but am somehow a bit freaked out by the lack of stuff... I guess I'm just not cut out to be a minimalist!
@Kanberra - The East Village place was a 3-room "railroad flat" (the rooms are linked together like a train) with windowless internal rooms, about ~450 sq ft. Sounds awful, I know, but that's what a typical late-1800's working class apartment in NYC is like. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenement
But to put things in perspective, we also have an old farmhouse in upstate NY where we raised a family, and which is anything but sparse.
@all - There actually is a bit more stuff in the apartment -- 2 comfortable black chairs and a CB2 chartreuse go‑cart table in the living room, a solid 50-yr-old dark brown lateral file cabinet that serves as a chest of drawers in the bedroom -- but you can't show everything in just 5 pictures. The Swedish room divider needed a lot of work when we found it (no lamps or wiring, etc.), but it was a steal at $300.
Thanks for the information! Next post - your lovely farmhouse in one of my most favorite part of the USA - Upstate New York!
I just love the way you used warm & cool tonalities and soft & hard textures in wall colors and furnishings. It looks so inviting and relaxed.
House tour - please, please, please!
How has the Tuscany sofa been holding up for you? We've been thinking of getting the same one.
@lipsofacto, The sofa is holding up well. We've only had it a year, so that's not much time, but we don't see any problems developing. The sofa is finished in Swedish Elmo Soft leather, one of the higher grades available for that sofa, and we use Leather Magic cleaning/conditioning supplies as recommended by American Leather. The white cleans up well from the dirt of everyday use.
Beautiful space. Would love to know where you got those horizontal mirrors over your desk.