Apartment Therapy Archive: Sep 2018

If you’ve been eyeing something on sale at Anthropologie, today would be a good day to click “add to cart.” The boho retailer has further marked down sale items to make them even more of a bargain. For a limited time, sale items are an additional 30% off. The discount is automatically applied when you add eligible items to your cart.

The possibilities are endless, but if you're stumped on how to style your floating shelves, these inspirational shelfies are sure to point you in the right direction.

Move aside gingerbread Christmas houses!

Disneyland is dubbed the “Happiest Place on Earth,” and is a popular vacation destination for people from all over the world. Even celebrities love to spend the day at the magical theme park in Anaheim, California. But have you ever wondered what it would be like to live close enough to Disneyland that you could visit on a regular basis? For true Disney fanatics, owning a home in the area would be a dream come true.

If you’ve finally convinced yourself that nothing sears a steak like a cast iron skillet and that you absolutely have to have one to make crusty cornbread, your next decision is figuring out which one to buy. In our opinion, there’s only one choice. The good news is that it’s remarkably inexpensive. (That’s right—”the best” often means “the most expensive,” but not when it comes to cast iron!) Our must-buy is the Lodge 10.

It is just about every Harry Potter lovers dream to travel to the magical world. We all waited anxiously to get our Hogwarts letter in the mail, but sadly, it never came. For those of us who are the biggest Potterheads, we try to incorporate the wizarding world into our lives any way we can. We rewatch the movies, reread the books, share them with our loved ones, and find ways to celebrate Harry Potter all year long.

My husband and I are “recession kids.” We were just starting high school when the Great Recession brought the most significant economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. We watched our parents, neighbors, and family friends struggle with unemployment and the housing market crash. Foreclosures surged throughout the country, and home values plummeted following the housing bubble.

A stud finder is more than a dad joke. This helpful little tool is an essential part of the serious DIYers arsenal—especially if you don’t want to risk ruining all your shelves and expensive electronics (not to mention the walls) because they weren’t properly secured. For most casual decorators, a stud finder isn’t a must-buy.

Does your cat actually sleep in the bed you bought them? Or do they like to sleep in boxes, on your counter, on your bookcase, or just about anywhere that isn’t their bed? Cats are finicky like that. They do enjoy soft, plush beds, but they don’t always want us to know that they like what we bought them. Maybe if you purchased this spaceship cat bed, your pet would have no other choice but to show you how much they love it.

Check out Natalie Jacob, the woman behind cocktail blog Arsenic Lace, and see what she’s done with her New Jersey apartment. Full of vintage, IKEA, Target, West Elm and a host of other sources, she’s mixed it all together in a super fun, original way. The wallpaper and paint treatments are exceptional—together it shows how the everyday can be turned fabulous if you roll up your sleeves and apply a little style!

Dead skin cells, soap scum, random food scraps, human hair, pet hair, and just regular ol’ dirt—these are all the things you regularly wash down your sink or tub’s drain. And if they sound gross now, image how much worse they are once they’ve congealed into a stringy, slimy ball of gunk inside your pipes. Yuck! You want to prevent any of this gunk buildup before it becomes a real problem—especially in homes with older pipes or large families.

The hills are alive with this sustainable tiny house. While those might not be the lyrics to the iconic The Sound Of Music song, it doesn’t make it any less true when addressing this glamping haven. Perched on the mountainside in Slovenska Bistrica, Slovenia, this tiny accommodation is all about modern simplicity. The one-room vacation rental can comfortably fit two guests, complete with a queen-sized bed, table, drawers, and shelves for additional space.

Did everyone go through a goth phase? Or was it just us? You might have told your parents and friends at the time that it “wasn’t a phase” but for most of us, it was. However, even if you don’t wear all black and channel your inner ’80s Winona Ryder every day, you still can love and appreciate the goth subculture. If you ever were goth or still are, you’re going to need to see Crate & Barrel’s Halloween decor.

Do you ever walk into a stylish space and mentally try to decipher storied or custom pieces from those that were shipped in a flat pack from IKEA? That’s a cool game to play, right? IKEA, arguably Sweden’s finest contribution to the 20th and 21st century (I kid…?), has become a mecca of sorts for the broke-twenty-something-who-has-no-furniture folk to the high-caliber tastemaker fold, and for good reason: there is literally something for everyone.

If you aren’t following Mandy Moore on Instagram, you should be! She’s been living it up in her gorgeous mid-century maison and even graced the cover of Architectural Digest showing off her new digs. Designed by the California-cool interior designer Sarah Sherman Samuel, it embraces the mid-century lines of the house while bring fresh life to each room.

Picture it, the year is 1999, you are settling down on the couch with your best friends with snacks and soda, getting ready to watch a DCOM. The movie of the week is Smart House, which is about a house that is so smart, it can do anything you want. It can even do your chores for you. It is the dream home (minus the minor meltdown the house has after some unplanned reprogramming). That might all seem like it could only ever be the premise of a movie, but smart homes are much closer than we think.

You’ve been squirreling away dollar after dollar and finally have a pile big enough to consider buying your first home. That’s the good news. The not-so-great news: First-time buyers are prone to making some pretty big mistakes. “Home sales have gone up and many first-time homebuyers are coming down with a case of home-buying FOMO,” says Tanya Hobson-Williams, an attorney in Jamaica Estates, New York.

If you’re running short on closet space or lack the motivation required to hang up your clothing (no judgment here), designer Zhihao Guo created a transparent vinyl chair case with your space and energy-challenged existences in mind. Serving as the latest piece of evidence that inflatable furniture is trying its darnedest to get back on our collective aesthetic radar again, Guo’s whimsical yet multi-functional seating option clearly pushes the limits of chair design.

Even if you mind your dollars wisely, sometimes it just makes sense to spend a little bit more on something you truly love. Splurging on a household essential that you will use every day, or adding a few high-quality, high-impact items to your living room, might make you feel a twinge of guilt, but there’s also a whole lot of satisfaction there, budget-be-damned, and no apologies required. (Not to mention, pricier items often last longer than their cheap counterparts.

Talk about the ultimate fall cleaning. Former fashion model and entrepreneur Tyra Banks recently offloaded another one of her Pacific Palisades homes that she bought four years earlier. The America’s Next Top Model host sold the four-bedroom, five-bathroom for $4 million, which is only slightly less than the $4.25 million she asked for when listing the posh pad back in May.

Moving in with your significant other can be a weighty next step in your relationship (or one taken lightly to save on rent), but no matter how seriously you take it, it’s going to affect how you work in the kitchen. If you were living solo before, it could be a bit of a shock to the system to share this busy space with another being. And even if you’re used to roommates, it’s a totally different animal to share the kitchen with someone you love romantically.

The owners of this home have lived with—and loved—this kitchen for years, and considered just doing a few minor upgrades, but when they realized that this might be their forever home, they decided to make some major changes so that they’d love this room even more—for many years to come… This is such a subtle, beautiful upgrade by 17 Apart!

When it comes to buying furniture, some pieces stay with you for a year or two, and some for a lifetime. But when it comes to buying furniture on a budget, more can fall into the former camp. And while some inexpensive options might be required to get started while you save up for more investment pieces, it’s also nice when those inexpensive pieces can grow with you.

You might live every day like it’s National Coffee Day, but turns out it actually only falls once a year (on September 29). From tired mornings to chaotic workdays and even the occasional late-night cup, your coffee powers you through a lot—and probably deserves to be celebrated. Since today’s the big day (and there’s free coffee all over the place), there’s no better time to reflect on the current state of your relationship with the buzzy beverage.

Overall, the aesthetic can seem a little spartan, but the design choices made are deliberate, and function is often just as important as good looks—and who can argue with that?

We’ve found the luggage to bring to Platform 9 3/4, the home decor that will make your corridor feel cozy, and even the books to read in-between classes. But one thing we’ve yet to cover is how you can determine what House you’re truly meant to be in—until now, that is. Target has introduced the Real Talking Sorting Hats for their wizarding shoppers to invest in.

If multiple television shows and having already achieved status as design TV’s top earners weren’t enough, HGTV’s Property Brothers, Drew and Jonathan Scott, still have more ventures up their sleeves. It was announced this week that the Scott brothers will offer an exclusive home decor line at Kohl’s.

By looking at your home like a stylist, you can unlock the potential that's been there all along.

Joanna and Clea talk about their new show, Master the Mess, share clips, and how anyone can get organized.

Perfect Night In is a series where we ask actors, artists, entrepreneurs, and beyond how they’d spend the ultimate luxury—a blissful evening at home. Since The Hills premiered 12 years ago, TV personality (and new mom to 1-year-old Sonny) has kept busy with a range of projects—from taking on a fixer upper and transforming it into her dream home, to teaching kids empathy through gardening with Mrs. Meyer’s Compassion Flower Project.

There’s no denying that tiny house culture is all the rage nowadays. From getting the best space-saving storage tips to locking down your next vacation spot and even making a dollar or two, these tiny quarters provide several reasons to get with the small space trend. Plus, since they tend to take on the traits of their surrounding environment and those who live there, these spaces make for some incredible design inspo.

We’re back with the final installment of A Renter’s Diary! We’ve followed Rebekah Hall in her first month moving from a single family home into a 800-square-foot apartment in Little Rock, Arkansas. She’s had to figure out how to downsize and work around the quirks of the space. Last week, Hall shared how she shopped around her apartment (and her parents’ home) for no-cost kitchen storage solutions.

Scandinavian and Nordic-inspired interiors are very good at very white, bright interiors, but they also do dark, moody spaces well, too.

Toilet paper is a fact of life, as are all the tubes that pile up as you go through it. Sure you can recycle those used rolls, but there’s a much better use for all that cardboard. Here are a bunch of ways to stretch out their humble little lives a little further. If you have a ton of gift wrap in your closet, take a break from buying more and find other ways to package presents. These fruit-themed ones are adorable.

Did you know the mirror, as we know it today, was invented fewer than 200 years ago? According to LiveScience, in 1835 German chemist Justus von Liebig coated a pane of glass with a thin layer of metallic silver and successfully coaxed out mankind’s inner Narcissus for decades to come. Since then, mirrors have come to be a solid fixture in interior design and, more recently, round mirrors seem to be challenging the rectangular norm (and for good reason).

Wanna live in a big mansion? A six-bedroom, seven-bathroom Beverly Hills mansion that once belonged to Britney Spears is up for sale. With a reduced asking price of $8.95 million, the 7,796 square-foot Mediterranean villa-style mansion sits at the end of a cul de sac in an upscale gated community, where future owners will have direct access to canyon views as well as public and private hiking trails.

Welcome to Scandi Week—Apartment Therapy’s seven-day focus on all-things Scandinavia (often defined as the countries of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway). Sometimes it seems like the whole world is obsessed with trying to copy this corner of the globe, from its timeless style aesthetic to its now-famous coziness rituals. For the next week, we’ll take a look at all of it—cleaning, pop culture, and of course tons of eye-popping design inspiration.

Meet Benny the Boler, a 1974 vintage fiberglass trailer built in Peace River, Alberta. Reader Ali and her husband Bryce transformed this 44-year-old cutie camper into a happy little home. Here’s how Ali describes the project: We bought him in 2017 and the plan was to renovate him with a light and bright attitude, for the love of taking something destined for a scrap yard and making it usable and beautiful. We have a real passion for working together and restoring something so functional.

Name: Christopher Beecroft, my wife… and two cats who really wanted to be in the pictures Location: Silver Spring, Maryland Size: 3,200 square feet Years lived in: 2.5 years, owned Our house is a 1964 split-level with four floors. It has a mix of mid-century modern-ish, Scandinavian-style, and inherited antique furniture. There is a wide range of art, including vintage concert and art gallery posters from the ’60s and ’70s, and some of my own photography.

Remember our epic guide to white paint? We figured it was time to ask designers about their blue crushes as well—you know, those just right shades of cornflower, ocean, cerulean, navy, and everything in between. Blue typically isn’t a polarizing color. Most people gravitate towards the spa-like, tranquil quality of its lighter shades, while others love the darker side—the energy of aqua, the intensity of midnight. Sure, you could go about picking a blue paint color alone.

Nothing says you can’t start preparing for fall, even if it’s still pushing 80 degrees. Between faint breezes that rustle heat-drenched leaves and the snarl-toothed ghouls sneering at us from Costco aisles, it’s clear that the change of seasons is, in fact, upon us. Even if you refuse to pumpkin-spice anything until the calendar page flips to October, it’s not too early to get a jump start on preparing for fall.

Welcome to Scandi Week—Apartment Therapy’s seven-day focus on all-things Scandinavia (often defined as the countries of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway). Sometimes it seems like the whole world is obsessed with trying to copy this corner of the globe, from its timeless style aesthetic to its now-famous coziness rituals. For the next week, we’ll take a look at all of it—cleaning, pop culture, and of course tons of eye-popping design inspiration.

This is it! The final day of the September Sweep decluttering program. I hope that you’re feeling great about your space, and that each day’s assignment got you just a teeny bit closer to the organized and in-control home you’ve always wanted. The very last step of the sweep is where we take those boxes we’ve been sorting into since day one and finally get all of our discarded items out of the house for good. It’s “deal with it” day.

Halloween is fast approaching, and Netflix is not messing around. The streaming service announced what’s new on the platform for October, and there’s plenty of scary shows and movies to binge well into the month. Everything leaving Netflix in October The classic scary movie starts streaming just in time for the spookiest month of the year. Everyone’s favorite out of touch Canadians are back—and they still make downsizing look glam.

“Modern Family” star Jesse Tyler Ferguson and his husband, activist/social innovator Justin Mikita, are giving us serious real estate inspiration. The couple shares a 1928 Spanish Colonial home in the stylish Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, and the property is the perfect juxtaposition of Gothic design with a lighthearted passion for art and humor.

Wouldn’t watching videos of adorable baby sea animals be so much more comforting if you were curled up on a sustainable sofa that was made from over 100 recycled plastic bottles? Enter: Lovesac’s new sofas, called “Sactionals”. Known for their eponymous next-level bean bags, Lovesac’s new modular sectionals look more like traditional upholstered couches that can be arranged and rearranged from one configuration to another in minutes.

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away–the mid ’90s–eBay reigned supreme as a destination for both the hard-to-find and cheap-to-buy. And while it’s still chugging away, an explosion of other deals sites (and regular sites offering more and more deals), it can be easy to think of eBay as a relic of an earlier time. But if you haven’t taken a spin through the eBay listings since you were looking for a rare Beanie Baby, now might be the day to return.

With a new year comes the opportunity for a new start, including a fresh coat of paint for your living spaces. But with so many color swatches to choose from, HGTV HOME By Sherwin-Williams just made your life a lot easier with their 2019 Color of the Year unveil. The winner is Reflecting Pool (SW6486), a hue of “many personalities” that communicates “a life of balance with a little bit of flair” with its versatility and adaptive skills.