Kyle Freeman

Name: Chris and ErinLocation: Carlisle, MassachusettsSize: 680 square feetYears lived in: only 4 months — rented I’m used to getting crushes on the homes I photograph for Apartment Therapy. But this one? This home I WANT. It fits in so perfectly with my recent obsession with the idea of living in a smaller space. Chris, a woodworker with his own shop, and Erin, a yoga instructor, massage therapist and writer with her own studio, scored this amazing rental on Craigslist.

Name: Kay McGowan of Mohr & McPherson and A Curated WorldLocation: Somerville, MassachusettsSize: 1500 square feetYears lived in: 4 — rented When it comes to eclectic furnishings and housewares from around the world, Mohr & McPherson is a Boston institution. One of the forces behind that institution is Kay McGowan, the general manager for the past 15 years. This woman knows her imports.

Name: Drew and Mindy and their beloved dog, Winnie CooperLocation: Melrose, MassachusettsSize: 1,700 square feetYears lived in: almost 2 — owned After I walked up the steep-ish, ample stairs to the front door of Drew and Mindy’s house (greeted along the way by Winnie Cooper!), I walked in and remembered why it’s so much fun to be a house tour blogger. I was instantly smitten with their delightful, beautifully curated home (and their dog, but that’s another story).

Location: Mt. Washington Valley, New HampshireSize: 1800 square feetYears lived in: 24 — owned I know this tour is a bit of a departure from standard Apartment Therapy fare. It’s roomier, lake-ier, and more traditionally decorated than the average tour. But it happens to be my favorite house in the world and a place of peace. So I finally decided it was time to share it. This lake house belongs to my parents. They bought it twenty four years ago.

Name: Rich and Emily and their daughterLocation: Somerville, MassachusettsSize: 2000 square feetYears lived in: 3 — owned I tend to be a little Jamaica Plain-centric with my house tours so it’s always fun when I scooch on over to the other side of the river for a house tour. Rich and Emily’s Somerville home was well worth the trek! Their condo includes the second and third floor of a two-family house.

Name: Meg and DanLocation: Jamaica Plain, MassachusettsSize: 925 square feetYears lived in: 1 — owned Meg and Dan, professional classical musicians with the Jupiter String Quartet, travel frequently for their work. So an uncluttered, streamlined home is all the more important. In fact, they were remarkably relaxed about the fact that we scheduled our photo shoot only hours before they had to head to the airport for an international work trip.

Name: Sarah, Craig, and son, Maceo Location: Jamaica Plain — Boston, MASize: 1099 square feetYears lived in: 8 — own It’s fun enough to be around one homeowner who beams with delight and pride for her home. But when it’s a couple and it’s apparent that they equally love their home and they genuinely share an aesthetic without much need for compromise, it’s even sweeter. Such is the case at Sarah and Craig’s delightful treetop home.

Name: Danielle, Derek, and sonLocation: Somerville, MassachusettsSize: 1,000 square feetYears lived in: 10 (Derek), 8 (Danielle) — own It’s such a refreshing pleasure to visit a home where people are living large in a smaller place, figuring out creative ways to maximize their space.

Name: Family of Three plus one adorable service dogLocation: Providence, Rhode IslandSize: 3000 square feetYears lived in: 3 — owned You get to see plenty of streamlined, minimalist spaces on Apartment Therapy. This isn’t one of them. This is a home that feels more like a delightful, giant cabinet of curiosity. This place isn’t shy about reflecting the stories, experiences and history of those who are lucky enough to live here.

Name: Sarah and JoshLocation: Somerville, MassachusettsSize: 1800 square feetYears lived in: Only six months! I tend to be a bit Jamaica Plain-centric for my Apartment Therapy house tours. But I finally crossed the river to check out Josh and Sarah’s retro-inspired condo in Somerville. It was worth the trek! I knew it was going to be a fun afternoon when Josh greeted me on the front porch, offering me two delicious cherry tomatoes he’d just picked.

Name: Naseem Alizadeh of The Bureau for Architecture and UrbanismLocation: Boston, MassachusettsSize: 600 square feetYears lived in: 2 Yet again, I experienced apartment envy when I arrived to take photos of Naseem’s Back Bay rental, a lovely home we first spotted in her Apartment Therapy House Call. It’s easy to imagine the two years Naseem has lived here morphing into ten. This is the kind of place that would be hard to leave.

Name: Rene & JerryLocation: Jamaica Plain, MassachusettsSize: 3200 square feetYears lived in: Almost 4 If a house can have good karma, this Victorian Mansard’s got it. Before the current owners, Rene and Jerry, bought this beautiful Jamaica Plain home, the previous owners made a bold and rare move. They skillfully returned this glorious single family home, which had been chopped into three units over years, back into the cohesive single family home that it longed to be.

Name: John GuthrieLocation: Jamaica Plain, MassachusettsSize: 1,350 square feetYears lived in: 13 years — rented Apartment Therapy first introduced you to the beautiful artwork of John Guthrie in 2008. Since that time, I’ve been so drawn to John’s work that I was more than delighted when mutual friends connected us for an Apartment Therapy House Tour. I thought that if John’s home bears any resemblance to his artwork, we’d all be in for a treat.

The weather today in Boston is perfect. THIS would count as a consummate spring day — a rarity in New England. Even I might consider boat living on day like today. But for those who live year round at moorings in Boston Harbor, they bargain for a whole lot more than 60 degrees and sunny, as in 10 degrees and windy.We learned of this phenomenon in a recent Boston Globe article about year round live-aboards.

Name: Emily & NateLocation: Jamaica Plain, MassachusettsSize: 700 square feetYears lived in: 1½ years – rented As an avid fan, Emily (a graphic designer) knows her Apartment Therapy stuff. Within minutes of walking through her door, Emily tells me that she’s pretty sure that the layout of her place is exactly the same as another house tour I recently posted. And funny enough, this other tour was also home to a Nate.

Most of us struggle with the design conundrum of how to disguise or hide messy cords, particularly if you want to use a leggy piece of furniture as a desktop or electronics docking spot. One clever, affordable idea (as in $4 affordable!) comes from Michelle, whose dreamy home we’ll be featuring in a future Apartment Therapy House Tour.

Name: Chris & HeatherLocation: Acton, MassachusettsSize: 2,700 square feetYears lived in: 4 I first met Heather and Chris when they contacted me for a fresh eye to help them pull together their playful family room. The moment I entered their house I had two thoughts: This is absolutely a future Apartment Therapy House Tour, AND this woman is so talented at design, I can’t imagine how I’m going to be a value added here.

This isn’t one of the sexiest design products you’ll see on Apartment Therapy today but it could be one of the handiest, particularly as you make plans to entertain over the holidays.Maybe your space is small enough that day to day you’re limited to a small, cafe size table without leafs. Or maybe you don’t even have a table set up on a daily basis, but you stow a card table for when you have to use a table.

Not long ago, we blogged about using IKEA kitchen cabinets for a DIY storage bench in our kitchen. We just spotted a kindred idea in the November issue of Better Homes & Gardens. Textile designer Bonnee Sharp appears to have used an IKEA Lack shelf with IKEA legs to make a storage bench. The dimensions of the IKEA Lack shelf unit makes it so that legs are necessary. You could also use an IKEA Expedit shelf without legs since it has a wider trunk.

Let’s face it, the IKEA Poang chair is ubiquitous for a reason. It’s passably attractive, reasonably comfortable and a decent price. While IKEA offers a good range of cushion covers, Bemz now offers 123 (!

Name: Amy Location: Jamaica Plain, MassachusettsYears lived in: Rented for 2 years The timing of this house tour, in concert with Apartment Therapy’s September Art, Craft, and Collections Month, is fitting — and a great segue into October’s Color theme and Room for Color contest! Walking into Amy’s first floor, one bedroom apartment is a delightful experience. The colorful walls and bunches of large and small collections make it impossible to feel gloomy here.

While researching replacement shower rods for our clawfoot bathtub we spotted this peculiar shower curtain system. It doesn’t exactly appeal to us but there is something intriguing nonetheless…It could just be that we like to see things done a little differently because it inspires us to build off of an idea and apply the concepts to an alternate situation. We spotted this unusual shower curtain set-up on a personal blog called Chronically Uncool.

No matter how hard I try, I don’t like to cook. So, in hopes of luring myself into the kitchen, I’ve created the atmosphere to feel more like an extension of my living space than a kitchen. In that spirit, I wanted a place to lounge by the kitchen window — the one that gets the most delicious winter sunlight. I’m always brainstorming ways to use off-the-shelf products for faux custom solutions for myself and my clients.

A while ago we pined for a colorful kitchen island — but didn’t want to spend a ton of money. So we decided to stack two IKEA LACK side tables to create our own kitchen island.(At the time the photos were taken, we were using the unit up against a wall so technically it wasn’t an island at that time.) We used extra strong, double-sided foam adhesive squares to attach the IKEA LACK tables together.

In response to our recent post about Alexandra Wentworth’s dyed rug profiled in Elle Decor, the mother of an Apartment Therapy reader was kind enough to send in her own step by step DIY version for us …My daughter forwarded this post (referring to the Alexandra Wentworth rug) to me because this spring I had dyed a small rug to cover some stains. It is a wool Karastan, good quality and soft to the feet, so I didn’t want to lose it in my home office area.

We’ve long resisted the temptation to get a window AC unit but we know plenty of people who haven’t. So we were interested to read about a Boston company that is renting AC units for the summer…This morning’s Daily Candy post alerted us to a company called RentAnAC. In operation since 2006, RentanAC rents window air conditioning units starting at $125/summer. The cost includes delivery, installation, and removal.

We see all surfaces for their potential to host fun, surprising designs. And why not a chain link fence as a canvas? Whether you’re trying to figure out how to disguise a chain link fence or you just see at as an opportunity for art, then you might be interested in the concept of “put-in-cups”…We spotted the photo above on Making It Lovely. The photo is from a website that sells put-in-cups.

If you’re a frequent or even periodic Ikea shopper, chances are that you’ve accrued a batch of Ikea tools, like allen keys. We just can’t stomach throwing them out, so we were pleased to see this question posted on the blog, How Can I Recycle This? Check out some of the ideas below the jump, then tell us yours!

We spotted this clever idea in the February/March issue of Readymade. The project was submitted by an Italian DIY reader and here’s what she used to make it…Sol Kawage made the chalkboard wine rack from “off-the-shelf drainage pipes enclosed in a fiberboard case, coated with chalkboard paint”.

Martha sent us an email: “Dear Apartment Therapy, How did Kyle of this post hang her curtain under the sink? I’m interested in doing the same as I’ve just moved our recycling under the sink in our kitchen…”(Note: Include a pic of your problem and your question gets posted first.

We’re big fans of daybeds but it’s not always easy to find stylish off-the-shelf daybed covers. So we were excited to learn this morning that Bemz, the Swedish company that sells reasonably priced slipcovers for many IKEA upholstered products, just added daybed covers to their line…The covers are intended for the IKEA Sultan mattress but would fit most twin mattresses (but double check your own measurements!).

This month’s issue of House Beautiful has an interesting article about the process and equipment used by paint and hardware stores to match colors. When you bring an inspiring colored object to the paint store, in hopes of having them make a paint to match that color, they’ll use something called a spectrophotometer.

This clever room divider is from Anne and Todd’s Gropius Meets Victorian House Tour in Jamaica Plain. We love the clean, graphic look of this divider which they made from…Old vinyl LPs! Initially they tried painting the records but weren’t satisfied with the results so they resorted to contact paper. We’ve seen the divider close-up and the contact paper does NOT look like contact paper – it looks really finished and polished.

A friend of ours, who lives frugally and walks lightly on the earth, decided it was time to paint his room. He didn’t have a particular color in mind which made him very open and flexible when he stumbled upon the surprisingly dense selection of mistinted paint cans at the hardware store. Mistints are paints that are unused or returned by customers because they’re not the right color match or finish.

Clearly, consumers are being encouraged to reduce their reliance on plastic shopping bags, but it’s going to be a while before they’re completely obsolete. In the meantime, perhaps you’re stockpiling a huge supply of plastic bags and the clutter is driving you crazy?….