Reader Submissions

Name: Mark Location: Pleasure Point —Santa Cruz, California I am a professional surfer who is constantly traveling so I recently decided to sell my family home to find a smaller space with less overhead. I luckily found a 1959 Broadmore mobile home right around the corner from my family home! It sits in a mobile home park that I honestly never paid much attention too but drove by every day for my whole life. It was actually the cheapest place for sale within a hundred miles of my house.

Name: Anna Location: Lakeview — Chicago, Illinois I live in a small studio apartment (350 square feet) in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago. I’m actually right on the border between Lakeview and Lincoln park, which is a popular location for 20-somethings who have recently moved to the city (I’m 25) which is nice because all of my friends live a few blocks away.

Name: Chelsea Location: Nashville, Tennessee My husband Jared and I live with our cat, Albert, in a quaint neighborhood called Germantown in Nashville, TN. We live in a building that was once a canvas bag factory. Our apartment is about 1,100 square feet, including our lofted space. We chose to live in Germantown because we were moving from Boston, Massachusetts to Nashville, Tennessee and wanted to maintain a similar metropolitan, historic feel in our neighborhood and home.

Name: Edmund Location: Montreal-West, Quebec, Canada Just over two years ago, we moved out of our hip 1,000 square foot downtown Montreal loft and into our three-bedroom house in Montreal-West (a suburb just outside of the city) in order to start a family. Not working with a gigantic budget, we really expected to have to compromise in order to upgrade in size. To our surprise, we happened upon an incredibly unique house with an interesting history that we instantly fell in love with.

Name: Irwin Location: Washington, D.C. I live in The General Scott in Washington, DC. The building was built in 1941 in the Art Deco style. After renting for almost 8 years, I finally bought my condo from the owner in 2014. Kitchen renovation was completed in 2015. My unit is a junior one bedroom and is about 495 square feet.

Name: Jenn Location: Goleta, California Ten years after I fell in love with Santa Barbara, my husband and I managed to scrape together enough to buy a home in the area. However the home we could afford had been abandoned for 10 years, when we moved in there were no doorknobs, no light fixtures, and the property was covered in shoulder-high weeds.

Name: Michelle Location: Brookland — Washington, D.C. My husband and I fully gutted and renovated our home in 2014. The house was built in the 1920s and is 4 square style. We have an open concept home and every space is fully functional for our casual living lifestyle. I am inspired by Scandi, boho, mid century design. Although our bedroom is our favorite room; we especially love our DIY kitchen concrete counter tops, our master bath tile and custom built double vanity we designed.

Name: Mary Location: Atlanta, Georgia I’ve come to nickname my house the Coucou Home, a tribute to the French word for “hello” that you might say to someone you know. And that’s the thing about my little “corner of the universe”; it’s comforting and welcomes people into my world. When I moved into my house, a renovated industrial space that was once a linen factory, the first thing I tackled was where to put my massive collection of signed books.

Name: Erin Location: Tangletown — Minneapolis, Minnesota My husband, Ken, and I purchased our 1934 Tudor-style home in July 2015 and spent late summer and fall last year renovating much of the house. My background is interior design, but I’m currently a freelance writer and DIY blogger at francoisetmoi.com. Ken manages commercial construction projects, so naturally we were looking for a project to sink our teeth into with our first home.

Name: Madeleine & Kihan Location: Capitol Hill — Seattle, Washington Our two bedroom, one bath, 1100-square foot apartment is located in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood in a building built in 1903. Our neighbors and friends Becky and Andrew were recently featured on Apartment Therapy, and live 2 floors up, so we have the exact same layout—which I thought might be an interesting feature to see. Recently, the entire apartment was shot by friend and studio mate Rafael Soldi.

Name: Jennifer Location: Lincoln, Nebraska After years of searching for just the right home for our family, we were fortunate to find our 1925 craftsman that had fantastic bones and needed just a bit of love in some of the more neglected spaces. We completely updated the kitchen, bathrooms, added two full bathrooms, fully finished the 1,800 square foot basement, and added a number of built-ins throughout the house.

Name: Alison Location: Redfern — Sydney, Australia My cozy 49 square meter/ 527 square feet apartment is above a shop on one of the busiest roads in Redfern. I bought the unit in 2012, it was going cheap as the previous owners had done bad makeshift renovations, painted it an awful blue and managed to have about 6 people living in it.

Name: Sarah Location: St-Henri — Montreal, Canada We wanted to prove that two people can easily live in a 485 square feet space, so we bought a wonderful industrial open loft located in St-Henri neighborhood, Montreal. Our space used to be a cigarette factory in the early 1900s and it was transformed into apartments a few years ago.

Name: Isabel Location: Mexico City, Mexico I invite you to enter the house of a diplomat! This isn’t the house of Madeleine Albright or a high-brow diplomat, but rather the house of mid-level Foreign Service Officer. Our lives are unique – every three years we move to a different country, into houses we don’t choose. We normally have a weight limit and like other renters, have limits on what we can do to a home. These are photos of our current house in Mexico City.

Name: Kristen Location: Nob Hill — Portland, Oregon Located in a cute neighborhood in Northwest Portland’s trendy and walkable Nob Hill, my 1100-square-foot condo is a modern space inspired by my passion for graphic design. As an art director and graphic designer for Nike, I am constantly inspired by my travels around the world, and have peppered my living space with items collected along my journey.

Name: Mara Location: Evanston, Illinois I bought my condo in June 2014. I chose Evanston because I wanted to be close to the lake, close to Chicago, and love the character of the older brick buildings. This is my first non-college living space that I can decorate and experiment with completely on my own. I’ve done a lot of updates and made some changes from paint to decor and documented everything on my blog. My style is a mix of mid-century modern and modern glam.

Name: Emily & Erica Location: Armory District — Providence, Rhode Island Our home is a 1850s gothic revival (circa 1900) in the armory district on the west side of Providence, Rhode Island—an area we love with lots of historic architecture and great food options within walking distance. We live here with our two terrible-adorable dogs, Kevin & Sally.

Name: Susanna-Cole Location: Baltimore, Maryland I was nineteen, in a dead-end job, daydreaming at a desk dusk to midnight – of seeing the world, instead of fluorescent strips of yellowed, artificial light tattooed under my eyelids, as I drifted to sleep.

Name: Nicole Location: East Downtown — Albuquerque, New Mexico Located in the former Main Hall of the historic 1914 built Albuquerque High School, this loft apartment occupies a former administration room. As a designer, the architecture, detail and character of the campus drew me in, and the space itself provides a perfect canvas for creativity. Three things that inspire me are light, life, and color.

Name: Molly Location: Austin, Texas My apartment is a tiny (500 square foot) one bedroom in the heart of my favorite neighborhood in Austin. I made location my priority during my apartment search, so I sacrificed a few things like size and amenities. This apartment has been a true testament to the idea that you can make any space a home with the right furnishings, art, and embarrassing amount of tchotchkes. My home is a happy place for me.

Name: Ashlee Location: Roscoe Village — Chicago, Illinois I want to submit my apartment because I’m freaking obsessed with it. It’s a 2-bed unit in an old turn-of-the-century smokehouse in Roscoe Village. My landlord lives in the front unit and is the former drummer for 90’s power pop band, Material Issue, and he’s always plodding around doing cool things to the building.

Name: Holly & Ryan Location: Peterborough — Ontario, Canada With the support of my husband Ryan, we are raising our two daughters and German Shepherd Dublin in a 1300 square feet bungalow. I grew up in Peterborough and two years ago we moved back to be closer to our families. I am an artist and work from my studio located in our basement. My husband commutes to Toronto and works from home part-time. When we saw this house we knew it was the one for us.

Name: Caryn Location: Santa Cruz, California In 2005, my husband and I bought a very small 1000 square foot house in Santa Cruz, California to raise our growing family. Proximity to the ocean and a great elementary school trumped our desire for square footage! Our little Santa Cruz bungalow had no unique architecture, so I viewed it as a blank canvas.