This Family of 5 Is Absolutely Thriving in an Extremely Organized 750 Square Feet

“When Peterson first suggested moving into his childhood apartment, I was hesitant — honestly it was a cockroach-ridden bachelor pad that hadn’t been maintained in years,” Sarah begins.

“But being rent-controlled in Manhattan, paying less than $1,000 for a pre-war three-bedroom was too good to pass up.” And before Sarah moved in nine years ago, Peterson was able to negotiate with the landlord and get permission to renovate and update the kitchen and bathroom.

“We’ve transformed every inch of our 750-square-foot space as our family has grown from newlyweds to a family of five,” writes Sarah, who describes the home before she moved in as “peeling tiles, suspicious smells, claustrophobic.”

After they first got married and moved in together, the couple renovated their bedroom first because they wanted “one nice room — an oasis of sorts — when we got home from our wedding. The rest of the apartment was a construction zone, and it was definitely stressful at times to live like that for a while!”

As you can imagine, renovating a home while living in it isn’t easy, but Sarah says they made it work by using one room as a storage space while updating another room. In short, they made it work.

“We rented tools from The Home Depot (like a floor sander) or borrowed from our super. I distinctly remember both of us crouched on the living room floor (a giant empty room at the time), each precariously holding an end of a glass-paned door as we ran it through a portable table saw (about 12” off the ground),” Sarah describes. “We knew the whole thing was absolutely crazy, yet we’re so glad we did it.”

• All white paint — Whatever white wall paint the super could give us
• Kitchen busy board + kids’ room perimeter stripe — All BEHR colors (Egg Cream, Pineapple Crush, and Chocolate Froth)

• Shoe cabinets — IKEA
• Storage bench — DIY (blog post)
• Sinnerlig lamp — IKEA
• Tjusig hangers — IKEA
• Round mirror — IKEA (discontinued)
• Wooden wall hooks — IKEA (discontinued)
• Folding metal wall hooks — IKEA (discontinued)

• Canvases — DIY
• Drawing wall — IKEA hack with Flisat shelf (discontinued) and  magnetic poster hangers
• Tanum rug — DIY IKEA hack (I sewed three runners together to get a long 17’ rug)
• Larbro mirrors — IKEA

• Kivik sectional — IKEA 
• Rug — West Elm but found on FB Marketplace
• Cabinet — IKEA but found on FB Marketplace
• All glass-paned doors — Craigslist from an office building closing down (living room, bathroom, bedroom)

• Dining table and chairs — Facebook Marketplace
• High chairs — Stokke
• Phone booth — Found on the street
• Mirrored doors — The Home Depot

• Butcher block countertop — IKEA
• Bananas yellow rug — Ruggable
• Retro trash can — Amazon

• Tarva bed — IKEA (blog post with our IKEA headboard hack)
• Pax closet system — IKEA
• Vedbo chair — IKEA
• VARMBLIXT lamps — IKEA (discontinued)
• Hovet mirror — IKEA (we removed it from its frame)
• Side tables — DIY
• Floating shelves and wood slat wall — DIY (blog post)
• Wall-mounted jewelry box — DIY
• Glass jewelry organizer — Amazon
• Tjena storage boxes — IKEA
• Kuggis storage boxes — IKEA

• Triple bunks — DIY (blog post)
• PAX closet system — IKEA + DIY IKEA hack (blog post)
• Gulliver crib — IKEA
• Pikler triangle — Sprout Kids
• Pikler triangle ramp — DIY
• Balance board — DIY

• Medicine cabinet — IKEA (discontinued)

Thanks, Sarah!

This tour’s responses and photos were edited for length/size and clarity.

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