Sonia & Jason’s Home Where “Every Nook has its Purpose”

Name: Sonia & Jason
Location: Asbury Park, New Jersey

We are Jason and Sonia. Jason is a graphic designer and writer, Sonia is a bartender at the local German biergarten and together we are the owners of Nomad, a travel inspired company that rents out vintage travel trailers and European style canvas tents for parties, weddings, etc. We also having a clothing line that we sell at Market at Fifth Avenue, a collective of local and national makers on the boardwalk.

Our apartment is roughly 700 square feet and is located in the heart of downtown Asbury Park. Our beloved city by the sea is in the midst of an amazing revival, with the downtown and oceanfront seeing major creative change over the past 10 years or so. Travel and Leisure magazine just picked us as one of the top destinations in 2016.

Directly across the street we can see The Showroom art house cinema from our couch and Parlor Gallery, a low brow art gallery. Just steps away is Taka Japanese restaurant, Talula’s farm to table pizza shop and bar and Cardinal, another farm to table breakfast and lunch spot. These are just a few of the gems that make up our neighborhood. We also both work within a block of our home and are right across the street from the train station which takes us to New York (Sonia recently moved down from Brooklyn so we always love to go back from time to time) when we need to get away.

The apartment we live in is on the small side so we needed to find ways to live big in a tiny package. We accomplished this by maximizing all the space without making it feel cramped. Every nook has its purpose.

We always love the expressions we see on friends faces when they first visit. “This should be in a magazine,” is what we always hear, so here we are submitting to our favorite home website where we are constantly finding inspiration.

Inspiration comes from all around. Living in a city filled with lots of creative energy and like-minded creative types is always a plus. Our style is a mix of flea market finds, items we’ve picked up while traveling (we recently spent time in Iceland, Mexico and Europe —Sonia is from Poland) and new items we find along the way. We love supporting small makers from around the U.S.

To give ourselves the feel of a separate bedroom in a studio space, we put three bookshelves together (the shelves were salvaged from a used bookstore across the street that was going out of business) and created a more private bedroom space. This is perhaps our favorite area in the apartment. We built a platform and headboard out of plywood and hung a giant painting Jason’s uncle did of the carousel on the oceanfront in Asbury. The painting was done about 20 years ago and depicts a time in the city when things were less than pleasant.

We love our home because it’s the perfect representation of who we are; cozy, warm, edgy, inviting.

Thanks, Sonia & Jason!

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