My First Venture into Interior Design: My New Apartment

I absolutely love my new place! I've been here for a couple weeks (just got pictures up, woops...) and it's amazing! One of the exciting things about it is that it definitely doesn't just look like a bunch of college kids live here, and that's mostly due to my fun times this summer... drawing and browsing the internet and shopping at Ikea. The size of the apartment helps as well.... one advantage to going to school in the middle of nowhere is that space isn't exactly at a premium. (The private half bath and walk in closet I get also helps.)

My room in particular is very satisfying! I put the most effort into it, if only because it didn't require coordination with all my roommates (and I could spend as much money as I wanted on things without having to pitch it to them first.) I'm so happy with the result. The walls and carpet are white (well the carpet is actually kind of a tan, it turns out, but still) So I wanted to go with a black and white basic color scheme with purple color accents. Basically, I love a modern design aesthetic but I didn't want the room to be too cold. I also looked for accent pieces in black and white that had a more organic feel to them. Not sure things turned out perfectly, but the result (above) was definitely great for my first realized attempt at interior design. And I could afford the whole thing on the budget of a full-time college student. Not too shabby.

The rest of the apartment turned out pretty well too. I love the dining room table we got, and it was a pretty great deal at Ikea. I pointed at it from across the room, said, "if I could get any table, I'd get that one, but I'm sure it's too expensive," and found out that it and its set of four chairs was actually quite reasonable! (picture to the left) I decided to compliment the wood tones with red, picked up a few place mats from Walmart, and got a couple posters for the wall. (A side note: I really need to get in the habit of framing things. It looks so much more finished. Unfortunately, $15 feels like a lot of money to those of us who get by on summer jobs alone.) Caffeine, wine and bread. Three things I very much like.

The kitchen is nothing too exciting, but it is pretty sizable compared to some apartment kitchens I've seen. Without the table there, it really looks too empty. It's fairly well stocked on appliances as well; we have a George Foreman grill (wish we could have a charcoal grill, but they're not allowed), a blender (for smoothies, I swear), an electric griddle (because I love it for making pancakes and bacon), and a microwave. There's also a fish tank, but it's not for storing live fish just in case I'm in the mood for some seafood. I have a cheap wine rack from Ikea sitting on one of the counters, but otherwise I'm trying to leave as much of the counters open as possible; big or not, it does not have an excess of counter space. One of the more crazy things about the apartment is that it's a four bedroom that's really just two two-bedrooms put together; this means that there are two kitchens! Makes it pretty easy to share that (right) between two people and our guests.

The living room was a challenge, design and budget wise. Since it's a double wide living room, like I said, there's a lot of room to fill up, and couches and the like are the most expensive and least easily craigslisted items we had to deal with. Somehow, though, we ended up getting everything but the lamps and the beanbag chair free! Basically, my roommate's sister's boyfriend's family was redecorating their basement and gave away two massively comfortable, basically new, decidedly not ugly couches as well as an amazing wood coffee table and side table. (It's possible our tv watching side (left) is their basement transplanted.) The other side (right) is much more loungy, more like something you'd find in a college student's place (the Van Gogh prints possibly excluded from that statement): A massive bean bag chair, a second-hand bar, and a couch that is my mother's first couch, hidden beneath a blue cover. I'd say the beanbag chair has gotten the most use, but that's probably partly because we haven't yet gotten our cable box for our tv. I did the design scheme for the living room too, but I had a lot less flexibility and a much lower budget.

So I did say this was a four bedroom place, right? What can I say about the rest of the apartment, since I've only shown you a few rooms? Well, one of my roommate's rooms is -frighteningly- pink, one pretty typical college girl -y, the other messy in the CS major way that only her computer stuff seems to have any dedicated furniture space (but she has a puzzle on her wall, and that is pretty awesome.) As for decoration of the common spaces, the other side is pretty bare... the roommate on my side did a good job of decorating her bathroom (it's a shared shower though, so I'd know...).

Anyway, looking at those pictures, I'm sure you'd agree that my room was the most notable thing, from an interior design standpoint anyway. The biggest issue was the space... too many big white walls without the money or coordination to buy big posters to match the scale of the space. The apartment on the whole still has a really nice feel to it, very homey. I tried very hard to avoid a temporary mood in the common space decorating as much as I could. In any case... Bienvenue!!