MY APARTMENT, LET ME SHOW YOU IT

[telophase]

Went by the apartment complex today and put down the deposit. They had three apartments they were willing to hold 'til June, and I picked one at the far end of the complex (less traffic), that was a corner unit (fewer neighbors). And it appears to have a door that reads EXIT right next to it, instead of another apartment, so I may actually have no neighbors on either side. And before you say "But what about traffic up and down those stairs?" - there is no parking on the side of the building the stairs go to, only entrances to garages. There shouldn't be any regular traffic there.

Being a corner unit, there are windows on two sides of my living room, and I have an uninspiring view of a bunch of leafless trees and a warehouse some distance away. In the spring and summer, however, the warehouse should be hidden from view.

I took a few photos, and a few measurements, and spent some time attempting to make the floorplan make sense according to the few measurements I took. I was not especially successful, but the general idea is there, and it's close enough to play Let's Design telophase's Apartment!



Kitchen. The flash makes it look lighter than it really is. XD The two cabinets on the left are the pantry.



And there's a place to put your trash can built in!



Living room. You see the French doors. The one on the left does not open.



The two windows on the left living room wall.



Taken while standing in the kitchen - this is the dining area that will become my studio area. (If I call it my office, everyone assumes I have one tiny desk. I THINK NOT.)



The window wall of the bedroom. Note the decidedly odd window placement.



Bathroom. The GINORMOUS tub is off to the right.



The closet, and the strange little niche in it. That's where the electric cat box is going to go, as there's an outlet in there. There's another couple of shelves and hanging bars to the right.




And now my redone floorplan that's somewhere in the vicinity of scale. I'm not sure on the placement of the bedroom door, but I KNOW that measurement is 60". Hrm.



As you can tell from all the furniture and the rules, it's time to play Let's Design telophase's Apartment! You can download a zipped Photoshop file with each piece of furniture on its own layer by clicking here.

Yes there is WAY too much furniture for this apartment. I am RUTHLESSLY downsizing! And it REALLY doesn't help that the older I get, the more it becomes apparent that my personal aesthetic, despite my distressing packrat tendencies, is CLEAN ASIAN-INSPIRED MODERN. My ideal bedroom? Contains my bed, and nothing else. My ideal living room? Contains two loveseats facing each other across a hewn-stone or hewn-wood coffee table and nothing else. Obviously, I am not going to quite achieve that here.

But since I have amazing loads of storage space, feel free to toss everything into storage! Get rid of pieces of furniture and suggest new ones! (Link to them, if you suggest them.) Do whatever! Have fun with it!

ETA: Here's a small zip file with two more pieces of furniture: a scanner cart and a printer cart. I have these 2 TV carts that I've been using to hold art paper and I just realized that the printer and the scanner will fit on them. AND that one of them will fit under the desk while I'm at the desk (I've got it under there now) with either the printer or the scanner on top of it, so it can be out of the way when it's not being used. The shelf of the cart can be used to hold my endless supply of large-format printer paper.

Comments

oohhhh, shiny!

[riofriotex.livejournal.com]

Clean and bright! Nice!

However, a designer I am not.

Despite the clean modern Asian necessities, the TV and bike are givens, though, right? And the desk in the studio?

Re: oohhhh, shiny!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yup, bike and TV are givens. Eventually I'll save up and buy a flat-panel TV so I can shut it up in some sort of cabinet when it's not on, but for now I have my big, chunky one sitting on its cart. :)

The desk in the studio, too - it's got my computers and monitors on it. I have to have either the big or the short chest of drawers nearby, also - my large-format printer and enormous scanner are necessary to the setup. Although I currently have two simple TV carts that hold paper that I was going to put in the niche downstairs for storing art supplies. I know one will fit under the desk when I'm at the desk, so maybe either the printer or the scanner can sit on one of those and be hidden under the desk when not in use. I think I may just do that.

ETA: Made images for them and added them to the post. XD

[gweniveeve.livejournal.com]

Ooh, looks nice!

[estara.livejournal.com]

Re the blocked bathroom door: you're willing to let your guests always walk through your bedroom to get to the bathroom? You're tougher than me!

Otherwise: cool that you know your dimensions, I sort of decided on the move where most of my bookshelves would go (and I messed up with the bedroom wardrobe, so I'll have to get some people to come in and move it a bit - the wall corner next to it has some mold and I can't reach it as it is now).

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I almost never have guests, and when I do it's usually my mother or Himself, who, if they don't like the state of my bedroom, can stuff it. :D Anyone else, I'll make time to clean it up. XD (Which, since my ideal bedroom is the bed and nothing else, shouldn't take too long.)

[chomiji]

(Didn't see this 'cause busy weekend ... .)

I truly admire your ability to even consider Throwing Things Out. We need to deep-six a whole lotta stuff because some work (hah! tons of work ...) needs doing on our house.

I guess the management in this complex struck you as nice and responsive? Given your previous experiences, I would say that's a priority.

It does look like you have lots of natural light, but I'm not sure how much will reach your studio area. Do you like the neutral color scheme? Will they let you paint, if you don't?

Somehow, regardless of where you position the cat, I suspect you'll find her somewhere else when you get back ... .

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I am so into Getting Rid of Crap right now, I amaze myself. :D The management seems friendly, and it's a new complex so they've got good people in right now and haven't rotated them out for others yet. XD The person I talked to lives in the complex herself.

The studio doesn't get a lot of natural light, but that doesn't bother me that much since I do most of my computer art on the computer at night. :) Real media I tend to do on my lap while sitting on the couch. I like the neutral color scheme. I dunno if they'll let me paint, but if they do, I'd just want a darker version of the neutral they've got on the walls now.

Yeah, the cat will find her own spot. XD

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

That is a nice-looking kitchen!

The tiny little window in the bedroom allows you to have a natural-light window over the bed or a bureau. You could do something interesting with a bureau there---get two mirrors the same size as the window and hang one to either side. With a bed, I'd put two pieces of art on either side---symmetrically sized themselves but not the same dimensions as the window.

The unopenable "door" means you can push a piece of furniture against it for parties or everyday and move it out for the converse! That is *very* good use of space; you won't be thinking that if the stupid *** weren't there, you could open the doors.

How finished is the storage area by the garage? It seems to be a very common way to lay out apartments, and friends of mine who've had units like yours have converted the "storage" by the garage into office, studio, or exercise spaces. If you don't have much to store (i e will fit on shelves in garage) and the space isn't repellent, it could be a bonus room.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The storage area isn't finished; it's basically an extension of the garage. Although if I have to do things like, say, stain my bedframe to the dark mahogany or espresso color I want, I just realized I now have A GARAGE in which to do it! Wheeeee!

Hmmmmmm *ponders mirror/art idea for that window*

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

You could have a frame shop make a frame (the more elaborate the better) to hang around the window, also, instead of any other window treatment like a fancy shade. Given your aesthetic preferences, (possibly strong-colored, don't miss an opportunity to inject personality into the neutrals you're working with) Roman shades might be good: they can have insulated backs (to keep cool in) and can be made up quickly in a huge range of fabrics.

It sounds like the storage area is the book room. How many of your shelves will it hold?

Which are the nicest, best, most attractive shelves you have, for your living space?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I do like the look of Roman shades...

I think the storage area will hold most of my shelves. I'm thinking about putting the four short bookshelves around the kitchen bar-thing there: one will fit on the hall side, and three on the living-room side, or all four on the living-room side. I can keep my cookbooks and whatever I'm currently reading/have checked out of the library there. The bookshelves labeled New Bookcases are the nicest - three of them, they match, the shelves are straight. The plainly-labeled Bookcases (2 of them) are nice and dark, but way too deep for real book-storage use, since there's so much wasted space, and the fake-wood covering is starting to peel off one of them. the other 4 bookcases are plan and the shelves bend a bit under the weight of the books, so they're an obvious candidate for the downstairs book room. :)

And I realized that the short chest of drawers is the same depth as the TV cart, and once I get home I'll measure and see if it's possible to stack the DVD player/TiVo/cable box/PS2/device switcher thingamabob next to the TV on top of it (they won't fit on top of the TV). If so, I think I'd rather use that as a TV stand as it's a nice dark fake wood and looks nicer than my current TV stand. (Labeled "cart" but as one wheel broke unfixably, I pried the other 3 off and turned it into a stand.)

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

If the shelves on the two fake-wood-covered, worn bookcases are deep enough to hold two layers of books, you can use a riser in the rear to double-shelve. Particularly good trick with paperbacks.

IF the new bookcases are the right height, running them along the wall under the windows in the LR might look nice. You can set furniture in front of them, pulled out far enough that you can still get back to the bookshelves. That gives you a long continuous surface to attract piles of clutter display things.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The windows, unfortunately, go down to about 18" from the floor. Low enough that not much fits under them, high enough that the cat will need some sort of surface placed in front of them to sit on and look out.

I've got risers for the bookcases, and used to display my manga on them. They're still huge. Oh wait - I forgot had pictures up. In this montaged shot (http://www.magatsu.net/pic/color-sort-big.jpg), the two on the far right are the fake-wood-covered ones. They look like they're not too big only because I have the books pulled forward. The two bookcases flanking the TV are the crummy ones with the bent shelves (there are two others elsewhere in the apt). The one on the left is 2/3 of the trio I'm calling the new bookshelves, and the shelves don't bend that much in RL - that's a trick of parallax or something in the photo.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

You could also use the bookshelves to create a barrier between the hallway and the studio. On the non-book side, staple a piece of fabric with a pattern you like. Personally I would prefer that, as it would define the studio space as separate from the rest of the apartment.

If you go with my arrangement or a variant, do place piece of cardboard or wood over the gap created by the meeting of two bookcases. Cats love jumping into bookcase chasms. Another possibility is to run them together with a little overlap area; this is less inconvenient than you'd think.

Placement of the bed depends a lot on orientation of the bedroom. Where is east?

Unless you like the coat rack a lot, or it's an antique piece, consider having a row of attractive, stylish coat hooks or pegs at your entryway instead.

Chuck the end table if it's not an attractive object in and of itself; nice case goods are easy to find and good ones worth having. Everything you have in a small apartment, if you are minimizing furniture, should be good.

[ninjoo.livejournal.com]

Looks really wonderful. Good size, too. Not so large that you drown in the emptiness, nor to get instantly choked by all the stuff (once you've downsized :D). Congrats. Am happy for you.

[cyancat.livejournal.com]

Let's Design!

I tried working out the furniture scheme, just because I loved doing that in school years ago. Moving furniture around is so much fun, even in reality!

Tried to put everything that you said into context along with flowing hallways and open areas.
If you wouldn't want the bookcase in the living room, I also thought that the coffee table in that spot would work just as good.

(http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b32/cyancat/?action=view&current=New-Apartment.jpg)

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

Looks great!