the apartment–after

**This post brought to you by the help of many friends, the beauty of hand-me-downs, IKEA, and Boomerang Paint.**

Renovation:  Two or three Russians (hired by our landlord who is Russian himself) ripped out a closet in our office that was jutting into our bathroom.  Then they re-did the floors and walls of the bathroom, so we have more space.  It makes a lot more sense this way, though meant we had one closet to share, one storage closet in the dining room, and a wardrobe.  Hence the knotty-pine things in the dining room.  I hated them, but at least they blend it alright.

Paint:  Start with Yellow.  Enter Shore onto the scene… a mocha-grey combo that looks pretty bizarre when the first coat goes up, but with a second layer, looks soothing and modern.  Shore went up in the living room, office, in the main hallway, entry, and three of our four bedroom walls.  I wanted a dramatic dining room, so we bought premium (non-recycled) paint in chocolate brown.  This is not Hershey’s chocolate color, though… this is Lindt 85%, baby.  It actually turned out darker than I’d wished, but looks quite dramatic. We also created an accent wall in our bedroom with the Lindt Chocolate paint.  (I have no idea what the color is actually called–it’s Glidden anyway). In the bathroom, spare room–Pete’s studio, and kitchen, enter Moss (Boomerang recycled).  It’s a muted cool, well, mossy green.  It also looks quite sharp with the bright white trim.   We had lots and lots of help with painting.  It was amazing.

Furniture:  We came with very little into this big apartment.  We were given so much of what we have–washer, dryer, fridge, kitchen table and chairs, couch, loveseat (though I recovered both–from an ugly orange tweed to neutral stripe and from dusty black to ivory with chocolate trim), and the two knotty-pine-looking storage pieces that are side-by-side in the dining room, as well as a storage wardrobe in the office that isn’t pictured.  We got a major discount on the bed–sold to us from some friends, Pete’s desk was a give-away from his department, and the funky 50’s asian-inspired tv-cabinet-now sideboard was given to us by his supervisor, who was moving.  Everything else we either had already or we got on our IKEA runs, thanks to parental generosity and also some wedding gifts!  My favorite piece is most certainly the Expedit–the four-by-four cubical bookshelf in between our living room and office.  I had visions of some cool divider, but didn’t realize just how well this one would work.  It’s functional and beautiful and allows light to filter in from the living room into the office.  Pete ingeniously raised it up on a board and cement blocks, and stabilized it so it doesn’t topple.  

Decor:  I definitely have a modern design aesthetic.  I like clean lines–the living room has squares repeated all over the place.  Our dining room has a ‘family wall’–executed again by my awesome husband.  Our friends gave us some art and I can’t wait to hang up more photography around.  It’s just a matter of time and finding the right frames.  The two white lamps on that sideboard were found on the street–someone just dumped them on the curb.  I dumped their sea-green shades and bought some better-scaled shades from our local discount store.  I’ll be really happy when we figure out how to plug them in.  The only outlet in the dining room doesn’t work.  

Basically, we love our place and find it to be very comfortable and inviting.  We can’t wait to get some chairs for the dining room (right now the kitchen ones double), and then the place will feel ‘complete’.  

Thanks for bearing with the long post and the long wait for pictures. I apologize for the strange order of the photos.  I also apologize for a bit of clutter around.  I didn’t feel like cleaning it all up.  

http://s20.photobucket.com/albums/b248/mariavvisa/decorated%20apartment/