Small Apartments
May. 2nd, 2007 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebThe third annual smallest, coolest apartment contest is on. I'm again enjoying reading the entries.
Last year I remember wondering where everyone was putting their stuff. This year I'm remembering that I have my own smallish, coolish apartment story: my first apartment I had by myself. I was maybe thirty, and I only had it to myself for a few months before my sister moved in. It was 670 square feet, which I thought was huge at the time, but it's only 20 square feet larger than the maximum allowed for this contest.
I had so much room and so little stuff that the first thing I did was have a pillow fight party.
I have pictures of my living room/dining room area at the time. The dining room had a pale patterned wallpaper on one wall. It had a table and three chairs which I had traded for. I got rid of a small table with rusted chrome, which was the right size for the other person. And I received a larger wooden table with black spots on it. I did a horrible job sanding it (you can still see the gouges) and then re-stained it and polyurethaned it. I recovered the chairs in a pale pink/tan/cream paisley fabric, and used the same fabric to make a tablecloth. On the table were also some decorative salt and pepper shakers. That's it! I don't even see a picture on the wall.
I remember thinking at the time that it was so matchy-matchy that it was kind of creepy! Like a magazine!
The living room was split into two areas. One area was the music area. I had an all-in-one stereo system (radio, turn table, cassette tape player, and yes, laughable even back then, an eight-track player). This was on a stand which had a shelf underneath large enough to hold records, and I only had about 20 records, so there was also room for four cases of cassette tapes.
The speakers were covered with a hot pink and purple paisley like pattern, which was more subtle than it sounds. One was upright to the right of the stereo with a candle and a small peace lily on it. The other was sideways on the left side with my pink poodle head mug, another plant, and a table lamp. Over this lovely ensemble was a Monet print, one of the lily pad pond ones.
In the corner to the right my guitar was leaning, inside its protective black cloth case. Hanging above it was a mobile with bright blue cutouts of seahorses. On the wall to the right was a small print of a watercolor painting of a cliff dwelling eroding down the mountainside in the rain.
On the other side was the conversation area. On the far wall was a deacon's bench made by my mom and uncle, bracketed with matching cheapo fiberboard two-shelf end tables. On the end tables were matching lamps made of wood with little candle-flame bulbs inside the base. Plus there are a couple of knickknacks on each end table. On the bottom shelf of one was an ice cream maker. On the other, my stuffed dog and my bowling pig (stuffed pig).
On the adjacent wall was a coffee table made by my old boyfriend the carpenter which I got when he moved away, disguised as a bench. Next to that, a rotating floor fan. Across from the deacon's bench was a sling patio chair that could lean back and rock. On the floor, tying it together, was a brightly colored striped Mexican blanket.
There were also two pictures and that's it. No stuff! I once had no stuff, too!
If these pictures were an entry in the smallest coolest apartment contest, I would not have done well. Even if I told them the white walls and grey carpeting was beyond my control because it is not part of the local culture for renters to do any kind of painting or renovating. At least I wouldn't have gotten any nasty comments about clutter. Perhaps the comments would have looked something like this:
"You need something big. Anything at all. This looks like a little elfin house. The art needs to be bigger and hung lower on the walls."
"Is this the house of a twelve-year-old? Because it looks a twelve-year-old playing house, using stuff she found in the attic."
"Everything in here is hard except the floor. It looks very uncomfortable, like there's no place to relax except lying on the floor. [So true. This is where we mostly sat.] Get a couch, already! And those records are an eyesore. You should hide them with a curtain behind the glass door. And blinds on windows? That is incredibly ugly. You should hang drapes immediately. Ceiling to floor drapes in one of the rich colors in your rug, no more pink."
"I don't know where you put your stuff. It must all be packed in the bedroom." [Surely. I had books! Clothes! But also: two closets!]
"Most of your stuff clearly came from thrift stores. You need to get rid of it and start over. Especially get rid of that ugly floor fan. And open up your blinds to let in more of that lovely light." [That would be from someone from New York or some other cold place talking.]
Then my sister moved in and we covered every wall and even a door. (The bathroom had two doors. I hate that. So we disguised one as a wall with a make-up cart on one side and a cassette tape holder on the other.)
**
Work was better today. I really, seriously finally got to start digging into the backlog of fun work. There's a computer job people have been talking about fixing and letting me run myself, and I did so for the first time this month and it worked.
There was no peep at all of the scandal in the paper today--it's the time of year when the student newspaper starts filling with good-bye stories.
Last year I remember wondering where everyone was putting their stuff. This year I'm remembering that I have my own smallish, coolish apartment story: my first apartment I had by myself. I was maybe thirty, and I only had it to myself for a few months before my sister moved in. It was 670 square feet, which I thought was huge at the time, but it's only 20 square feet larger than the maximum allowed for this contest.
I had so much room and so little stuff that the first thing I did was have a pillow fight party.
I have pictures of my living room/dining room area at the time. The dining room had a pale patterned wallpaper on one wall. It had a table and three chairs which I had traded for. I got rid of a small table with rusted chrome, which was the right size for the other person. And I received a larger wooden table with black spots on it. I did a horrible job sanding it (you can still see the gouges) and then re-stained it and polyurethaned it. I recovered the chairs in a pale pink/tan/cream paisley fabric, and used the same fabric to make a tablecloth. On the table were also some decorative salt and pepper shakers. That's it! I don't even see a picture on the wall.
I remember thinking at the time that it was so matchy-matchy that it was kind of creepy! Like a magazine!
The living room was split into two areas. One area was the music area. I had an all-in-one stereo system (radio, turn table, cassette tape player, and yes, laughable even back then, an eight-track player). This was on a stand which had a shelf underneath large enough to hold records, and I only had about 20 records, so there was also room for four cases of cassette tapes.
The speakers were covered with a hot pink and purple paisley like pattern, which was more subtle than it sounds. One was upright to the right of the stereo with a candle and a small peace lily on it. The other was sideways on the left side with my pink poodle head mug, another plant, and a table lamp. Over this lovely ensemble was a Monet print, one of the lily pad pond ones.
In the corner to the right my guitar was leaning, inside its protective black cloth case. Hanging above it was a mobile with bright blue cutouts of seahorses. On the wall to the right was a small print of a watercolor painting of a cliff dwelling eroding down the mountainside in the rain.
On the other side was the conversation area. On the far wall was a deacon's bench made by my mom and uncle, bracketed with matching cheapo fiberboard two-shelf end tables. On the end tables were matching lamps made of wood with little candle-flame bulbs inside the base. Plus there are a couple of knickknacks on each end table. On the bottom shelf of one was an ice cream maker. On the other, my stuffed dog and my bowling pig (stuffed pig).
On the adjacent wall was a coffee table made by my old boyfriend the carpenter which I got when he moved away, disguised as a bench. Next to that, a rotating floor fan. Across from the deacon's bench was a sling patio chair that could lean back and rock. On the floor, tying it together, was a brightly colored striped Mexican blanket.
There were also two pictures and that's it. No stuff! I once had no stuff, too!
If these pictures were an entry in the smallest coolest apartment contest, I would not have done well. Even if I told them the white walls and grey carpeting was beyond my control because it is not part of the local culture for renters to do any kind of painting or renovating. At least I wouldn't have gotten any nasty comments about clutter. Perhaps the comments would have looked something like this:
"You need something big. Anything at all. This looks like a little elfin house. The art needs to be bigger and hung lower on the walls."
"Is this the house of a twelve-year-old? Because it looks a twelve-year-old playing house, using stuff she found in the attic."
"Everything in here is hard except the floor. It looks very uncomfortable, like there's no place to relax except lying on the floor. [So true. This is where we mostly sat.] Get a couch, already! And those records are an eyesore. You should hide them with a curtain behind the glass door. And blinds on windows? That is incredibly ugly. You should hang drapes immediately. Ceiling to floor drapes in one of the rich colors in your rug, no more pink."
"I don't know where you put your stuff. It must all be packed in the bedroom." [Surely. I had books! Clothes! But also: two closets!]
"Most of your stuff clearly came from thrift stores. You need to get rid of it and start over. Especially get rid of that ugly floor fan. And open up your blinds to let in more of that lovely light." [That would be from someone from New York or some other cold place talking.]
Then my sister moved in and we covered every wall and even a door. (The bathroom had two doors. I hate that. So we disguised one as a wall with a make-up cart on one side and a cassette tape holder on the other.)
**
Work was better today. I really, seriously finally got to start digging into the backlog of fun work. There's a computer job people have been talking about fixing and letting me run myself, and I did so for the first time this month and it worked.
There was no peep at all of the scandal in the paper today--it's the time of year when the student newspaper starts filling with good-bye stories.