I’m purely doing this because I got a few comments after a previous post I submitted last week. Someone wanted to see my abode after I made fun of theirs, so here it is.
Now before you start commenting about how bad something is, or the selection of some obscure piece of furniture, you should probably keep in mind a few things:
1. I move almost every 9 months, so I can’t really buy ‘place’ specific furniture. I’ve worked at HOK for 3 years, and lived in 4, going to be 5 different places. I generally have to justify buying something, especially if it might not fit in the next place.
2. Rental Agreements state: no painting, no hanging, and not changing a thing. This puts a lot of limitations on what you can and cannot do to a unit. I’ve found from the various apartments I’ve lived in that if you damage or paint one wall in the unit, the Landlord doesn’t seem to mind if everything else is left untouched.
3. Because of 1 and 2, it doesn’t make much sense for me to buy anything over one hundred dollars. Especially when it will probably end up in the garbage or in a closet somewhere.
4. My pay and situation has changed significantly over the years. What may seem like a bargain buy a few years ago might not be my first choice if I had to do it all over again.
5. I’ve tried to keep the decor flexible enough to be able to replace or change with the size of apartment, and my tastes.
(6. Roommates. Everyone wants a sense of entitlement to their surroundings. So it’s generally a compromise of what gets used.)
Would I change anything? Absolutely. Am I happy with how my living room looks? Not exactly. My dream place would have exposed concrete floors and ceiling, 12-foot ceilings with floor-to-ceiling glass walls, and an industrial loft feel to it. But that’s probably not going to happen for quite a while.
Not knowing where I’m going to be living in 3 months has kind of made me react, rather than digress. It actually is enjoyable trying to redecorate a space with what you already own. Take for example the ottomans/coffee table; I sometimes will use those as the table chairs in a smaller apartment. The IKEA chairs I am using right now can be taken apart. I also frame fabric, because it’s cheaper to buy a smaller canvas frame than to replace a painting/portrait.
My biggest regret, though, is buying the matching chair to my couch. That thing is an issue at every place. It’s either too big or is at an odd angle to the TV. I’ve had it for 2 years, and I can’t remember the last time someone even sat on it. I wish I could sell it and buy something smaller. I’m not a big fan of buying matching sets of anything, so I don’t know why I even bought it.
But I think I live in a completely different situation then most. Most of those TV shows describe renovations for the purpose of either selling, or staying for an extended period of time. I’ve never seen one episode of any of them describing how to live a transitional lifestyle, from apartment to apartment, while still making it feel like home.
(Hopefully someone else would like to send me two pictures of their space with a description of what they did, or wish they did. Just so I’m not the only one showing pictures of my living room.)
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