Apartment Redesign

I told you guys I have been working on some big projects and I wasn't lying! My friends Patrik and Francine live in a little studio apartment that was in desperate need of some reorganization and furniture upgrades. They had seen the work I had done for the blog and asked if I would be interested in helping out. A real life interior design project? Yes please!

Supplies:

A truck

Power tools

Lumber

Paint

Stain

Brushes

Wood glue

Wood putty

Screws

So here is a look at what the apartment looked like a couple months ago. The clothes armoire took center stage on the most prominent wall, along with a small shoe rack and some storage bins.

The couch was essentially unusable and sagging in the middle(as covered by the pillows). 

The windows were blocked off by the tv, a desk, a catch-all table and other odds and ends. The bookshelf to the left also took up valuable floor space. 

So with all these things in mind, I drew up a few quick sketches for a new desk, a shoe rack and some wall-mounted bookshelves. 

With the sketches and a list of materials in hand, we headed to Home Depot and stocked up. 

Patrik got to work drilling the holes for the shoe rack. We just used a couple 2x6 boards with 1/2" wooden dowels as the shelves. 

Once the shoe rack was put together, I sanded down all the dowels so they were flush with the boards, filled in any imperfections with wood putty and let dry. 

Meanwhile, Patrik started drilling the holes for the shelves on the desk - we made a row of holes on each section so that the shelf height can be adjusted as needed. Also, you probably want to prop up whatever you are drilling onto something else so that you don't accidentally drill holes into your floor. But if you do end up drilling through, rub a little olive oil(or any available oil) into the holes and no one will ever notice!

Here is the desk all put together. Afterwards we decided that the desk would look better with some feet on it, so we just picked some up at Lowes and screwed them onto the bottom. 

Their pans were taking up a lot of counter space so we screwed some hooks to the underside of the shelves in the kitchen to hang them from. 

Here is the shoe rack all painted. We had decided to paint one of the walls an accent color so the shoe rack corresponds with that. 

The desk got a coat of stain to finish it off and the bookshelves were stained as well.

Here is the accent wall!

The bookshelves all in place above their bed - looks like Patrik and Francine can now expand their library!

We moved the armoire over to the wall where the couch was and put the shoe rack conveniently by the door. 

The wall sconces were a faded brassy color so we gave them a facelift with a coat of sleek black paint and crisp new white shades.

The tv was mounted on the accent wall with the desk below. This allowed them to watch tv both from their new couch and from their bed. 

We also found some organizers at Ikea that we mounted on the wall behind the computer to collect little office odds and ends - pens, pencils, mail etc.

I wish I had gotten a better picture of this. But we picked up a nice fairly new couch from a craigslist ad and almost everything is gone from in front of their windows. The last thing to do is frame and hang some artwork above the couch! We did all of these projects in a total of four full days, just spread it out over the course of about a month and a half. The total cost, including the couch, came to just around $500 - not too shabby for a couch, desk, shoe rack, bookshelves, tv mounting bracket and a fresh coat of paint on the accent wall! The apartment is so much more efficient now and really feels spacious. 

--Heather