Easy apartment customization ideas

An apartment is just an empty box (or two) - it's what you put into it that makes it great or drab. Here's my list of do's and don'ts

Buy the best furniture you can afford. Go to auctions to find great pieces at reasonable prices. Check out furniture store sales in January. Decide on a color scheme and stick to it by carrying around swatches of paint samples you get at home stores. A really great leather couch or sleigh bed with good quality linens will make a room feel rich.

No crappy posters or unframed stuff taped to the walls - buy some real art and have it framed. It doesn't have to be big bucks, there are many affordable lesser known artists. Go to student shows, they will be happy to sell you their paintings. Professionally framed prints, drawings or interesting maps are also good.

Buy quality matching dishes, glassware and tableware- no jelly jars or plastic. Buy a nice set of cooking pots, treat them well and you will have them for life.

Good lighting makes a difference, put dimmers on your (tasteful) lamps or ceiling lights. No bare bulbs. Keep it simple, it's best to avoid lamps pretending to be singing trouts- and why people buy light switch covers shaped like footballs or with rose decals on them I will never understand.

No junky pull down window shades. Get good window treatments, they are easy and economical to find at places like Pottery Barn or Target.

At least one good carpet that can go on top of a wooden floor or on top of an ugly existing apartment wall to wall (I hate wall to wall because it absorbs dirt and is hard to clean, hide it).

No bookshelves you might have banged together in 7th grade shop class. Buy good ones. Get a nice entertainment cabinet to hide all your TV and electronic crap.

Keep clutter down by throwing out what you don't use or hate to clean.

Buy a nice storage cabinet or new medicine chest for the bathroom - no one wants to look at your dirty toothbrush or nail clippers. Buy good quality bath towels (your future girlfriends will thank me for this suggestion).

When you decide to go you take your classy stuff with you and instantly turn your next apartment into a great new place.

Painting is easy and cheap!

Definitely!

I love GreenWitch's suggestions. Might take a while to acquire all of them on a limited budget, so I'd emphasize the things that make a big difference but don't necessarily cost much -- paint, window treatments, bedspreads/ comforter covers, etc.

Do you actually have an IKEA nearby? You're really set then if so -- you can get the anonymous furniture there but you can also get the window treatments and bedspreads and such for way cheaper than most anywhere else. Rugs, too, lots of good, cheap rugs.

Just those surface-coverers -- paint, rugs, window treatments, bedspreads -- can really make a huge difference. If you can manage to get some good furniture to plop in the middle of that a la GreenWitch, excellent.

When I lived in England I stayed in a tiny bedroom in someone's house and was forbidden from doing anything to the walls (including taking down what was there or adding anything at all), and I took my favorite thin Indian print bedspread, instantly felt at home.

hmmm....when I lived in apartments, you weren't allow to paint.

Paint and then paint it back? Ask the owners, maybe you can paint and then paint back to the original before moving.

Buuuuut, probably that's too much work.

Depends, I think. I've lived in both ("painting is OK" and "absolutely not.") Definitely ask the owners if it's something you're interested in.

And if painting the walls isn't okay, you can always paint your own furniture. We have a bookcase that started off brown, then became black and is now blue; we even painted a bulletin board -- it's green with brown trim now.

Or you can make your own artwork. Even if you're not an artist, you can probably put together decent color combinations using a color wheel. http://www.ficml.org/jemimap/style/color/wheel.html
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/floriculture/container-garden/lesson/colorwheel.jpg
http://www.artsconnected.org/toolkit/encyc_colorwheel.html

You can just make shapes using a ruler. Basic geometrics are fine when you draw them nicely with a ruler, then color them with complementary colors, e. g. a red triangle, a blue rhombus or whatever. You can use paint or colored pencil.

Or you can frame some nice scenic photos you've taken, or frame some artistic prints or even just postcards. When I first started living my own, I was dirt poor and put up a bunch of flower postcards, which we still have somewhere. They were bunches of daisies, peach roses, blue irises, that sort of thing. I just collected them in an area on one wall. They were pretty and extremely cheap, and could be changed or rearranged if I got bored.

Frequent craigslist.org for bargains. You can find some very cool stuff on there for a lot less than new.

When I couldn't afford good stuff to hang on the walls I would buy a calendar that I really liked and frame the pictures in it.

I remember reading how to use fabric and liquid starch to cover a wall. When you moved you just peeled it off. It was really cool. I'll see if I can find it....

Buy blank stretched canvas at a hobby shop. Paint it solid (I prefer bright-ish) colors using regular latex wall paint.

Hang several different colored pieces that coordinate with your furniture.



Easy-peasy.

Just repaint the canvas if you change furniture.

Easy!



http://www.diynet.com/diy/lv_wall_coverings/article/0,2041,DIY_14133_2270741,00.html

Hey! I like!

In my guest bathroom, I bought several brushed silver picture frames that were on clearance..

I hate those cutsey little pictures people put in their bathrooms, and the color was more important to me.

I went on the internet and looked up images with the colors I wanted, free form images mostly.

I printed out, cut to size and slapped them into the frames and onto the wall.....no one knows I didn't go out and buy them.

Plus I can change them any old time....I'm not going to worry about good art in a humid bathroom.




I've mentioned this idea before....I guess it doesn't appeal to everyone, but I think it's really cool.

A friend of mind owns a tiny condo, one bedroom, just for vacations. In the bedroom he bought extra flat sheets in the same pattern as on the bed, and stretched them on the wall behind the bed and stapled with a big stapler.

It was smooth to the wall, could be changed at any time, and honestly, gave the bedroom a really classy look.

A lot easier than painting, and no worry about getting permission from the land lord.


Go to an arts and crafts store and buy a big clear glass globe type vase, a bag of colored stones, and whatever artificial flowers they have on sale, something is always on sale for 50 cents to a dollar a stem….

Pour sand into the globe, every so often placing a colored stone against the side of the glass, so there are "dots of color" arrange your flowers, and viola, art.

Below is a picture of a corner of my library. The pedestal under the flowers, the lamp, the pillows, all cost about $10.00 each…a little spray paint on the pedestals, and there you go.

ooops, didn't know your were posting a variation of the cloth covering above boom....well.

That fabric trick is super-cool, boomer!