I feel very lucky to have lived in this 1 bedroom cottage for 2 years in college, it was originally a shed for the neighboring house and the living room was a later addition to turn it into a home (as you can tell from the exterior-style window connecting the bedroom to the living room). It was a sanctuary set away from the main college neighborhood, on a quiet tree-lined street with a short walking distance to Pearl Street (and all of my go-to lunch spots).
I fell in love with this cottage for many reasons - the wooden ceiling in the living room, the reading nook in the front room, the spaciousness of the bedroom, and the unique kitchen made with real wood and glass panes, lined with an unfortunate lime green (that I later painted dark green, hoping the landlord wouldn’t notice).
I was well versed with facebook marketplace by the time I moved here, but what started here was my love for vintage furniture. The dresser made from solid wood, the danish coffee table stained in a beautiful dark brown, and the bar table set in the back of the living room (though it lived in many places around the house over time), all helped make this house a home.
My dad also taught me many lessons on how to be handy with this house as the subject - from installing the doorbell & security camera (and drilling an alarming amount of holes in doing so), to hanging up the bookshelf in my bedroom. We installed curtains, a coat rack, and cieling hooks for hanging plants.
Overall, 10/10 place to live - this is really where I started to find my own design style.
This apartment was very cookie cutter, much smaller than the cottage and frankly needed some help. It lacked the inherent charm that the cottage had, so I spent a bit of time space planning and finding inspiration to make it a bit more me. Below are the plans, and I didn’t exactly see them all the way through as I only spent 9 months here - but still a good exercise.
I reused the floating shelves from the last apartment and combined them with a shelving unit I had to try and create a built-in type thing,