Apartment living...almost by the rules

There are benefits to living in an apartment. You don't need to mow the lawn. Household repairs are free. You have plenty of neighbors to meet. You don't pay property taxes (at least directly).

You can even find a new place every six months if you want.

But what about dogs? Painted walls? Your choice of ceiling fans? In this way, apartment living can be somewhat limiting, but be encouraged. Most of us have been there.

THE DESIGN GUY AND HIS WIFE...THE EARLY YEARS.

I know this because my wife and I lived in an apartment for a few months after we got married. We could hear the neighbors music through the walls. We could hear loud conversations outside our windows. Our ceiling fan was plugged in by a cord that ran across the ceiling, down the wall, and into an outlet. Fun was had by all.

Eventually, we grew tired of the white/yellow stagnant walls and decided to find ways to give the place a little more flair. Wall coverings became the focus of our attention. We considered hanging curtains against the wall in our living room to change the flavor. Then we determined that this was a little too dramatic for our tastes. Next we moved into vegetation. The plants were beautiful for weeks at a time and really enlivened the living space. Unfortunately, they began to die as fast as we could replace them. Apparently, we lacked gardening skills.

Next we moved into artwork. We tried building pleasant, 1000 piece puzzles that we hoped to laminate and hang. Though pictures are worth a thousand words, they're worth a lot less with only 998 locatable pieces. Though we didn't think of it at the time, our idea might have worked even with the missing pieces. It would have been "deconstructive modernism."

My mom's paintings helped with some of the rooms but we weren't quite there.

Next we moved into a music theme. We took an old guitar case with orange velvet lining and took the cover off of it. Then we cut Plexiglas to match the shape of the case and bolted it in with 3/4 in thick bolts. After cutting a little space at the top of the Plexiglas we had ourselves a hangable guitar piggy bank...or donation jar, depending on the generosity of our company.

We matched this up with a pair of snare drums that we bought at a garage sale. We painted the face of one of the drums orange, then bought a cheap clock at Wal-Mart and pulled the hands, motor, and battery out of it. By piecing all the parts back together through the head of the drum, we had a groovy clock that we hung on our wall. The other drum we also painted and used as an end table.

My wife finished off the room with 40 vinyl records that she purchased from the thrift store to hang them around the room. Though the records didn't work out so well, we never had to worry about coasters again.

Just an anecdote: There is nothing new under the sun. Just when my wife and I congratulated ourselves on our cleverness, we found ourselves in a little bed and breakfast in a small town in Arizona called Strawberry (population: 42). While sitting in the lobby we noticed that both the coffee table and the clock on the wall were snare drums!

To finish off our office, we needed something that could hold a lot of books. We didn't just want shelves because the room was already pretty bland. Eventually, we found a Target that was selling off their red employee lockers for $40. I guess they do those kinds of things when they are going out of business (I had to restrain myself from buying a commercial-grade, soft-pretzel warmer).

Used Employee Lockers

Make Great Storage

After getting the lockers home and reassembling them, we began to hammer off random doors to expose empty cubbys. Eventually, it produced a neat storage space that added a lot of color to the room and covered up most of a wall. Unfortunately, the lockers were too much of a challenge to reassemble when we moved so I threw them away.

I am not sharing these ideas with you so that you would try them at home. That is not a good idea. Instead, I am trying to reveal that style takes time to develop and apartments are great places to start experimenting. The limitations put on you by your situation provide you a great opportunity to grow. Creativity takes practice and its affordable when you're finding ingredients from thrift stores and garage sales.

Don't worry about the bad ideas. We just gave all the really weird stuff away to our college aged neighbors who had even less furniture than we did.

Who wouldn't want to set their coffee mug on "Freddy and the Jets Greatest Hits Volume II"?

Feng Shui or Gumballs

At the risk of jeopardizing my credibility as a design consultant, or perhaps strengthening it, I would like to critique the increasingly trendy style of decorating known as Feng Shui (pronounced "fung shway").

Feng Shui is a methodology of decorating living spaces and office settings. It attempts to balance the invisible energies that flow through rooms the way that wind and water would, which is how Feng Shui gets its name ("wind" and "water")

I think its Feng bunk.

The Design Guy Offers Alternative Explanations to Feng Shui

I agree that the decoration of a room can profoundly affect the mood of a room. I might even say that it can affect the energy of the room, but I don't mean the same kind of energy that Feng Shui is talking about. When I say energy, I am talking about physical energy. For example a dark blue/gray room will make you want to read books and take naps as opposed to working out and being creative. This is simply because blues and grays are very soothing colors.

When Feng Shui speaks of energy, it refers to the the moving of invisible life forces and spirits. For example, it suggests that you put mirrors on the ceilings above toilets so that your life energy doesn't get flushed away with the toilet paper. Supposedly life energy is always looking for a way to leak out. Feng Shui even suggests that you keep your sink drains closed to keep energy from sneaking out through the plumbing.

What really strikes me funny is Feng Shui's answer to bedroom design. According to the rules, the beds should never be situated with their feet facing the door. The concern is that this may tempt a person's spirit to make a premature departure for the afterlife.

Perhaps it's better that they sleep with their head towards the door so that their hair escapes during the night?

Regardless, the affects that Feng Shui attempts to achieve can be grasped without the help of astronomers and spiritual diviners.

One principle of Feng Shui is that energy flows through a room. Supposedly, a front door that opens into a room with windows is a bad idea because the energy/money/power that comes into your home will quickly leave through the windows. Based on this principal, homeless people who live in cardboard boxes should be extremely successful.

I won't comment on the money and power perks, but I do know why big rooms with windows seem fleeting. It's because the human mind desires to establish boundaries. The mind has developed a way to gauge distances, shapes, depth, and space based on visual and audio stimuli like perspective and acoustics. When a person walks into a room that does not have a defined space, perhaps because the eye is looking out into a back yard, it has a hard time comprehending the space it is in. The mind thus has to work extra hard to understand where it is. Often, this leads people to seek out another space in the house that is easier to figure out.

Feng Shui's answer to this puzzle is blocking the path, or at least the view of the windows, so the energy doesn't escape. The problem with this is that your room will become smaller if people can't see its far walls.

My suggestion is that you leave this aspect of the room alone. First of all, you have a backyard! That's fantastic. There are people all over the world who live in tiny condos with little balconies. I say you let them see what you got. Is that a barbeque? A pool? Oh...you have a dog? Why not?
Besides, who wants their guests to stand comfortably at the front door? It's probably better that they decide to move elsewhere in the house where they can relax.

What about the bathrooms that drain energy like leaky buckets?

It doesn't have anything to do with the plumbing. Bathrooms are generally just cold
environments for four reasons:

1. The floors are usually tile or some other type of hard , cold surface.
2. There is usually a lot of light (enough to light a room quadruple the size) which keeps you
alert.
3. There is usually some moisture hanging out, which makes it a little damp.
4. There is a large amount of cold porcelain on the toilet, sinks, and bathtub.

Putting a mirror on the ceiling and closing the sinks aren't going to change this. If we want a more comfortable bathroom setting we need to bring in warmer colors for the walls, thick floor rugs and towels for texture, and some candles for warm light.

Lastly, Feng Shui suggests using simple shapes for design. This goes along with what I explained earlier. Simple shapes for furniture and accessories do two things for you. Firstly, they keep the room from feeling cluttered because the design is simple and easy to navigate. Secondly, they keep the design simple for the human mind to figure out. Once it knows what to expect, it begins to feel comfortable. Until then, the mind will analyze its situation to make certain that it is safe.

I don't mean to mock Feng Shui. What I am really saying is that it isn't as magical as it sounds. My experience with it has been that it is expensive and after all the consultations are finished, the homeowner is left with a bunch of 25 cent mirrors stuck all around the house.

For that kind of money, I think I would prefer to have some gumballs.

Don't Be Fooled By a Model

New homes can look pretty tempting when builders begin to offer discounts and incentives.

The models look so good, it's easy to imagine yourelf living there. The problem is that you probably won't be.

I am often asked to help home buyers decorate their homes while they are still being built. We make this work by using the model home to pick the colors and the spacial design. But the model homes are tricky.

Model Homes Need a Disclaimer

For example, the rooms are often smaller than they appear. My measurements never seemed to look right, which puzzled me up until the day that I measured the bed. It was a MINI bed!

It appears that sometimes, builders use undersized or small furniture to make the rooms look bigger. This little detail is easy to miss when you are imagining all the wonderful details of your new home.










Custom landscapes are not included
with most new homes.

The models also maximize space by including all the upgrades. If you have 16-inch floor tiles, your room will look more sprawed out than if you have linoleum. If you have sprawling window curtains hanging from the ceiling to the floor, two-feet beyond your windows, your windows will look bigger. Smaller ceiling fans in small rooms can also cause them to look larger. Choosing to install stair railings with spindles instead of having sheetrocked walls can also increase the amount of visible space, and having four-foot-tall kitchen cabinets increases the apparent height of the kitchen.

By now we have added around $15,000 in upgrades...but there's more.

Models can also have an extra foot or two added to the dimensions of the rooms. If you wanted to have the same look, this would cost you hundreds of dollars per square foot to do.

You should also note that the paint in the model homes is much better than the paint that they will most likely be using on your home. The paint in the model is of high quality. The paint most builders use is of a contractor grade, five steps down from top notch. If you want a better paint...you're going to have to pay extra...and even the better paint is pretty bad.

Lastly, you should note that the models are being cleaned almost daily which means they are usually sparkling. Doesn't everyone want to live in a spotless house?

I am not suggesting you should avoid buying a new home. I just want you to know what you are buying.


Don't forget to check the first model's refrigerator for a free soda,
The Design Guy