When Kelsey Foster was in our apartment, shooting like a star, we were joking with her that our bookcase is like a shrine to “us.” Just tons of picture frames, all with various images of me and Sally. Sure it’s our apartment – but when every single frame in our living area contains some sort of shot of us two, it just looks like embarrassing narcissism. Kelsey suggested taking a few pictures of us along with those of the apartment so that we could continue to fill more frames. Clearly we had no problem posing for her… You would think two self proclaimed photo-shy people would have a harder time looking normal in pictures. This just goes to show: a) how talented Kelsey is, and b) how many pics she had to take to get some good ones of us.
We are so, so lucky that Kelsey Foster came to our humble apartment and we finally got some decent photos worth sharing of the space. She did such a phenomenal job capturing the space that Sally and I spend the most time in: our main room. So here it is… Our wall-to-wall carpet space in all it’s glory! When you walk in the door to our apartment there’s a tiny open kitchen on your left and you’re basically standing in a space that opens up to where our dining table sits (on the right) and our seating area is off to the left. My bedroom is to the right of the main room (with the door by that little fig tree that’s sort of struggling) and Sally’s bedroom is to the left of the couch.
We don’t like the carpet, but we live on the top floor of our apartment building so our main room has super high ceilings that make it feel bigger than it is. The window lets in great natural light and even though the fire place never gets used, it’s a fab focal point for our art and the table I lovingly made in college (with bare hands and glue my friends). It’s kind of hard to picture since we don’t have any “before” pictures but the room looked SO different before. We didn’t move any furniture and the only new piece is the lucite coffee table. Everything else we painted, slip-covered, or covered – hand-me-down pieces were thoughtfully changed – and everything looks brand new. So here’s are the major changes we did:
- The sectional couch is slip-covered with new covers for the cushions – before it was a yellow, wide corduroy fabric.
- We bought a cow hide rig and had new cushions made for the rattan chair – before there was a multi-stripe fabric on the cushions.
- The two side tables flanking the couch were painted a high-gloss navy – before they were both plain wood.
- The dining room chairs were painted gold and we reupholster the seats in white ostrich leather – before, the chairs had a satin wood finish with pink and white cruel fabric.
- We had the base of the table painted a high-gloss dark grey – before it was aqua – but the table top did not change.
From there we added new lamps, bought art, new pillows, and accessories, re-organized our book shelves to be grouped by color, and generally tried to make it as monochromatic as possible compared to the candy-land of color it was before. I would say that the whole process, from start to finish, took about 3-4 months. Once we committed to what we wanted to change and dedicated a good amount of money to making it happen, we were dedicated to making it happen. Oh, and we’re really happy with the outcome! You hardly even notice the carpet, right?
