Before & After: Opening up the Studio Apartment {Amy}

We moved into a studio apartment in January of this year. We did it for several reasons, one was because we did not need the sheer amount of space we had in the apartment before this Another reason was that we didn’t want to pay the premiums of having a 1,500sqft apartment down town.

So the night we started moving stuff in it looked like this:

Horrible lighting, I know, I’m sorry :(.

But when we moved the rest of our furniture in we found we had an abundance of bookcases (inordinately disproportionate to the space we now had) and decided there was no better way to utilize them than by making a wall where a wall hadn’t been before.

So the four book bookcases went up facing the “bedroom” and three DVD book cases (and one small display shelf) went up facing the “living room,” and it worked. We had effectively created two rooms and life went on as usual.

However, while it worked, it did have its own set of problems. Don’t get me wrong, I loved sleeping beneath my books… but I was beginning to think I’d need to look into those light strips they have in airplane aisles. And when you only have 976sqft, you really want to make things feel as big as they can.

(This picture was mid process… so the book shelves are already half gone, which is why that “wall” looks so thin.)

So we took the two sets of bookshelves and moved them. The DVD shelves just migrated to the perpendicular wall, and the bookshelves found another home in the front hall way. And the apartment feels so much bigger this way (though we always knew it would.) And, fun fact, because the doors on the bookshelves are glass, they have a mirror like effect that helps make the room feel bigger too.

***************

And if you were worried about the books – I would be – rest assured, they are now the first thing I see when I walk in the door and the last thing before I leave, and that makes me immeasurably happy!



Yes, the picture on the left is what it looks like when I empty my bookshelves out onto my bed (and that was several book binges ago....)