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Pimp my boring ass apartment(NSF56K)
HyperAquaBlast
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Ok so I've been in this apartment for about 7 months and it depresses the fuck outta me whenever I return home from work or whatever. Its boring and has no pizzaz. This is my second place I have had to myself while on my own. Before this place I was just starting out with buying my own furniture and getting used to the new life and before that I was living in just a bedroom sharing a place somewhere. Those rooms used to be full of video game, comics and movie posters with some action figures or fake things that looked real all over the room. Yeah geeky teen shit you know? Now I am not really running away from that since I still love those things but I gotta start making my place more of a home instead of a clubhouse.
So here are some pics captured from a horrible cell phone camera! The lighting is horrible but at least you can kinda see whats there. Walls are a cream color and carpet is beige.
Living Room/Main area
What I see when I first walk in
On the sides of the tv stand are a rubbermaid bin and drawer set. The bin was from older time when I just needed storage and the white drawers house game controllers and video cables and what not. They also help as speaker stands. But want to get rid of those asap.
I really want something above the couch. Probably a picture. Not a fan of big mirrors above a couch as I have seen in many homes.
The little bar/window area is pretty drab and I thought of getting somekind of series of hooks or a coat rack/backpack holder here.
The dining area if you wanna call it that
I need a table. I don't have company over much and when people are over we are either in around the couch or in the kitchen and i eat at the coffe table or at my PC desk but I 'd still like an actual table and chairs. I was even kinda thinking like a really low Japanese style table. Not for any type of weeaboo shit just that light up there is really low and bugs me and the area is small so a few pillow seats and a light table that I could stand up and move out of the way would be fine.Dont mind the pile of new uniforms by the closet.
Yes that is a fake sword. Second thing I bought with my first paycheck when I was sixteen. At first I just put up there for decor since I still had but second month I was here some dude just uped and walked in to the apartment right when I got out of the bedroom and stood at the front door and said sorry wrong place and left. Freaked me out. So if anything it also a shitty home defense tool that i can only imagine myself actully using .
The hallway and bedroom
Cat5 cable snakeing into the bedroom I made at work after my wireless internet got all weird. Want to hide it with something.
Just put an old bedsheet up to block the light at night and stop my silhouette being easily seen from outside. Was able to see my girlfriend one time walking around when I was outside.
So as you can se my place is some damn boring and unappealing. Pretty much just have stuff thats useful at the moment.
What I am looking for that I'd think look nice:
Plants! Any suggestions on good size plants that don't drop too many leaves?
Wide pictures or framed posters.
Cool looking functional lamps to replace my cheap ones in my bedroom.
Better furniture (I hate my couch and desk and coffee table)
Apartment friendly shelves that aren't super basic. Girlfriend really thinks little shelves around the place with little Star Wars or Marvel dudes would be cool. Yeah I know same old direction but we love the idea of little action dioramas.
And of course I am open to suggestions. I will be moving in about a year and a half and hopefully into a house so any furniture that would fit here but good in the future are cool. I don't mind having a bunch of geeky things again around the house such as comic book hero statues or similar and like to stick with what I know and love. I'm willing to spend close to around a $1000 right away but that is only if its a lot of things and not just one nice dining table. Just need ideas and places where to shop and what a stranger walking in to my place for the first time will have them go, "eh not a bad place you got set up here kid."
So here are some pics captured from a horrible cell phone camera! The lighting is horrible but at least you can kinda see whats there. Walls are a cream color and carpet is beige.
Living Room/Main area
What I see when I first walk in
On the sides of the tv stand are a rubbermaid bin and drawer set. The bin was from older time when I just needed storage and the white drawers house game controllers and video cables and what not. They also help as speaker stands. But want to get rid of those asap.
I really want something above the couch. Probably a picture. Not a fan of big mirrors above a couch as I have seen in many homes.
The little bar/window area is pretty drab and I thought of getting somekind of series of hooks or a coat rack/backpack holder here.
The dining area if you wanna call it that
I need a table. I don't have company over much and when people are over we are either in around the couch or in the kitchen and i eat at the coffe table or at my PC desk but I 'd still like an actual table and chairs. I was even kinda thinking like a really low Japanese style table. Not for any type of weeaboo shit just that light up there is really low and bugs me and the area is small so a few pillow seats and a light table that I could stand up and move out of the way would be fine.Dont mind the pile of new uniforms by the closet.
Yes that is a fake sword. Second thing I bought with my first paycheck when I was sixteen. At first I just put up there for decor since I still had but second month I was here some dude just uped and walked in to the apartment right when I got out of the bedroom and stood at the front door and said sorry wrong place and left. Freaked me out. So if anything it also a shitty home defense tool that i can only imagine myself actully using .
The hallway and bedroom
Cat5 cable snakeing into the bedroom I made at work after my wireless internet got all weird. Want to hide it with something.
Just put an old bedsheet up to block the light at night and stop my silhouette being easily seen from outside. Was able to see my girlfriend one time walking around when I was outside.
So as you can se my place is some damn boring and unappealing. Pretty much just have stuff thats useful at the moment.
What I am looking for that I'd think look nice:
Plants! Any suggestions on good size plants that don't drop too many leaves?
Wide pictures or framed posters.
Cool looking functional lamps to replace my cheap ones in my bedroom.
Better furniture (I hate my couch and desk and coffee table)
Apartment friendly shelves that aren't super basic. Girlfriend really thinks little shelves around the place with little Star Wars or Marvel dudes would be cool. Yeah I know same old direction but we love the idea of little action dioramas.
And of course I am open to suggestions. I will be moving in about a year and a half and hopefully into a house so any furniture that would fit here but good in the future are cool. I don't mind having a bunch of geeky things again around the house such as comic book hero statues or similar and like to stick with what I know and love. I'm willing to spend close to around a $1000 right away but that is only if its a lot of things and not just one nice dining table. Just need ideas and places where to shop and what a stranger walking in to my place for the first time will have them go, "eh not a bad place you got set up here kid."
HyperAquaBlast on
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Target is your friend for finding pretty pictures at low low prices.
PS. Cute doggie
Ikea has a lot of cheap "art" for walls. Get yourself a headboard and a plain white bedskirt so that your bed looks like an actual bed (mine looked exactly like yours when I was a bachelor).
You should be able to get tons of lamps and stuff like that at Ikea for cheap. I know nothing about plants, but my wife bought some plants that are green and have big leaves and don't drop any leaves at all. It's just about the most boring plant ever, but it's perfect for an apartment. Home Depot should have lots of indoor plants for cheap, that's where we got ours.
Threadless Has prints of some of their designs, which can be rather minimalistic if you're into that. Blik Wall Decals are wall stickers that can help you break out of the frame format, if you want to be adventurous, Infectious also sells wall vinyl, but their selection is "eh" right now.
I would take some time to think about the games/comic/shows you like, then do a little research into the concept artists and see i they sell prints.
Given your budget, I second the Ikea advice. They have some nice staged rooms you can check out on their website to get some inspiration. Target is also an option but tends to be a bit more expensive. Craigslist can be wonderful because they will often have furniture from the above places at even cheaper prices, or nicer furniture at comparable prices. The only problem with buying piecemeal is that it tends to show unless you have a good eye for mixing and matching.
My first question is, are there any pieces of furniture that you absolutely must keep? The couch, for example? If so, this gives you at least one item around which you can build the room. If not, you've got a blank slate, and that's cool too.
I notice that you haven't painted any of the walls; is that an option or are there restrictions in place? Assuming this is a rental, you can probably paint with a light color and then just paint over it before you turn over the keys. If you're too scared/lazy/whatever to paint, then there's design element #2: white walls. Otherwise, keep in mind what furniture you're definitely keeping because you'll want that to jibe with the paint color. I generally suggest that you find whatever artwork you'd like first because that can inspire your wall color choice.
Before getting too ahead of things, do you have any strong ideas about what style or color of furniture you like? For example, I really love black and white furniture, but I'm not a fan of light wood. I prefer simple, clean lines, and I don't like anything very ornate or cottage-looking, but neither do I like super-modern stuff. So do you like wood or metal furniture? If wood, what kind? Do you like colorful stuff (red, blue, etc.)?
Last but not least, before I await responses, I highly recommend that you measure your rooms and create a mockup of each room so you know exactly how much space you have to work with, where your windows and outlets are, that kind of thing. I like that site because it's free and it lets me put in furniture and customize the size and move it around. Saves a lot of time and energy later.
Ikea actually has a room creator thing on the website, you download the application and can put stuff in a room given your dimensions.
Yeah art wise I am just not sure. I want original looking stuff but I don't want to be the dude who puts stuff up just because it looks kooky. One of those things where I know what I like but I can't describe what I like. I know its not something like a painting of mountain tops or fields or a fruit bowl no matter its style of painting that you see everywhere.
Quoth, well pretty much everything but my bed I plan on not keeping long. I foresee myself sorta starting from scratch once I move again. Sort of the reason why I have only what I have right now but until then the big things are staying (couch, dvd/game shelves, bed) but then again I hate the couch and everything about it so I may get a black couch in the soon. I rather just keep the paint as is and then decorate over it.
I love black and silverish furniture and then bright bits of color coming out at different points in the room. The blue area rug in the living room was to hide audio cables but I wanted a vibrant blue to come out. There used to be a bright red rug in the dining area but since nothing was on top of it it kept sliding around. So large black items in a living room with vibrant colors of the rainbow on something near or on them. But single color or no more then two colors nothing psychedelic. Like just the way that red pops out on the TV makes me happy so I'll just leave it there sometimes.
I'll look through Ikea and use those room mock ups. Thanks.
Oh and if anyone knows how to make that dog accentuate a room better let me know. She is basically a throw rug that gets hair everywhere.
Dracaena
This or any other kind of Dracaena, over here in Germany Ikea carries them.
They do not loose leaves and they do not die. I had one for more than 1 year in a room with minimal light and forgot to water it for weeks sometimes.
Lots of other plants are really forgiving like that, just go to a store that has employees that actually know what they are doing and ask them.
Decoration:
Get a nice rug, or better get a couple, even the nicer ones at Ikea are rather cheap, get one for the corridor and one for the bedroom, maybe some livelier colours, everthing looks darkish blue and beige in your appartment.
I wouldn't buy any pictures at Ikea or another furniture store. Those are generic and boring and just show your guests that you do not care too much about the decoration of your flat.
Try browsing for some nice posters of things you like and get them framed or just get a design or picture from the net and have it enlarged and framed.
Or do the framing yourself, frames are cheap and even the cheap ones look tons better than just a poster tacked to the wall.
Refrain from getting the generic cool movie posters everyone has, seriously, I want a buck for every students room I have seen with this poster in it:
Anyway, get pictures, any kind of pictures, your walls look so bare it's depressing, I lived in a similar room for half a year and some nice pictures on the wall make a lot of difference. Put together a collage of photos and frame them if you go for that kind of thing or maybe one of those wall tatoos if you find a design you like, the options are nearly limitless.
Also, get curtains, something else I refrained from doing myself for a long long time. Curtains and drawers make a lot of difference, a blanket on the window looks like shit from inside and outside.
Furniture:
If the prices are anything like they are in Europe, 1000 $ will carry you far at Ikea, unless you want all the best stuff.
And a nice table and some chairs will probably run around 200$ and that's going to be one of the better ones.
My kitchen table which is so far satisfying for me cost me 30 Euros I think.
With some stuff like shelves you can go for the cheap stuff and it still will look ok.
Cool, I used to be and my brother and sister are both Coasties
Hah, I had one of those as a kid and loved it, now I want one again
Just watching them coming alive again in a couple ofhours was so cool.
3DS Friend Code: 2165-6448-8348 www.Twitch.TV/cooljammer00
Battle.Net: JohnDarc#1203 Origin/UPlay: CoolJammer00
You probably don't want the typical dorm-room type posters (the inevitable Boondock Saints or Tarantino posters, three blondes in g-strings in the bed of a pickup truck with HAUL ASS written on it, etc.), so here's some suggestions for various stuff you could do.
Big photographs in frames can be kind of cool - landscapes, cities, stuff like that. If you've ever done much travelling it can be fun to get your own pictures framed and put on the wall. You should also have a bulletin board with stuff on it - pictures from whatever, tickets you've saved from cool concerts, anything with a story behind it that you can stick on a board really.
Paintings are always good, too, and you can get a print of something in a frame for pretty cheap. Really any kind of painting looks good, but everybody likes different artists so just get on allposters or somewhere and browse around for a while. If you've got any friends who are artists ask them if they'll draw or paint you anything. You can sometimes get posters of vintage ads that are pretty cool - I've got a poster on my wall that's a copy of an old Mustang ad from the sixties that I like.
Also, a couple of other cool things a lot of people don't think of - and if you like history, like me - is old newspapers, magazines, and maps. Maybe I'm weird but I think it's kind of badass to have the New York Times from V-E day hanging on the wall. Antique maps are pretty neat too - especially the ones where there's still blank spots on the map waiting to be filled in - and you can get duplicates on most sites from pretty cheap.
Finally, if you want your rooms to look bigger/less boring, put either a rug on the floor, or a big wall mirror. A good sized mirror can make a small room feel a lot less claustrophobic. Bonus points if you put it over your liquor cabinet.
One, pillows on the couch. If you find some artwork you like, you might want to grab some solid-colored pillows to play off one of the colors in the art. Or you can go with blue pillows to match the rug. Or both. I recommend Target or KMart over Ikea for this.
Two, new bedding for your bedroom. Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, JC Penney, and many other places have nice bed-in-a-bag sets that aren't expensive and match without any brain work. I assume you don't want anything with flowers, so again I'd go for a solid color or something white with a solid colored stripe.
Three, artwork. There's good old art.com or Michael's or whatever random stores in your area happen to have artwork. Any idea what kind of stuff you like? As a side note, try to hang anything you get in odd numbers, like one or three or five; it tends to be more balanced that way. So either get a really big picture for over your couch, or three smaller ones, or five even smaller ones.
In terms of furniture, if you'll be moving soon and leaving things behind, you may want to just hold on to your money and work with what you have. Meanwhile, am I seeing things or do you have a brown couch with black furniture? Don't do that next time.
Edit: OH! Forgot to mention curtains. For heaven's sake, go buy some curtains for your bedroom. Get ones that match whatever bedding you buy. Curtain rods are not expensive and are easy to install, so there is no excuse whatsoever for you having a blanket over your window.
As of now you have a huge white blob, with specs of black and a dash a blue here and there.
Add some colors, man! The colors!
ha ha man that brought me back to some good ol'Nickelodean tv time. The colors Duke! The colors!
Yeah Quoth I have like 5 different bed-in-a-bag sets. What you see in the picture is a fleece banket cause I was a bit cold and had some Saturday morning curl up and do nothing time in the bed prior to making this thread. The bed is usally the most colorful thing in the room. And the brown couch, stool and tv stand in the bedroom were the first hings I bought when I moved into my first apartment cause all I owned at that time was just my car, clothes, and entertainment stuff. I regret all those brown things everyday. You have no idea how much I hate that couch. Curtain. yes. I keep putting those off and just got use to that sheet curtain which was a spur of the moment thing.
Anyways yeah been seeing some good things on Ikea and been browsing allposters and went to Target today. Didn't get anything though just kinda did some recon. But yeah wall stuff I think I know what to do which is pretty simple and I'm probably going to go on a online shopping spree tomarrow.
Now anybody have any three dimensional deceration suggestions? Like I dunno keys and mail holders or something of that nature? Like I wanna fill up some space on things but with sorta useful things that are good looking. I don't want to have a Spider-man sculpture next to a T-800 skull head that just sit there but maybe a T-800 head that also counted coins and told you the room temperture...maybe?
Look for some cool driftwood and hang it up somewhere. Makes your apartment look more...I don't know, beachy.
Once you have the big pieces up, namely the artwork, then you can add the extra stuff to embellish. Where do you normally eat? If you don't use the passthrough in the kitchen for eating, I'd recommend that you find a nice decorative bowl for stashing your keys and put it there. You could also put one in one of the shelves of that tall lamp next to the door.
Try to buy all the artwork for each room all together so you can be sure it coordinates. Target also has some nice small shelves like this that you can put a couple of knickknacks in if you have some lying around. Nothing too heavy, though.
You can't do wrong with a trio of candles, all different heights. Stick them on the coffee table. To replace the big ugly plastic bin in the living room, I recommend flanking your entertainment unit with some small shelves from Ikea with plastic drawers or magazine boxes.
Try this.
Pick a theme and roll with it.
Seriously, walk up and down a flea market and find something that catches your eyes. Use that as your theme and decorate your room around it.
Of course, there should be some limit to whats catching your eyes. A Jedi Enclave theme is only cool to someone who's 12, and the pimp den is only cool to people with IQs less then 12.
Find something tactful, use it to decorate the rest of your room.
Somewhere like RedBubble.com is a great place to find reasonably priced photographs. Every print has multiple mounting options (matted, laminated, mounted, canvas, in-frame) for various prices - most tend to be between $20USD to $100USD for sizes from 5x7 to 20x30. A $30 matted 8x10 would look great mounted directly to a wall.
- check out your local university or art school expos/conventions/zines get together/feel market/ thrift stores, they sometimes yield inexpensive space fillers.
- if your gonna slap a print up, frame it. you can find cheap frames at the thrift store or ikea.
you can spray paint the frames as well, a white frame has a realy cool effect sometime.
- apartment therapy all around good ideas flying around that blog. or the selby voyeurism on hip peoples place.
- different lighting is cool too.
Also think about lamps fx. you could some small ones and place left and right from the TV or you could get a night stand for the bed where you can put a small lamp.
Plus if you go to Ikea look at getting something more colourful to put in front of the couch. Perhaps something with some red in it.
Do you have any friends who are artists (even amateur ones)? Get them to draw, paint things for you to hang. Even if they're not amazing I think you'll find it works.
A lot of these on this site are amazing.
http://www.redbubble.com/products/configure/6022766
Like this I just find extremly stunning. I kinda want to go overboard with that one and get the nicest options possible for it. Thanks for the site.
http://www.redbubble.com/people/blamo/art/1781113-2-tangle
http://www.redbubble.com/people/geniusloci/art/1114314-6-vogue
http://www.redbubble.com/people/tomo/art/64486-11-noever-stare
http://www.redbubble.com/people/tomo/art/64264-11-king-75
Not too sure on the last one but I'll give it a shot. I really like that art style and they are all so lively looking.
But I also realized I don't have a printer yet and I like the idea of rasterbating things and I'm going to go with that for the bare wall next to the kitchen and around the bedroom.
Even a brief look at Redbubble proves it is AWESOME and I will have to get some things for my next apartment when the time comes. Maybe I can brighten things up and provide some contrast for my dark furniture.
I don't really have any suggestions for the OP, except to reiterate picking a theme (even if the "theme" it is just a color scheme).
They key is visiting thrift stores and being crafty with what you find.
2. New bedding
3. Wherever there is a window, drapes do nice.
4. I don't think you can paint the apartment so a piece of artwork would be good for your room walls.
5. Pillow on the couch or a draped over large blanket for winter.
That's all... Go watch some house makeover show on those HD tv's dang man. It's like they reproduced.
You can pick up a lot of really nice designer and name brand stuff for very little. It's all police confiscated stuff and a lot of it is pretty classy.
"Those who are willing to give up essential liberties for a little safety diserve neither liberty nor safety"-Benjamin Franklin