Welcome to Amplified Apartments, a blog series about apartment hackers who’ve made strides against the mother of all city-dweller dilemmas – square footage.
There’s no stopping Amplified Apartments alum Meredith Krull – the brains behind Meredith and Gwyneth, the New Yorkie. The talented media upstart, who graced the ForRent.com blog back in January, recently moved into a new pad in Nob Hill, one of San Francisco‘s most charming neighborhoods. With a larger square footage to play with – 796 sq. ft. to be exact – Meredith has once again lifted a bare space to impressive design heights – layered, functional, and pleasing to the eye at every angle.
Any moving process – however thoroughly planned and industrious the planner – requires time, and this case was no exception. It took three weeks for the new place to feel anywhere close to complete. The blogger and Gwyneth, her Yorkie, worked on each room one-by-one – staging and restaging them until hitting the sweet spot. No piece of furniture was left unused, though new furnishings were added, free of charge.
Read on to hear about Meredith and Gwyneth’s recent design adventure — tips for a smooth, scratch-free move in included.
Your apartment has touches of your old home, but is very much a new interior. How did you go about using the same decor to create a new living space?
I, and Gwyneth, of course, didn’t want our new place to look exactly the same as our last San Francisco space or our home in NYC. And because, for the most part, all of our things are in fact exactly the same, we looked at finding new uses and arrangements for them. A lot of what we did differently came down to furniture placement.
Our Ikea Expedit bookcase and a wrought iron table & chair set is in our “dine-in library.” The new space also has this amazing built-in media cabinet, so we took the piece we had as a media console in our last space and put it in the closet for extra storage for folded items.
And the coffee table from our last SF rental is back at the end of the bed as a bench. We have a “new” coffee table which was a dumpster dive find we discovered on the side of our street a few weekends ago.
Did you make use of all of your furniture and decor? How much of it is new?
We made use of it all! Didn’t get rid of anything! The only new things are the dumpster dive coffee table and the window treatments. Our new space has a lot of windows and very high ceilings, so we DIYed a Roman shade for the kitchen, added pom-pom trim to the panels in the bedroom and splurged and bought some beautiful linen panels from Pottery Barn for the bay windows in the living room.
What was the first step in the design process? Did you have an inspiration board, a single image, or theme in mind?
We pinned up a storm the week before the move, but it’s impossible to figure anything out for certain until you get in. We spent a few weeks moving furniture around and trying a few options before we settled on the current arrangement.
How long did it take to get to the current design state and how many times have you changed it since the move-in day?
The first two, three weeks were like putting together a puzzle. Trying out different arrangements, shuffling furniture from area to area until everything fit and felt right. We probably tried out four or five arrangements in the living room – couch in front of one of the bay windows, then in front of the other, then floating in the room. It was endless!
What’s the key to achieving a harmonious design quickly and efficiently?
Pick the biggest priority area and get it set up first. For us, it was our bedroom. If you start working on too many rooms at once, you can get overwhelmed with too many pieces moving at once. Plus, getting one room close to finished before starting another helps keep the motivation up.
Definitely have a big beach towel handy to move furniture without breaking your back or scratching your floors! (Tweet This)
What space saving ideas did you implement in your new apartment?
This home has been the easiest space-wise. I know it’s still pretty small, but it’s the biggest I’ve had. Coming from 470 sq. ft. in NYC makes this apartment, at almost 800 sq. ft., feel like a mansion. The biggest space savers are the bookcase in the dining room and using two bookcases in the walk-in closet to store folded items – there will definitely never be enough closet space.
What were the major challenges that came up in the design process?
Finding a place for the Expedit. The new place is so open and has so many widows that there weren’t a lot of free walls long enough for it. The bathroom is also one of the more challenging spaces. It was not particularly charming, but I think painting the bottom half of the walls has helped. There’s more work to be done in there for sure.
What’s your number one tip for moving and creating new living spaces?
The most important thing is to go easy on yourself! It’s easy to want it all “done” quickly and feel bad if it takes more time than you wanted it to.
Remember with moving- it’s never really “done.” That’s the fun of it! Enjoy the process! (Tweet This)
For more of Meredith’s creativity in action, see her blog, Meredith and Gwyneth, the New Yorkie.
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