Monday, April 8, 2013

The Process of Settling In - Shopping Edition

I loved your comments on yesterday's post, dear readers!  It's so fun to see what stage of home-ness everyone else is in, and it sounds like many of you are near where I am right now.  So, even though this isn't the post I drafted on Saturday to publish today, I think it's a perfect opportunity to talk about the stages of decoration that we and our homes go through as we grow up and settle in.

But since I'm sure you're burning with curiosity, let's start with the floor plan of my new apartment!  The whole thing is 675 sq ft and, though the image below isn't to scale at all, it might help you imagine the space to know that the living/bedroom area is 22' x 12' in real life and the dining room is 5'3" wide.  It's on the ground floor from the entrance, but that wall of windows on the right (the north side, actually) looks out over Rock Creek Park and the zoo as if I were on the third or fourth floor because the neighborhood is super hilly.

Back in June, when I first returned to DC, we all agreed that I'd live in Mom and Dad's house until Jon moved to America in late spring 2014.  In that plan, I fantasized about eventually finding a place big enough for the both of us plus Charlie, a grown-up apartment with a lease that lasted longer than a year that we'd gradually fill with investment furniture and artwork.  My first real apartment in DC would be our apartment; it would be the home in which we nurtured the seeds of our marriage and allowed our new relationships and identities to blossom.  The reality of living with my parents, as wonderful as much of it was, destroyed most of those dreams.  Since Jon won't be moving to the States for another year, I've now signed a lease that expires in May 2014 on a studio that I can afford by myself.  The one dream I held on to was that my new apartment would have furniture and accessories that would be worthy of a working adult who is celebrating her 5 year college reunion next month.

You can guess how long that lasted, right?

Because I'm not moving into the new apartment from my own place, I don't actually have anything significant to bring with me.  All of the furniture I bought in London was sold to my landlords for the next tenant, and since I moved back to DC I've been enjoying the bounty of the 20+ years my parents have lived in my childhood home.  I imagined my new apartment as a blank slate, an opportunity to start fresh, stylistically, and to build my own home organically.  I didn't see the point in spending money on anything temporary - in my mind, that meant anything that wouldn't come with me to the next apartment, the one I'd share with Jon.  I'd stick with the basics until I could afford what I wanted, I thought, and then I'd slowly build a collection with lots of input from Jon because, obviously, he'd have to live with the pieces we chose for years to come.

Again, I'm sure you can guess how long that lasted.

It turns out that almost every item of furniture is basic when you're outfitting a studio apartment and it turns out that I don't have the time to wait until I find exactly what I want before I acquire most of the things I'll need.  Fortunately, Mom and Dad have a few pieces stored in their house that they're happy for me to take, and, though I was kind of a brat about hand-me-down furniture at first, I really am grateful.  It's exactly what I need to tide me over until I can develop a style and the savings account to match; actually, given everything they're passing along, there isn't much else I urgently have to buy.

So where did we go to pick up the last bits and pieces?  Ikea, obviously, and I cannot tell you how much I wanted to be past the phase of my life where shopping at Ikea is a given.  The thing is, I'm realizing that we never entirely grow out of Ikea.  As a commenter on an ApartmentTherapy post wrote a few years ago, "Ikea products are a symbol of being grown up enough to finance and furnish your own place and to have the foresight to choose items you might actually want to keep longer than one school year!"  There is some really nice stuff at Ikea, and once I got over my own snobbery I found exactly what I need to plug the holes in my apartment.

I did also pick up a few things from Craigslist, but they were mostly basics.  DIY and other decor blogs make it look so easy to unearth hidden treasures from unsuspecting sellers, so I like the idea of decorating from online forums, but I'm afraid that most of this aspect of settling in will have to wait until I have some more disposable income.

So that's where we are now!  I'm still grabbing small pieces from Target and Bed Bath & Beyond, but I'm mostly ready for my new apartment.  Well, except for the packing...

Wish me luck, dear readers, and please do let me know if you have any tips on making a new house a home!  If you want to see where I'm finding ideas, check out my Pinterest boards - here's one of the inspirations I'm loving right now:


25 comments:

  1. I can't wait to see what you will do! Maybe it will inspire me to get my own home in shape. :)

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  2. you know how it takes 1/3 of the time you were in a relationship to get over it after the breakup? I think there's a formula for settling in, too - like, (amount you spent on your house) / 12 x (magic number) = how long it takes to be fully furnished and decorated

    right?

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  3. Isn't decorating a new home the most exciting thing ever? And that picture from Pinterest...wow! My apartment has grey walls and white everything else. I love the combo together. Though, I must say, I would love to own that headboard!! Can't wait to see how you pull it together!

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  4. Hand me downs are lifesavers! Over half of our house (including the two guest rooms, our master bedroom and our dining room) are family heirlooms and stuff I took with me. It saved us sooooo much money and is much nicer than what we could ever afford alone. Plus, it left us with room in our budget to buy a few fun things. Take those hand me downs!

    And on Ikea.... our neighbors redid their ENTIRE kitchen in Ikea. Their house is the same layout as ours and every time we go over there, man am I jealous! That place rocks!
    I love that bedroom picture! Decorating really is the best! I can't wait to see how things turn out!

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  5. My grandma died right when Paul and I were starting a house together, and we got a bunch of her furniture. it was decidedly Ssn 1 Mad-Men dated and reeked of her 2-packs-a-day habit, so we gradually replaced all but a rocking chair and side table that we actually like. It was nice to have it all as a stop-gap, though, so we had time to accumulate better stuff. That said, I doubled our furniture at our auction house in England. I added up my receipts, though, and discovered that I bought everything- stained glass church doors to antique chairs to a reproduction tin railway sign and everything in between- for a few dollars less than our on-sale West Elm king sized bed and mattress cost us. I like used furniture anyway, though, assuming it's not in crap condition or smoke-filled, since it's likely better quality and it's less taxing environmentally.
    But as for when your style/decor get set? We re-arranged a couple of rooms in our house in Idaho when it came time to put it on the market, and suddenly were both like "HOW DID WE NOT REALIZE HOW MUCH BETTER THE COUCH IS OVER HERE!" and other comments of frustration. So now we are willing to rearrange furniture and rooms on a whim, because you can always put it back and it just might be so much better.

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  6. I wish I had tips for you. I inherited my grandma's house and pretty much all the furniture, so I haven't done much with it. In my head I have these grand plans, but I'm not a good decorator. I painted walls and that's about it. In fact, my walls are bare. Yeah... I should probably do something about that.

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  7. ah, good luck! making a house into a home is such a fun process. we tried to make our house homey by only hanging up art that we picked up from traveling together, or pictures that one of us took. I think that it truly makes our place ours

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  8. Ladyfriend, I hate to break it to you but if you live in a city you'll always need IKEA. It just fills a gap! I used to feel like one day I'd not shop there too but the reality is that you always need a something that they do well. The trick is to upgrade it – so with our kitchen, we're going for a custom countertop. You have to consider IKEA like Gap or JCrew - quality basics that you dress up or down depending what you need.

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  9. haha I am learning this! the stages of Ikea... you eventually end up at acceptance :)

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  10. oh I love that! it means I'll have to wait until Jon's really here, to a certain extent, but it can still guide me in the meantime :)

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  11. oh man, I'm sorry to hear that - what a lovely way to always be with her, but I can see how it might be a bit... stifling, maybe, as you try to define your own space? I always tell my parents that I want their house when they move out, but honestly I have no idea how I'd decorate it differently!

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  12. I'm in the same boat, having sold all my stuff in Texas before moving to DC. I thought that now that I'm a "grown-up" I'd buy good statement pieces that I'll have forever. HA. I don't have money for that. Although my Craigslist dresser is fabulous and from Ikea, it got several compliments as I moved it in. WIN!

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  13. Good luck with the moving and furnishing! I can't wait until June when Rob and I get to start our move but I know it's not always a walk in the park building a home. I mean IKEA is made for situations like ours where they're not really permanent but we need a freakin couch! Haha

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  14. I think it's easy to forget how long it takes to build a home! I mean, we see lots of before/after photos, but what we don't see is the x number of years the couple complained about the "before" situation, trying to save up to do something new and exciting, before making changes, you know?

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  15. WIN for sure! Maybe by the time Jon and I downsize from our forever home to our empty nest we'll have just enough good stuff to fill the empty nest - haha :)

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  16. I am LOVING gray as the basis for rooms! it's so easy to accessorize gray + white together and they look so clean and crisp without being sterile. great minds :)

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  17. My grandmother died last spring and I did take a few things from her apartment - it'll be interesting to see how I fit everything together! and honestly I always LOVE the stylized Ikea displays, though I'm usually too snobby to admit it!

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  18. Oh, I'm so excited for you to enjoy your new neighborhood!!! I lived right by the zoo for the past five-ish years, and I absolutely love the area. It's beautiful, safe, and very active. I will definitely miss it! Say hello to the pandas for me. :) As for Ikea, I'm having a love/hate relationship with it right now. The hubs and I are getting to the point where we want to invest in pieces that we will keep for years to come, and recently we have gotten very into antiquing for special pieces. However, since we're both still students, Ikea has filled in some essential gaps. It has treated us very well, and even though I'd love to scoop up all of the beautiful old furniture I can find, I know we have a few more trips to Ikea left in us.

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  19. Nothing wrong with Ikea, especially if this is not going to be a long term place. My boyfriend and I moved in together about six months ago and we bought quite a few things from there because we didn't want to spend a lot on pieces that probably wouldn't fit in a larger home. Ikea has a lot of clean lines that work with everything (and we're actually getting some patio furniture for our minuscule concrete slab out back this weekend lol). We also have a lot of hand-me-down pieces from my mom but that's great because she has fabulous taste!


    kendall from buttons & blossoms

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  20. I suppose what ends up happening is you get your starter pieces and then gradually get your long-term pieces. It's funny, we bought some nice things for our apartment, and when we moved to the house we have now, they ended up in the basement because they weren't really the pieces we wanted to have forever- they just fit in the space. I do agree that there is a time and place for Ikea. We have Expedit bookshelves in Gus's room, my craft room, and our crawl-space closet, and they are perfect for what we need them for. We did nice wood bookcases for the living room. You just figure it out as you go (and rearrange and rework). Just have fun with it and do as much as you can with things you really love.

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  21. AND I'M RIGHT NEAR OPEN CITY! there goes my wallet and my waistline... haha :)

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  22. okay, lesson of this post: everyone's houses are a mix! I think maybe I've psyched myself out with too much inspiration :(

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  23. YES! this is actually something I'm trying to remind myself - who knows where we'll be next and what will go where and how? It's okay to figure it out as we go along. it IS. thank you :)

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  24. I think Ikea gets a bad wrap. Sure there are some horribly pieces, but they also have a few beautiful lines that look perfectly grown up, so I couldn't agree more with the quote from Apartment Therapy.


    I hope you show us pictures when you're settled, because I'm sure your apartment is going to be lovely :)

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  25. Open City!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Their patio is so nice on a sunny day!!! Ahhh, you are going love your new place!! :)

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I love reading your thoughts and suggestions! Please do leave a comment so we can get to know each other better.