Ideas for small (or no) nursery – Part 1

My son Guy was born in 2007 when we my husband and I lived in a 650sf 1BR apartment.

There was no way to divide the living room or bed room to create small nursery, so I started planning some solutions in order for Guy to be in the bedroom with us.

The ideas on this post will help you to design small (or no) nursery.

• Free some closet space - It is unbelievable how much stuff babies need! Car seat, stroller, bath, bouncer, clothes, diapers… you name it. Once you have more room in your closets, many of those items can be stored there. Two ideas, the first will cost you some money and free a lot of apace, the second is very affordable but would still save something.

1. Storage bed – first thing I did, was to buy a storage bed. It helped me clearing a lot of closet’s space.  I am storing there blankets, bed linen (not all of it, as I want some to be handy), guests towels, seasonal clothing etc.   I got my bed from the Door Store that unfortunately does not exist anymore but there are other nice beds below:

IKEA

 


West Elm

Flou

 

CB2 and Target







2. Huggable hangers – very thin light hangers that saves space in the closets. They are not strong enough to hold a suit of a coat, but great for shirts and pants. This solution helped me to have more room in closets for some baby stuff.
It is a very simple inexpensive idea. but it will free a lot of closet's space. it is also really nice to have the same hangers for all cloths.

Next post - creative ideas for changing tables

Vacation apartment in Chelsea

I haven’t had a chance to write in the past few weeks but here I am with a post about a vacation apartment I design in Chelsea.

My friends bought this studio apartment and asked my help in designing it.

The apartment is very long and I had to come up with a way to create spaces for different activities; dinning, living, sleeping, working etc. My friends wanted to give a modern feel to it and asked to include “something about new york” in the design.

I had two big challenges; it had to be ready in 3 days and the budget was $6500.

The most important thing I did was to divide the space to 3 different areas, but still to keep everything open and light.

The bar defines the dining area and creates separation between the kitchen and the living area. Because of the tight schedule, we didn’t build an actual wall, but a low divider from wood with a piece of wooden countertop we bought at ikea.

I used the beam in the ceiling to hang a light curtain. It separates the sleeping area from the living space.

I selected dry sage color for one of the walls and we left the rest of the walls with the light yellow paint.

A desk can function as a working space, but can also be used for make up (we hanged a large mirror above).

Most of the furniture are from ikea. The desk is from West Elm. The orange sofa is a piece of furniture my friend really liked and I thought it could work. Picture are from Ikea as well.

Hope you like it… I do!

before

before

plan

Hey Barbie, can you design my house?

Hey Barbie, can you design my house?

A friend told me about this Barbie architect and immediately I went to check it.

I think it’s a nice, cute idea, but found it a bit surprising that Barbie would go to visit a construction site (note the white hard-hat), it heels, wearing a dress! When I worked in construction management, I used to wear Jeans with paint stains... However, I do I like the dress, it’s very creative. Finally an architect that doesn’t wear only black right?

As for the drawing's tube, maybe next time Barbie can have a laptop and some model making materials (who said laser cutter and some pink plastic?) as well.

I wonder what houses will she design though.

Great gift for an architect friend… 

When you need to store but have no space for a piece of furniture and shelves won’t work…

My dining area; bright and sunny, but it’s a very small-designated space. Since the kitchen is not very big either, there was no place for me to store all wine glasses, tablecloth, dishes used for entertaining, etc.

Buying some kind of a cupboard wasn’t a good idea – it’s too deep. I had a feeling that floating shelves in a house with a toddler and a baby, wouldn’t work so well…

So I went to Ikea and bought two AKURUM “Fan cab/top cabinet to refrigerator“.
36” wide by 24” high. Depth with the doors is 13”.

Image from Ikea website.

For under $150, I got lots of storage space! It perfectly fits our needs and it even looks good…

This idea can also work in kids room, living room or home-office.