eliz's Profile

I keep coming back to this entry -- the picture of the living room is so appealing to me. It's sophisticated and calm. I just love it.

The ratio of cup & saucer sets to everything else is waaay off.

This is obviously a gorgeous old building (that molding! those floors! those windows!), and it looks like a calm, pleasant place. But in terms of this contest, there's not a single thing shown in any of the pictures that is a particularly cool use of small space. I think painting the ceiling in the bedroom is a great idea to accentuate the molding.

That fireplace screen is the best. Lyonstill, I just spent a few minutes on their blog trying to track it down. Came with the house.

Having a gym, a library card, a hair salon, and a couple of go-to brunch places and after-work take-out places makes me feel like I'm settled in a new place. And knowing where on the el platform to stand so that I'll be at the desired spot at the other end. And for some reason I get asked for directions a lot (like hardly a day goes by), so being able to answer them makes me feel like it's my hometown.

Oh, Tess Wilson, if you're expecting there to be "prairies" anywhere in Illinois, you're going to be sorely disappointed.
xoxo, Born and Raised in the Cornfields of Central Illinois

I believe that one of these is not a bedroom. I also believe that I am pretty clearly alone in that opinion, so I will harumph over in the corner by myself, alone with my lawyerly hang-ups about things like defining the terms of a contest.
One thing I do like about it, though, is that I like the fact that you can show Apartment Therapy people all the spacious, fancy bedrooms you can find, and the group will still admire the small cool one the most.

Add another vote to the THANK YOU YES column. With interest rates and condo prices as low as they've been the last few years, I do the math every few months. But I want to live in the city, so I'd be buying a condo, not a house. Which means that as low as my mortgage payment might be compared to my rent, the association fee changes the entire calculation. I rent an apartment I love for under $1000/month, and in condo buildings I look at, the monthly HOA is roughly $500-600. THAT feels like throwing money away, essentially paying rent on a place that I would supposedly already own.

I grew up in a family where my parents paid off their mortgage when they found out they were pregnant with their first child (me), and they still live in that same house 40 years later. That would be nice, and that's the imprint I got about what responsible borrowing is. Nothing even close to that is possible in my life, but I like the other things in my life that create that situation (living in a more expensive city, quitting a high-paying career that made me crazy), so if renting is the trade-off, I'm fine with that.

I think this post is funny. So are the comments. My sister showed me someone on etsy who needlepoints some of Kanye's crazier tweets, and the one about persion rugs with cherub images is her favorite. As soon as I saw the main photo of the rug, I knew what it must have come from!

Lately it seems like every renter I know in LA is moving to Highland Park or Eagle Rock.