Dave's Profile

The correct answer is: ignore landlord. Hang real curtain rods. In pretty much every state in the country, you are allowed to hang things on your wall (assuming you use modest sized nails, etc. that can be easily repaired under the rubric of "normal wear and tear").

Landlords put those kind of things in leases and "house rules" all the time and they are pretty much never enforced in the singular. They are there to deal with the more egregious situations. You'd have to be completely peppering your walls with nail holes for it to rise to a problem for you, the tenant. That's why those type of rules are there - to deal with the insanely abusive type tenants.

You do have rights, as a tenant. And one of the most basic is you get to live in your rental unit as a home - and that it is, YOUR home. There's a reason why if your landlord shows up unannounced in a non-emergency situation and just lets himself in, he is a trespasser and you can have the cops toss him.

So hang your curtain rods till the cows come home. I'd love to see a landlord try to argue (in front of a superior court judge) that your curtain rod hanging was a material breach of your lease triggering a right to evict. I'd buy popcorn to watch that fail parade.

Ah the travails of the petit-bourgeoisie...

Looks like having a large social network (and being able to tap into Mom's address book) is more important to winning than having a finished, completed space. This space is nice enough but very incomplete. There are several contestants currently below this one that are far more finished, far better designed.

This contest has turned into a bit of a joke. There really needs to be a change to the judging system to allow for a blend between a popular vote count and like a judging panel of professional designers. And I agree, leaving nasty comments on other contestants pages is just totally crass.

@rick100 - Ha!

Having taken a look at most of the contestants at this point, its seems like a theme is emerging this year as far as a type of space that is/are rising quickly up the leaderboard. Seems like the "all white look - white walls, white furniture, white lighting fixtutres, etc. punctuated either by darkish wood cabinetry or a single piece of dark brown furniture is all the rage right now.

@Julia MN - the circle-y bit is a wall-sized rotating door. From what we can tell, it used to be a Murphy bed. The bed is gone and now its a closet.

Thx Mr. Modtomic - one thing I have found with the McCobb pieces though is that the veneer is rather soft and thin. I swear a sneeze would leave a nick on it. Even with multiple layers of added varnish on the desk, it still peppered with marks since I acquired it.

Dude. You're making the rest of us contestants look bad. Seriously.

Fantastic space - the fact that its barely over 400 SF is nuts. I've lived in city apartments that were tiny - if I crammed them with as much stuff as you did, instead of panache, I'd have something that looked like a janitor's closet.

And the fact that your space feels like some sort of time-travel/interdimensional portal to an imagined Victorian steampunk meets Harry Potter meets Breakfast at Tiffany's is just fricking insane. AND its a working artist's space.

Go away. Please. You are giving me Woody Allen level of feelings of intense inadequacy and lack of self-worth.

Two thumbs up.

I have to agree with Ando - its a great place, but I find that I'm not that impressed when its really a professional architect or interior designer doing the work. As a professional in multifamily rental & condo real estate development, I have to say there just isn't a lot of creativity that goes into hiring a design professional or picking through color samples or finish submittals. I felt the same way about the Darren's Usable Space submission - just seems to say more about the owner's personal financial situation than anything else. (Plus, the 999 SF is just a bit too cute by half.)

Its in sharp contrast to the far more DIY spaces like "Franklin's Apartment is Alive" or "Coco's Cozy Hollywood Regency" - neither of which are anything close to my style nor could I ever imagine liking living in them - BUT are so personally idiosyncratic & feel "true" to the soul or personality of their owners that I can't help but fall in love with their spaces - the kind of homes that make you want to meet their owners to get to know more about the people living there.

Completely unsurprised. Its a given that almost any multinational retailer out there is going to attempt to grind down their worforce as much as possible in order to shovel as much profit as possible to executive management and the company's owners. (and in the case of publicly traded corporations, ownership of shares is far more highly concentrated amongst a narrow social class than Wall Street would have you believe - fun thing about being an ex-corporate lawyer - you get to see how it works behind the curtain)

On a morning when a vocal minority of the country is cheering on the dismantling of Medicare and Social Security, the adage that "There is No War But Class War" was never truer.

Depending on what state you live in, I wouldn't worry too much about what your lease says. Large population "Blue" states (NY, CA, MA, NJ) tend to have reasonable tenant protections such that niggly lease violation like taking down and storing window blinds or putting modest amounts of screws in the wall are not going to get you evicted. (nor should it - the neither landlord nor his/her property is being harmed in any material way). Most tenants have more power under state L/T law than they know.