This is my apartment a few days after I moved in. I arrived at the airport with just 2 suitcases and a cat. Everything else I either had to buy or ship over from home. I was really busy trying to buy things while I still had the rental car so I didn't bother trying to clean up until later. It was a HUGE mess. Here are the Before pictures:
Here's the other side of the livingroom/kitchen.
1 week after arriving, I have the most important things set up. Computer and internet! It's getting better, but this place was really old and dumpy looking when I got here. As you can see, the curtains were "pieces of junk" as proclaimed by the maintenance man when he saw them. He replaced all my windows with new blinds!
Here are the After pictures:
You can't tell from this picture, but my new monitor is so big that it's too close if I put it on my folding table desk. It's sitting on top of a chest of drawers, a ream of paper, and an ochem book. I also have lovely cardboard box "bookshelves" along the edges of the room. No sofa, but I do have a lovely rug I brought with me from Hong Kong a few years ago. I'm planning on getting some cushions for sitting on, then I can still ahve a part of the room that I can change and move around whenever.
The view outside my living room. As you can see, these blinds aren't all bent out of shape and I can finally have some privacy as the neighbors in the complex up there like to smoke and talk on their cell phones out there. Usually, it's quiet, and a much much better view than the people whose windows look directly at another building or into someone else's windows.
From left to right: the tiny kitchen, the coat closet-turned-kitty-restroom, front door, Panini's luggage-turned-bed
The door to bedroom. Not enough counter space for serious cooking. However, the counter tops are a charming powder blue flecked with gold and old burn marks. This place is straight out of the 60s. However, the fridge is reasonably new and there's a fresh (maybe 5 year old) coat of paint on the walls.
My extremely comfortable futon (filled with alternating layers of cotton and foam, made locally, not that cheap china-made junk you get at walmart). A rug that has traveled all the way from Iraq. and my bedside table made out of my printer box and a sheet from my desk calendar. Half my furniture is made from boxes. and I really don't mind it that way. I've been finding myself reluctant to get big bulky furniture and lots of stuff. I like living more simply and should I ever need to move, it's easy. Everything is portable or turns into a container for transporting things.
I didn't have blinds on this westward facing bedroom window for a week and a half during the heat wave. This place has shaped up since i arrived!
There's a water heater in my walk in closet. Makes that room always warm. Not exactly desirable in the summer.. but I'm sure I'll be glad of it and the instantly hot water in the wintertime.
It's a groovy medicine cabinet lined with the same ugly old stained paper that's in all the cabinets. I've since relined everything with a roll of wallpaper I found at Goodwill for a dollar.
Well, there's the grand tour.
