Tiny Space Transformation Chronicles, Post #1
I figured this was a good place to document my progress on transforming a tiny, foreclosed dump of 568 square feet into a non-dump, also of 568 square feet. Anyway, I ended up buying this space for the price of a very low-end luxury car. It was built in 1981 (the same year Charles and Diana got married and MTV first launched,) and, well, after 30 years of cheapskate landlords just patching over flaws and renting it out, it really, really needed some work. Post #1 includes the living room (called a “Great Room,” hah!) and the kitchen. When I bought this place, the previous owner had torn out the floor, but had gotten as far as putting tile in the kitchen and bathroom and putting new counters in the kitchen, and then had run out of money, at which point foreclosure occurred. The kitchen had a floor and cabinets, but there were no doors in the place, save the door to the outside world. There were no appliances, and no floor in the “great room” or bedroom. There was some kind of horrid padding, which I’ve been told is not even real carpet padding, in the “great room,” but that was about it.
And if the “great room” looked bad, the kitchen looked like this.
As you can see, the walls were painted Blood Red/Mango/Lemon Yellow/Hemicuda Green in some kind of Playskool/Partidge Family Bus theme.
A few months later, after hiring Arizona Rapid Maintenance to work the place over, the Great Room and kitchen look like this:
And the kitchen looked like this:
The bedroom/office is not finished yet, so that will be Tiny Space Transformation Chronicles Post #2. But the idea was (after much obsessive CAD layout,) to split the great room and the kitchen with an Ikea Expedit room divider. The Expedit room dividers serve as bookcases, room dividers, shelves, dressers, etc., so they’re really good for people who live in small spaces. The floor is a generic Pergo laminate (Tropical Fruitwood) that is much thicker than real Pergo. The paint is Behr. I don’t know who made the molding. The rest of the furniture is Ikea, Winsome Wood (from Amazon) and Walker Edison (from Amazon.) The Winsome Wood stuff has in particular been a pleasant surprise, as I bought it without seeing it, and was pretty shocked by the build quality. Stainless (and really awesome) appliances are made by LG (fridge, washer and dryer,) and Whirlpool (range, microwave, and dishwasher.)
More to come when I finish.
