In NYC apartment rentals typically come in one of two sizes, tiny or teeny tiny. When it comes to actually buying an apartment you are pretty much stuck in the teeny tiny zone, but since you are in NYC all of your friends and family are insanely jealous of your teeny tiny space so it’s all good.

My sister’s boyfriend just bought a studio apartment in Manhattan and I’ve been enlisted for my decorating services. Now having a client that is a good friend and dates my sister has it’s up’s and down’s. On the up side I get to help furnish a space that my sister will eventually be moving into which is nice. I tend to decorate a bit more on the feminine side so it’s nice to flex my design muscles with a more gender neutral design. On the down side since it’s not the typical client/designer relationship there are times when we are both stubborn and my strong willed client won’t give in to my design vision. Normally all of my design clients are more than happy to take on all of my design advice and there are very few changes. We shall see how this whole design process goes. It will be interesting to see what we end up.

Here is a peek into the process thus far…

Before:

{This is the living, dining and sleeping area aka everything. There is also a walk in closet and bathroom off of the front door.}

{The kitchen opens up to the main room and doesn’t have a lot going on. It wasn’t even large enough for a full sized refrigerator.}

One of the first decisions that had to occur in the space was the new floor stain, paint for the walls and the kitchen.

Dark floors were the number request by my closet so the floors went from honey oak:

To dark walnut:

Since the floors went dark and the space is about 400 sq ft the question of going dark on the paint was discussed numerous times. I loved the idea, but didn’t want to push too much, because dark would make it feel a bit smaller, but I thought it would add more charm so I pushed for Holiday Wreath by Benjamin Moore. Numerous samples went up and in the end Holiday Wreath won! Yay!

Take a peek:

I love it and so does my client!

Once the floors and paint choices were made the kitchen was next. There wasn’t a big area to work with in the kitchen. The previous owner was only able to have a college sized refrigerator and my client wanted a full size one. The contractor was able to move a wall and take space from the walk in closet in order to put a full size refrigerator in.

{ During a trip to IKEA I fell in love with their new kitchen model, Sofielund. It had this great gray/taupe white wash look to it and I quickly became obsessed with it. Having it on both the upper and bottom cabinets felt a bit too modern, which is why we went with white instead.}

Stay tuned for more progress pictures..Now that the basics are done we get to start the fun part and pick out furniture, rugs, accessories, etc.