New Year's apartment makeover

Happy New Year! Today's post will be extra long as I missed yesterday ....

I've started the new year off on a high decorating note by completely redoing my apartment.

Pictured here: the work in progress.

It all began with a copy of Elle Decor that my sis gave me as I was boarding the train back to T.O. after the holidays.

Elle Decor is my absolute FAVE decorating mag - it's eclectic yet elegant and that's exactly my decorating philosophy.

The mag inspired me so much that all I could do on the train ride home was brainstorm what I would do to my apartment to make it more elegant looking.

All I had was a general idea: less cluttered and junky looking; more elegant, but functional too.

It took 10 hours for me to do the re-org. Boy did I get a workout.

The key to any re-org is clearing away all the knic-knacs and bric-a-brac from furniture and dumping it in piles in a room or area that you're not going to re-do. That way you can work with a clean slate. In my case it was the desk area, the hallway and the kitchen.

I started by moving the cheap IKEA bookshelf from one corner of the apartment to a small wall.

I had to take out all the books and drag the bookshelf across the room - don't do this on your own, please, as you could end up under a heavy bookshelf!

Problem: I didn't have enough bookshelf for all my books as I wanted to turn one small bookshelf into something else (more on that later), and I had a lot of ugly paperbacks that don't really display well.



My original solution: turn my linen closet into a bookshelf and take the door off. The idea is wonderful, but it is problematic as I don't have a place to put all my linens.

So for now, the linen closet is a combo linen closet/bookshelf.

Once I can figure out where to put my linens I'd like to make the entire thing a bookshelf and just take the door off. I think it would look really funky.





Here's a makeover preview, of the bookshelf relocated to a smaller wall. I moved the blue velvet chair from the bedroom - it's such a showpiece and wasn't getting much attention there - and put it in front of the books to create a cozy reading nook.

The tiny retro glam lamp on the side table was $4.99 and found during a recent Goodwill dig; it is part of a set so I can pair the two together when I'm feeling symmetrical.

By the way, this is in my dining room area. I have so much more to show you, and I'm thrilled with my new glam look! Stay tuned this week!!