Decorating your first apartment

When it came time to set up her first apartment early this year in Old Town, Ashley Cavazos lucked out.

Her grandmother decided to get new living room furniture for her own house and gave Cavazos her old couch, coffee and end tables, and an ottoman.

The coffee table’s top opens to reveal a trunk’s worth of space for storage.

“It’s pretty convenient,” Cavazos said, looking under the lid of the coffee table in her top-floor apartment. “At first I didn’t want it. My grandma said, ‘Do you know how much stuff you can fit in there?’ She was right.”

Cavazos’ willingness to accept the gifts of family is one of the top tips interior designer Bridget Mack offers to people who are setting up house for the first time. She has many others as well, including how to customize decor without having to sew, where to shop for good deals on used furniture, how to get rid of stuff without having a garage sale — and the one category of furnishing to always buy new.

Often, people moving into their first apartment are young, and often they don’t have a lot of money when they’re just starting out. Stores like Target and World Market carry reasonably priced furnishings for a new apartment, “but if you’re working on a really strict budget, there are alternatives,” said Mack, owner of Bridget Mack Interiors and the interior design director at Wichita Area Technical College.

“Go look in Grandma’s attic. Go hit up family and friends: ‘Are you going to get rid of that?’ I’ve set up my grandkids many times with stuff I was going to put in a yard sale.”

Furnishing

Mack also recommends shopping at thrift stores and consignment shops. For example, she likes Invio Fine Furniture Consignment at 535 N. Woodlawn for “better-quality furniture, and not just furniture, but accessories. They have higher-end quality at a good price.” Others include Three Pea at 4729 E. Central and RElove All Things Shabby at 515 N. Woodlawn.

Betsy Windholz of Invio said a woman looking to help her daughter set up her first apartment visited the store last weekend.

“We get the good old sturdy furniture,” Windholz said. “The new stuff is not always well-made.”

While Invio’s inventory is in constant flux, one day this week the shop had three dining sets sized to fit odd or small spaces — a 34-inch round French-country table with three upholstered chairs; a triangular table with two chairs that could tuck into a corner; an small oblong table of iron, wicker and glass with two chairs that slid all the way under each end of the table for a compact package.

In addition to accepting hand-me-downs, younger people gravitate to the unusual, say owners of consignment and thrift shops.

“Young people are looking for something unique. The retro look is big,” said Chuck Presley, who co-owns Second Hand Rose Resale & Thrift Shoppe at 332 N. Seneca in Delano.

Garage sales and estate sales are good places for picking up nicer dishes, silverware and glassware at a discounted price, Mack said. “You have to have the time to do it,” she added, but she pointed out that younger people often have more time than money.

Young people also are looking for something modern and colorful, Windholz said. Ikea is popular for the apartment dweller who wants to buy new, especially as it delivers if you order online. But if you do buy something from Ikea or anywhere else that requires assembly, be sure you can actually put the item together. Reading reviews online can help determine the difficulty level, and some customers share tips on ways to assemble things more efficiently or securely. Reviews also can be a source for ways to use or place furniture and other household items.

Molly Loesch, who recently moved into a Riverside duplex, also has been the recipient of benefactors getting rid of old stuff.

But she found that the one thing she wanted new was a good bed.

“I had been sleeping on a twin mattress since I was 16,” Loesch said. “I got a queen.”

Mack insists on buying new in one other category as well: electronics. And by that she means anything that plugs in.

“That’s a safety issue more than a decorative issue. Everything else can be revamped, reused, reclaimed,” Mack said.

Part of shopping for your first place is imagining the many ways an item can be used, Mack said. For example, Windholz of Invio pointed to a free-standing wine rack bracketed by wide shelves that could hold any number of things in most any room.

Apartment complexes themselves also can help with visualizing even while you’re still shopping for a place to live.

On its website, Eagle Creek Apartments at 9550 E. Lincoln has graphics of the floor plans that are available, along with a feature called “virtual move-in.” Icons of furniture in various sizes can be dragged into each floor plan to help see how it would fit in.

The Lux at 120 E. First St. has photos of model units on its website that give an idea of how furniture can be arranged in the lofts. Furnishings come from Target and CB2.

Use of space, storage

Many times young people will get a studio apartment because they can’t afford a one-bedroom, said Shelby Basu, a leasing consultant at Eagle Creek. In that case she recommends putting up a long thin tension curtain rod and hanging something such as a sheet over it as a divider between the living and sleeping areas.

Cavazos’ one-bedroom apartment is more like a small studio, with the bedroom separated from the living room by a partial wall. Add to that the fact that “I’m a couponer,” Cavazos says, and she is faced with having to find storage space for lots of stuff.

She’d long been shopping for bargains in anticipation of her first apartment. After graduating from K-State, Cavazos moved her stuff from college into a storage unit and lived with her parents for two years. When she found a good deal on something, she stashed it in the storage unit.

She has lots of storage bins, and made space for them by putting her bed on risers and stowing the bins under the bed. A king-size blanket on her full-size bed hides the bins. An over-the-toilet shelving unit makes use of vertical space for storage in the bathroom.

Rooms also can do double duty in a small apartment or house. When Loesch bought her new queen-size bed for her duplex, she didn’t let go of her old twin. Instead, she put it in a small second bedroom along with a desk so the room can serve as an office and a guest room. She’s also treating a carport as a deck, placing a little table there and putting Christmas lights around a railing. “It’s really kind of nice.”

Decorating

When it comes to decorating, most landlords don’t want residents to paint, so temporary wallpaper is a good alternative, Mack said. “Put it up, have some color, have some fun, then roll it up and take it to the next place. The same thing with hanging art. Use Command strips on the walls; don’t fill them up with holes. People want to get their deposit back.”

A neat way to add light to a dark space is with Christmas lights, Mack said. “They make great ambient lighting, and they’re fun. If a window is not giving you enough light, put them behind draperies, and that way they shine through the curtains and look like sunlight. The same with rope lighting.”

Mirrors also can help, but be careful placing them, Mack said. You want to be sure that they reflect a pleasant view.

For flooring, a plethora of area rugs can be found at resale shops, Mack said. You can have them professionally cleaned at a carpet-cleaning business.

If you want a custom look, you can buy a carpet remnant from a carpet store and go to a bindery and have it edged, Mack said. You can customize the look even more by taking your own fabric for the edging, perhaps one that matches throw pillows.

DIY

For window treatments, Mack urges wide-ranging creativity. For example, you can use something as simple as a pretty tea towel. “You can hang almost anything on anything,” Mack said. “I have used antique linen dishrags that Grandma cross-stitched. I’ll put them over a rod and put it over a kitchen window. It’s cute as a button.”

Or how about this? “Sew some bobbers on a fabric and hang it on a fishing rod,” Mack said. Just make sure your makeshift curtain and rod are secure so they don’t fall down.

Plain muslin is inexpensive and also can be used as a curtain. To dress it up, add a decorative fabric band, perhaps matching the fabric to throw pillows you’ve made. You can use a fusable bonding web like Stitch Witchery adhesive rather than sewing.

Putting new trim on old fabric items also can give them new life, Mack said.

The most challenging thing for Cavazos was finding a shower curtain long enough to keep the water from coming out of her tall shower. She finally found a liner that was long enough, and she kept her original curtain on the outside because she likes it a lot.

Moving on

Because first apartments often aren’t long-term, think about the ease of moving furniture in and moving furniture out before you buy it. And be sure you like what you buy. You never know how long you may have it.

“I really lucked out,” Loesch said. “I didn’t have a dining room table, but a friend of mine had come over to see my house when I was painting, and she asked if I had a dining room table, and she gave me hers. It’s small, but she said it was the first piece of furniture she bought as an adult, and she always carried it around with her wherever she lived.”

That is, until she found Loesch in the same situation she’d been in when she bought the table; then she was finally able to let it go.

When it’s time to move, or if you no longer want certain things, and you aren’t able to have a garage sale, you can sell things to one of the resale shops, Mack said.

This story was originally published July 17, 2015 at 2:33 PM with the headline "Decorating your first apartment."