Cool Finds For A First Apartment

My daughter lives in LA and has had apartment roommates for years. Her lease is up this summer and the roommate she has now is moving on. So, she’s decided to get an apartment on her own.

It’s hard right now finding a new roommate, knowing what people’s lifestyles are and how they behave in this quarantine. Anyone you live with can bring home the virus if they are careless or get out and about too much. Living single in LA in your twenties is kind of hard to find someone who adheres to a more strict quarantine, if you can imagine.

She’s found a place, it’s a typical LA west side apartment, built in the 50’s or 60’s likely, with a small kitchen and one bedroom/bath. It is a small building with the atrium in the middle, typical of these style apartments. While it is rather spacious overall inside for what it is, it does have a few drawbacks.

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Atrium style LA apartment

Small LA apartment building

It doesn’t have a dishwasher or a microwave. The tiny kitchen has the range and refrigerator plugged into an outlet ABOVE the countertop, which we thought did not look code compliant, but they said they will fix. (Who knows. Most of these apartment managers just put you off.)

At least this kitchen has quartz countertops! Although, they are the “glitter” variety with little glitter speckles in it. :-/

It has the typical vertical blinds that many apartments do out there of this vintage. No balcony or patio, no gated parking, but she has an old, beat up car anyway.

It’s still crazy expensive though! And luckily she has a good job with benefits and can work from home! She changed jobs only a few weeks before quarantine, so she is lucky to have one.

The best thing about it is location, it’s close to some of her good friends and her work (when it gets back up rolling in the office). They will also let her have a pet with a deposit, something she’d love to have.

It has LVP floors throughout, she’s so sick of living on cheap, threadbare carpet that has all the nastiness from previous renters in it. And it has a small window type unit A/C, which these days in LA is becoming critical. It seems they are having more hot spells every year!

So, A/C is more important than a dishwasher.

My daughter has a bit of interior designer in her.

I imagine you can understand that. :-) She is a social media content creator and photographer, so she has an eye. She likes cool, vintage things, a bit of a Boho look, and has a wish list of stuff started for her new apartment.

Here are some of her wants for the new place, filtered through this twenty-something’s designer-leaning lens.

Cool finds For the apartment Kitchen

To be honest, I kind of like this retro look microwave more than one of those space-saving ones above the range with a vent.

Cool vintage look microwave oven for only $59! Color is “Bebop Blue”. :-)

With doing dishes by hand, she will need a decent dish rack. I like this one with a drain board and lots of space, including utensil cups there on the side.

This is a cute white dish rack with wood handles, pictured below. I like the looks, just wish the drainboard would empty off one side, into the sink.

This is an inexpensive one, and the color would be fun with that microwave color.

She’s going to need a cart or a table for it, as there is no counterspace, especially since she’ll need a dishrack out on the counter by the sink.

I like the butcher block top on this kitchen cart, it will extend the countertop really, since she will be putting it at the end of kitchen counter. She could use this anywhere later on down the road, a laundry room, closet, home office, etc. It’s versatile and practical.

This is Elfa from Container Store. It’s lightweight, easy to move, but sturdy. Nice butcher block top and drawers too.

Dining space next to apartment’s kitchen.

I told her she should buy a console there for the back wall, but she needs other things right now. She has a small dining table she bought on Craig’s List last year with 4 plexi chairs from Ikea, that she will use here.

At least with the cart next to her kitchen counter there, she can plug the microwave into the dining room outlet there, not using up valuable kitchen outlets.

That space next to the window will be where she hangs her bike. It’s really the only place to put it.

Cool Finds For The apartment Bathroom

Her bathroom, although plain, has decent finishes really. The apartment she has now has plumbing fixtures and tile that has been painted over multiple times and is peeling. :-(

Plain white apartment bathroom could use some extra storage and some color!

She really needs some storage in the bathroom, and loves that this over-the-toilet shelf doesn’t look like the typical bulky storage unit. It’s easy to install, you just lean it in place!

That “flex” shower caddy is useful, as there will always be oversized and miscellaneous bottles and products in the shower.

Over the toilet storage

Flexible shower caddy

Here are a couple of shower curtains she’d like to have. The bathroom is just all plain white, so a little color and pattern would be nice.

Floral shower curtain

Watercolor look shower curtain

I bought these towels for her last year, so they will help bring in a little color.

Yellow patterned towels for a plain white apartment bathroom help liven up the space.

Cool Finds For The Apartment Living Room

One of the biggest things she is really excited about is being able to move her desk out of her bedroom. With roommates and limited space before, she couldn’t really put her desk out in the open living area.

She doesn’t have a big desk, but she does need a desktop computer for all the photos and image management she does every day, so it is something she uses.

Since working from home for the last 3+ months, she says it is not enjoyable to sit in her dark bedroom most days to work. It makes it hard to focus. One of her friends that recently moved to her own place told her that moving her desk out to the living area was a game changer with her work.

There is space on the long wall by the front door for her desk and I think having a tackboard/magnet board above it, something like this below, would be cool. She could do two, stacked above her desk.

Magnetic tack board with graphic pattern

Or, maybe a little shelf like or ledge like the ones I did in my office, would work. Her desk is a warm wood color like this below. They come in 3 finishes and my husband says these are the EASIEST shelves to install he’s ever put up for me. :-)

I really wish she wasn’t moving right now in these uncertain times, but it actually made for more apartments on the market, so she had an easier search than ever before. I’m just hoping a safe move can be made now.

Here’s a little post I did about her apartment she is living in now, when I visited her last year.

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