DelayedReaction

So I've been in my apartment for awhile now, and I've decided to make it look more like an apartment and less like a college dorm room. I figure stuff like framed art would go well, but there's a problem: I'm on a budget.

What kind of a budget? Well, let's assume I'd like to spend as little as possible. Mostly I'm looking for suggestions that would fit well with a 21 y/o engineering major, yet would still retain some semblance of class.

After removing the posters and whatnot, here's what I have:
3 small framed Escher prints, about 12" x 15" or so.
1 9' x 1' panoramic view of the Grand canyon, framed.
A framed and autographed poster-size program sheet from the summer production of Grease I did.

So I have a decent start, but I need a lot more. Any suggestions?

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If ignorance is bliss, you must be having an orgasm.

metalgeek

Ditch any worn out furniture you have, ikea always works.
(I mean severly worn out)
Prints are always good, you can often get posters of art for pretty cheap, it's the framing thats expensive.

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The truth is, wherever you choose to be, it's the wrong place.
Chuck Palahniuk , Diary

basmoq

I'd suggest some living stuff, either an ivy in the living room, or a bamboo plant in a nice pot. they may be small, but there easy to take care of and can add a bit of "yes, I'm responsible" to the room.

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"There's someone out there for everyone - even if you need
a pickaxe, a compass, and night goggles to find them."

billege

Put up some nicely framed (style is of course up to you, but if you like metal frames buy them and stick to it, same with wood. Young places usually don't have any matching stuff, make it look like you intentionally bought these things) pictures of you, your family, your friends. Prints and what-not are nice, but if you've got some framed memories laying about, now you've got a home instead of a pad.

While we're at it, if you have any beer bottle collections, liquor bottles on display in the living room, get 'em out and into the trash. The only people that put empty alcohol bottles on display are those that are kids, especially proud of what they drank, and alcoholics who never pick up.

Lose the posters, NO posters on the wall anywhere. If it's not in a frame lose it, unless you have a den or like a sports theme room. (now I read you've got that...)

What is your foucs in your living room? THe PS2, the TV? What does everything face? Is the furniture placed to accomodate people talking and looking at each other, or is it a movie theater? Neither one is right or wrong, just what you put out there. If the PS2 is drug halfway out of an entertainment system, that's a mess too, you look kid-ish. Put things away, try not to clutter more than you must.

If you have a coffee table, as it seems some people do (I have no love for them at ALL), make sure that sucker is clean. You get to have some framed pictures, a BOOK or two if reading is important to you, maybe some plant or something. You are allowed a stack of mags on the bottom shelves if you must. But, the type of your mags dictates if you want people to see them. Maxim, yeah great, but not on display in the living room.
I swear to god that coffee tables are great attracters of clutter, and a place to put your feet. They have absolutely no place other than that for me.

In general, the cleaner and more tidey a place is, the 'older' it looks, so always keep the clutter down. Learn to throw shit away. The side advantage of that is easier dusting. I hate dusting. The number one clutter fighter for our house is that my wife and I both hate to dust. The less we have to pick up and dust under the better.

If I think of more, I'll add it here.
Good Luck!!

Ikea is nice, but we've gotten a lot of small furniture from Target. They seem to have all sorts of matching themed cabinets and shelves and stuff. The fact that we can afford them helps too!! Adding like things always helps. If you can ditch a bookshelf only to buy another bookshelf that is the same theme (modern, curvey, really simple--whatever) as your entertainment center or couches or tables, then do it. The more your things share or compliment each other with color and style the better.

__________________
I can sum up the clash of religion in one sentence:
"My Invisible Friend is better than your Invisible Friend."

MSD

My dad had quite a collection of rare beer cans and bottles on a shelf downstairs above the bar. It was a nice touch. Of course, most of his were a series that commemorated famous baseball legends.

Paq

there is a difference between rare beer cans and several cans of white can, black label "BEER" that you get for $3 a sixpack...or bottles of smirnoff or everclear laying around..

one thing that does help greatly is to have a theme. I believe someone suggested having your frames match for your pictures and that is totally true. Also, try to have a flow about the room, don't just haphazardly put stuff everywhere that there is wallspace. Think of hanging pictures like you would in an art gallery, each one with its own space and its own story.

Try something with lighting. Ceiling fan lights are great for bright lights, etc, but you may want an upright lamp in the corner for the subdued look. Those are $20 at bed, bath and beyond or walmart, target, etc, and they look really good.

never mix wood and metal frames in the same room.

M.C. Esher for an engineer is perfect.

Plants are always good, but remember, some do requre more upkeep than you may be willing to put up with. The ones in my living room were a PAIN. leaves everywher,e have to water them at least once a year, i mean, really, who has time...(seriously, you had to water them daily or they would die, not dry up a bit, but fucking DIE)

i always avoid coffee tables like the fucking plague. Nothing but somethng to bang your toes or shins on. End tables beside a nice couch or comfy chair is fine, coffee tables are just begging for clutter and broken toes...

Candles are nice little accents for special occassions and generally just look good as decoration.

seriously, get rid of the old scraggly assed furniture...a plastic crate is not an endtable, an industrial wire spool is not a poker table...

Mags....i'd avoid...just too cluttery looking and as interesting as playboy articles are, they just don't fit in a nice room...

hmm...that's a start and doesn't cost much

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Live.

Chris

billege

Yes, there is a huge difference between Bud Light cans and rare imported beers, empty gordon's vodka bottles vs a hundred dollar limited batch.

I hear you when you say, "downstairs, on a shelf above the bar." Yeah, that's a damn good place for a bottle collection. The living room is not generally a place for that. The only way I can see a bunch of empty bottles in a living room/kitchen area is if you are a serious wine/beer/liquor afficianado who has such an affectation for alcohol that the room has that theme going for it, and the bottles/cans etc. are part of it.

I've seen far to many college guys have empty party beer/liquor/etc. spread around the pad. While some displays were creatively arranged, even backlit, it's a serious dead giveaway you're either a punk kid, or an alkie. Those are the displays I was referring to.

__________________
I can sum up the clash of religion in one sentence:
"My Invisible Friend is better than your Invisible Friend."

maleficent

I like the personal touches, that mean something, like the Grease poster...

You want decent seating in your apartment. Or some really big comfy pillows that allow for sitting on the floor.

Good lighting. (overhead lighting is bad -- lamps are good)

If you expect company of the female persuasion:
For your bed.... Nice quality sheets (www.overstock.com or www.domestications.com has nice stuff that won't break the bank. and decent towels.



Other people's cast offs are a good start for people starting out, but rather than dumpster diving, check out a site called www.freecycle.org - it's a mailing list for your area, that people will list stuff that they are getting ready to get rid of - -in my area a lot of folks are ditching furniture.
They list it -- you go fetch what ever tehy are dumping.

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Averett

Yes, if you're expecting female company (and I'm sure you are, being a 21 year old guy ) invest in good sheets and towels.

If your seating (couch, chair) stuff is in poor shape, get some slip covers. They aren't too expensive.

Target is your friend. Nearly every single thing in my apartment is from Target. And everyone loves my apartment

__________________
Absence is to love what wind is to fire. It extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.

roachboy

i began the decollegification process by putting my bong away when i wasnt using it.
this seemingly trivial adjustment required others----i had to walk the bakeline such that:
(a) i would remember that away was not on my coffee table in the middle of my living room, which unwittingly treated the bong like it was a chalice on the table-altar and
(b) i would not then find myself standing in the middle of the living room, late at night, wondering where i keep it, while thinking with more focus about oreos or brownie mix.

i found that the friends drifted away that i once had who thought it was great to smash pbr cans flat on their foreheads--flat cans that i for some resaon would keep around for a few days like they were trophies brought back from a Big Hunting Expedition.
the pbr itself followed.
i started thinking that flavor might be a good aspect of the beer experience.

the problem with this whole thing was that it ran me into this space i was not anxious to get to: living like an "Adult"--which i assumed involved some perverse affection for laura ashley fabrics and other things that would result in the long run in my wearing pastel izod-lacoste polo shirts with the collar turned up, sunglasses dangling around my neck from a lanyard topped by a persistent 70s haircut with a part down the middle and integrated with the floor by loafers with little tassle things on them.
this outfit seemed to indicate that i would become the sort of person who would talk about weather and investment strategies at the tedious parties i would go to, would force myself to develop an affection for sports involving racquets so i could join a club that housed courts that also had a bar, which i could frequent in order to regale other such beings with stories of my vast income and various holdings. or travels. or something.

the prospect was horrifying.

this prospect would of course trigger yet another round of being-toward-bong, which would be greatly complicated by the fact that i had only recently decided that i should put it away when i was not using it, which in turn meant that it was no longer in its normal shrine-place in the center of the living room, with the result that it would not be clear to me exactly where it was.

in frustration, not being able to locate the bong, i would more and more often decide that i was hungry and would cook something for myself in the kitchen.

and that is how it started, this crawling out from my undergradified living space--for purely stupid reasons, i started learning how to cook. and the shift, which was gradual and did not make me think i was going to turn into polo-shirt guy, worked its way out from the kitchen. for some reason, learning to cook shifted my sense of what i was doing, basically, in my living space.

__________________
a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamau brathwaite

meembo

living green things work really well, makes the place less angular, more organic

Display your personality, what's important to you. My favorite apartments are direct reflections of the personalities of the rent-payers.

Although everyone who knows me will call me a hypocrite -- the cleaner, the better. (Do as I say, not as I do)

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less I say, smarter I am

Ace_O_Spades

My apartment is very college... and although I may be looking to de-college it sometime, and I would TODAY if i had the scratch... i don't

I think the count in our living room is:

-Two massive posters of hot girls, one involving two girls kissing

-one poster of Trevor Linden that we got out of a newspaper

-One dumb and dumber poster

-One really ugly piece of framed artwork

-An old, but very comfy sectional couch in the corner, one futon, and a papa-san chair to sit in

-one old wooden coffee table

-one entertainment center with tv, dvd, vhs, ps2, and stereo.

I think it's great for two 18-19 year olds, maybe we're not ready to de-college it just yet

Although I would like a plant or two

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Feh.

cdnjeepin

ewps, re-read it..de college it..

when i got seperated..i got my sister to come over and re-do everything..she changed it all around and made it more of a bachelors place..

Just get rid of the old and busted furniture, get some nice stuff, repaint the walls, good towels, just try and make it respectable..

macmanmike6100

what should we do with wine bottles? i tend to the keep the ones that look "artsy"...

billege

Throw them away.
You can keep and display new, full ones, in a rack. Sad, but true.

__________________
I can sum up the clash of religion in one sentence:
"My Invisible Friend is better than your Invisible Friend."

maleficent

Unless they're really special - and have significant meaning to them (ie it was the bottle of wine you were drinking wne you proposed) toss 'em -

You can keep wine labels in an album, so you remember the wines

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sailor

Yeah, dont save wine bottles unless you have some special reason to.

If you really like wine, start a notebook like she's talking about. Its quite a help, especially when you can tell the guy at the wine shop other wines that you liked and get suggestions of new ones to try. Soak the bottles in hot water until the label comes off, then tape/glue it in a notebook and write a bit about it (did you like it, dryness/flavors/tones/etc)

__________________
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
--Plato

Rubyee

Okay, this may sound "young", but if done right, it is nice and cheap.

I use corkboards to display all of the photos I take that I want to frame but cannot afford to. I keep the number of photos on a corkboard to a minimum so that it doesn't look busy, and you can use nice pins to give it a more sophisticated look.

Also, and you may not like this since you are of the male persuasion, but baskets can be your hero. I use baskets for almost everything. You can get baskets of varying sizes to hold magazines, remotes, small pocket items that you throw out each night when you come in, or anything else. And yes, they can look manly- you can pick up some dark wood baskets.

Throw pillows are cheap, and you can get some cheap prints on ebay.

__________________
You don't know from fun.

analog

OH MY GOD, SHE'S MY MOM!! NO MORE BASKETS!!!!!

No they can't.

My roommate and I went through the exact same thing. One day when we were sitting in our brand-new apartment, it occurred to us that we needed to upgrade our style of living. This college-guys decor was just not "us" anymore, nor was it the image we wished to portray to others when they came over.

Seating- Seating is #1. Save up, do what you have to, but the futon and the couch you found on the side of the road have got to go.

Matching- You don't have to be a genius to figure out that 12 pieces of furniture in 12 completely different colors looks odd. Try and keep to 1 or 2 basic colors, and work from there with variations of textures. Think of wood grains as you would your shoes and belt- if they don't match, you look weird.

Art- I'm so glad to see Escher came up. Escher makes for great art. It's not busy, it's not so colorful that it detracts attention from anything, it's never garish, and you can put it ANYWHERE and it's GORGEOUS art. People will compliment you on it. Placing is very important as well. Make sure you have even spacing when you hang them side by side, and that they're all in a straight (horizontal) line... uneven art is just distracting.

Plantlife- This is really a matter of personal choice. YES, it MIGHT be attractive to some people, but I am one who intensely dislikes plants in the home. I don't know why, I just don't think they belong there, and I think they look stupid. Really stupid. That's your call. Tip: Dead or dying plants are worse than no plants at all.

Bedroom- Keep it as tidy as possible if you're looking for a date, but your bed is key- and not in a purely sexual way. Nice sheets, fluffy pillows, and a nice blanket will do wonders for the feeling of an entire room. Most important about that, and many of these things is this one simple fact:

It looks like you care.

No matter who you're going after, I can almost guarantee few are looking for people who don't care about anything.

Best of luck!

DelayedReaction

Thanks to everyone thus far. I'm thinking of getting a larger Escher print to complement the smaller ones in my room, and I may move the Grand Canyon photo out into the main apartment. Not sure how I'll get it to coincide with everything, but where there's a will there's a way.

Does anyone have any suggestions for additional art pieces? I'm probably going to commission my little sister to paint something. She's incredibly talented (to the point where her work has been sold), and she owes me a painting.

I'm a good fan of Escher's stuff. I really like clean line drawing stuff, something that isn't noisy and easy to immerse myself into. A bit of color would help though; most of my art is rather muted at the moment.

__________________
If ignorance is bliss, you must be having an orgasm.

amonkie

Is there something in your life that she could paint to symbolize you? The best way to way a place more personal is to add yourself to it. If you've got a hobby, or a favorite set of colors or shapes, or anything, give her some ideas and let create something that reflects you.

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Calling from deep in the heart, from where the eyes can't see and the ears can't hear, from where the mountain trails end and only love can go... ~~~ Three Rivers Hare Krishna

LaBanditaRoja

To answer your want for maybe some more colorful artwork, as someone else said, look on the art poster sites. And get it framed.
Or go to some place like Michael's, Target...Ross. They have some framed artwork you can buy, or unframed you can frame. But make sure that it's not too different than what you already have. Or at least have sections of one thing and sections of another.

JohnnyRoyale

One thing you can try, go to your local museum or art galleries, sometimes they have prints of their art available on the fairly cheap, then you can get frame it yourself frames from an art supply store. That's how I did my first apartment after college, looked really good.

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I'm gonna be rich and famous, as soon I invent a device that lets you stab people in the face over the internet.

maleficent

I love that you can have a piece of art painted by your sister - it's personal, it means something, it's not a beer poster -- it can be a conversation piece.

I have a bunch of framed posters from trips I've been on-- one was an art exhibition that I saw in London, another is from a photography exhibition in Sydney - I like the pictures themselves, but I love them because they hold a special memory for me.

You don't want your apartment to look like it came out of a design magazine, you want it to look like and have the personality of the guys who live there.

Take a visit to stores like Pottery Barn or The Door Store or Restoration Hardware - or even some of the even more expesive stores - -see what you like - shelving, accessories, etc.. then recreate the look for less, at places like Target or Pier I imports or other stores. Just get the ideas from the design heavy stores.

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thadon

I smell a new show in the makings ... Queer Eye for the Frat Guy

glasscutter43

Iwould get her a bigger brush and start with the kitchen and go from there. I love free labor.

__________________
Book 'em Danno

Phory

I too wanted to "de-college" my apartment when I graduated. One of the things I did that helped a lot was buying original artwork. I would go down to Portland's saturday market on a regular basis and try to find stuff that was unique and cheap. I picked up lots of pieces between 10 and 50 bucks (I had to get a lot of them framed though). It doesn't need to be expensive. Having unique stuff that most people haven't seen before goes a long way towards giving your place an "adult" and original style.

Another good inexpensive way to really set your aparment apart is to buy a few antiques. For example I bought an antique wardrobe. It's made from hardwood, richly stained and looks really good. I bought it from a place that imports and restores Antiques from England. It cost me only 200 dollars. Compare that to the latest Ikea catalog where similar sized wardrobes start at 250 dollars and don't look nearly as good and don't have nearly as much character.

One last thing, have something other than beer and college-style liquor around (you know, Malibu Rum, Jack Daniels, cheap taquilla, stuff like that). You can quickly accumulate an asortment of interesting wines at a place like Trader Joes that aren't very expensive. Have some good gin, good taquilla, and a decent bottle of bourbon or scotch. on hand as well.

On a related note, for what it's worth, I found that at that age having a "de-colleged" apartment really helps with dating. It sets you apart so much from other guys in their early 20's. With my old apartment I quickly noticed that the girls I had the most luck with were ones who had seen my place. So much so that, eventually my main "first date" strategy evolved to take girls out somewhere in my neighborhood (downtown Portland is nice in that there are lots of cool places to go.) so that I could think of some excuse to take them by to see my apartment. "Oh crap its raining, don't worry my place is on the way to the next bar. Let's grab an umbrella really quick"

DelayedReaction

As much as I would like to paint the apartment, they have rules against it. Apparently the only ones who can paint it are the guys who can spray an entire room in fifteen minutes.

__________________
If ignorance is bliss, you must be having an orgasm.

majik_6

As for artwork on the cheap, if there's a local college with an art program, see if they have a print sale or ceramics sale. Either way you can get original pieces from the ceramics and print making students that's really cool and often hella cheap. At my old college's print sale, really nice pieces were going for 5-20 bucks a piece.

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it's all about self-indulgence

Hwed

My suggestion? Don't spend a bunch of money on furniture and decor that you'll probably throw out in a few years when you're out of school, making some decent money, and maybe married. If your apartment is livable, enjoy it and save your money. You're in college, for crying out loud. You're supposed to look broke, not like a page out of a furniture catalog.

Chiuey

There are a lot of good feedbacks here and I wasn't bothered to read through them all, so here's the essentials. (ps. I have a college degree in interior design if that makes you feel any better)

1) KEEP YOUR SHIT CLEAN!
2) Get rid of alcohol paraphanilia (sp?)
3) Bed, Bath and Beyound, Ikea
- Get some lamps
- Candels for the bathroom and Living room
- Proper bed set and towel set (Make shit Match)
4) Book shelf with pictures (in frames) on it and books would help too
5) small, easy to take care of plants.
6) As you already have..... pictures and poster (Prints of famous art work or your own art work if you're artistic........) IN FRAMES! I can't stress the frames enough. Even if it's glass front no border frames....
7) Area rugs if you can find any good ones
8) Get a girl to help you decorate, a woman's touch can go a long way!
9) Make sure your shit matches
10) KEEP YOUR SHIT CLEAN!



Good Luck