My Minimalist Apartment Makeover | Renter Friendly Studio Apartment Makeover

my apartment is finally finished and in this video i'm going to break down the details how i made my design choices how i came up with the storage solutions and give you a detailed budget breakdown and the total cost at the end all in all how i designed every inch of my studio apartment [Music] you guys really showed up in the comment section of last week's video thank you so much for all of your comments and contributing to your likes and dislikes of design i really enjoyed hearing what you guys had to say and our tsd project spotlight of the week goes out to this kitchen look how much better it looks just by getting it organized and putting away the clutter that's on the counter tops it looks so good thank you so much for sharing and if you have any tsd projects that you want to share with me you can tag me on instagram at the suitcase designer so we're gonna go through the whole apartment area by area i'm starting in the bathroom because i love bathrooms and this bathroom is one of the main reasons i chose this apartment over the others we have this big beautiful mirror with so much storage behind it which is something i mentioned that i hate about american design in the last video the one strange thing about this big mirror is that it's actually quite tall and i'm a very tall person all these years i spent wishing that i had really tall countertops in korea and i finally got one and it's actually too tall i mean i can i can like grab it but you know i don't think the bathroom needs a lot in terms of design because it's already so simple and clean but the one thing we did for this space was add new towels which i think is always a good investment and a really quick way to make your bathroom feel more spa-like and these towels were actually recommended to me by a friend and they're so cheap online and so fluffy so if you're in korea i'll leave them linked below because i know it can be really hard to find full sized white towels here we also added fluffy washcloths so again we have functional items working as decor in a small space just try to keep the countertops here empty because when they're cluttered in a small apartment it can especially make it feel cramped and crowded for this space we spent not a lot of money we bought two full-size towels and approximately eight washcloths it can honestly be quite weird to be using the bathroom here and someone be in the kitchen because you're just like just sharing this tiny little wall our kitchen is also the hallway and where we need to store a lot of stuff so it's a little more crowded than i would like this one and this one are the two bookshelves that we bought from ikea and when we bought these we were planning to live in this apartment for a year but our plans have changed and we're going to be moving a lot quicker than we expected so let me just show you this one really just houses fruit apparently uh it's pretty much empty we're selling this because it's we don't need it anymore and do i regret it no it really served its purpose and we didn't know we were moving earlier someone literally just came to take us so maybe i'll put some art or something on the wall just temporarily so that it doesn't seem so empty for now we have izzy's corner this is what i always move out of the way when you guys tell me i need to get izzy's scratcher she has this she has another one under the sofa as well honestly i would love to have this hallway just empty and free of these bookshelves here and we will get that one out we'll have some extra space but this one is quite nice because it creates just a little extra separation from our bedroom and the kitchen hallway bathroom area so that's nice and izzy likes to jump from the bed to the bookshelf so it's fun for her and that's fine but behind me here we are going to step into my kitchen even though it's a small space i really wanted to keep a lot of my kitchen tools because i like cooking and they honestly make the quality of our life better i don't think you should get rid of everything when you downsize but be intentional about what you do keep we use everything in our kitchen and i don't regret keeping any of it the middle shelf here is very practical we have our rice cooker shelf with all the devices we use daily and the toaster oven up here while it would look much better to hide these machines put them away it would be a pain in the ass every day to pull them out so we just try to keep the rice cooker shelf clean and embrace the practicality of it in the drawers below we have a very minimally organized situation again i wanted to swap out all of my spices and get the cute matching ones but it really just didn't make sense we're not moving with these to our next destination so instead we're just trying to use all of them up and recycle them after we're finished the countertops are pretty standard size for a studio apartment but quite small if you are a full-time food preparer i don't want to tell you how many times i've just wanted to give up cooking a meal because it gets so tight in there really quick when you're trying to prep your food and cook it and if you have dishes drying then you're trying to wash veggies or something it just can be a really big nightmare very stressful situations so we try to leave the countertops free of anything except for like practical cutting boards that we're using for the kitchen we spent the original two ikea shelves and we bought the few organizers to fit in all the shelves i'm just going to quickly back up and show you our entryway closet i actually like having this utility closet more than a shoe closet only because we can put izzy's litter box in there down here i only see the litter box if i'm leaving the house or coming in the house or if i'm coming down here to check it so it doesn't bother me she's happy with it we're all happy with it it's good and yes we leave the door open for her 24 7. so the shoes are still stacked like this because we're not wearing them right now but we will after the move when you have a single closet that's simultaneously a garage umbrella closet maybe storage closet cat room it's gonna look a little bit jumbled and moving down here to the closets uh we'll start with my husband's closet i asked him babe you want me to organize your closet for you no no he said no so i'm just gonna leave it he's happy with it so i won't touch it honestly you could do it a little organizing but i won't touch it yeah you got all your secret cat toys in here my side of the closet the one that is far more organized is part storage park closet we have clean bedding up here and my pants are up there too and then below we have laundry red light and just other miscellaneous items that we regularly use but we don't have anywhere to store the one addition that is so simple but made such a huge difference in our space was the addition of these automatic lights these are really cheap automatic motion sensor lights from ikea and holy they make such a difference they will really elevate the look and feel of your closet in our closets we only spent 25 dollars and now we're gonna move on to our office it's the focal point of our studio no matter where you sit it's so functional for two people who work from home but it's also a really great balance of our personalities within this very small space but definitely from the time we first moved in it's taken some effort to get it to where we are today some of you might remember that when we downsized from our three-bedroom apartment a few months ago we had an entire extra room dedicated to our office supplies and books and diy supplies and really all that stuff that i sometimes need for this channel we'll get your big salt we'll get your medium sauce oh we got your small saw and we had to do a lot of downsizing initially so that everything would fit in here but this is the space that continually changes behind all of the cabinet doors because as we're filtering more and more things out to prepare for our international move space gets emptied stuff moves around so it's not finished but i will show you where we've gotten to today the books have moved once again and they'll honestly probably be shipped out to our next home very soon so this space will soon be empty in the middle here i've intentionally eliminated all of the organizers like boxes or anything like that because i want to get as much out of my house i'm really just trying to take stock of what we have and how much we're going to need to ship so this is all very messy right now and down here we have what remains of all of my diy supplies below in the drawers these are used on a daily basis so we try to keep them as organized as possible so that it helps us keep our office running smoothly and it makes cleaning up at the end of the night a whole lot easier but one of the things that i loved about this apartment was all of these beautiful built-ins i know some of you hate all beige but if you saw some of the other studio apartments that we had an option of moving into i am very happy that we got this one the beige is something that i can definitely work with rather than like lime green cabinets i'm a fan of decorating with the items that you love no matter if other people or designers tell you that they're ugly to us our books represent our personalities we love them we use them so we're going to keep them and if other people don't like them i can't tell you how many times during the day i'm working from the sofa and i look over at them and they just make me so happy and that's exactly how the items in your space are supposed to make you feel the whole office space is very minimal and especially outside of office hours we try to keep everything to a minimum on top of the desk which i think is so important if you're working from home and you especially live in a studio apartment so i'm going to count these design pieces as part of the office since that's where they're living now and everything else we already had from our old apartment and behind us we have our living room it might look a little bit different too and that's because it's not pink i can't believe some of you guys thought i was going to leave that pink i'm not going to spend a lot of time talking about why the layout is the way that it is but if you missed it you can watch this video where we literally picked up the sofa the heavy ass marble table and we moved everything around to try out your ideas and show you the different functionality of the room based on the layout we also covered in that video why i eliminated the rug so check that one out this space is really minimal and that's totally intentional this house feels very small throughout the day while the three of us are home working and it's so busy with bodies and work stuff so much that if you have a bunch of decor pieces out it's just really overwhelming even on the coffee table anything more than a candle is just too much for the space whenever you have so much going on and this fake red velvet bench is actually a really easy diy that i did we had this bench from our previous apartment and i really wanted to get rid of it but izzy loves laying on this thing and looking out the window every morning so in the early morning hours when she's trying to wake us up she'll just stare at the people and the birds outside and ultimately we get to sleep longer so we kept it to quickly upcycle it i just bought some cheap velvet fabric from online and reupholstered it it also rotates throughout the apartment which i love because it's just one room and it can get quite boring so i prefer to have one piece that you can do many different things with i really just like moving it around it just makes living in a one-room apartment two percent more enjoyable and i will take that and we have this always rotating stool which serves all the same functions as the bench does but i like it so a common theme in this apartment is to have one piece of furniture that has multiple functions one of the reasons i like buying ikea sofas is because it's really easy to update the covers through either ikea or from other companies like bems we originally had this sofa cover in the samster gray and i do not recommend anyone buy that it shows dirt so easily so if you have a pet oh no no i don't recommend it we ended up getting the viarp one we just wanted to update it for a fresh new look for our space but we definitely learned a lesson in buying this fire cover because turns out it's every cat scratching post streams she just loves tearing the out of the sides of the sofa and has absolutely destroyed it in her quest for attention at 4 am when she tries to get us out of bed the last thing i changed was this painting i actually originally recycled this from that diy bed frame we made a while back and i just made it into a frame and we added canvas over it and but i just wanted to have a very easy piece to make that was white and textured and this did the trick i thought about adding another lamp to the space and honestly it could probably use one but i think if you're in a situation like ours you just really have to balance what's worth investing in and what is it and for me i just decided to skip a lamp because it didn't really change my space that much so figure out what works for you the curtains are the same from our previous apartment but they're really too short for these windows but it wasn't worth buying new ones as far as under sofa storage goes i know in a small space that you have to maximize every inch of space that you can but i really try to avoid putting anything under the sofa just because it makes me feel better to have that space free and i'm able to clean it really easily but i mean in a small space sometimes you're not able to do that so we had to put a few things under there and hey it's okay and the last very simple trick that we used to elevate the space was to add these 10 led lights throughout the house so that at night you can turn them on and it creates such a calming environment and they're controlled by remote they're so good but the budget for this room was the marble table the sofa cover the fabric bench the acrylic molding paste we used for the painting and the led lights and taking a fraction of a step behind me to our master bedroom we have a very minimally designed space over here because it's just so damn small we do have cement walls that renters are usually not supposed to drill into which really limits what you can hang on your walls so by renter friendly i really mean it has to be renter friendly in here you probably know by now i'm a huge fan of white bedding but that's only because over these last 10 years of moving white bedding it's never done me wrong it just transitions so well between any space which always makes it a great investment i really think white is the quickest way to brighten up any space just like we saw in the recent seoul studio apartment makeover especially in small spaces where it feels cramped white bedding just gives me less anxiety than colorful bedding and it just makes me feel like i'm living in a fancy hotel room and not a studio apartment with my husband and cat i also have this simple pendant light which barely hangs in the ceiling but it really enhances the mood at night especially at the end of the day it transforms the space and makes it so cozy it's a very simple bedroom but it honestly doesn't bug me because if i'm sitting in bed all i ever see is the office so who cares under the bed is where we really had to maximize our storage because we do have a lot of heavy winter clothes that we need to keep and we have all of our workout equipment that stuff doesn't fit anywhere else and there's also suitcase shoved under there i wanted to use as much storage that i knew we could keep when we move so for clothing we use these waterproof storage bags and i really love them they're so great for moving you can move with them but for our workout equipment i chose the underbed rolling bin so that we could easily roll out all of our equipment whenever we needed it so jackson has one box and i have one too i honestly don't love that there's all this stuff under our bed collecting dust and fur and hair and but it's pretty necessary for the space the total price for the bedroom budget was a little more expensive because we had to buy a new bed our king size bed from our other apartment was just too big for this space so we had to downsize beds and buy an entirely new bed our budget for the bedroom includes the mattress bed frame pendant light and all the rest we already have so the grand total is 1377 usd and all of the previous videos of the studio series are linked in the description box if you guys want to watch any of the earlier episodes thanks for watching

Channel: The Suitcase Designer

Views: 29,691

Rating: 4.9527826 out of 5

Keywords: studio apartment makeover on a budget, detailed breakdown of apartment makeover, step by step apartment makeover, renter friendly studio apartment makeover, realistic studio apartment design, small studio apartment organization, minimalist apartment makeover, modern studio apartment makeover, minimalist small home makeover, suitcase designer, the suitcase designer

Id: YWCkAM44RIg

Length: 16min 48sec (1008 seconds)

Published: Sun May 23 2021