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Sarah Coffey

    Latest Stories

    16 Colors to Complement Yellow for Your Home
    Here's how to make this bold, cheerful color work for you.
    Sarah Coffey
    Jun 25, 2024
    23 Smart Ways to Organize Your Bedroom Closet
    Are you a little obsessed with organizing? We are too.
    Sarah Coffey
    Feb 25, 2023
    10 Real-Life IKEA Kitchens
    It’s no secret that IKEA offers an affordable, off-the-shelf alternative to a custom kitchen. With the flexibility to mix and match finishes and styles, the Swedish store is a go-to source for renovators, but it’s also ubiquitous. Fortunately, there are lots of ways to personalize an IKEA kitchen, and we need look no further than the Apartment Therapy house tour archives for ideas.
    Sarah Coffey
    Oct 13, 2022
    How To: Make a Pegboard Wall Organizer
    Project: Pegboard Wall OrganizerTime: An afternoonCost: $30.00 (more or less) Our DIY home organization project for the New Year involved hanging a pegboard organizer in our tiny kitchen. Although we found lots of how-tos for installing pegboard on the web, very few of them had detailed instructions and supply lists, so we thought it would be helpful to document our own experience in step-by-step form.
    Sarah Coffey
    May 9, 2022
    On the Cheap: 10 Room Dividers Under $100
    Room dividers can be useful in a shared kids’ room, a studio apartment, or a large loft — but they’re often very pricey. If you’re on a budget and searching for ways to separate space, here are 10 options under the $100 mark. IKEA Their thin, sheer panel curtains can be hung from ceiling tracks to create room dividers that separate space but still let light through, and they carry nearly 30 styles and colors.
    Sarah Coffey
    Jan 27, 2021
    10 Ways to Customize a Rental Bathroom
    Renovation and rental are two words that you don’t hear too much in the same sentence, but even though you might not be able to completely overhaul your rental apartment, there are ways to cover up that old avocado-green tile, add storage to your small shower, or transform an ugly overhead light without making your landlord angry in the process.
    Sarah Coffey
    Jul 17, 2020
    Checklist: Basic Cleaning Supplies for a Small Space
    Small spaces = less cleaning. It’s one of the best benefits of living in a tiny apartment. The only problem is that living small also means less storage space, so you want to streamline your cleaning supplies into a kit that can be easily stowed in a kitchen cabinet or closet.Here’s our basic checklist for everything you need to keep your tiny home clean… Broom, Dustpan, and Mop: These are the basic tools of floor cleaning. We use a small interlocking broom and dustpan.
    Sarah Coffey
    Jul 16, 2020
    How to Shop for Kitchen Cabinets on the Cheap
    Cabinetry usually adds up to about half of kitchen renovation expenses, so if you have a small budget, you’ve got to find ways to cut costs. Shop sales, check second-hand and salvage stores, try a demolition auction, or find ways to get a custom look from big box sources.For kitchen cabinet sources, click here. Home Depot Big box stores like Home Depot have frequent discounts on stock kitchen cabinets.
    Sarah Coffey
    Jul 15, 2020
    Best Sources for Small Bathroom Renovations
    Dehlia’s tiny bathroom is typical of a city apartment: a 4 x 6 foot space that benefited from a functional, small-scale redesign. The floors are slate, the walls are seaglass, and the fixtures are well proportioned for the room. It can be difficult to find small tubs, toilets, and sinks for a bathroom renovation, but combing Dehlia’s source list as well as a few good posts from the Apartment Therapy archives, we’ve found some relevant resources.
    Sarah Coffey
    Mar 11, 2020
    10 Classic Bathrooms
    Hex tile, clawfoot tubs, porcelain pedestal sinks. These are few of the elements that make up our idea of a “classic” bathroom—the kind you might find in a pre-war apartment or a New England farmhouse.The nice thing about a classic bathroom is that it’s not going to go out of style anytime soon. Materials like subway tile and marble counters are long-lasting and tend to survive the cycle of trends.
    Sarah Coffey
    Feb 27, 2020
    How To Create a “Dust-Free” Bedroom
    Since my husband has asthma, we’re always looking for ways to reduce allergens and dust in our home (although it’s impossible to create a completely dust-free environment). We came across a good resource the other day. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has a step-by-step plan for reducing dust in the bedroom. Some of the tips on the site were for extreme cases. To read the entire article, click here.
    Sarah Coffey
    May 10, 2019
    Top 100 US Furniture Stores by Sales
    What are the biggest furniture stores you can think of off the top of your head? IKEA, Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel? Those were the ones that immediately came to my mind, so I was really surprised when I opened Furniture Today’s 2011 Retail Planning Guide and found a list that included some humongous stores I’d never heard of. Nebraska Furniture Mart? Badcock Home Furniture? Having lived in big northern cities for my whole life, these places have stayed outside my radar until now.
    Sarah Coffey
    May 7, 2019
    Before & After: 5 Gardens by Paxton Gate
    San Franciscans know Paxton Gate as one of the city’s best garden stores, but you may not know that they also do landscape design. Their portfolio is full of inspiring before and after photos, including gorgeous gardens that started out as leveled dirt lots, overgrown backyards, and scraggly hillsides. If you’re the owner of a weedy lot or an unkempt patio, these photos might just be the kick-start you need to plan an outdoor renovation project.
    Sarah Coffey
    May 6, 2019
    Top 10 Wall Sconces for Small Spaces
    Sconces are the chameleons of small space lighting — they blend in anywhere, whether a bathroom, hallway, or bedroom. Here are 10 particularly compact and useful designs, from high-end Italian pieces to budget utility lighting. West Elm Their Flat Stock Single Sconce has a mirrored backing that reflects light, and it’s affordably priced at $59. There are double and triple versions as well. If you’re a renter, check out their non-hardwired Industrial Sconce, $79.
    Sarah Coffey
    May 4, 2019
    In Search of the Perfect Small Scale Sofa
    So, you’re shopping for a sofa that won’t overwhelm your tiny studio apartment or you’re looking for seating to fit inside an alcove. The problem is, you keep coming up short (bad pun intended — sorry). Most furniture stores tend to favor large sizes, especially when it comes to anchor pieces like sofas and beds. But if you know where to look, you can find moderately sized sleepers, settees, and loveseats that will work in a small home.
    Sarah Coffey
    May 4, 2019
    Tereasa’s Modest Cottage
    Name: A Very Modest Cottage Location: Elkhorn, Wisconsin, on the grounds of Tereasa and David’s summer camp Size: 10 x 10 square feet Type: Half-sawn log cabin from a prohibition-era motor cabin court Years lived in: Guest cottage on our summer camp for 3 years Tereasa Surratt advises people to “look for the abandoned souls,” and once you know the story of this cottage, you’ll understand exactly what she means.
    Sarah Coffey
    Jun 4, 2010
    B, Joe & Rachael’s Eclectic Split-Level
    Name: B, Joe & RachaelWhat We’re Into: B: Hold the Onions, Joe: Bookish Us, Rachael: Literature for All of UsLocation: Ukrainian Village, ChicagoSize/Type: Three bedroom, two bath apartmentYears lived in: B: two years. Joe: one year. Rachael: two months. It’s pretty incredible how B, Joe and Rachael (with the help of former roommates Dave and Matt) have transformed their rental apartment into a custom-made home.
    Sarah Coffey
    Aug 7, 2009
    House Tour: Amy’s Vintage-Modern Nest
    Name: Amy (and Janis, her Maltese)Profession: Editor & Founder of Venus Zine and venuszine.comLocation: Humboldt Park, Chicago Size: About 500 square feetYears lived in: 1 year, ownedType: 1920s brick apartment building-turned-condos >> Amy is a wiz at working from the ground up. In college, she started a black-and-white stapled fanzine that evolved into Venus Zine, an internationally distributed full-sized glossy that covers women in pop culture.
    Sarah Coffey
    Sep 18, 2008
    How To: Dress a Platform Bed
    When we made the switch from a plain old mattress and box springs to a platform bed, we started to change the way we made our bed. Before we had a duvet, and now we prefer using layers of quilts and blankets, neatly tucked and folded under the mattress to show off the bed’s clean, low-slung lines. This image (of the Hubert Modern Platform Bed at TREOmodern) shows the way that layers of bedding in the same family of colors can create a “striped” effect.
    Sarah Coffey
    Dec 11, 2007