MANILA, Philippines - When I moved into my own apartment a few months ago, I faced a seriously daunting task. The cramped 49-square-meter shoebox I was going to call home boasted a disgusting bathroom (it appeared to belong to a down-on-its-luck frat house), sad-looking kitchen (the tiles and grout were darker than my dog’s underarms) and a decrepit bedroom (the ceiling, with its strange stains, looked like it was home to water nymphs). And those weren’t the only problems dogging my grand home makeover. The space constraints made purchasing furniture slightly problematic.
While my YStyle bud and partner in crime Celine Lopez and I conspired to fix it up (which we documented for Modern Living, natch), I spent most of my time poring over home decor websites, trying to figure out how to implement attractive space saving strategies. Apartment Therapy, long on my bookmark list, soon eclipsed Facehunter and Daily Beast on my daily blog roll.
The website, founded by “part interior designer, part life coach” Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan and his brother Oliver Ryan, started out as an interior design service then morphed into a blog and is now a network of blogs devoted to different parts of the home.
When Gillingham-Ryan decided to pen a book about designing a living space for small spaces, he cleverly chose to highlight successful practical living ideas by featuring 40 cool homes. Unlike The Selby, another blog turned book, which is home to gorgeously impractical homes like three-story lofts in New York, hotel suites-turned-homes and old-fashioned English houses run amuck, Gillingham-Ryan’s selections highlight his home truths: how you can shift the sense of scale by using a contrasting color or adding a home office by simply making use of an ignored bedroom corner.
Practical home solutions are a dime a dozen (my mother had plenty to offer like: “Stop shopping”) but what Apartment Therapy offers is inspiration. And with a problem apartment like mine, inspiration — and lots of pretty pictures — is exactly what I needed.