The 33-year-old actor and content creator felt the itch to customize the industrial apartment in Dallas, Texas, she and her husband called home for three years, so it would better serve as a creative inspiration point. “This was the first time I wanted to go all out.”
To turn an oversized wall into a concrete masterpiece that matched her floors, Simone used push pins to hang up several pieces of canvas. She then applied joint compound to fake the texture of concrete, which she painted when it was dry. In total, the project took about 10 days. She also DIYed wood paneling, which only required four pieces of plywood, some screws, and an afternoon.
A 32-foot-long faux-brick wall took far longer: One month of constantly working her way down the length of her apartment. She used the same technique to mold joint compound into brick-like rectangles, and pulled out her acrylic paints to make the bricks look as realistic as possible.
“Once I started, it looked really good,” she remembers. “But I definitely lost a little bit of steam, and it started not looking as good towards the end. I was trying to make it look like the brick was on top of the concrete. There were some parts I wasn’t as in love with, but I just had to crank it out.”
Though her upgrades were renter-friendly, their size and scale made them intimidating to undo. Returning the apartment to its former state before moving out was slightly nerve-wracking, she remembers. Luckily, they were able to take everything down with little issues.
A half-completed kitchen receives some much needed counter space
IKEA is full of renter-friendly solutions, which is why Taylor Winnie headed straight to the big blue store after moving into her new apartment in Los Angeles. The location of her new spot was great, the apartment was brimming with historic charm, and the bathroom had been renovated, but the kitchen left a lot to be desired—especially in the counter space department.
“It had really bad vinyl flooring that [looked] straight out of the ‘90s,” the 30-year-old marketer recalls. “It had very basic cupboards and countertops, and then one side of the kitchen was completely missing.”
Winnie installed peel-and-stick tiles onto the floor, and used a layer of contact paper to protect the existing flooring from the adhesive. From there, she made an appointment at IKEA’s kitchen center, and worked with the staff to identify all of the pieces she’d need to build two cabinets on either side of her stove. In total, the project cost less than $1,000, she estimates, which is money she feels she’s already making back given the unlocked functionality of the space.
“It got to the point where I was eating out so much because it didn’t have a space to cook; I had a stove and nowhere to set food,” she reflects. “I wanted to make healthy meals for myself and stop spending so much money eating out. So this makes it worth it for my physical health and my quality of life.”
A pre-war kitchen—and pantry—gets a makeover from the floor up
For years, Hattie Kolp has been focused on bringing her rent-controlled New York City apartment back to its former, pre-war glory. She’s uncovered pocket doors, added crown molding, and freed brass hardware from years of landlord-special layers of paint. But when it came to her kitchen—which had a sloped floor and little counter space, among other drawbacks—she had no qualms ripping the whole thing out and starting from the ground up.
