So, eight short months later, and my apartment is ready. I'm moving in on Monday, which means that I'm having to think long and hard about what to do with it.
In the spirit of doing things that are slightly out of my nature, I've decided to take the absolute minimum of stuff with me when I move. The new apartment is a bit smaller than my current rental, but the use of space is a lot more efficient; however, it has a lot less storage space. Here I have a balcony and a couple of wall closets where I can simply dump stuff for later reference; there, I will not have the luxury. It is a brand new, modern building, a break with the incompetence and limitations of Soviet architecture. It's even got an unorthodox color scheme, contrived by an artist/interior designer. The point was that the foundation would be grayscale, onto which background I can then add wild and lively colors as I see fit. It came out great - very warm, unoffensive, classical rather than retro. I said it's unorthodox because most of these new apartments - as indeed most deep renovations these days - either end up with either a bland shade of beige, or lose all self-control when faced with a Pantone book. There's an apartment in another building, same floorplan as mine, that is painted a magic marker sort of neon-green. Boggles the mind, really.
But now, I need to figure out the rest of the stuff in the flat. The problem is that such sense of style that I myself possess is calibrated negatively. I mostly get the sensations of "hell no, definitely not that". The upshot is that I rarely end up with things I really like - rather, by process of elimination, I end up with things I can tolerate. I'm not non-conformist for the sake of rebellion itself, not in this case at least, because this is where I'm going to be living, so I need it to be comfortable and practical; at the same time, I despise both the prevalent conservative style and the prevalent modern style in furniture. The former is decadent enough to be offensive, the latter is impractical enough to be preposterous.
I've got two days to trawl Tartu's shops and come up with something acceptable. Wish me luck.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Good luck! I was fortunate in that my walls were painted slate blue in the livingroom/kitchen, white in the hallway, and a pale yellow in the bedroom. My furniture is brown, orange, red, and black, so everything goes quite well together without being matchy-matchy. I think the key is to get a very solid piece that you love to serve as the focal point of the room (mine is my large sofa) and a few lighter pieces (like glass tables or a metal-frame chair) to compliment.
God, I've been watching too many design shows.
I definitely know what you mean by too many design shows. :) BBC Prime is especially to blame, in my case, but also the original Aussie amateurs-fix-up-apartments-and-sell-them reality show.
At the time of writing, I've moved in, and I'm promised that they have even hooked up the hot water/heating today. And I've just bought a toy whose usefulness is only matched by its awesomeness - a device to find wooden studs behind the shearwall, so I can hang stuff up with peace of mind. Detects metal and AC current, too. 8-)
Post a Comment