Our New San Francisco Apartment!

Renting an apartment during COVID has been an experience for sure, but we're City folk now and I'm ready to let my inner interior decorator shine.  Over the next few posts of this blog, you will get to see a before and after of my new San Francisco apartment!  I've been so excited to decorate that it has consumed all of my waking moments for the past 3 weeks.  It's starting to get to the point where I feel like taking photos of it and sharing with the world, which I think is a pretty good sign.

Full disclosure: This is NOT what our apartment currently looks like, although it is a nice colorfully decorated apartment belonging to the previous tenants. I didn't get very many photos of our current apartment while empty, and this photo was taken when we were still touring the apartment and deciding whether we wanted to rent it or not.  As you'll see from the pictures below, this is a much more palatable photo. While this decor is definitely a lewk for some, it's not necessarily our vibe. I'm excited to show everyone what we have turned it into! 

This new apartment checked many of the boxes as to what I was looking for: 

• Great natural light
• Extra bedroom for office space
• Room for a dining table and additional living room seating
• Dishwasher 
• Walking distance to Pac Heights shops and restaurants

One thing it didn't have: an in-unit washer and dryer. But hey, a girl can dream.

Here's what the apartment looked like without any furniture in it: 

As you can see, there are painting supplies everywhere.  Even though we already started paying rent and received our keys, there was apparently additional work that needed to be done on the walls.  We had already decided we were going to move in our furniture the following weekend, but that we would slowly move things in during the weekdays leading up to the big weekend move.  Our landlords used this time to do additional renovations on our unit, which prevented me from taking really good empty apartment photos. 

You may not really be able to tell from this photo, but the living room is really oddly shaped due to the jutting corner fireplace.  While I love a fireplace, this one isn't functioning, so it's basically just a strange impediment in laying out the space.  As you can see to the left, there are also a bunch of little nooks and crannies that fit only the most specific sizes of furniture.  My measuring tape has never been taken out so frequently!

The previous tenants put their couch at an angle in the room towards the fireplace, and put their TV in the small space between the fireplace and the hallway.  

While that's a choice for some, I knew our TV would not fit in that space and that I wanted to reuse our ikea Besta unit on this wall in this room.  We watch a lot of TV, so I was fine with it taking center stage in the living room.  I think it turned out great, so you will have to check back to see how my vision ended up!

In addition, we were trying to slowly move things in, so the apartment was never truly empty once the painting stuff was gone. 

Bedroom view, you know I couldn't leave those built-ins alone for long

Peloton room/office or Peloffice

In any event, the before pics don't really matter! The after, and what we are currently living in today, is what I am enjoying every day and am very proud of to post on this blog.  I'll be even prouder to show my friends in person, once it's finally safe to do so!  For now, I'm happy to be able to document this journey and share my progress with the small amount of people looking at this blog.  I truly appreciate the support. 

Best,

Isabella