Since life was a little cray when we moved and I didn't have time to do a proper goodbye post for my studio, I'm doing a little #ThrowbackThursday today!

While everything turned out just fine (as it usually does) I was pretty sad to say farewell to my colorful little studio! It was my second solo apartment, and will definitely go down as one of my favorites! Bright colors, cute little balcony, subway tile, and a dishwasher, oh heck yes! Living in luxury in NYC 😂

It was also unfortunately the second apartment I've lived in that the landlord ended up selling the building 😳. NYC real estate is no joke guys.. So today I'm giving it one last hurrah to share some of my final decor dets before it got boxed up! 

The perk to living in an apartment that is basically just a big rectangle is helloooooo wall space for a BIG gallery wall! Haha, I'm a sucker for a good gallery wall so I filled this baby up.

Something I've adopted in multiple apartments now, is my washi tape wall designs! Such an easy way to add some color or dose of excitement to your walls and it's just as easy to peel off when you move. Ideal for renters like me!

Another fun touch in the studio was my "confetti wall" above my bar cart. To add a little fun to that wall I got 2 different types of gold paper and used a die cut punch to create the little circles. Pop a little double sticky tape on them and wa-lah confetti wall!

I also had the most adorable little balcony that I LOVED! The perk to being on the top floor was there was nothing above me too -- the one perk to living on a 5th floor walk-up! Haha. In true Anna fashion, the balcony was just about as colorful as the apartment!

Little colorful studio, you are missed! Especially my extra dose of girliness, or as Chris referred to it as my "barbie dream house" decor. Well, that's a wrap! If you missed the apartment tour of the new digs make sure you check it out here too!

This post is long overdue! I finally had a chance to take some shots of the new apartment (okay it's been 4 months..) and am excited to share! This is my 4th apartment in the city, and my first with Chris (other than the few months in the studio) so it's a bit of an eclectic blend between both of our things. 

The Specs

Location: Upper East Side

Apt. Sq. Feet: Apx. 385 sq. feet

Outdoor Sq. Feet: Apx. 240 sq. feet

So living in NYC, they never tell you the square footage of apartments (unless they're new buildings) so it's always a bit of a mystery until I measure for my apartment tour posts. I have to say after moving in here, my guess was it came in around the 450 sq ft. range because it feels a lottt bigger than the studio, which was around 373 sq ft, but to our surprise it doesn't even break the 400 mark coming in at apx. 385 sq ft. Can I also take a moment to acknowledge I just said I thought 450 sq. ft. felt big?! 😂 You know you've lived in NYC too long when... haha. 

I must admit, while we certainly could have made the studio work for a bit (if my landlord didn't sell the building), having the bedroom is pretty nice. I'm very much a night owl and work pretty late a lot of nights, so it has been nice to have the separation in the space. Plus, we can have two TVs out now too so I'm not tied to watching sports 99.9% of my evenings anymore. 

Oh and btw, note on the pics -- my marquee sign has some blinking lights which is fun when you're in person, not so great for taking pics lol!

I really loved using washi tape to decorate the walls in the studio so I went at it again in the new place! This time around I went with a gold washi tape and went with a linear design to spice up those white walls a bit.

Chris had a few "must-haves" in the new apartment... Cue his Pearl Jam, the Iron Sheik, and Bob Dylan posters.. Sooo yeah those made it in. 😂

While most days we end up just eating on the couch, I wanted to create a little eating nook. I decided the perfect little spot to create one was on the wall in between the kitchen and living room so I bought a shelf from Ikea and wa-lah instant little eating bar!

Another thing that was a little tricky is we don't have many cabinets in the kitchen and we didn't have any drawers. So we bought a hutch and put up some open shelving to create some addition storage space and kind of a galley kitchen feel. I have a lotttt of glasses -- hey a girl needs cute glassware for girls nights right?! So this really helped maximize the space we have.

Okay, so total confession.. I've become a magnet hoarder. I've been picking up new ones whenever I got somewhere new and I've worked up quite the collection.

As you can see, our apartment is old -- Pre-War baby. So there's some older and kind of funky things. Yes, we have an electrical reader in our living room lol.. buttt that's what people on HGTV like to call 'character', right?!

As renters, obviously most are things we can't change but we still did some DIY projects to spruce the place up where we could! Like our bathroom! While it isn't anything to call home about, I did do a lot of work on it when we first moved in to get it up to my standards. Just call me handy Anna! I re-grouted and re-caulked the bathtub, which let's just say needed some love.

Our apartment is long and skinny so from north to south it's our bathroom, kitchen, living room, bedroom and then the backyard.

It's okay that our apartment is still under 400 sq ft. too because what reallyyyy MAKES this apartment and why I really really wanted it was because of its private backyard which comes in at a whopping 240 sq ft! Bringing us in at 385 sq ft inside and 240 sq ft outside for a nice 625 sq ft of living space when the weather is nice. Summer come back to me already!!

I put some serioussss sweat equity into the backyard to get it to look like this. Let's just say it was a bit of a fixer-upper but I'm sooo happy with how it turned out with some help from the Felicetta's! I'll share the before and afters on this one (along with the bathroom projects) on a future post to show some inexpensive projects you can take up as a renter.

All and all, we're really happy with the new place and the new location! Anddd being on the first floor instead of the 5th of a walk-up has totally changed my life #realtalk. Hope you've enjoyed checking out the new digs too!

For one reason or another, apartment brokers generally do not tell you the square footage of apartments in the city. It’s always seemed strange to me since square footage is usually one of the first things you’re told. So why is this? I’ve heard a few answers from brokers, including it’s because when the apartments were built they did not keep count of square footage and because the layouts have changed over time. I never really bought either of these responses though because it doesn’t take a mathematician to do an estimate of square footage, especially when we’re dealing with small spaces.

Personally, I’ve always assumed it was actually because of legality issues and my suspicions have furthered since continued outrage over the last year about a push for micro-apartments that are 325 square feet. There’s been reports that the units are “breaking the law” because of a law stating apartments must be at least 400 square feet in NYC. I did a little research on this so called law and surprisingly couldn’t find too much info on it, other than it was enforced in 1987 and that apartments could not be built smaller than 400 square feet. Like I said, I’m not super educated on this law, but I’m going to go ahead and assume that it only applies to new builds because the majority of apartments ARE NOT 400 square feet in the city. And since my apartment was built in 1915, if my assumptions are correct, my apartment missed the law by a lifetime!

Case and point, I did apartment hunting this summer. Now I was looking for studios on the lower price range and they were tiny. Think, an oversized bedroom. I was totally okay with what my money could buy and was just excited to get my own place. So imagine my surprise when I scored what I thought was a BIG one bedroom on the Upper East Side that I could afford. Say what?! A one bedroom!? Is this real life? For those of you that have been reading, you know how excited I was about my score and every time I described my apartment to my friends and co-workers, the word “big” (by New York standards of course) always came out of my mouth. 

So after 5 months in my apartment I decided to figure out just what “big” meant and I got the tape measurer out. My apartment is pretty much a long rectangle so I started by doing the measurements of each room and then added them all up. I have a few slightly slanted walls in my living room where the window is, so my number is just an estimate, but what I ultimately came up with was…. 383 square feet. 383 square feet?!? My BIG one bedroom apartment was only 383 square feet?!? I mean I knew it would be small compared to other cities, but I wholehearted believed it was close to 500 or maybe 450, but 383? Oh boy.. Not what I was expecting that’s for sure! And what’s even scarier is if 383 square feet is a “big” apartment — for my price range of course — then the other apartments I was looking at couldn’t have been much more than 200 square feet, if that. Much lower than that 1987, 400 square feet law.

So my question is.. if old buildings are exempt (I’m assuming) from the law then why don’t people talk about square footage? What’s the big deal? Is it the atrocious price per square foot? Is it the fact that the number might scare people away? Is it because the brokers simply don’t know? What is it?! Which then leads me to also ask, what is the big deal about these micro-apartments? Yes, they’re small, but clearly most New Yorkers are already living in smaller spaces that weren’t actually built to optimize every square inch. A lot of questions, and not many answers! All I know is, I probably won’t be using the term “big” as much in reference to my apartment, but I’ll love it all the same!