I'm originally from Amish country, Pennsylvania and have lived in San Francisco for nearly a decade. I grew up living in small apartments and modest houses, and always had the smallest bedroom (or shared bedroom) because I’m the youngest in my family.
My family loved camping, and so setting up my little tent exactly how I wanted it was always an empowering and joyful activity for me.
And thus began a love affair with small, functional and beautiful spaces.
A year and a half ago, my husband and I bought a 650 square foot apartment right on the Panhandle of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco and have spent the last year of COVID-19 lockdown designing it. It's been a wonderful project!
When I moved into the apartment, the study certainly didn’t feel cosy at all.
So, the first thing I did was build the wainscoting around the walls myself, paint the walls teal and hang bookshelves in every corner.
Before and after. Hazel painted the walls teal, built some wainscoting (it’s usually defined as installing wooden panels on the bottom half of a wall), and convinced her mother to send one of the old rugs. Source: Instagram
I put in the desk and big reading chair so that we would have a space to work on creative side projects, for my husband to play PC video games in the evening and for me to read on lazy Saturday afternoons.
But, like a lot of knowledge workers, I’ve been unexpectedly working from home for the past year. So our hobby desk suddenly had to do a lot of heavy lifting.
For example, I had just a regular sitting desk. But, with me working at it full time, I was starting to really feel the negative effects of sitting all day. So, I disassembled the desk and put the desktop on motorised sit-stand legs so I can use it as a standing desk too.
