Apartment Decor Details

Our apartment has gone through many changes, and that is not reduced to just new furniture over the past three and a half years. We constantly look for new decor pieces to add to our home to give it a more personal touch, while still making sure to compliment the charm of the Spanish Colonial influences that we love in this 1920’s building.

Our home is filled with maps and atlases, but this is our only globe. James has said on numerous occasions that he would love to have another globe from the 1950s that has both East Germany and French West Africa, but we have yet to find the right one.

One of our favorite things about Spanish Colonial Revival homes are the archways.

We have a lot of books all around the apartment, these images don’t even show it all. Our books come from many sources such as our old homes, college years, used book store purchases, and some have been in the family for generations.

Our bathroom is full of interesting bits of character such as the yellow and black tiles, and the artwork on our shower door.

When we first moved in, this was what the handles and faucet looked like over our bathtub, but they have now been changed to very boring generic replacements after a necessary repair.

This frame in our bedroom was once a mirror that we purchased at a flea market, but our mischievous kitties broke it. I attached a piece of patterned fabric to the frame so that we could still use it as decoration in our bedroom.

I have loved anything with owls ever since I was a child, and there is certainly no shortage in our apartment.

We have quite a few souvenirs from our trip to Guatemala hanging from the walls and ceiling. We chose items that felt authentic to the culture, and that would also add fun pieces of texture to the space.

These shot glasses are more Guatemalan souvenirs, and the books are a collection of English translation dictionaries from 1957.

Here is a wall plaque from Italy that once hung over James’ father’s bed when he was a child. It now hangs over our bed with two framed maps on each side of it.

We found this hutch at a flea market and we use it to display ceramic kitchen items and to hold our cookbooks. When I first spotted it I knew that the colors would work very well with our kitchen table.

This small table was a wonderful find. Currently we use it as a little bar, but we hope to find a bar cart someday when we have a bigger space to work with.

We though that we would use lanterns similar to this one for our wedding centerpieces before finding larger ones for a reasonable price. This one is sitting on a doily made by my mother.

This is what the hallway right outside of our door used to look like when I first saw it. Since then, all of the brown has been painted over with white, including the floor, and a sloppily cut rug was installed that demonstrates no understanding of the building’s characteristics. If I had first seen the hallway looking the way it does now, I may not have even chosen this building. At least the candelabra remains untouched.

This painting is on the wall of the upstairs hallway. It is very difficult to read the date with the signature, but as best as I can make out, it says ’72.

The greenery in our patio grows very quickly and sometimes it really feels like a jungle out there.

The peephole on our door has certainly seen better days, but it is such a wonderful little detail.

There are many more little details strewn throughout our entire apartment that give each room its own character while maintaining stylistic cohesion from one room to another. With each item we not only take our current home into consideration, but also think about how we would integrate pieces into our future home someday. We strongly believe that although we do not have a house yet, apartment living should not feel temporary but should feel like a home. After all, this little space will forever be our first home together.