“It was a bit of a happy accident,” says Megan Hopp of discovering the Park Slope one-bedroom she and her fiancé would soon call home. “Another rental we were interested in had just fallen through, and we had one weekend left to find a place,” she recalls. “Then a real estate agent told me about this apartment, basically saying, ‘If you want it, it’s yours.’ It was a true disaster, but it was in the perfect location, the price was amazing, the bones were good —and I’m always up for a little spruce-up.”
BEFORE: The original kitchen featured industrial lighting, parquet patterned vinyl floors, and aging appliances.
AFTER: Among the improvements made to the kitchen: newly painted cabinetry , updated appliances, fresh countertops, and a $45 VCT floor .
The designer, known for interiors brimming with color, texture, and pattern, made sure to receive her landlord’s permission before moving forward with alterations to the 600-square-foot home. But another hurdle lay ahead: determining how to achieve the bold look she envisioned, on a budget. “Because it’s a rental, I wanted to be as frugal as possible,” she says.
BEFORE: The kitchen has high ceilings but was not putting the wall space to use.
AFTER: Megan added upper cabinetry, which gives the room a symmetrical look and affords extra storage.
For Megan, this meant hours of careful price comparison, and taking on much of the required labor herself. Changes ranged from the relatively small (affordable bamboo shades on the windows, for example, or new pulls on kitchen cabinetry) to the seriously statement-making. In the latter case, paint —both the addition and the removal of it—was a key player: A dilapidated entryway, once dark and cluttered, was given a fresh marigold facelift; in the living room, layers of high-gloss pink paint—“150 years of it!” the designer says—were painstakingly peeled away and replaced with Portuguese-inspired wallpaper and baby blue trim.
BEFORE: “Every square inch of the living room was covered in high-gloss pink paint,” the designer says. “It took hours to scrape off.”
AFTER: Designer Megan Hopp in her newly designed living room.
AFTER: “I chose the print because of the vertical nature of the pattern,” Megan says of her Hygge & West wallpaper. “The apartment has really high ceilings, and this was a way to make them look even taller.”
Like many homes furnished and decorated on a budget, the apartment features its share of IKEA finds: amber curtains in the living room archway, wardrobes in the bedroom, a two-dollar shelf filling a gap above the stove. But other bargains came from more unexpected places. “The kitchen floor is VCT tile —the kind of thing you see in elementary school cafeterias or the DMV—that I arranged in a striped pattern,” Megan says. “I ordered it directly from a wholesale flooring company, and it ended up costing me $45.” (The entire renovation, which spanned five months, totaled $5,000.)
BEFORE: The entryway, once used as a storage space, was dark and overcrowded.
AFTER: New cabinet doors, decorative molding, and a wash of yellow paint transformed the lackluster entryway into a cheerful place to sit.
“This experience offered me an opportunity to really customize my space—despite it being a rental—which was exciting,” the designer says.
For those hesitant about asking to make similar changes to their own rentals, she insists there’s often more room for discussion than one might think. “People assume that there’s so much you can’t do,” she continues. “But if the space needs work already, your chances of getting permission to customize go way up. My advice is to find out what your options are—if you’re curious, don’t be afraid to ask.”
BEFORE: Large windows made for an abundance of natural light in the bedroom, but the space lacked sufficient storage.
AFTER: “The living room is such a jewel box, with varying levels of color and pattern,” Megan says. “I thought it would be nice for the bedroom to be all white: a place to step away and decompress.”
A once empty nook is now home to an IKEA wardrobe, customized with handsome new hardware.
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