First Digs: The Quasi-adult's Guide to Decorating With Style---without Blowing Your Budget - Softcover

Sun, Yee-fan

 
9780312347284: First Digs: The Quasi-adult's Guide to Decorating With Style---without Blowing Your Budget
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0312347286 ISBN 13: 9780312347284
Verlag: Griffin, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

A practical handbook for those moving into a first home or apartment discusses how to decorate, refurbish, renovate, and repurpose one's living space to create a stylish, comfortable home that reflects one's personal taste without spending a lot of money, offering tips on bargain hunting, painting, organization and storage, do-it-yourself projects, furnishings, and more. Original.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

YEE-FAN SUN, a graduate of Harvard University, is the founder of www.digsmagazine.com, an online magazine that provides practical home and living information for the “post-college, pre-parenthood, quasi-adult generation.” 
 


YEE-FAN SUN, a graduate of Harvard University, is the founder of www.digsmagazine.com, an online magazine that provides practical home and living information for the "post-college, pre-parenthood, quasi-adult generation."

Von der hinteren Coverseite

Good-bye dorm, so long mom and dad, and hello new digs! Whether your rent, buy, or share your first home or apartment, getting it to look great without spending a lot of money can be a challenge. Yee-Fan Sun comes to the rescue with this engaging guide to decorating, refurbishing, and repurposing so you can leave those milk crate bookshelves and sagging futons behind. Packed with DIY solutions and guidance on how to personalize your new home, First Digs covers everything you need to know to decorate, organize, and maintain a cool, comfortable space that reflects your own unique style.

First Digs features:
· Guidelines on how to prioritize and allocate a miniscule budget
· Savvy bargain-hunting advice
· How to spruce up home furnishings
· Tips on painting like a pro
· Illustrations throughout
· DIY projects for lighting, slipcovers, window treatments, wall hangings, and more!

Learn how to make the move into your first home a little easier, much more creative, and a lot of fun!

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

First Digs
chapter one
choose your own (living) adventure
it was so easy back in the college dorm days. Fill out some forms, submit them to the random gods of housing assignment, cross your fingers, and hope for the best. In the post-dorm phase of life, however, finding a roof over your head involves just a little more work. Sure, your parents dropped hints aplenty about how you're always welcome to move back into your old bedroom--and hey, maybe you've even taken them up on the offer, bunking down in your twin bed and biding time while you wait for some sign regarding what to do next. But when you get tired of sneaking your significant other out of your bedroom each morning, when Mom tells you one too many times to drive carefully as you leave to meet your friends in the city, when the Pearl Jam poster that you tacked above your bed back in eighth grade comes tumbling down atop your head one night, you'll know: It's time to strike out on your own and get your first real apartment.
But before you start packing up that moving van, there are just a few things you'll need to consider. Should you throw in your lot with some roommates, brave it solo, or maybe move in with your sweetie? How much rent is too much? And how do you know when you've found the right apartment, anyway? With questions aplenty dancing in your head, a tinyknot of panic begins to build. But quit hyperventilating: We're here to help you find your way.
share and share alike: living with roomies
When you've lived your whole life thus far in the hivelike coziness of a dorm or the family nest, the outside world can seem like a big, lonely place. lumping straight into your own digs seems particularly intimidating when a quick glance through the newspaper rental ads reveals that for an alarmingly large chunk of your rather modest monthly salary, you can live in a closet, in a basement, or in a part of town you'd be scared to drive through in broad daylight. The solution to your predicament? Get thee some roommates.
Sharing digs with other folks means you can get a much bigger, much nicer place than you would likely be able to afford all by your lonesome. Other costs of living become cheaper as well; running utilities for two costs about the same for one, and with other people around to potentially split kitchen duties, you might find you're a whole lot more likely to actually cook in-house rather than resort to overpriced takeout.
Even if the quirks of your college housing lottery have made you leery of having to deal with roommates ever again, living with roommates in the postschool years really can be a good thing for more than just your economic state. Yeah, so that nice girl you bunked with freshmen year turned out to be a raging klepto and pathological liar, and the former friend you lived with the following year drove you bonkers with her tendency to pilfer your Ring Dings, but these days, you're older, wiser, and most of all, more experienced: You know a little something about what you are really looking for in a roommate.
Now if you haven't already experienced the problems of living with good friends, you might think your safest bet is to move in with someone you know and love. But think long and hard before you leap into a lease with your oldest, best friend. Fuming when your buddy takes fifty minutes in the bathroom each morning, getting passive-aggressive about the ever-presentstack of someone else's dirty dishes, getting nagged when you forget (okay, again) that it's your turn to take out the trash: This is the stuff that's ruined many a fine friendship. There's way too much that can go awry when folks who have a great time hanging out together decide to share a roof ... without taking that all-important step of considering each person's actual living style first.
Some of my very favorite people in the world are a little wacky. They keep strange hours, voluntarily getting up to tap away on their laptops in the wee hours of the night, doing a three-hour nap/three-hour wake schedule, or going days on end without any bedtime at all. They have bizarre hobbies that make their homes look like little museums of their personal obsessions. They're always finding themselves in some crazy situation with some new guy, or new girl, or every once in a blue moon, both. They're full of marvelous little quirks that make them endless sources of fascinating stories, and I always look forward to spending time with them. And a big part of the reason this is possible is because I don't have to live with their nuttiness day in and day out. And they don't have to put up with mine.
Seriously, the qualities that you look for in a friend (fun, funny, always up to something interesting) aren't necessarily the same ones you should seek in a roommate (of the same cleanliness level as you, able to pay all bills on time and willing to do so of their own volition). Yes, sometimes good friends can make great roommates, particularly if both you and the friend-cum-potential-roomie are the sort of adaptable, low-maintenance individuals who are blessed with the amazing ability not to let other people's weirdnesses bug you. But unless you're fully confident that you and your pals genuinely share similar views on such mundane matters as washing dishes, vacuuming, noise levels, and fiscal responsibility, it's often safer to keep your friends as friends and look elsewhere for someone to share your abode.
When you're moving in with a stranger, it's a beautiful clean slate: No one is bringing any baggage into the situation, allowing you all to be much more open from the very beginning about what you expect. You don't have to feel like a total jerk when you tell your stranger-roomie that you're not real keen on significant others becoming nonpaying tenants, the way youmight feel if this were your good friend instead and you were talking about her boyfriend who you already knew and liked. Money issues are also way less uncomfortable to broach with people with whom you share no history. And additionally, there's the fun factor of simply getting to know a new person--who might eventually turn into as great a friend as she is a roommate, if you're lucky.
where to find 'em ...
Once you've decided to get yourself into the roommate market, it's time to start putting out the feelers. Good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth is still the best place to start, as it's 100 percent free and involves almost no extra effort on your part. After all, you talk to people on a regular basis, don't you? Casually mention to any and everyone who'll listen that you're looking for a roommate. Your officemate might have a sister who's looking to share a pad; your mom might have a friend whose son is freaking because his roommate just bailed mid-lease. The waitress accidentally eavesdropping on your lunchtime conversation might overhear your plight and tell you that she and her roommates just happen to have an extra room in their group house that they've been trying to rent out for ages. You never know who might know someone that might just be your perfect future roommate.
While you're doing your networking, you'll also want to take more active steps to find someone to room with. When you're looking to move into your first apartment, this will likely mean finding someone who already has a specific place and is looking for someone to split the costs. The classifieds section in your local paper is the obvious place to look; you'll also want to try out online resources like craigslist.org or roommates.com, your favorite message board, and roommate matching Web sites. Neighborhood bulletin boards--in the cafe, bookstore, used CD shop, wherever--are another good potential lead. And hey, if you spy an ad at your favorite coffee hangout, you at least know that you and your...

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Verlag
Griffin
Erscheinungsdatum
2006
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0312347286
ISBN 13 
9780312347284
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
273
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
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