Dave & Amy's Creative Solutions

Who Lives There: Dave, Amy and "a terrier mix with giganto ears".
Location: St. Louis, Missouri
Size: 960 square feet

What is your one favorite element in your small, cool home? The front half of the space is used as our studio so in actuality we're living in closer to 400 sq. ft. I think that this limitation called for us to come up with different ways to double up on living zones and come up with numerous creative and customized storage solutions. The platform bed is a good example, we realized that we'd have to place the "bedroom" smack in the middle of our living space so we decided to get as much storage as we could out of it and to transform it into a sort of artistic installation.

What was one of the biggest challenges you faced in furnishing your small home? Trying to furnish and build everything on such a tiny budget with no IKEA in sight was definitely a challenge. Though, I think this caused us to come up with a more whimsical approach to furnishing and allowed us to re-contextualize found objects in interesting ways. Whether it's using a firefighter's pike-pole for a curtain rod, retro suitcases to hide ugly powerstrips, hang floor to ceiling shelving with chains as brackets, or wire up a giant tree branch with pendant lighting and suspend it over our bed, I don't think that these solutions would have presented themselves if we could have easily purchased what we needed.

Source: apartmenttherapy.com