After scraping away a quarter inch of cooking grease from the tops of the kitchen cabinets and tucking the lease-holder's treasures under the bed we set about making the place habitable.
Here is what the bedroom looked like when we got the place, as photographed through the kitchen doorway:
Notice the dirty day-glo green paint on the kitchen wall, the plywood shelf unit on that wall, the stickers and band aids covering the doorway wall on the right, and the crowded unfinished built-in cubbies.
Worst of all was the unpainted pine sleeping loft that was only long enough for a small child, yet too high and unsafe for said child. Hand-made of rough wood, its side slats the perfect size for a little head to stick through. The wooden loft was less than four feet high but built right against the window providing fire escape access. In an emergency it would have been almost impossible to get out through the narrow gap between the window ledge and the bottom of the loft. On the window are ugly safety grates which were uncovered except for dirty sheers.
With the permission of the family from whom we are subletting, we made a lot of changes. We only have a two year sub-lease, and we do not intend to renew. Yet we needed the place to be habitable for those two years. Since we neither own this apartment nor hold the lease we were not interested in sinking much money into decor we could only enjoy for two years. Here is the final change:
I scraped every sticker off that kitchen wall. Then we painted it a sage green-gray. We used a light color of paint to make the place seem bigger and brighter. Using matching fabric that looks like raw silk we made a gathered skirt for the cubby unit. It is attached to the wood with small "cafe" curtain rods.
The windows now have Dutch-style lace curtains that let light pass through while hiding the safety grates. The unsafe short loft was disassembled and replaced with a regular twin-sized loft bed. Under the loft is a reading chair and child's desk with a wall-mounted lamp. The bare floor is covered with oriental carpets, with the broad antique floor planks peeking out.
You can see the curtain rod near the window above the ceiling. It has velvet floor-to-ceiling curtains that extend all the way from the window at the far left to the window at the far right. At night they block light. In the daytime the windows are covered only by the lace curtains but the velvet curtains hanging along the wall between the windows produces the illusion of a wall of windows.
Finishing this room meant only re-purposing rugs and curtains we already had. The fabric for the new cubby skirt and the matching skirts for the uncovered kitchen storage and sink came in under $25. With paint, curtain rods, the loft, our new mattress and so on we have kept our redecorating budget between $1000 and $2000. A lot to invest in a place we will leave in two years, but necessary for a home exchanger. The more "after" photos I have posted on my exchange home listing the more swap requests have poured in.
Home exchange saves me at least $1000 per week on hotel and restaurant costs. I have already made back the money I spent in free home exchange travel.
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