Well, my first apartement was technicaly a small cabin that I shared with the biggest pot smoker in the Sierra Nevada. Here is my story. Spring of 2004. I was tired of living in Los Angeles. The traffic. The overcorwding. The weather. It was all getting to me and I felt that I was losing my mind. I had to get out of there and move away. I was still living at home so I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I had always wanted to work up in Yosemite National Park and I went ahead and applied on their website. A few months later I was hired and all set to move on up. It was about 6 hours away so it wasn't too far. I took with me a few essentials. Some clothes, small TV and DVD player, some movies and a few other little accessories. When I arrived I was assigned to a small cabin and a roomate. This guy had already been living up there for a few years and he hadn't had a roomate in a while so it took him a day or so just to get his crap out of my side of the room. In the meantime I was staying at a tent cabin nearby while I waited for Troy to clean up my half of the room. 48 hours later I moved into our cabin. It was not at all what I expected. First of all, he was a huge pothead and I think his diet consisted on beer and weed and not much else. He rarely bathed and hygene was not on his top ten list of priorities (and he worked in the kitchen of the Yosemite Lodge). This guy was such a pothead that he actually used to smoke in his sleep! I was up late reading one night and he suddenly sits up in his bed, reaches over for his pipe and takes a few hits. The whole time he did this his eyes were closed. After a few days of this I had to confront him about smoking indoors because his smoke was causing all of my clotes to stink like weed and I didn't want people to think I was some stoner. Then his friends would come over and since the place was so small they would sit on my bed when I wasn't there and his friends were just as dirty as he was. He also had a friggin Iguana as a pet and he let it run free in the room which I didn't really care for because the damn thing kept crawling on my while I slept and when I would wake it would be damn near sitting on my face. The final straw finally occured when I found a dead mouse in our fridge. Apprently it got inside and was trapped and died. I went back to the housing department and got another tent cabin by myself. I thought that living in the most beatiful place in the world would be a special treat and in many ways it was. After my experiences at the park I realized that it is much better to visit as a tourist than to live as a local.

Age- 35 Gender- f Children? no these responses come our last apartment, but also apply to our current home, which comes in at just under 1000 sq ft. Do you have visitors over and if so do you move things around to make room? yes, lots of movie nights at our place, so the living room is set up for 4-6 with a small coffee table that has a larger top we can add at need, and hassocks that stow away under the day bed we have instead of a proper couch. all we have to move is our own stuff (we're both artists, and do a lot of work in the living room) Which room in your apartment do you spend the most time? living room, kitchen. What do you store away out of season clothing and kitchen appliances like the crock pot and the blender, tom's guitars, art supplies (have their own closet) will admit to storing most of my 'extra' books, bulky materials, and such at my mom's place. Is there enough space for storage? yes- if I'm ruthless with myself, who will freely admit to being a packrat who'd 'save' every paperback, ever issues of MS living, and whatever I find on the curb on the way home, if I could. Is your kitchen sufficient for your needs? sufficient, yes. adequate, even...but the girl who taught me a lot of the cooking I know did so in a 'galley' style kitchen with less than a square yard of counter space, so a lot of how I cook is about passing things directly from the fridge on your right, through the cutting board, to the stove on your left without taking more than a single step. the kitchen is actually less well laid out in the new (well, 100 year old) house...but I make do, since it will be done, all at once, sometime in the next decade. Do you eat at home/out? Would that change if your kitchen were set out differently? we eat in way more than we eat out- but I would prepare more elaborate meals if I had the room for it. How do you personalise your apartment? my landlord wouldn't let me paint the walls- but he did let me paint the trim, which is royal purple and turquoise, to match the matting on my collection of fantasy art posters. big, bright throw pillows helped a lot, and did live hanging plants. What do you spend the most of your time at home doing Tom watches movies on the TV and draws, I sew or paint, garden a bit, and read- I try and save the boob tube for movie nights. Do you have enough privacy in your home? inside, yes, since we were on the second floor. but the cul-de-sac we lived on was nosey as heck, and the neighborhood was lousy, to the point that I gardened in long skirts rather than shorts. in the house, priviacy is not so much the problem as the street light that sits outside out bedroom window- that called for blackout curtains! Have you had problems with a particular area of your apartment? the single bath with its single sink, and no storage to speak of (a medicine cabinet, I added a corner shelf unit later) has proved to be a pain for me, who is used to having a bath with two sinks- and a second bath to run to in an emergency. same thing in our new house- but we're rehabbing what used to be a powder room on the main floor, which should make the best of the situation.

We used an 18-inch base cabinet with the deep drawer at the bottom and a shallow drawer on top. We attached a regular door front to the deep drawer hardware (can't remember exactly how we did it but it wasn't complicated). I didn't want to use the small IKEA trash bins so I looked all over to find the largest trash can that would fit the space; I can't remember exactly how big the can is (I think it was a Rubbermaid can) but it fits exactly side to side and top to bottom (without the lid) and is the perfect size for the Costco 13-gallon kitchen bags. I thought I would then look for a smaller can to fit behind for recycling but until I could find it we started putting a paper grocery sack behind the main can and it worked so well that I never looked for a smaller can. We reuse the sack until it gets too weak and then throw it into the recyling with whatever is in it. We've been using the trash set up for 2 1/2 years with no problems; the door/drawer seems as sturdy and stable as it did when we started using it. And that's with two teenagers who certainly aren't concerned about overstuffing the trash can.

I've had my engineered hardwood in 5 rooms for 6 years and just love it - amazingly scratch resistant, beautiful, mid-warm brown maple 5" planks with a bit of variation in the surface to suggest hand scraping, without going overboard. The maple is rustic enough - with color variations and dark knot splotches - that it can hide small damage. Damage is rare, it takes a lot to harm this wood. I get a lot of compliments and would like to do the last 3 carpeted rooms of my house when I can. It's easy to clean AND hides dirt (too) well, so whether I'm diligent or lazy my floors look great. The only issue I've had is that my exact plank got discontinued. When I redo, I will have to match plank width, thickness, color, and surface profile. I have checked, it's not so easy..... Make sure to choose maple or oak species, they are the toughest.