At Home With: Brad and Sarah in Ukrainian Village, Pt. 2

Walking through Brad and Sarah’s apartment is sort of like flipping through the pages of a design magazine: each room reveals another inspiring element, a work of art in home decor.  But as I said in Part 1, this apartment is even more inspiring than an article in Domino because Brad and Sarah did it all on a budget.

This white desktop was salvaged from an alley. The three file cabinet pieces on the right were from Great Lakes Antique Mall in Holland, Michigan (no website, but you can Google them), $30 for the set. The other card catalog was an eBay find (local pickup) that Brad says was “more than fifty, but not more than 100 dollars.” The chairs were Sarah’s parents’.

The crates were painted and mounted on the wall, and came from Sarah’s parents’ basement. You can find similar crates by doing an eBay search for “wooden crate”.  These kinds of crates are also easy to find in alleys and at flea markets.

The distressed metal jelly cabinet was abandoned in an apartment building where Brad used to live.

Brad and Sarah got rid of a lot of stuff when they moved in together, which is partially why their apartment looks so sparse and clean, and why the elements they have chosen to display stand out so well.  By steering away from clutter, Brad and Sarah save themselves the agony of buying trendy design “staples”. Brad, an admitted perfectionist, prefers to research the furniture and collectibles they add to their apartment to make sure he’s getting the best quality, best price and, of course, he’s not submitting to a passing fad. “Design has its own Ugg boots,” he says.

These windows come from several years of collecting discarded old windows from Chicago alleys.  Brad painstakingly hung them after careful measurement (something I could never in a million years do, being a “measure never, cut 16 times” kind of person).

“The average price for shell chairs on eBay is $125,” Brad says. “That’s four years of research.” (You thought I was kidding about the research?) So you know Brad and Sarah got a good deal when they paid $35 each for the yellow chairs at the Blue Star Antique Pavilion in Douglas, Michigan, and $75 each for the orange chairs on eBay. (”Seventy-five shipped,” Brad says.)

The vintage table was an attic find, though Brad and Sarah are hoping to eventually replace it with a pine farm table from Vintage Pine in Chicago.

I love it when people undertake apartment modifications, rehabbing spaces even though they won’t be yours forever. Brad and Sarah did a few mods on their bathroom — painting the walls and installing these cabinets and a shelf in the shower window.

Their kitchen has one giant modification, too. Brad ripped out the old flooring and exposed the hardwood underneath. But wait: before you get all excited and try to do this at home, don’t. It took him more than a year, lots of backbreaking labor and exposure to harsh chemicals, and even then he had to tackle the problem of sanding, buffing and refinishing the wood he exposed. (Luckily his landlord accomplished the last three steps for him.) Still, better than linoleum, don’t you think?

Some quicker Ikea mods to the kitchen — these you could try!

A quick but elegant kitchen mod — and something so Chicago about it, too.

If you’d like to see more of Brad and Sarah’s apartment, visit Flickr.  While you’re there, you can join the brand new BackGarage Flickr photo group and post pictures of your OWN apartment, condo, loft, houseboat, etc.