*EXTREME* 485 Sq ft STUDIO APARTMENT Makeover (Rental Friendly)

In my last two episodes of Restoring Roots, we headed to Benji's space to transform his kitchen with a full-on transformation of the cabinetry. And believe it or not, this is all rental friendly. From there, we headed to Tion's space where we were able to make over his bedroom from start to finish with a lot of different DIY projects. And this was an impactful transformation. Today, we're heading to downtown Los Angeles to make over Amina's studio apartment. Hi, my name is Amina. I'm an artist. I'm a filmmaker. I've done things like music videos, commercials, and even some podcasts. I unfortunately lost my studio in the Altadena fires, including my film equipment. This is just like such a special treat to be recognized in this way and just bring a little bit of art and life to the space. I'm a girl who collects unique items, so I love different textures and colors. Like, I really like to play around with patterns, just fill this space with life. Like I like to come in and feel like wow every time. All right, so welcome to my space. Oo, I'm excited to see it's cute. It's small, but it's cute. I love it. It looks so good already. Yeah, this is the bedroom area. I don't have a specific vision. I feel like I'm have like an eclectic type of vibe. So, I like everything. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I like unique pieces. Uh-huh. And I can see you already have like a boulay bed. I just chose something like super neutral for the bed frame first and then like you can like add bedding and pillows and add the color and texture from there. Got it. I also love this little like wall here. I like that they added this cuz I feel like sometimes they can keep it all connected and so I like this little divider just to sort of divide off the space a bit. Kind of like living area, living room, dining area. Yeah. And it is a little smaller. We are going to maximize this space. I was just telling Amina when I walked in like I love love love working with small spaces. Like it's one of my favorite things to do. You have to be like a little clever with it. So that's a fun challenge about it for me. So we are going to make this appear way bigger. I promise you when you get back. Yeah. No, it's going to be so good. Something else I found out about Amina is her birthday's on Thursday. So this is like kind of a fun little birthday present for her. It is cuz we're doing the reveal on Friday. Got to get to work. All righty. Here's our little ride. Oh my gosh. This is adorable. Yes. It's so cute. There's so much space too in this car. I love the like fold fold down seats. I know. Can you believe that's a full third row? Like and then you have all the trunk space still. Oh my gosh. It's so much space. You weren't kidding about that third row. I know, right? And it's comfy too. Like I'm chilling. Usually like people have screens like right here. And I love how it's like up a little, you know, a little way near your ey line. Mhm. Mazda really thought about everything when it comes to the CX90. I absolutely love all the technology features that they added to this car, especially the 12.3 in digital display, which is a touchscreen. It's customizable, so you can make it your very own, and it has all the driving data you need at a glance. All of your most used dials and knobs are conveniently located, including charging ports. They're all over the car, which I love, including a typical DC plug in the back, which always comes in handy. I think one of the coolest things on the CX90 is the active driving display. You literally see important data that you would normally look away from the road for just directly in the screen in front of you. This vehicle is also equipped with so many different cameras and sensors around the car just to ensure that every facet of the technology is used to its advantage and that the 360° view monitor, you're able to see a bird's eye view and parking is a breeze. I will see you in one week. One week? Yeah. Well, I'm excited. I think you're going to love it. Yeah. Yeah. I hope so. At least. Since we are working with a pretty simple and honestly blank canvas, we do need a lot of items. We need to fill it up with quite a bit. And I'm not going to lie to you guys, I actually only found Amina about 5 days before starting this shoot. So, I didn't have too much time to actually prepare order online. So, I had to find quite a bit in Los Angeles. I kind of am obsessed with these chairs here. I love love love the shape of the bottom, these little spindle leg, and then also the little cutout detail on the top. Let me see if I could show it to you. And it also has a great upholstery. This is original upholstery. Just stopped by and picked up some really cool pieces at the vintage store. So, we are going to pack them in the car. Look how easy this is to drop the back seat. It's so simple. Now you have so much more space and still a whole second row of seats, which is crazy. We got this really cool table here. In keeping with the woven theme, this nice wavy mirror, which I don't want to blind you, but it's kind of cool. I found this smaller mirror here that is like a pewtor style. And then just a couple of little decor elements. I thought this was such a cool horn bowl, but also can drill a hole in the top and turn it into like a lampshade, like a horn lampshade. So, that might be something I do and like do on top of the side table. Just a few little accents. $4. $4. We are getting started on Amina's studio space right now and I am so excited. We are actually going to put some rugs down kind of as foundational areas and also grounding spaces for our furniture and to create like little zones throughout the studio space. In the living room, I want to add a really fluffy rug from my collection with June Lloy. This is the Wilshire rug and I feel like I've kind of grazed over this rug so many times and it genuinely needs some love because it is so stunning. It's so fluffy and it's just the perfect textural rug. And the thing is that Amina says she loves texture. So, I wanted to ensure that I incorporated that. I'm not sure if you could tell here, but I also put the rug a little more on the right side of the space because over here in our kitchen area, we have the fridge and I want to do like a little tiny dining space just right over in this little nook right here. And then we're going to have this nice alley back here, which the couch will sit a little out. We have to be very particular with placement of things so we can make sure that the flow is really nice. And the sofa that we got is in such a good color. Let me share this with you. I'm sure you guys can get a little glimpse of the color, but look how stunning this sofa is. I love it. It's also really, really plush and so comfortable. It's like placed on here so crooked. I was sitting on this for like an hour earlier when we brought it into the space and I was like, "This couch is so beyond comfortable." So, I wanted to make sure that we had a nice comfy couch. I also love the kind of streamlined look of this and how it's two seats as opposed to three. Sometimes I feel like that looks a little bit more just a little bit more clustery. Like there's more cushions. There's more seam lines to look at. So I like the streamlined look of the double cushions here. I think it just feels nice in this space. This coffee table. Okay, let me give you a little look. Look at the feet. This is actually a Senufo style coffee table or bed um from Africa. And I love these. I've seen them before. I've never got to use one in a design. I also like how it's a little shorter, so you can kind of like put your feet up on it on the coffee table if you want to. You might be wondering what I'm holding in my hand right here. And this is seven yards of fringe trim that I picked up from the downtown LA fashion district this morning. This was $12 a yard. So, I ended up spending around $90 on this trim, but it's totally going to update our sofa and give it more of a custom feel. And what I'm going to do with this trim is actually just hot glue it to the underside of the sofa. And I know some of you are like, "What do you mean hot glue?" Like, this is upholstery. Believe it or not, all fringe is actually just hot glued right onto all upholstery. Hot glue. You can actually get glue sticks that work super well on fabric. So, that is what I'm going to be using. We're going to be adhering this to the underside of our sofa. I'm going to work in little sections at a time. So, I'm just going to add some hot glue, like probably like a foot of trim. This truly is such an easy upholstery upgrade. And you can do this on anything. like you could do it to a sofa, an armchair, an ottoman, a stool, really anything that you have. And this fringe comes in a lot of different lengths, color options, and styles as well. So, you have a lot of different versatility when it comes to using it. I'm back in Amina's space today and I am working in the bedroom and I'm actually going to be doing some peel and stick wallpaper which I'm excited about because the wallpaper came. I was a little nervous because it didn't have many reviews online and I was like I like the coloring. I like the photo of the wallpaper and it came and I kind of love it. It's actually almost more of like a wall covering look. So, I think once it's on the wall, I'm wanting it to more so appear like the walls are like woven in some sort of retonesesque raphia material to really add some nice texture to the space and also just warm it up. Okay, so we're going to start right here. I also love how wide of a panel this came in cuz sometimes the wallpaper comes in like 18 in. This is actually a 24 in section. So perhaps this is giving like hotel wall, you know, in the bedroom space. Peel and stick wallpaper is a product I love, but it's also different from roll to roll. Like some of them could be a little bit more sticky, some of them can be more flexible, some of them can be more stretchy and just not as pliable. So it's definitely dependent on the product that you use. The thing I can say is that the more that you do peel and stick wallpaper, the more easier it kind of comes or like the longer that you do it that time of day, the easier it comes. So, it's going to definitely take a little bit of practice at the start. You're not going to just slap a peel and stick wallpaper up on the wall and just like in a second it's going to be perfect. It might take you a couple of tries, but you can pull it off. You can put it back on. And that is the thing that I love about peel and stick wallpaper is that it's very forgiving. Now, this one I do think was a little bit more geared towards a contact paper. So, it was kind of challenging to apply as a wallpaper. However, it is totally removable and I did get it up on the walls in all the areas that I wanted it. It has been probably like 6 hours and Justin and I just finished wallpapering the space and it looks so good. I love the texture that it adds. I was a little scared and iffy at first, but I think with all the additional elements we're going to add, it's going to be like the perfect backdrop and it looks just so nice. I will say it was a little meticulous to put up though, so I don't know how much I recommend this as like a peel and stick option like for easiness, but I definitely think it kind of reads nice. This is going to be the bed area, of course. And I want to put down a rug to start. And I brought two of them with me from my house and from my collection. And these are two of the printed ones. I brought two because they're a little easier to travel with. One's a little bit more dark, which I kind of feel like I might like. Like I think that could be really pretty. That's going to be our Palisades option. The darker one fits in here really nice as well. I honestly forgot how pretty this rug is. It is so good. This is the Agora. Kind of feels a little bit more feminine in here because I do feel like the wall covering kind of like a medium tone. So, this adds a little bit of a lightness back. Honestly, I love this one. I think it's such a great option and it's really neutral, but it has some slight little bits of like the terracotta and the rust in here. But, I think I'm going to go for our bolder option, the Palisades. And I want to share with you the bed because you guys might recognize it. Here is our bed frame. This was actually in Tian's room that we made over before. I actually ended up sharing the before space with Amina that we had worked on because we did his space right before this and I shared the before and after and she saw this bed in the before and loved it. So, I was like, why don't we just see if we can use it because it wasn't being put to use and it was going to be put back into storage. Tian is so kind. He was like, oh my gosh, of course, feel free to use it. So, we are going to be using it in this space which I think is going to be really nice. I know that she had a literal exact media unit almost identical to this on her mood board. So, I think she's going to love this bed. I got these nightstands. They're actually like these wheel cog side tables. They're really, really cool. I love them. I've always actually wanted them for my own space and I've just never picked them up. But when I saw them there, I thought they would be the perfect size for just the side of the bed. And I liked the round shape of them as opposed to like just a traditional nightstand. I thought it added a nice little interest. It kind of mimicked the arches in the back of the bed frame as well. We have one for either side. And then I also have lamps for the tops. I have a matching one. It's twin sister over here. Here is our desk, which is actually across from the bed. And I will say right now, the desk is a little deeper than I thought. However, it's not an issue. We still definitely have like space to walk through. Keep in mind, we're in a small studio, so this can also double as an area to maybe eat at. It's also a great large work space, so if she needs to spread anything out, it's honestly like almost the size of like a small fourperson dining table. I also have a chair for this space. And then I also want to potentially hang my tapestry rug from my collection up on the wall right here. Here is the smallest size. Um I think it should fit like right above the desk perfectly. And then widthwise it's just going to be such a great size. And then when Amina wakes up every day, it's just right across from the bed. And I love it's kind of like a window with like a really beautiful scene of a castle, trees, and birds. So let's hang this up. And these are super easy to hang. I'm just going to use two picture nails to get this up on the wall. I also just love it too with like the steel desk because it's two completely opposite vibes, like this ancient tapestry vibe mixed with a more modern aluminum style steel desk. Also picked up a set of dining chairs. One is going to be out at our little mini dining table, which you're going to see shortly, and one's going to live at this desk area. That way, you could bring both them out to the dining area. And they look like this. They are actually a ' 70s Danish style chair, but I loved the colors of the stripes here, this little cutout, and also this curved back. It's a really comfortable chair, too. Like, I would so be sitting here and working for hours. I love this little area. We've made our way to the living room, and if you recall, we've already put down a sofa in here. We added the fringe to the sofa, rug, and coffee table. And here is the base of actually a dresser that I'm going to be using as a sideboard. And I created this for a different project, but it actually didn't work out for the space I was going to use it in. So, I decided, why not try it out here? And I think it's going to be a really cool kind of graphic touch to the space. Let's go ahead and put it back together. I numbered the drawers so we're able to just quickly slide them back in. Here's our sideboard dresser storage situation. And this is where Amina can put a TV if she wants to. I'm going to style it just more like a console kind of credenza. add some pattern, some interest, like a nice bold pop to the living room because before we just had the orange sofa and the rug, but there wasn't much pattern in here. So, I want to introduce that through this bold piece here and then also through some pillows and additional accents. Okay, I mentioned earlier a little like dining chair setup situation and this here is half of round dining table. And I actually ended up taking this apart. So, it was one large round dining table. Or, if you can imagine, there's one other half to this that would make a circle. And on the underside, I just unscrewed the attachment that connected them together where you would essentially add a leaf inside. And it allowed us to have a half table. So, I didn't have to cut this or anything. And I got this at a secondhand shop for like I think it was like $30 or so cuz we don't have space for a full table in here. But we do have space for half a table, which still gives you room to have like two people sitting at it if you wanted to have a friend over. But also, um, this is a studio space, so I'm sure you're not going to be having like massive parties in here. And the way I'm going to be doing that is using a cleat, which is like something you would use to mount a heavy object on a wall. Flip it down, right? And this is our half edge that's going against the wall. And here is one half of the cleat. So there's two parts of these, and when they connect together, it holds on the wall. I think we want it like pretty much like Yeah, we have our cleat attached to the wall now. And this is how simple it's going to be. Kind of drop it right down in that cleat. And there you go. I'm picturing her being able to bring the second desk chair over here if she has like a guest over and they can both use a table, but then the other desk chair can also live at the desk. So, there's one here and then there's one at the desk. And the nice thing is this can be kind of tucked away and then utilized when she wants to actually use it. I kept the styling super simple over here and added a small little oil painting which is a still life which is perfect for a little dining area and also a vase with some fresh flowers in it. Somehow in the hustle and bustle of everything, I completely forgot to film putting the bedding on the bed. But to be honest with you, I did a very simple like bed styling, but the bedding itself is really what stands out. This is a nice kind of bright almost fuchsia color bedding and it's in a velvet because I know that Amina loves velvet so I wanted to add that to the bed area. And then I did some satin pillows just for again texture. I added a cut off water bottle inside this clay vase. That way you can still have fresh flowers in there on top of our little thrifted finds that we found and popped a couple of sculptures up on top of the wall because I actually feel like this wall height is really interesting and it allows for these sculptures to really be highlighted on top. And then I added just a couple of additional decor elements and accents. I love widening the look of like artwork or something with some candle sconces on either side. So that's what I did for this tapestry just to make it kind of feel a bit wider. There we are now in the kitchen area which is right actually behind the sofa. Like the sofa's right here. We definitely have enough space for the dishwasher and for our refrigerator and everything in the kitchen space. But I do want to add one little personalization because I think it can make the space look really cool. And I actually had no idea this even existed. This is a stainless steel contact paper. I found it online and I ordered a roll of it because I thought why not cover these white cabinets. They're like a high gloss lacquered simple white just modern cabinet and I thought what if we gave them kind of a metallic touch and also steel and like silver kitchens right now are totally trending on social. So I thought it'd be fun to try this out. We're going to start with one. I actually have no idea if this is even going to work. So it potentially also will not be working. Ooh, it even feels kind of like um foily almost like what's that stuff? Myar. This should be pretty simple, though. I think all I need to really do is smooth it. That took me like maybe 8 minutes to do one cabinet door. And I was kind of struggling cuz I was on camera. But this looks freaking good. It has a lot of fingerprints on it right now because I literally was smoothing it down. But let me pop this back up, give it a quick wiping, and we can see how it looks. On the last day, Justin and I had to divide and conquer in order to get everything we wanted to get done in this apartment. So, he actually ended up wrapping the rest of these cabinet doors, which I was so super grateful for. And I think at this point, I was figuring out the bed styling. So, while he did that, I worked on the bed styling. When he finished, I just went into the kitchen and did some simple styling in here. I added some fresh flowers along with a few of the ceramics that I found while sourcing over the past few days. It is reveal at Amina's and she's going to be here in like literally an hour and it is time to put this place like do the final touches on it. And I actually ended up I was thinking all last night about the lamps when I got home and I was like I just don't think I love that emerald green with the purple. I don't know. It just felt a little bit too like predictable in a sense. I don't know. I just wanted something that was a little bit more mellow in the space. I think these look really really nice. They're also dimable. It's like a ceramic base with a really nice pleated shade. I think it feels a little bit more elevated. And also the white shades on the previous were just a little too stark for my liking. Oh my gosh, you guys. Amina is here. She has arrived. And look at her stunning hair. I'm screaming. I'm just going to walk you like into like a good position. I feel like right like right here is a good spot where you can see kind of a lot. Oh my gosh. I'm like kind of nervous and I'm so excited for you to see. But do you remember what it looked like before? Just like Yeah. Just like white, you know, with some concrete. Yeah. All righty. Well, we transformed it over the past week and you in three, two, one. You can open your eyes. Oh, do you like Oh my god, this looks so good. Can I sit? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Oh my god, you guys. This is like your little desk area. So, I really like that. You need the desk. I just figured I figured you like probably work a lot and you're like always on your computer and doing media work. So, I figured and I thought this desk was so cool like with the steel gives you a ton of work space, too. And you have a little bench over here like where you can tuck your shoes under here and like this mirror for when you need to leave and get ready. And this is only like the bedroom area. We still have out there. But don't peek out there yet. I know you said you really like texture. So I wanted to incorporate that. This is a peel and stick wallpaper. And so like whenever you move out, you can literally peel it all off. Crazy. Remember that bed that you saw in that before photo of the previous Yeah, we got to return that. Yeah. No, no. your we kept your before bed so that way you could return it and get money or or sell it on whatever you wanted to do because I ended up just getting you this bed from the previous space cuz they were I ended up getting them a different bed and then you liked this one and it was kind of on your mood board. You had like a media console on there very similar. I love these like side tables. I would have never like on my own like decide to get it but it like fits in the space like so perfectly. I know. I think it I just it's like so like such a vibe over here and it's also so different from like the living room area. So you kind of have like more peaceful bedroom vibes and then your work area and then there's also like the living room space. I am shook. Oh my god. And even this rug this rug is beautiful. I'm like all talking over you so excited. This this rug and this rug and the rug in the living room are all from my rug collection. They're like my own designs. Yeah. Like I saw some of these kind of um inspired rugs and a lot of velvet in your inspiration. Like lots of colored velvet which I loved and I was like great. So wait till you see the living room. And I love this like little mirror right here. It's just like a get up like oh hey girl. And I thought this was just like pretty. You can move it around. You can like tuck it over there if it's in your way. No, I love it. Like I am shook. On for round two. Here we are for round two. Okay. So, why don't you in three, two, one, open your eyes. Oh my gosh, this is so cute. Oh my gosh. This the couch. It's so comfortable. You're going to be obsessed. And I added this No, I immediately saw this. I added it. You added this? Yes. So, I bought the couch and it was just like kind of boring with like a gold leg. This is so fabulous. Thanks. And I bought this little coffee table. Yes. It's so cute. Which is so cute. And I then I made this. I painted what? It was like just a dresser before, so I added some stripes to kind of break up the fake printing vibe. And then I thought it just would add like a really cool bold focal point to your kind of like living room. I love it. I've always wanted one of these. It's what's it called? Like it's a side sideboard credenza. Yeah, credenza. Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's technically just like kind of a dresser is what it would be, but I we used it as like a credenza side. So crazy because it doesn't it doesn't feel like cluttered, you know, like it feels like it flows like really nice in here. Like every it feels like a space. We bought a table and like we dissected it and then now here she is. Wow. As a little like dining table and you can like the kind of cool thing is is that we got two of the same chairs for your desk. So like if you had someone over you guys can like both sit kind of at the dining table area. I love it. Or you or two chairs also fit at the desk, too, which is kind of nice. This is so cute. Okay, but the thing that you might not notice is Oh, snap. Do you know? Okay, you notice them now. Oh, just a little Oh, this was such a clean touch. Yeah, cuz these were just like white and in the background, so I thought it just like sometimes it will reflect like the shadows of the trees and stuff, which is really cool. So, it's kind of like a moving like little art vibe as well. I love it. Yeah. Thank you so much. Oh my god, this is so cute. I'm so happy you like it. I love it. Yeah, I love your style so much. So, it was also really fun to work with because I just knew it was going to be like a great overall space and a lot of people want to see me work with color more. So, yeah, because I kind of do tend to go a little bit more like neutral or like earthy tones, but I do like adding color here and there. And so, for this one, I tried to broaden it. This was like perfect. Yeah, every color like I love like orange, like the purples like the little mustard. Thank you. Oh my god. All right, guys. I will see you in my next video. I hope you like this one. Bye bye. A big thank you to Mazda for sponsoring this video.