This 809 Sq Ft Loft in Dallas, TX is filled with memories and great finds

Hi, Apartment Therapy. My name's Christina, and welcome to my 809-square-foot apartment in Dallas, Texas. I've been living in this space for three years now. I live with my fiance and our golden retriever. When I toured the apartment, what I fell in love with first was the wall-to-wall windows. There was so much natural light coming in, and I just knew I had to have the space. And I also really like the high ceiling. It makes it feel a lot bigger than it actually is. When I first moved in, I wanted to make sure that I had enough spaces created for my furniture. And so I wanted to have a separate bedroom area, a living room area, and also a dining area. The kitchen is tucked away in the back corner. So I knew that I needed to put the bedroom as far away from the kitchen as possible. I just didn't want the bedroom in the kitchen area. So we started with the bedroom first, which may not be ideal, but it really helped with the flow of the floor plan. Originally, I had the bed against this wall, and I liked the layout, but as my fiance moved in, we needed more storage space, so we had to get a dresser. And so I kind of shifted the room around. We moved the bed in front of the windows, and then the dresser we put here. I actually put a full-length mirror on top of the dresser so that I wouldn't have to rearrange my gallery wall. Putting the dresser on there really worked out well. It just kind of hid the space that was taken by the bed. And then we put this chair in the corner. It's a nice chair to kind of sit down, put your shoes on, read. We found it on Facebook Marketplace. So the gallery wall is comprised of just some of my photos. I do take a lot of photos when we travel. I've worked as a photographer in the past, so I really enjoy taking photos. The panel here, it's an acrylic panel. It's from the 60s. It was in my parents' house. When they were renovating, I asked them to save me a piece. I didn't really know what I was gonna do with it, but I framed it, and I think it's really cool. It's a great color. I really like having it there. It reminds me of home. The bedding's from CB2. I wanted a really grounded, kind of dark color, so I chose the green. It also matches my sofa. It's not the best color when you have a golden retriever who sheds a lot, but it's very grounding in the room, and it really provides a calm energy to the space. We also bought this wicker room divider shelf on Facebook Marketplace. It was a great find. We're so happy with it. It's just such a unique piece, and it's a great way to display all of my plants and just random things that I've collected over the years. My mom's old camera, and some of her wedding gifts that she received that she never used, these green canisters. I really love the colors, and they match my color scheme really well. This is our living room. This is my favorite place in the entire apartment, and it's definitely where we spend most of our time. We're up high enough, and there's not any buildings across from us, so when we look out the window, we just see the trees and the sky, and it's the best way to end the day. We see some really awesome sunsets here. I wanted to focus on a lot of earthy tones and warm wood grains to help warm up this space. It's kind of a cold space with the concrete floors and the exposed beams and all the windows. The green sofa is definitely one of my favorite pieces of furniture. I've had it for a few years now, and I just like the warmth that it brings to the space. We have another gallery wall here behind the couch. These photos are all photos that I've taken on trips or photos from West Texas, which is where I'm from. I also was able to make the gallery wall work well with the sliding door. The sliding door here leads to our bathroom, and we were gonna be opening and closing the door a lot, so I used photo frames that were really thin, so when we open the bathroom door, it just slides right over, and we don't have to worry about them being knocked down, and it doesn't block the door from opening. The coffee table is from a local antique mall. I actually found it on Facebook Marketplace. I like the color, but I also like the unique shape. It's got a rattan base, which gives it a more retro feel, but it's still very modern because of the clean lines, so I really like the design, and I think that that's really where my style leans towards is modern with a little bit of a retro vibe, and then the rug is a Facebook Marketplace find. I was really excited to find it. It's such a unique piece. It's unlike any rug I've ever seen before. I have no idea where it came from. There's no labels or tags or anything. I just saw it, and I knew I had to have it, and it ended up being the perfect size for the space, so I was really excited. And then next to the living room, we have my fiance's workspace. We found this desk on Facebook Marketplace. It's modern and really warm, so I thought it was a good match for the space, and he really liked it, so it was kind of like one of his first pieces of furniture that he brought into this space, so it kind of helped make the apartment more ours than just mine. Our TV stand is actually two coffee tables from Target that I've pushed together to create a long console table, and I like the extra space because it gives me a good place to kind of display more plants and really kind of bring a jungly vibe to the apartment. I have this rattan cabinet over here from Target. Obviously, it looks pretty, but it's also really functional. We do eat in front of the TV a lot more than I would like to admit, so we keep a lot of our stuff here that helps with that. We have our placemats, napkins, handles, but also the things that we use frequently instead of having to run into the kitchen every time. It's just so easy to grab it out of here, and it's also really close to the dining room, so if we do decide to eat at the dining table, we can just grab the placemats and the napkins from here as well, so it's like the perfect place to have things for both spaces. This is our dining space. The main focus of the dining area would be our dining table. I actually found this table about eight or nine years ago at a sample sale. I just happened to go on my lunch break, and I saw this amazing table. I just had to have it. It was such a great deal. I think I paid $115 for it, so definitely the highlight of my day that day. Actually, probably my year. The dining table I paired with these Eames dupe chairs, we'll say. They were actually white, but I painted them the rusty red to kind of match everything else in our room. The rug is another Facebook Marketplace find. It's a little bit different than the other two, but I do like that it has some of the same colors. It's a more graphic design, but it's kind of nice to have a more playful rug in the dining area. I also have a collection of candlesticks. They've come from all over the place, antique malls, thrift stores, anthropology, and then the green one from my mom's wedding collection. And I also have this pot here was my grandmother's. Before she passed, she had given it to my mom. It was something that she used to cook beans with on the stovetop, so I thought that was really cool. I don't cook beans on the stovetop, but I do like the piece, so I have it displayed in our dining room. The dining room also serves as my workspace. So my desk is this secretary desk that I found on Facebook Marketplace. I really like it because it opens and closes. So while I'm working, I can have it open, but whenever I'm done working, I'll just close it and you don't have to see the computers and everything else that I use to work. So it makes it a nice decorative piece, but it's also very functional. This is our kitchen. It's not too big, but it's a good size. We do cook a lot, so we spend a lot of time in here as well. We try to keep the counters as clean as possible or as clutter-free as possible. There's not a whole lot of counter space, so with both of us in here trying to cook, it does get a little bit crowded. There's not a ton of storage in this space, so we added this wire shelf. This serves as our pantry. I have collected all of these baskets from thrift stores. I think one of them came from Target, just wherever I can find them. And that's how I used to kind of organize the shelf. I didn't want it to look too messy. I didn't want it to look like a grocery store, so I thought that the different textures of the baskets really helped kind of warm it up and make it look pretty while it stays functional. On the side of the wire shelf, I also added some wire baskets. These came from Amazon. This is also Winston's feeding station. We have his feeder here and his water bowl. I try not to put too much decor in the kitchen. I did put one of these brass containers that I found at an antique mall. It holds our soaps and our sponges, and it's just a nice way to keep them together, but also looking pretty. That's what matters to me. This is our entryway. So this is where we have all of our storage. We have two closets in here, and then a makeshift closet that I created using an Ikea shelf, some tension rods, and curtain panels from Target. We also have shoe cabinets from Ikea. It's such a great way to store our shoes, and they're really narrow, so because the space in here isn't super wide, they don't take up a ton of space, which is really nice. It's also kind of turned into our drop-off station, so whenever we get home, we drop our keys in the bowl. We'll put our sunglasses here. I can set my purse here, and it doesn't feel too cluttered, and it doesn't feel like anything's in the way. This is our bathroom. It's much brighter than all of the other spaces. The room itself is really dark. There's no window, so I wanted to add some color to it through the different finishings. We have a gallery wall in here full of photos of Winston from our trips. The main focal point is our shower curtain. I got this from Target. I liked it because it had a lot of bold colors, and it also still had some of the greens and oranges that I use in the main living space, so it kind of tied in, even though it's a much brighter, fun space. I think one of my favorite things about this apartment is that it has been so adaptable and flexible to where I was in my life. Whenever I moved in, I was single. I was living here by myself, and when my fiance moved in, I was able to create space for him. Home to me is a place where you can fully be yourself. The way I decorate, I'm very sentimental, so I like things to have a meaning, whether it's photos I've taken, paintings I've taken, trips we've taken. Just from anything I've experienced, I like to have that shown in our apartment.