I am not a YouTuber, so here’s my West Hollywood apartment tour blog post! In early January, I packed up all my stuff and drove from Seattle to Los Angeles. I kept putting this post off because I thought I was going to make my room cuter, but it’s been 3 months and it still kind of looks like a college dorm I don’t know if I’ll ever re-decorate.
I have moved to Los Angeles twice now and both times, I’ve lived with strangers who have posted that they’re looking for a new roommate in one of the Los Angeles housing Facebook groups. This apartment is a 3 bedroom/2 bathroom, and it’s probably around 1,000 square feet. It has air conditioning and it’s walking distance of a ton of restaurants that I’ve still barely just begun exploring. However, I will say that living in West Hollywood is only good if you don’t need to leave West Hollywood/Hollywood/Beverly Hills because it’s hard to get anywhere else.
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The common living area is really cute thanks to one of my roommates Kate who has lived here for two years and has artfully thrifted everything except for the carpets. The kitchen is pretty small and there are crickets that live behind the fridge, but you can’t have it all!! Kate has the master bedroom/bathroom, and then my roommate Andrea and I each have our own rooms and share a bathroom. It’s tiny and there’s no fan, but it does the job.
If you’ve ever had to furnish a room, you know furniture is wildly expensive. I don’t understand why accent chairs cost so much?? One day I will have nice things and won’t have to live with or buy things from strangers on the internet, but at 24, I’m thrifty and sometimes thriving, so most of the furniture in my room is secondhand. Thankfully, Los Angeles has a great re-sell market because people are always moving, so you can find some great furniture that’s been hardly used, especially on Facebook Marketplace. I’ve learned you can also just wander the streets of West Hollywood in search of free things because people will just leave things (couches, tables, bookshelves, literally anything) on the sidewalk all the time.
There isn’t enough room to really hang towels in the bathroom, so I bought this over-the-door towel rack from Amazon and put it together myself, which if you know me, is a big deal.
I bought the white bookshelf for $50 from a girl off Facebook Marketplace. Over the years, I’ve learned I am not good at interior design. Or maybe I just can’t afford things that look nice yet, I guess we’ll see. I feel like the shelf could be decorated all cute, but at the moment it’s more functional and holds my laundry supplies and miscellaneous items.
I got my desk and my docking station from my work from home stipend with Staples Advantage. I pick up this Acer monitor for $20 on Facebook Marketplace and picked it up from a girl who lived down the street. My office chair is from Costco from college and the lumbar support pillow is from Amazon. I made the collage on the wall from various magazines I collected in college and interning at Variety.
The bedroom looks a lot bigger because I have a twin bed. Is it slightly claustrophobic? Yes, but this is the configuration that makes the most sense. The twin bed is from college, which is this metal foldable twin bedframe from Amazon and this mattress that I got from my friend Anica in college, originally from Ikea. The bedframe is raised 18 inches off the floor so I can hide stuff under there behind the bedskirt I got from Amazon. The sheets are from Macy’s and the comforter is from the Opalhouse collection at Target. I made the pink fleece blanket with fabric from Joann’s. The soft bin at the end of my bed was $17 from Marshalls and holds my extra pillows and blanket hoodie.
The drawer set is also from Ikea that I got in college and the top drawer is my nightstand and the rest holds my sweatshirts. The lamp is my dad’s old lamp from who knows when, that was in my childhood bedroom back home. The iHome Zenergy alarm clock was a Christmas gift from a work vendor.
My favorite section of my room is my TV/sitting area. I bought the 43” Insignia TV off my old roommate for $150 which just barely fits across the white cubicle bookshelf that I bought from a different previous roommate for $30, originally from Target. I won an Apple TV from a lunch and learn at work pre-pandemic. This is the first time I’ve had a TV in my room and so I originally wanted to be able to watch TV in bed, but there was no way I could do that with the way this room is laid out with the window and the closet taking up an entire wall. In the end, I like how it’s laid out.
The best deal on Facebook Marketplace was this cool accent chair I randomly bought on a Monday night from a girl in Beverly Hills. It’s originally from Wayfair for over $250, but I got it for $85 and I absolutely love it because I can unfold part of it and just lounge in it or totally unfold it to make it a cot.
My mom found our kitchen carpet back home from Home Depot, and this 4×6 carpet one was $43 from Home Depot, which is a really good deal compared to the ones I was looking at Home Goods and TJ Maxx. I picked up the side table from a yard sale across the street from my apartment. The girl was selling a pair for $30, originally $150 each from the Capiz Collection at World Market, so the other one is in the living room. The silver standing lamp is from Ikea from college. I also bought the white bookshelf off a previous roommate for $30. The fake plant was $6 from Ikea because I am not a plant mom.
I have a lot of closet space behind these mirrored doors, which is super nice because I forgot how many clothes I had while it was all sitting in storage for the past two years.
And that’s my West Hollywood apartment tour! My next move will definitely be further west, hopefully Culver City, or just somewhere that isn’t 20 minutes from a freeway!
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