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Apartment Tour: Korea

October 20, 2015

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Here’s a tour of our cozy place in Seoul. We live in a villa, which sounds quaint and romantic, but in Korea, that means a small apartment building. Most villas we’ve seen have two to six apartments.

So, flashback to July – we were in Ankara and I thought I would be efficient and pack our luggage in a way that we wouldn’t have to touch the majority of it until we got to Korea. That was wishful thinking. I had forgotten how stressful it is to pack most of your worldly possessions into a few suitcases. We went through MANY rounds of revisions and paring down. After three weeks in the States, we arrived in Seoul with five checked luggage pieces, two rolling carry-ons, one backpack, and one guitar.

This is what our home looked like the first day we arrived. I am sharing this to remind myself to rejoice in how far we’ve come since then:

We are fortunate that the school furnishes our apartment with the essential pieces. They also stocked our kitchen with new dishes, silverware, pots, and pans.

Here is our entryway. The air conditioner is on the left. We keep our shoes in the built-in dolap. The hall tree and shelf are both from IKEA. The orange sticky notes around the place are my labels of Korean words!

I killed most of my first round of succulents. I’m blaming it on the low light. We have only three small windows. Here are my succulents take two:

This is the view from the front door. The couch from IKEA (mentioned here) dominates so much space, but it’s comfortable and we live on it when we’re home. I like how it matches our Turkish rug!

The walls are concrete and are covered in a textured wallpaper. We tried every kind of Command hook out there, but nothing stuck. (The only hooks that held were from Daiso. You melt a dot of glue on the back with a lighter and stick it to the wall.) I had to get creative and hung our map tapestry (from GMarket) by sticking sewing pins through the wallpaper. Isn’t it interesting how the Americas are on the right side of the map?

Air plant in driftwood from Pida (피다):

Next to the couch is a door that opens to where our washing machine sits. We keep cleaning supplies and other storage items back here:

Behind the dining room table is the main bathroom. There’s no tub or separator wall, so we use a squeegee to push the water towards the drain after a shower:

Kitchen and dining area:

Stove and microwave:

Here’s the master bedroom. We call it the cave. There are no windows, so if we close the door, we could sleep for daaays. We are creatures of habit and purchased the same bedspread we used in Turkey from IKEA:

This is the bathroom connected to the master. (I can’t imagine anyone taking a shower in this tiny space!)

Also connected to the master is a storage room. It was really humid in here during the summer months, but we may move more things into this area once the cold weather hits.

Off of the kitchen is a spare bedroom:

This bedroom has my wardrobe closet. We use the dresser in here for things like office supplies, electronic cords, and medicine. Our suitcases are in the corner for now so they don’t mold in the storage space. This room usually serves as our laundry drying area.

While I can’t say I adore our apartment, I am very grateful for it and appreciate having our own space to call home. We have what we need and live comfortably here. I’m also thankful we live in a safe neighborhood that is conveniently located to the school, shopping, and public transportation. Our longing for natural light may push us to move next year, but that’s a ways off and we’ll see.

What do you think of our new place?

Our New Apartment

September 21, 2013

Leah

4 Comments

Due to unforeseen circumstances, David and I had to move out of our previous apartment in June before summer vacation. Two of our friends left last year and we got their apartment. All of the buildings in our area were built similarly. However, our new place is a lot nicer of an apartment and we’re loving it. (Especially the view!)

We rent our furniture from our employer. We inherited a few new rugs and furniture pieces from some of our friends.

I found a metal “B” for $2 over the summer, brought it back to Turkey, and covered it with twine for some front door decor:

Here’s the entry foyer area:

I made this wood pallet art last year. The pipes made hanging it a lot easier this year:

Here’s the kitchen. The shorter counter by the window is a great height, but the rest of the counters and cabinets were made for giants. It’s kitchen Olympics every time I cook. I can barely reach the lowest cabinet shelf without the step stool.

The balcony is right off the kitchen. Some pigeons welcomed us when we first moved in, but we quickly vacated them.

This is the hallway to the bedrooms:

First door on the left is the spare bathroom. No squatty potty this year! This is our cleaning supplies storage closet.

The second door on the left is the full bathroom. We don’t have to put the drain hose in the shower any more when we do laundry! It’s amazing! This bathroom is all fancy with fancy tile and gold accents. We like it a lot better:

Our bedroom is on the right. I plan to add some decorations to the walls sometime soon:

Also on the right is our guest bedroom. It’s pretty sad looking, especially since I haven’t put any linens on the bed yet. It has a small porch behind the curtain:

The room at the end of the hall is our “dolap” room. (Dolap is a Turkish word for any kind of cabinet.) We couldn’t get the chair to fit in the living room, so we put it in here. This was originally supposed to be the guest bedroom since it’s larger, but it’s where the movers put the dolap. It ended up working out better this way, I think. We hang our laundry to dry in this room.

The living room and dining areas are off of the foyer. It’s amazing what a difference crown molding makes! (PS. See my peace lilly on the right? I didn’t kill it over the summer! I cut the dead shoots away and it’s growing again!)

The art on the wall by the table was a print we purchased in Bruges. We got the frame from Ikea. It ended up matching our light fixtures:

This couch is amazing. We rarely have the footrest put away:

Our cabinets, TV stand, and buffet are all against one wall now:

So that’s the new place! Home sweet home.

Home Sweet Türkiye

September 25, 2012

Leah

2 Comments

Welcome to our apartment tour! We live in an 11-story building in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Ankara.

The picture below is our entryway. We usually pile our backpacks and shoes on the rug.

Also part of our entryway is this dolop. Dolop is a Turkish word for any kind of closet or wardrobe. It’s nice to have a place to set our keys, hang up our coats, and store extra shoes.

Connected to the entryway is the kitchen. We love the marble countertop! (There is a lot of marble used in the buildings in Turkey, especially on the outside.) The strangest thing about the kitchen is the cupboards. Giants must have built the kitchen (or very tall Turkish men who don’t ever work in the kitchen). I can reach the front of the bottom shelf, otherwise, I have to use a step stool. That was one of the top things on my shopping list after we first moved into the apartment! We have a gas stove, fridge, and microwave. You can see a blue water jug on the left hand side of the picture. We order water jugs for drinking water. It would be OK to use tap water, but excessive use over time can cause kidney stones. Across from the sink, there is access to a porch.

Next to the kitchen is the dining/living room. It was nice not to have to shop for furniture here in Turkey. Transportation can be a little complicated. As of now, we are renting comfortable furniture from the school. We have a good sized table with 8 chairs. There is also a china cabinet type thing. We’ve filled the drawers with office supplies and electronic cords.

Beyond the dining room table is the living room. This set is very comfortable. We don’t really use the loveseat or armchairs much, but we love the full sized couch.

Can you see why? Most couches in Turkey have this awesome pop up footrest. Super comfy!

We also have a nice entertainment center and bookcase set. We were just given a DVD player, so we hope we’ll get a cast off TV sometime eventually.

After entering the apartment, directly to the left is the hallway to the bedrooms and bathrooms. We have two bathrooms, one of which we never use. It is the Turkish bathroom – the squatty potty. We have a cover for it and store cleaning supplies in this tiny room. The door always remains shut! Sometimes it can smell a little weird. The ventilation system for all the apartments is connected to this toiletroom.

And then there is the regular bathroom (which I know you’re dying to see…). We have our washing machine in the bathroom.

Here is our bedroom. When we were shopping, David didn’t understand why we needed a comforter. Afterwards, he agreed it looks nice. The mattress lifts up for more storage.

This dolop is in the master bedroom. I so graciously allowed David to use it as his very own closet.

Because the next room’s dolop is all mine! Just kidding – I share. He uses one section and we store linens, towels, and extra bathroom supplies in it, too. There’s a small balcony off of this room.

The third bedroom is our guest bedroom slash laundry room. And by laundry room, I mean we hang dry our clothes in here. Hence the drying rack and clothesline.

God has blessed us with a roomy, comfortable place! We would love to paint some of the walls and get a couple rugs for the floors. However, right now we are okay living with just the essentials.