Hi! My name is Jessica and welcome to my Sweet Digs,
where I share 460 square feet with my fiancé.
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Come on in.
I live in Burbank, California, next to the Warner Brothers Studios.
I live here with my fiancé, Dean, and we’ve been living
together for almost two years.
I bought this place for $259, which I thought was a lot at the time, but now
that it’s selling for $375, I think I got a good deal.
This is the closet that I turned into the office, also known as
the “cloffice.”
The reason why I call it “cloffice” is because originally it was a sliding door
closet, but I needed more square footage.
So, I actually took off the doors, added a hanging light, painted the inside, and
stuck my desk in there.
Now it’s my little office area.
Right behind the door when you enter, you’re going to see our travel map.
My fiancé and I signify all the gold pins for places that we’ve been together.
All of the white pins are places he’s been himself, and all of the black pins are
places I go by myself.
Every time we go to a new place, it’s kind of fun to come home and
stick another pin on the map.
Right below it, I actually hung a walking stick.
We took a trip to Japan and climbed Mount Fuji, and every time we hit another
checkpoint, all the way up to the summit, we got a little stamp.
So, it’s one of the hardest trips that we’ve been on together,
but it really built our relationship.
So, it’s really important to us.
This is the kitchen.
When I first started house hunting, I had a long list of must-haves.
I had to have outdoor space, I had to have 2 rooms, I had to have
indoor washer and dryer, a gas stove, and central air.
And I got one of them.
I think cooking is one of the things that my fiancé Dean and I like
to do a lot together because we have the one must-have in here.
He loves to make chicken wings.
He’s the best.
And I love to make quinoa that my mom taught me to make.
To utilize the vertical space, I actually had somebody who does
a lot of work on my parents' house build these octagon shelves
for me.
We kind of house our plants, some of our family pictures, and every time we drink
a bottle of wine, we name it, and we stick it in this.
My biggest regret with designing this space, it’s kind of a love/hate relationship, was
picking white floors.
I think it was a good idea because the white floors make the
460 square feet feel bigger, however, anytime you move furniture, anytime
you walk in here, you’re gonna leave a scuff.
So, I guess it’s something that I just have to deal with.
You would think that this is a “shoes off” household because everything is so
white, but I really don’t care.
Just walk on in.
Welcome to the dining room area.
This dining room set actually didn’t start as a set.
The table was from my parents.
Three of the chairs are from a thrift store, and one of the chairs is from a flea market.
We painted everything white, and added the same fabric on top
of the seats to make it my dining room set.
It’s actually a place that we end up piling everything on.
When walk through the door, our work bag, our jackets.
Everything ends up here.
So, the next day we have to clear it off again.
The most sentimental piece is probably the hutch.
It is currently our mini-bar, but it wasn’t always a mini-bar.
It was actually my parents’ china cabinet that was in their first home.
So, when I bought my first property,
it was kind of like a rite of passage.
When you live in a small space, you may think that you need certain things,
but after a while you realize you don’t utilize it as much as you should.
So, we had a small couch at one point and no one ever sat on it.
So, we swapped it out for a credenza from CB2.
I can’t really remember how much it cost.
I think I block out things that I have to pay full price for,
but if I had to guess, probably around 3 or $400.
Dean actually did a lot of his work from this dining table.
So, having a little bit of extra storage for his work stuff, and
a lot of other things that were laying around the house, was way more
important than a couch.
My favorite piece in the entire place is probably also the most functional.
My dad built a pony wall/ shoe caddy/ TV swivel mount.
And that serves as a divider between our two spaces,
the dining room and the bedroom.
So, I needed to find a lighting solution for the bedroom area because it was a
little dark in here.
I already had a bull head that I attached to my wall as
kind of art, and decided to stick a light bulb kind of in its mouth area to
make it into a sconce.
Every time Dean looks at it, he says it looks a little demonic, but I think it
was smart and cute.
What do you think?
Leave it in the comments.
One of the hardest things about living in such a small space with another
person is if you have a disagreement, you have nowhere to go.
So, kind of a little unspoken thing that Dean and I do is when we have a little
argument, he goes into the dining area, I stay in the bed.
And it’s probably the only two spaces in the house where
you can’t see each other.
So, until we cool off a little bit, that’s where we stay.
Dean and I met at a party called “Colors” a little over three years ago.
It was the last couple of minutes of the party.
The last call.
And he asked to buy me a drink.
And I told him I wanted a water.
We ended up talking for the rest of the night, exchanged numbers,
and we’ve been inseparable ever since.
This is the closet that Dean and I share.
So, I’ve worked in fashion and eyewear for the last five, six years.
I currently work at Trina Turk.
I’ve worked there for about a year and three months, and I love it.
My last place was a loft with two walk-in closets.
So, I know you can imagine downsizing to one closet
and then sharing it was difficult.
But I think that the pieces I kept were the pieces that
I actually wear all the time.
So, I don’t really mind it as much.
One decision we made was to take the sliding doors off.
You know that little middle part that you can never get to?
We couldn’t afford to lose that space.
So, by taking the doors off, we actually ended up fitting more in there.
The one door in the house leads to our bathroom.
So, the first thing I realized when I got to the bathroom area of this
place was that sink wasn’t even inside the bathroom.
It’s actually directly across from the closet.
But by having the sink on the outside of the bathroom,
it allows us to both get ready at the same time.
I mentioned I had a long list of must-haves, and one
of them was a clawfoot tub and instead I got this.
I guess it works for the purpose of getting ready, but I really want a nice,
beautiful clawfoot that I can light candles.
Yeah. Wishful thinking.
After Dean and I get married next April, we’re hoping to upsize a little bit.
And this time I’m not gonna have a long list of wants.
I just want a door.
When I first moved in, and bought this place, it was just for myself.
So, when Dean moved in, to downsize my stuff even more
than I already had was a task, but sharing it with Dean,
solidifying our relationship, it ended up being the best
choice in the end.
Thanks so much for watching my Sweet Digs.
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