We might be a little obvious about trying to keep everyone amused while holiday gatherings pull our attention away from home projects. That said, this post shares another corner of city life: John’s Apartment on New York City’s Upper West Side, the second video in a short tour series I made for my best friend Kitty, who was living in Iowa at the time.
This apartment tour captures the practical and creative ways people make small NYC spaces feel like home. John edited the footage down, so the living room doesn’t appear in this cut. At the time the space only functioned as a living room for a few days before the roommates built a wall to create a third bedroom — a common Upper West Side solution for lowering individual rent. The tour also skips showing the five flights of stairs required to reach the apartment, a detail everyone who lived there remembers well.
Even without every room on display, the video highlights several appealing elements of city apartment life. You’ll see the resourcefulness involved in furnishing on a budget, clever use of a compact kitchen, and the personal touches that turned a rental into a distinct, lived-in space.
What to expect in this tour:
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Budget-friendly furniture finds and easy DIY solutions that work well in small apartments
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A small but well-used kitchen, showing how thoughtful layout and organization maximize function
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A color palette dominated by rich browns and deep blues, reflecting a masculine yet cozy aesthetic that was later softened when we moved in together
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A standout accent wall mural inspired by our favorite album cover from The Shins, painted by us as a shared project to personalize the space
The apartment illustrates a few key approaches to decorating small urban homes: choose a cohesive color scheme, incorporate a few bold accents that reflect personal taste, and invest time in functional storage and layout solutions. In this case, the brown-and-blue tones created a unified look, while the mural added a creative focal point that made the bedroom feel unique and intentional.
Furnishing a Manhattan apartment on a budget often means mixing thrifted pieces, inexpensive finds, and small upgrades that have big visual impact. In John’s unit, several pieces came from free exchanges or discount stores, then were rearranged or repainted to match the overall aesthetic. These kinds of low-cost changes can refresh a space without needing a large investment, which is ideal for renters and students living on the Upper West Side.
The kitchen, though compact, demonstrates that good organization and a few thoughtful additions can make a small cooking area feel efficient and inviting. Clever storage, vertical shelving, and a limited set of well-chosen tools allowed the space to function smoothly even with multiple people sharing the apartment. Small kitchens in NYC often require creativity, and this one is a good example of maximizing every inch.
Finally, the mural project shows how roommates can collaborate to create something that feels personal and meaningful. Inspired by an album cover the roommates loved, the painted wall brought art into everyday life and turned an ordinary bedroom into a place with personality. Shared projects like this also help build a sense of home, especially in transient city housing where long-term renovations aren’t possible.
If you enjoy apartment tours that focus on practical solutions, creative DIY, and the realities of living in a dense city neighborhood, John’s Upper West Side apartment offers a compact, honest look at how people make small spaces work. The tour captures the charm of resourceful decorating, the reality of roommate-driven space changes, and the small details that make an apartment feel like home.