Good Morning Lacquered Lifers. Today I thought I would embrace the concept of Throwback Thursday and share some photos of my Philadelphia studio apartment that I lived in from 2009-2011 while I attended graduate school. The studio was 12′ x 24′, and while that may seem small, it fit me just perfectly. Sure I was hanging clothes in a closet in the tiny kitchen that only had a half fridge and two burner stove (no oven), but there was room for my bed, my desk, some great ikea club chairs, and I even through four person dinner parties in that apartment with a little drop leaf table I would pull off the wall and open up in the middle of the room. And the location? Perfect. I was one block from Rittenhouse Square. Built at the turn of the 20th century as a single family home, this Philadelphia row house between 20th and 21st Streets was once quite grand. However, by the time I got there, the home was broken up into small studio and one bedroom apartments that weren’t in the best shape … Here is a photo of the building from the exterior. See the dormer windows on the fourth floor? That’s my apartment. Even though the building no longer looked the way it had 100 years prior, there was still evidence of its past in some of the architectural details on the facade. Everything in that apartment was bought on a shoestring budget and became a DIY project, or was something I inherited, or was a gift from my parents. And some of these pieces are still a part of my life here in Charleston. Those silver tables are now coral and live on the piazza. My teeny tiny kitchen. And to think that I made dinner parties worth of dinners in that space! All on the stovetop b/c I had no oven. I painted the walls Benjamin Moore Caribbean Blue Water in high gloss which made a teeny space feel more like a jewel box than a closet. And the walls of the main room were Benjamin Moore Bird’s Egg. I loved that little studio. With all the studying and work I was doing, I probably spent more time in that apartment in Philadelphia than both of my NYC apartments combined. It seems like only yesterday, but I took these photos six years ago. Whoa. Happy Throwback Thursday.