Real-Life TAA: Anna's modern SF loft

I'm excited to bring you another Real-Life TAA from one of our readers, Anna. I'm extra excited because a) she's hailing from San Francisco, b) she shares her TAA with an adorable kitty, and c) her place is a testament to minimalism and having a good eye!

Anna's apartment is definitely a TAA. It's only 9 feet wide by 28 feet long, totaling about 250 square feet. (I don't math too good, so I'm going with those numbers.) She recently moved to San Francisco from Portland. When she first got to the city (tangent: San Francisco can only be called "The City," "San Francisco," or maybe "SF." NO "San Fran" and DEFINITELY NO "Frisco!"), Anna found a furnished sublet for the first six months, prompting her to get rid of what little furniture she'd been hanging onto. When the time came to move into her own place, she had the luxury of starting from scratch. And yes, I do consider that a luxury. When you move into a new place, you run the risk of holding onto old pieces out of sentiment, even if they don't work in your new home. As Anna says, "I was able to get things that worked in my new space, rather than trying to trying to make it work with old stuff that wasn't right for this space."

Check out the San Francisco and Portland Ork posters on the wall

Of course, the major disadvantage to starting with an empty apartment is that you've got to invest a lot of time and money into making it livable. Even if you're buying the cheapest of furniture, buying all the pieces you need in one go really adds up. This often means buying one piece at a time and very slowly putting your home together. Anna's lived in her current place for about 8 months, and she's found some treasures in that time. The credenza, which works as both a dresser for her clothes as well as a TV stand, was a Craigslist find, as is her desk. The mirror and shoe cabinet were found in her building's basement, abandoned by some former owner.

Anna considered painting her new place, but her landlord's kind of a stickler about painting (I feel ya there). But the white walls were also a refreshing change from having previous places with bold colors, and act as a kind of refuge from the sensory overload of downtown San Francisco. Though she's not sure what material the floors are made of, she suspects that they're a kind of plywood. It's definitely an interesting texture. And of course, I'm a sucker for exposed brick, and love the whole look of the far wall with the window. The support beam in the middle of the room looks like it'd be a little inconvenient, but the beams crisscrossing the ceiling look pretty industrial-cool.

Anna's bed is a built in loft (oh, how we love those lofts!) that sits above her kitchen. It looks pretty cozy, and I think that her kitty, Sugar, agrees. Her nightstand/mini-bookcase was another basement find.

The kitchen is one of the smallest I've seen. There's no stove or oven, so she uses a toaster oven and countertop burner. The kitchen also houses some of her bathroom things in a nook she carved out using hooks and a repurposed wine rack; she shares a bathroom that's down the hall from her apartment.

She's also quite handy, that Anna. The piece above is an old window with a floral gift wrap across it, and she also put in these steps so that Sugar could get up into the loft for cuddles. The piece above her couch is another window filled with Christmas lights!

Clearly I'm homesick for SF. This pic made me get teary.

Gorgeous mason jars as tealight holders

Anna's advice to other TAA-dwellers is to get rid of all your extra crap, and in a place such an uncluttered, minimalist cool, we can see that she practices what she preaches. Even though there's no built-in storage, she's managed to hide away all those lil' odds n' ends that seem to take over a small space. The effect is modern and clean, and her place looks great!

Thanks, Anna, for letting us take a look around!