apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Everyone says this about one place or another in these contests, but I can't imagine how Eduardo's apartment did not make it to the finals. He was robbed, as they say.

@davidasposted, I agree. And I still don't know how the finalists were picked. Was it our voting?

There are so many different kinds of spaces in this year's contest, as there were in the first one. I am admittedly partial to renters over owners, and to smaller spaces vs. larger spaces.

I'm in a complex, none of us own, and the majority of apartments are studios or small one-bedroom. Which means that the majority of people here are singles or couples.

And I am most interested in seeing the homes of other singles or couples in small rented spaces. I want to see what can be done, and how to do it. I want to get ideas. I want to be WOWed.

I also want to see spaces that are not straight out of a catalog. Any catalog. I don't care what catalog it is, if it looks like someone has ordered everything, hired decorators, designers, contractors and had custom built stuff created for their large, owned space, I am not all that interested.

Because that is NOT my life. There are tons of magazines and websites set up for people who own, people who are well to do, people in BIG spaces. The people who can renovate, while renters may not even be allowed to paint.

Even when I become a homeowner, those will be top priorities. I will not be having custom work done, walls will probably not be torn out. I will be making do with what I have and looking for interesting ideas and concepts that do not require a bottomless pocketbook.

I am much more interested in the creativity and maxing out space and showing individuality. Eduardo's is one of those spaces.

Matthew's Cartoonist space is another one. Roxy's Room to Grow also. There were so many that caught my eye, with neat ideas and solutions. James' Cotton Mill and how he worked around the pillars and what he did to the bed. This is cool stuff, people.

Yes, I DO sincerely love to look at all the great images and articles on this site. That all white and shiny room was terrific! But not for me. Ha! It's not just something I cannot do, it's something I would not do. It's not "me".

I'm much more interested in found objects and recreating or reinventing purposes for what is available. I have the money to do all those names, but it is NOT my style.

Me, in some ways, I'm kind of like a goose. They wake up in a new world every day -- they don't remember what happened the day before in any way.

By that I mean, when I see these apartments, all I can do is kind of throw myself into that space and generally like it, or generally love it, or generally want to throw the person out of there and take over it for a week or two. So, when we're asked to vote on these, I vote like that.

I have a hard time actually comparing all the ones that are up for an award at any given time, though. If I were a judge, I'd probably print them all out or something and scrutinize and do a little comparative spreadsheet of various factors.

So I'm guessing that the judges took their jobs very seriously, and although two separate judges took this one seriously enough to call it their personal Honorable Mention, even though the temptation is to say, "then obviously it should have placed better" it really could be that they each had specifically different winners, and I don't think that this person was necessarily robbed, per se. Because actually in a contest where there were SO MANY entrants, and seriously such a HUGE percent of them were pretty fantastic, this is still a pretty serious honor.

That said, I REALLY think this an amazing entry.