Hey you, not everyone’s idea of style is the John Belushi COLLEGE poster. The Voice roamed georgetown looking for the sweetest student setups. And Three of our four featured cribs are in Village B. All are on campus. Take that, West Georgetown townhouses and Burleith brownstones.
Crib #1: I’d rather be in Paris
“We wanted our apartment to be a home,” Nicole Sullivan (MSB ‘07) says of her Village B quarters. “Our home,” she adds. “A girl’s home.”
The apartment is nothing if not girly, from its mint green gathered curtains and powder pink tapestry lining one wall to the pouty Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn black-and-white photos lining the walls. Nicole admits to being the interior decorator of the apartment, but received plenty of help from her roommates Ashley Bender (CAS ‘07) and Meg Lindsay (MSB ‘07).
“They reined me in,” Nicole admits.
“She had to realize that we weren’t single girls living in the city. We’re college students,” Meg says. “It feels like home now, not a college apartment,” she now admits.
Glancing around the “jewel-toned” apartment, restraint is not the first thing that comes to mind. The girls did not overlook a single detail. Every color fits. A table runner stretches the length of the table, which is set with perfectly matching china and cutlery. Nicole not only bought a matching tableware set, but also matching cutlery cups, wine glasses and even a butcher knife set. Even their name plate at the courtyard buzzer is a step above the rest: It is laminated with their names written in a pink loopy font. Their couches are not covered with the customary sheet, but rather have fitted slipcovers that Ashley purchased.
“I liked them because their color was Champagne-Ashley,” she giggles, patting the silky beige slipcover. “It was $89, but then we got the matching chair covers from eBay. They were only $7. I wish we’d gotten the first one there, too.”
The apartment is in no way a bargain by student standards. The girls estimate that even with eBay purchases and Nicole’s sister’s donation of curtains and a futon, they spent somewhere between $1,000 to $2,000 of their money alone, and this figure is excluding their parents’ purchases of a kitchen set and the 27-inch T.V. set in their living room.
Ashley picks up her cell phone: It is a resident asking her to babysit.
“Sometimes I feel like we’re the Baby- sitters Club,” Ashley says. “One of us is always babysitting. But, I guess that’s how we paid for this place.”
It has been, after all, a true transformation, taking the girls, who arrived at school stocked with decorating supplies, three days of constant work and relentless trips to Bed, Bath and Beyond and Target. On the top floor on the Village B complex, the apartment was an administrative office until this summer; the door’s former sign remains, reading “Jesuit Volunteers.” Living in a former office has its perks, from the fabulous view of the front gates and special lighting, to the remarkable lack of beer stains on the carpets. However, it also has a few downers, as the girls soon found out.
“This place was definitely a ‘fixer-upper’,” Ashley emphasizes.
“It was freshly painted and carpeted and absolutely nothing else,” Nicole continues. “It was disgusting. Disgusting!” she shudders.
When they first arrived there were no bedrooms doors, furniture or running water. Nicole made all the right calls and Facilities was there constantly.
“I can’t tell you how many times I woke up to a few huge men just working away in my room,” Nicole says.
The calls paid off because now the apartment is not only in working order, but also resembles something out of Martha Stewart Living, pre-prison of course. The day they finished decorating, the girls appropriately gathered around their kitchen table in their bathrobes and had dinner together before going out. Ashley says she hopes to have more dinner parties like that in the future.
The Martha Stewart similarities end there. Friends refer to both the ladies and their apartment as “Sex and the City-esque” and, so far, the girls’ entertaining has been mainly in the form of cocktail parties. According to Nicole, the closest they’ve come to having a dinner party has been, “Pushing the button on the box of wine.”
“This is definitely a boxed wine house,” Nicole continues. “There will be no kegs here.”
And they are very happy with this. “I just love it so much,” Meg says.
None of the girls would change anything about the apartment at all except “the long flight of stairs,” Meg says. “There are just so many. I hate it!”
At least it makes for a fabulous view, both inside the apartment and out.
-Kathryn Brand
Crib #2: The Dudes
If you’re walking down 37th street past Village B, you might notice lots of things while discreetly peeping through the windows of your fellow classmates. Usually, it’s a pair of socked feet propped on top of a pile of pizza boxes. If you happened to have walked past Village B 40 towards the beginning of the semester, you might have seen a housewarming party, attended by girls in jungle attire carrying very classy house-warming gifts.
If you missed the party, its leftovers are still visible. Notice the strings of ivy, previously part of a jungle costume, wrapped around the chicken wire contraption attached to the side of the wall. This contraption is appropriately named “Nietzsche the Beer Dragon,” made by Brodie Parent (CAS ‘07) with wire leftover from an eighth grade project, and this summer’s empty beer cans. The finished product is an artfully unfinished art piece.
“Both Brian and I like to express ourselves in any way we can with the medium we have to work with. We consider ourselves artistically inclined but we don’t have time for that at Georgetown. So we put stuff on the wall to pull us through. A visual journal I guess you could say,” Brodie said.
Not visible from the window is an electric guitar, not on its stand, but securely attached to the wall. It was the guitar that Brodie, who seems to have brought the goods for Village B 40’s decorating scheme, learned on back in the day. From the beginning of the guitar’s life, it was pretty crappy. His brother found it in an abandoned apartment in New York City, but instead of throwing the broken guitar away, he gave it to Brodie, who fixed it. When Brodie got a new one, he saved this treasure of his early high school days for his apartment wall. The accent lightening bolts (made with duct tape) jutting from the guitar are a small but essential addition to the overall design, compliments of roommate Brian, who seems to have an eye for good spacing.
Brodie also brought along a Diego Rivera copy done by his mother. He left it up to me to find the Communist undertones in the painting, then pointed out that it was only coincidental that the back wall of the living room was painted bright red.
The group purchased a very chic futon for $190 from Ikea that would go well in any college living space. An old school stereo on one of the shelves was brought from Ryan’s childhood home, and several other wall decorations, such as a rusted, tin advertising sign, are remnants of Brodie’s grandfather’s shop from the 1930’s.
“I want people to have something to talk about when they come over, which is why we have d?cor with stories and histories,” said Brodie.
This apartment is unique in the choice of wall d?cor and the meaning behind it. How much more fun is it to walk into a room with a history? The accessories at Brodie’s place, his eighth-grade project, his grandfathers store, his mother’s painting and the other stuff provided by his roommates, are a step above the invariably drunken, debaucherous collective history of Villlage B 40. If you want to make your apartment special, make it yours.
-Mary Katherine Stump
Crib #3: single life
While wandering the gloomy, subterranean tunnels of the basement floor of LXR you may come across the festive island of color that is Tracy Wedan’s (CAS ‘06) room. After her roommate transferred, Tracy ended up with what might be the biggest single on campus. It was a triple last year. She made this space her own with masterful interior decorating.
Growing up in Singapore and Thailand, Tracy had plenty of time to comb the local markets for treasures.
“I’ve traveled around South East Asia a lot so that’s where I picked up a lot of the fabrics in my room,” she said.
With her walls adorned with the fruits of her travels-fabrics, posters and figurines-the room brims with warmth without feeling cluttered.
“I like a lot of rich, vibrant colors so I try to throw it up somehow whenever there is a blank spot on the wall,” she said.
In Tracy’s room, everything has a story. Nothing is devoid of personal meaning from the paired elephant figurines on her nightstand to the expansive, variegated, green-bird tapestry. She displays prints on her wall that people in her printmaking class made, as well as postcards from friends’ travels.
Several beaded elephant bags from India and assorted fabric grace the room divider, a hand-me-down from last year’s occupants. Behind this divider is a queen-sized bed, covered with silken pillows. This bedroom nook provides privacy for when guests come and sleep in one of the room’s two standard twin beds.
Tracy has also read about Feng Shui and has tried to decorate her room accordingly. She has divided her room into nine equal parts, including the wealth, travel, relationship, creativity, family and harmony corners. Her relationship corner features paired objects-a pair of elephants sit on her nightstand, and a pair of heart candles (that she doesn’t plan on burning) grace her windowsill.
“I hang a money pouch with pennies in the wealth corner,” she said.
Having collected her decorations since high school, Tracy has accumulated more than she can display at once.
“I like to change things out on the walls sometimes,” she said.
Several folded tapestries lie in the windowsill, awaiting their turn.
Tracy recycles things from year to year in interesting ways. “I’ve been using the same materials for the past 3 years but I’ve used them in different ways,” she said. The beaded Mona Lisa, which she bought in Vietnam for $9, was hanging in the basement of her boyfriend’s apartment last year. This year it is attached to the wall.
“Last year a lot of the fabric you see was hanging on the ceiling,” she added.
Despite the elegance of her creation, Tracy still views her room as a work in progress. “I still need a rug,” she said. An anthropology major, Tracy plans on doing fieldwork in Singapore next summer. Maybe she can find a rug there.
-Sonia Smith
Crib #4: Princes of Persia
The music flows as you pass through the black curtains. By nighttime, revelers are posed at the bar and lounging on the sofas, surrounded by a dimly-set spotlight. Resembling the interior of an Adam’s Morgan hotspot, this bachelor pad can in fact be found less than one hundred yards from the Georgetown front gates, in the Village B apartment complex.
The residents have turned what would otherwise be a generic, white-washed Georgetown apartment into an expression of their culture and tastes. Bijan Ganji (SFS ‘06) explained that, “being Persian, we have expectations of aesthetic comfort and quality of life in general.” For these boys, comfortable living meant ditching the standard-issue chairs that are provided with Village B apartments and introducing comfortable, not to mention stylish, furniture to the place.
The inspiration for this Village B crib comes from a single color-the boys painted one wall in Tabasco red with a rustic finish. According to Arvand Khosravi (SFS’07), the rest of the apartment grew from that color decision. The red wall provides the background for the bar, creatively constructed from the apartment cubby shelf set on its side with a black curved table placed on top. The bar doubles as a functional Friday night centerpiece and a dining room table-necessary since the standard one is now is stacked in the hallway. The crimson wall is highlighted by arches of light, coming from spotlights within the bar shelves. When asked about the work put into the d?cor, Bijan responded that it “doesn’t take a lot of effort, extravagance or ability, you just have to put some time and attention into it.”
It seems as though the effort has paid off, as this living room has become the place to be for the guys and their friends.
The other three walls in the apartment are colored in a green apple hue, meant to introduce a flashy contrast with the homey brick tone. Rather than fill their apartment with beer memorabilia and Animal House posters, these boys chose a variety of paintings and prints, including a Picasso and European cityscapes, to express their lofty tastes.
“Same as all our compatriots at Georgetown, we strive to be distinguished and unique” Bijan said. But unlike most of us here at Georgetown, “we like to pretend that we’re not college students” Bijan continued. Like every Georgetown student however, these boys cannot resist the economy and convenience of Swedish furniture superstore IKEA.
It is the way an interior decorator can combine the elements in a room that makes a space stand out. In the end though, it is the idea of creating a space that contradicts the setting it is in, that makes this apartment noteworthy. Though surrounded on all sides by nearly identical spaces, this pad refuses with persistence to be what it was designed as-”Georgetown on-campus student housing.” Take a good look at the pictures because you probably won’t be getting into the exclusive party at this pad to check it out for yourself.
-Lauren Gaskill
