洛杉矶 DIY 达人打造出租屋变个性空间

Set designer Lee Levy's decorating strategy is simple: “Look at what you have. If you don’t like it, just change it,” she says. It doesn't have to break the bank. Since she moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles with her boyfriend, Seth Powsner (he's also a set designer), that has been their guiding principle for crafting a totally bespoke home in a Highland Park rental. When Lee spotted the place with high wood-beam ceilings in a Craigslist ad, she was immediately smitten. “I don’t really like renovated places,” she explains. “They're often cheaply done and don't have charm.” She'd rather make her own fixes, “on the cheap and renter-friendly.” As in, any cosmetic changes must be removable. 

Can you spot the DIY? Lee even gave this vintage IKEA cocktail table a new look by applying a layer of iridescent film. The rug was a quarantine purchase from Urban Outfitters. First on the list after signing the lease? Painting the walls white. “It brightens up the place like crazy,” she reports. And once her landlord approved of her paint job, he gave her the green light on her next big agenda item: the ceilings. The space in between the beams was brown—to match the wood?—but painting that bit white totally transformed the feel of the space. Her landlord even told her he's going to start painting all the ceilings this way.

Lee sourced these tubes for a photo shoot at a store that sells linoleum floors and carpets. She brought them home, covered them with fabric, and used this group of seven to create a graphic, three-dimensional wall element. 

Lee gave a standard IKEA mirror a makeover by edging it in rubbery drawer liner she sourced a the Dollar Store. “I liked the color, so I just glued it on and made a shape to it," she explains. "I cut out the shapes that I wanted. I kept it more subtle. I didn’t want to go crazy.”

A three-bulb floor lamp from IKEA accentuates a corner of the living room. That aforementioned faux tile fueled one of several home improvement projects she and Seth took on during quarantine—they used stick-on fiberglass tile, which Lee hand-painted pale pink and yellow, to create an accent wall in their bedroom. The couple also took the time to launch Tubular, a line of cheeky ceramics—butt incense burners; hand-shaped wall hooks—made with polymer clay and baked in their oven. 

In the bedroom, Lee used linoleum stick-on tiles to create a statement wall behind her bed. She painted the tile pale pink with yellow in the grout.

Photo: Lee Levy Rather than the high-production, perfectionist approach to DIY that reigns on social media, Levy hopes her own freestyle method is more relatable. She's quick to tell me that a seam is visible, or a color is slightly off. But that's okay. Everything doesn't always have to be just so. “A lot of people don’t feel like they can do this stuff if they’re not naturally crafty,” she says. “But honestly, you really can modify a lot of what you own. It’s so easy.”

Lee and Seth's new Tubular ceramics—a quarantine-era venture made with Polymer clay and baked in the oven—are on display in the bathroom.

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