By Joy Kraft
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Leah Spurrier used floor-to-ceiling sheers to divide living spaces in her loft. (Steven M. Herppich photo) | ZOOM |

One-room living isn't for every single ... and for even fewer twosomes, especially in a country where super-sizing has spread from fries to housing.

But try telling that to Valerie Foster, 31, snuggly tucked away in 730 square feet of space at 4th and Plum Apartments, downtown. Though she commutes to Kenwood Towne Centre for her job as a retail manager with MAC cosmetics, she's a champion of downtown and one-room living.

"I wouldn't live anywhere else. I could possibly be here forever ... and happily," she says.

A big statement for a self-confessed pack rat.

"You really can have a lot of stuff, even in one room," she says. Her apartment is "big enough to put everything away, but it's not too big. It's homey."

But living small does take big planning.

She and her husband, Mike, stacked and painted old lockers bright yellow for a kitchen pantry. | ZOOM |

"Once you start looking around creatively at your space, you can come up with ideas. You have to step back and look at it a little first," says Organized Living's Stephanie Denton, who has helped the "space challenged" for the past 10 years.

"You have to listen to your space," says Leah Spurrier, designer and owner of Lifeesthetics, a contemporary design store and studio in Over-the-Rhine and a dedicated lofter.

That's what Letitia Waller did with her 1,100-square-foot studio with exposed brick walls, polished hardwood floor and bare beams just off 13th Street in Over-the-Rhine.

"I first saw it in its raw stages, being renovated," says the visual artist and teacher at Riverside Academy at 3280 River Road. She says she was drawn to the space because of the light.

"I could think of things I wanted as they finished it," she says of the building, which is being renovated by Urban Sites Properties, also of Over-the-Rhine.

DECORATING TIPS

Here are decorating tips from IKEA, the design catalog/stores: • Paint the room in pale, neutral colors to maximize the sense of space. • Divide space into zones by using screens, bookcases, plants, furniture. • Separate a built-in kitchen from the rest of studio space with storage pieces or textiles. • Use a sofa that does double duty as a bed or dress up your bed for daytime to act as a sofa. • Put furniture on casters so it can be easily rearranged. • Use mirrors to create the impression of extra space. • Use multifunctional furniture, such as a storage box that doubles as a stool or a chest used as a coffee table. • Mount the TV and stereo on a wall to free up floor space. • Use empty space under shelves for storage by installing hooks for cups or belts, bells, keys, etc.

ON THE BOOKSHELF

Big Ideas, Small Spaces, Christine Brun Abdelnour (Rockport Publishers; $10) Home Design Workbook: One-Room Living, Sylvia Katz (Dorling Kindersley Publishing Inc.; $18.95) House Beautiful Small Spaces, Louis Oliver Gropp (Hearts Books; $21) Living in One Room, Jon Naar (Random House; $8) Making the Most of Small Spaces, Anoop Parikh (Rizzoli, $14) One Space Living, Cynthia Inions, Andrew Wood (Watson-Guptill Publishers; $17.50) Small Lofts, Christina Montes, Matteo Piazza (Hearst Books; $25) Studio Apartments: Big Ideas for Small Spaces, James Grayson Trulove, Il Kim (Hearst Books; $21) Terence Conran Small Spaces: Inspiring Ideas and Creative Solutions, Terence Conran (Clarkson N. Potter; $28)

SAVING SPACES

Stephanie Denton of Organized Living, Kenwood, has been helping people make the best of their space for 10 years. Here are her tips for the space-challenged: Declutter regularly. Think vertically. Choose storage with a smaller footprint, such as media storage towers, and shelving above furniture. There are all kinds of under-bed storage units, many on wheels, as well as bed risers. Use the backs of doors for racks. Find double-duty items - end tables that store things, a blanket chest/coffee table. Roll it. Think about wheels on everything from furniture to filing cabinets. Steel shelving or shelves of Scandinavian wood can be customized then reconfigured. Paint in neutral colors to maximize the sense of space and accent with color. Divide zones using screens, bookcases, furniture. Install hooks for cups, etc. under shelves. -->

"I loved to cook, so I made sure the racks were set up for my cookware. And, they installed brackets for my pots and bowls. I had to come in and say `this is how I want my dishes to be displayed.' You can't just throw things in the cupboard and hide them."

Lights, curtains help

Creative thinking is the key to living in a 30-by-65-foot loft for Spurrier, 33, and her husband, Mike, 36. When they first saw the loft, the beamed and skylit space had a kitchen/bath area partitioned in the front and a sleeping cube in the back with massive exposed brick walls on both sides.

"It was one of the most beautiful apartments I'd ever seen," she says, "but it had issues to be dealt with" - light, storage and massive exposed brick walls.

"Tons of track lighting" took care of the light.

The couple hung a 27-foot-long curtain of lightweight crepe from heating ducts running the length of the apartment, about 2 feet from one wall, to create storage behind the curtain for clothes and just about everything else two people need - linens to stereo speakers.

"It softened" the space, Leah Spurrier says. "It lightened and solved a major storage issue, creating a more friendly atmosphere. It was an amazing transformation, best closet we've ever had."

The couple hung seafoam-colored sheers trimmed in turquoise along the living room area. The remaining brick walls were broken up with vignettes created with Leah's eye for everyday objects and imagination.

Old shutters hang above a table against a wall to create an office space. A series of mirrors grouped with reflective tiles delineates an entryway. Bookshelves on another wall outline the dining room, and a retro black-and-white bar invites guests to pull up a stool.

"Decorating was an exercise in restraint," Spurrier says. "As a designer, one of my specialties is inexpensive problem-solving and composition.

"You have to be fiercely selective and pay more attention to what you have, because in a one-room you see all of it all the time. It becomes one big composition. Every little quadrant becomes part of the bigger quadrant. You have to make sure there's transition when you change something. It's not like a house where each room might have its own little design or identity."

That required selectivity is what guided Waller, who knew when she saw her space exactly where the bed would go: angled in a corner, tucked under a window. Besides the bed, when she moved in she owned just paintings and two end tables. That's all.

Waller enlisted a friend, Isaa Sacko, owner of Sackolah on Main Street, a shop specializing in artifacts, beads and art from Africa.

"He had his eye out for me, looking for things," she says. And "as I collected more art from fellow artisans the concept of the space kept breathing and growing.

"I find myself wanting to expand my collection, but I have to be mindful to keep that harmony. Things tend to close in if you are not careful," she says. "And the presentation has to be just so because everything is out in the open."

Bare storage led Spurrier to buy pots and pans to hang on racks over the kitchen sink and to recycle rows of old storage lockers "from the Y" as a pantry.

A keen eye for acquisition helped Harry Kotlarz of Groton Lofts, at Seventh and Race streets, downtown, to furnish his 700-square-foot room.

Employed by Johnson & Johnson and often on the road, he was drawn by his apartment's view of Garfield Park and the "constant light" from the 8-by-4 foot windows.

Letitia Waller credits "fellow artisans" for her decor | ZOOM |

Starting with a sofa, bed and utilitarian kitchen table, he shopped antique stores, estate sales and Verbarg's and combined some Stickley and French-country pieces "that really work well together," he says.

"I like the simplicity of it all. As a 40-year-old man, I can live comfortably in one apartment - though I could easily afford more - with the realization that I really don't need more."

Because they are classic pieces, he knows they eventually will fit easily into his retreat, a Montana cabin that holds collections from his travels.

One of the keys to one-room living is "things that are utilitarian have to be better looking and simpler," says Spurrier.

Kotlarz found himself with "a storage unit that may have been in my garage before, but now it's part of my living area," he says "But it works. It's just a little more functional looking than the other pieces."

Using furniture to divide living spaces is second nature to inspired one-room lodgers.

A stand of old gym lockers with pull-out storage baskets separates the bedroom and living space in a 1,300-square-foot floor of an old furniture warehouse on Woodward Street, Over-the-Rhine, home of Jennifer LeMasters, 26, a student in the College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning at the University of Cincinnati, and Matthew Wirtz, 24, an architect with Russell Compton.

Waller arranged stained glass and pottery in her kitchen | ZOOM |

"You can see through the lockers because they are mesh so it's a screen between bedroom and living room," says LeMasters, who adds the duo furnished the space with second-hand buys, discards and fortunate finds.

"We have a wooden pallet with metalwork on it. We added casters to the bottom and have our TV on it so it can be rolled to the living room or bedroom area," she says.

They rescued an old pie safe for kitchen supplies and sanded a wooden cable spool, topping it with glass from Pier 1, for a table.

They constructed a bed that seems to float on a high-tech cloud from old camping gear braces and a frame made from 2-by-4s covered with three hollow wooden doors.

"The space was a little daunting at first," LeMasters says. "We said, `One room, how are we going to do this?' but it was a fun challenge."

They even incorporated an old piece of elevator machinery used in the building's warehouse days.

"It's great urban art," she says.

Easy to clean

Beyond the constant filtering of possessions, one of the unexpected pluses of one-room life is housekeeping.

"I'm not lying when I tell you I can clean the whole place, top to bottom in an hour, including the bathroom and kitchen," says Kotlarz.

"You just can't have a dirty house," says Spurrier. There are fewer nooks and crannies. There's no place to cram things. You have to put them away."

That's no problem for UC student Danny Cross, 23, whose dresser is inside a closet that doubles as a sleeping loft in his Clifton studio.

"I just don't have much."

"The only problem sometimes is climbing down the ladder when I'm in a hurry."

E-mail jkraft@enquirer.com