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This week on Sweet Digs, we tour the L.A. apartment of entrepreneurial couple, Ashley and Brett. Paying $2,900 a month in rent, they have decorated a beautiful modern and industrial-influenced loft. Watch this episode of Sweet Digs to tour their California home!

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High rent, small spaces, nosy neighbors — we put up with A LOT of things to live where we love. In Sweet Digs, Refinery29 gets a peek inside the homes of the coolest people we know, from tiny studios to sprawling houses, and ask the real questions like, "Wait, how much is your rent?"

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Transcript
00:00Hi, I'm Brett. I'm Ashley and this is Zoe and welcome to our Sweet Digs. Slash
00:05production space. Before you guys can come in, make sure to subscribe down
00:09below. All right, come on in.
00:12So we live in the historic core of downtown LA. We pay about $2,900 a month
00:19to live here, which is actually really good for LA. We can walk to pretty much
00:22any bar, restaurant, anything you want. We have a pool, free parking, two bathrooms.
00:28We own our own daytime production location rental business, where we
00:32essentially rent out locations for television, film, commercials, music videos.
00:38And we also offer online training for people who want to do the same thing we
00:41do and have their space rented out for production events or meetings.
00:51This is our living room. The most expensive piece in this apartment is this couch and
00:56chair set that we have. We love mid-century design, but we hate paying for it. So I
01:02actually found these on Craigslist and it was a little under $1,000. It's nice and
01:08sleek and has a kind of sophisticated edge and it's pretty comfortable.
01:12We justified spending a little bit more on just decorating the space and getting
01:16furniture because we knew we were going to be using pier space to make money off of
01:21our space. It's more like an investment than it is just, you know, actually just buying
01:25something you have for your home. So I think probably our favorite part of the space has
01:29to be this garage swinging door. People can load in equipment here. We load in groceries through this
01:34door. Lazy days. Yeah, super lazy. Pull the car right up. It's been really cool to have just as an
01:39access point. This is our dining slash kitchen area. A lot of the decor elements come from DIY projects
01:47that I did myself. I actually found these at Joann Fabrics for about $10 a piece. Got some stain from
01:53Home Depot and now it serves as this beautiful shelf area with a whole bunch of ingredients I never use,
02:00but it looks nice, so. And then also this chalkboard wall that we actually did ourselves one day. I
02:06always love to do different design graphics on here, different decals, and it gives it like a really cool
02:11unique edge that not a lot of apartments have. Probably the most sentimental piece in our whole place
02:16is this kitchen table. It was actually named after me, which is so cool. Of course I went on
02:21Craigslist and I actually found a table maker. We met with them in person, sat down, told them what we
02:26were looking for in terms of the size, the style, the design, the type of wood we wanted to use.
02:31It's
02:32just a really awesome part of our loft and we'll probably never get rid of this thing. In here we
02:36have
02:36the kitchen. So this counter we actually got on Craigslist. I ended up finding this thing for $125
02:42bucks from a gelato restaurant, which is actually just a block away from here. The two of us hold
02:48this thing by foot down the street at like nine o'clock at night. Probably my number one tip for
02:53Craigslist is always keep looking. This is the first floor main bathroom. We actually don't use this
02:59bathroom that much, only for guests. This is where we hide Louie's litter box. I did a lot of the
03:05art on the
03:06walls. I bought a couple of really cheap frames for like four bucks. I wrapped them in wrapping
03:10paper and literally used leftover nail polish that I had to just make some wonky little abstract
03:17piece. And boom, instant bathroom on a budget. We have a second living room. The previous tenants
03:22actually used this space for a second bedroom, but since it's only the two of us, we thought,
03:28why not have a comfier, more chill, relaxed living room? The other room is more of the nice seating
03:34entryway. This is more of the cozy space that we like to watch movies and entertain friends.
03:38So there once was a piece of furniture that we disagreed on. However, it is no longer in the space,
03:44and that is because it was a terribly ugly beanbag chair. I thought it was kind of cool looking,
03:49but apparently not. We see who won. We do a really good job of working together and kind of using
03:55the
03:55space together. We didn't want it to be too girly or too masculine, so I tried to keep that in
04:00mind when
04:00designing the space and make it really feel like it was both of ours and not just mine or not
04:04just his.
04:05All of the art in the space is actually original artwork from a very famous artist, me. I'm just
04:12kidding. I'm not a famous artist, but for our production business, it's really important that we
04:17have art that can be used for pretty much any backdrop without having to get any crazy legal release
04:22design. So I made some wonky abstract designs that are pretty neutral and it works out.
04:30So I decided to take this blank space and turn it into a gallery wall. A lot of this art
04:36I did myself,
04:37of course, but I also found some really cool pieces from old geology books. Some of these stencils are
04:43mine. I also took some clippings from the Tao Te Ching and just funny little phrases that make you laugh
04:49as
04:50you walk up the stairs. Well, here we have our bedroom. Really cool. Ashley is very comfortable
04:55in the bedroom. She likes to sleep all the time. All the time. One of the biggest things that we
05:00were lacking with this place was not having a designated closet space. We were really limited
05:05on storage. We actually got the inspiration to build our closets from boutiques and we picked up
05:11the components all from Home Depot for pretty cheap. It's kind of like living in the closet in a way.
05:16A really big closet. I would describe our home style as sort of a blend of several different
05:22styles. There's obviously a lot of mid-century modern elements to some of the furniture and
05:26the way it's laid out, but there's also some bohemian and sort of Scandinavian elements as well.
05:31I would categorize it as Craigslist chic because everything in here is from Craigslist if I haven't
05:38said that already. Here is the bathroom. Since we're on the ground floor in the middle of downtown,
05:44it's very much so a fishbowl type of environment. Meaning, sometimes when I get out of the shower,
05:51I don't realize the blinds are open and I just walk outside all naked. Usually in the morning when
05:56we're getting ready, we keep the blinds down. Then when everyone's dressed and decent, we open the
06:00blinds and we know that there's not going to be any mishaps with someone seeing something they
06:05shouldn't have been. We met, what, almost nine years ago? Nine. I'd like to say we met these mutual
06:10friends, but technically it was Facebook. It was Facebook. So I sent Ashley a well-crafted message.
06:16It was a novel. That explained my interest. That was it. We were like really close early on.
06:23BFFs. Before we started this pure space business, we were, I was an accountant, a CPA,
06:29doing a lot of boring stuff. And I have a sales and marketing background. This business has
06:34allowed us the opportunity for us to both quit our jobs and run this business full-time. I think
06:38probably the biggest lesson we learned, which is to be open and seek opportunity wherever you can.
06:43When people ask us like, how do you deal with having strangers in your house all the time?
06:47When we tell them how we were able to build a business and how fun it is, it really kind
06:52of
06:52changes the conversation and makes it seem like such a great opportunity, which it is. This is our
06:56dream apartment. We are so lucky and feel so grateful that we found this place when we did and we've
07:02spent
07:02the last three years kind of making it feel like home. I think the next step would be buying a
07:06house out here
07:07in LA. If we could change one thing about the apartment, it would probably be the storage.
07:12More storage would be good, but that can come with the house because it would be a lot bigger.
07:22Thanks for checking out our Sweet Digs. To subscribe, click here. And to watch more videos, click here. Bye guys.
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