A place of my own: Perfectly imperfect Born apartment

Have you happened to see a man rolling down the street balancing a palm tree on one end of his skateboard? Maybe you’ve noticed a couple loading themselves up with dresser drawers that were destined for the dump? If so, don’t worry, they’re not crazy, they’re resourceful.

Gordana, who was born in Bosnia but lived in the United States for 18 years, and Julien, from France, embody a lifestyle in which not everything has to be perfect. As Gordana explained, “A paint splatter, a knick, a tear, it’s all welcome.” Those details fuel their imagination. “We think about what the previous owner was painting, or what was dropped on a table to knick it like that. With secondhand furnishings, there’s always a story to be told.” 

This is exactly why the couple spend so much of their free time roaming the streets of Barcelona, piling salvageable items on their skateboards and giving them a new life in their apartment. “We don’t feel the need to buy new things when old things can be remodelled and look cooler than a perfect, store-bought replica,” they both agreed. In a sense, collecting street pieces has become a game. “We have a list of the date and the street, when and where we found everything in our apartment,” Julien said. “It’s nice to reminisce about how certain things came to be here.”  

Upon moving to Barcelona a little over a year ago, Gordana and Julien found their apartment on a quiet street in the Born, where the smells from a local bakery waft into the wide open doors of their bedroom. Although the apartment had been abandoned, they saw its potential to become a home. They began by removing the arches over the doors and working on the walls. In some areas, they exposed the different layers of paint that had consecutively covered the plaster. “We love discerning the history of the apartment in this way,” said Gordana.

The biggest hurdle of their apartment project was the kitchen. “We started from nothing,” Julien said earnestly, so they considered what they already had in their possession. Discarded dressers became their kitchen drawers. On top of those, table legs prop up a repainted kitchen counter. Individual drawers are attached to the wall to hold jars, canisters and bottles. And a well-placed nightstand masks the butano gas bottle. The room is now the best example of Gordana and Julien’s ingenuity in repurposing used things. 

The rest of the space is no less impressive. Empty picture frames hang on their bedroom wall—a simple, yet stylistic touch—and the balconies are lined with ‘rescued plants’. A ladder, with no purpose other than to become a bookshelf, stretches out in the hall, over a stack of decorative suitcases. “We’re constantly collecting books,” Gordana said. “I can’t bear to see them trashed, which means we’re going to need to convert another ladder pretty soon.”

In the ‘dining office’, where all the ideas and work for their company Wabi Sabi Lifestyle Co. unfolds, there is another reclaimed piece that draws attention. Outside of Barcelona one day, Julien came across a church pew thrown out on the curb. He knew with a few seat cushions it would make an excellent bench, so he carried it for 45 minutes, by himself, to the car. “At one point I stopped to rest next to a bus stop,” he said with a chuckle. “Everyone sitting there, waiting, couldn’t help but laugh at me because it looked like I had brought my own seating for the occasion.” One of the best parts of this ‘game’ they play is coming home with stories like that.     

When you step back and take it all in, every one of their creative redesigns of spoils retrieved from a late night scavenger hunt, every book, drawer and chair, all come together to make the perfectly imperfect setting of Gordana and Julien’s place.

If you have made yourself an interesting home from home and would like to appear in our Place of My Own feature, please send an email to editorial@barcelona-metropolitan.com.