Austinite's home gets free makeover

Apartment Therapy, Wayfair team up for transformation.

Instead of hitting local bookstores to promote “Apartment Therapy: Complete + Happy Home,” Apartment Therapy blog creator Maxwell Ryan turned the book tour into a five-stop room redecoration tour. Blog readers entered a contest for a free makeover by submitting photos of their rooms. The makeover came with about $5,000 worth of new furniture and accessories from online home store Wayfair.

Austinite Victor Tran’s new East Austin home was chosen and, one day last week, Ryan and Christiane Lemieux, the executive creative director of Wayfair, transformed his home from sparse bachelor pad to inviting, modern respite.

Tran had a hand in selecting what would go into his

living room, dining room and kitchen space. He pinned possibilities from the Wayfair site; Ryan and Lemieux also made suggestions. They used his existing red couch and big-screen TV as well as two kitchen chairs, but added a new entertainment center, a coffee table and chair in the living room, a round table and two new chairs in the dining room and bar stools in the kitchen.

They softened concrete floors by adding rugs and brought in succulents to add life to the room. Some of the accessories were cool, Austin chic, while others pointed to Tran’s interests. Above the TV is an orange wire longhorn head. On the entertainment hutch, an All Terrain Armored Transport model from “The Empire Strikes Back” sits next to a potted succulent.

Ryan says Tran was easy to work with because “Victor has a point of view.”

APARTMENT THERAPY Apartment Therapy’s Maxwell Ryan and Wayfair’s Christiane Lemieux transformed a room in Victor Tran’s East Austin home.

APARTMENT THERAPY Apartment Therapy’s Maxwell Ryan (right) and Wayfair’s Christiane Lemieux redid a room in Victor Tran’s East Austin home. The home went from sparse bachelor pad to inviting, modern respite.