E-Mail This Article to a Friend Behind the curtain A glimpse of a stranger’s apartment can reveal a new world of personality and design BY NINA MACLAUGHLIN

Two summers ago, I needed a place to live. My lease was up at the end of May, and I couldn’t move into my next place until September. I toyed with the idea of spending three months squatting at friends’ places, moving from couch to couch, futon to futon, riding out the summer rent-free. A week here. Ten days there. A Tuesday night with that friend from middle school I bumped into at Dunkin’ Donuts. I did the math, adding up the blocks of time friends and acquaintances would agree to let me crash. I figured I’d be out on the street by June 28. It’s no fun to overstay your welcome.

With 14 days left before I’d be ousted from my place, I started looking for a summer sublet. I scoured all the usual sources, scrolled through postings, sent e-mails, set up times to check out apartments and meet potential housemates. Fortunately, the students who populate (some say infest) this city during the school year skip town come summer, leaving vacant rooms on every block. In two weeks I saw eight places.

There was the 28-year-old graphic designer in Coolidge Corner who shared her two-bedroom apartment with three cats. Kitty litter crunched under my feet on the kitchen floor. "Do you like animals?" she asked. I hadn’t yet walked through the front door. Then there was the Asian couple who lived in a basement apartment in Brighton with their three-month-old daughter. "Do you like babies?" asked the father when the kid stopped screaming long enough for us to exchange words. And then there were the three guys in Mission Hill who had covered every available inch of wall space in the kitchen with pictures and posters of naked women. Even the magnets on the fridge were pornographic, except for the one in the shape of a bottle of Bud. "You’re not a feminist, are you?" one of them asked as we walked into the kitchen.

And there were other places — a blur of bedrooms and living rooms and neighborhoods and rents — some appealing, others not. It was an exhausting few weeks. Trying to find a place, trying to determine, in a matter of 20 minutes or less, whether you can imagine thriving in a given space, living with the people in it, is a tedious and tiring process.

But for all the pain-in-the-ass-ness of it, looking for a place to live also provides the unique opportunity for mini glimpses into people’s lives. It allows you to wander into a stranger’s home and see how he or she lives, and witness the variety of life taking place within this city, even within a single building. People infuse the space in which they live with their own energy. How a person defines his or her space physically — with pride or abandon, with glistening countertops or Cheeto-stained armchairs, with coordinated color schemes or hand-me-down hodgepodge — reveals much about that individual. Below you’ll find a few such glimpses, a look at some people and their living spaces, and how they make them feel like home.

Location: Belmont Street, Watertown.

Size: Two bedrooms; living room; dining room; kitchen; sunroom; small study; bathroom.

Rent: $1400 per month.

Dwellers: Dustin Smith, 27, national senior publicist for WGBH; Gina DeFelice, 27, looking for work as a guidance counselor, finishing up a stint with Boston Duck Tours.

The impermanence of renting makes a lot of apartments feel temporary, as though the inhabitants aren’t so much living there as just staying for a while. And that’s especially true for people in their mid 20s, not yet settled in their careers and without kids to bind them to a place. They want to make a place livable, but not necessarily comfortable or welcoming. DeFelice and Smith, however, have made their apartment their own.

"My parents got divorced in 2001," says Smith. "My home was always really important to me, and this foundation — you think it’s always going to be there — disappeared. So I started building my own home." And that’s apparent as soon as you walk into their Watertown apartment. Everything about the space invites. It’s sophisticated: you can tell from the first glance around the living room that much time and thought went into the purchase and arrangement of the furniture. And it’s comfortable: it feels lived in, loved.

"I want people to feel like they’re in a version of their own home," says Smith.

The apartment, a 10-minute bus ride from Harvard Square, has great flow. Each room has its own identity, and yet the transition from one space to the next is natural. And the place is huge. "Gina’s my best friend," says Smith, rumpling DeFelice’s hair, "but this place is big enough that I can shut my door and not know she’s here. That’s the benefit of not being in the center of Boston," where every square inch comes at a pricey premium. "All the apartments around here have character," says DeFelice, pointing to the wood detailing, the French doors, the built-in bookcases. "And it’s a lot less expensive than the city. It’s not difficult to find a reasonably priced place around here, and it’s only a mile or two outside Harvard Square."

In the living room, a rich red sofa and matching chair from Bernie & Phyl’s draw the eye, sparking the desire to curl up among the throw pillows — some striped like candy, some cream-colored — from Bowl and Board. The couch’s color is tempered by neutral, camel-colored carpet and curtains, both from Pottery Barn. "Red’s my favorite color," says Smith. "There’s a lot of primary color in here, but they’re deeper tones so it doesn’t look like a crayon box."

What’s on the walls plays a crucial role in defining the mood of a room. A large framed photograph of the peak of an old barn roof against a brilliant blue sky was a gift from a friend of Smith’s, local artist Kate Crisostomo, whose work can be found at www.straycatcards.com. "It’s my favorite thing in the room," Smith says of the image. A voluminous multicolored vase from Crate & Barrel shares the mantel with a smaller buttercup-yellow glass vase handblown by a co-worker of Smith’s. "The key is taking mass-market art and incorporating unique, eclectic, one-of-a-kinds to blend style no matter what your price range," says Smith, sounding like a sound bite from Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Gracing the opposite wall is a photograph, picked up by Smith and DeFelice at a festival, of sailboats in Rockport. "We like to keep a few things around that remind us of home," says DeFelice, who grew up on the North Shore.

In the kitchen, an oversize campaign poster for John F. Kennedy, a gift from DeFelice’s dad, hangs next to a ’50s-style pin-up image from Restoration Hardware. "It’s our retro-themed kitchen," says DeFelice. "There’s no need to resign yourself to having a crappy kitchen. Work with it. Go retro." And Smith talks about the importance of whom you know, even when it comes to buying furniture. "I’ve got a friend who used to work at Williams-Sonoma, and this Boos Block [high cutting board], which normally costs $500, I got for $50."

But what if you don’t know people who can get you deals on housewares and furniture? "People our age tend to think it’s all or nothing," says Smith, "that you have to buy everything for your place at once, and there’s a lot of procrastinating as a result. Instead, build up slowly. I’ve been acquiring the stuff here over a long time."

After two years of sharing this apartment and three years of living together, DeFelice is soon moving to another place in Watertown to live with her boyfriend, and Smith’s boyfriend is moving in. "I’m excited to turn this into our home," says Smith of the new living situation, but both lament the end of an era. "We’ll still be neighbors, though," says DeFelice. "I’m just moving down the street."