By Setarreh Massihzadegan
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Every house is a reflection of the people who call it home, and the apartment homes at Brooksby Village are no exception.

Residents of Brooksby in Peabody may have 30 floor plans to choose from, but the differences between apartment homes is also a result of the colorful personalities of their owners. Most hold the best of decades-old mementos and decorative know-how.

“I cannot believe what people have done,” says Marie Wakefield, who lives at Brooksby and hosts the community’s TV show Living at Brooksby, which tours apartment homes there. “What people have done with what they’ve brought is just marvelous.”

Budget beauty
Phyllis and Edward Papski’s two bedroom apartment home, decorated on a budget, was featured on the first episode of Living at Brooksby. “Their apartment would just knock your eye out,” Wakefield says. “It looks like something from House Beautiful.”

Phyllis Papski, a jewelry designer and onetime antique auctioneer, put her artistic instincts to use when decorating her home. The Papskis’ living room is adorned with shelves from the discount store Building 19 and with inexpensively framed words of love written in Japanese calligraphy. “You have to like to shop,” Phyllis Papski says of her budget finds. “To me, the hunt is the fun of it.”

When it came to the couch, Phyllis Papski had pillow covers made from a bedspread she found at HomeGoods. The patterns of deep red, green, and gold  match the red and gold argyle wall in the adjacent dining area.

Custom design
The Papskis also enlisted the help of Brooksby’s Custom Interiors design center—and Custom Interiors Coordinator Dorothy (Dot) Harding—to paint the red background color of the wall and the trim around the rest of the room. Phyllis Papski herself put on the gold touches. “We’re extremely happy with it,” she says of her home.