It's mine!

I closed on my new apartment this morning. Afterward I went to the A&D Building (which is open to the public, and tremendous fun - more on that later) and got ideas.

But first the basics: it's a prewar co-op (to be precise, it was built in 1941: pre-Pearl-Harbor, post-invasion-of-Poland), one bedroom, with a sunken living room, five closets, and many original details (oak parquet floors with inlay, decorative iron railings, plaster moldings, arched doorways, etc). There are plenty of windows, but only the bedroom has a view; the others face a shadowy alley. Here's the floorplan:



I bought it in "estate condition", and it needs lots of work: new kitchen (it's already gutted), new bathroom, new windows, floors sanded and polyed.

Here's a video (which I made for my friend Becca, who lives in France) of the apartment in its "before" condition. (Actually it looked even worse when I first saw it - there was a gaping hole in the hallway ceiling, a weird rusty trough in the kitchen, and electric blue paint on the living room walls. )



I'm hoping it will be adorable and fabulous when I'm done with it. That's what this blog is about.