My Manhattan Apartment
Hello, Saucy Dwellings! Long-time listener, first-time caller -- I posted my new duvet cover on a "Show us your... bedding" thread, but that's the extent of it. So I trust you'll be gentle.
I live with my boyfriend in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side (the upper edge of Yorkville, if you know the area); we share about 700 square feet with our two dogs, Nacho and Bear-Bear, and a gerbil named Eloise. We bought the place about year and a half ago, and we've been slowly chipping away at all the home improvement projects the previous owners had neglected over the last twenty years or so -- painting, scraping the hideous popcorn ceilings, redoing various moldings, etc. The big projects remaining are the kitchen and bath, which are dated and pretty sad so I won't show you pictures of them, and redoing the floors, which are most definitely original to the building's 1980 vintage and probably weren't so pretty when they were new. You can see the "before" pictures from just after we moved in at my Facebook album (don't worry if you don't have a Facebook or aren't on my friends list -- it's a public link).
Our living room / dining room. My boyfriend's got this big plan to hide the cords to the flat-screen TV behind the wall, but I'm not sure when or if that plan might ever come to fruition. I wish I had gotten a better picture of our dining table, which you can just see peeking out in the corner -- it's this gorgeous oval Danish modern thing made of teak that my mother bought from a newspaper classified ad in about 1980. I had to completely disassemble it and cram it in the back of a station wagon to bring it back from my dad's house to the city, but dammit, I had to have it.
Sofa, with dogs. This damn sofa was about half-an-inch too big to get out of the service elevator and down our hallway, so we had to hire a guy to come SAW IT IN HALF internally and then reassemble it in the apartment. I drank a lot that day. (Oh, yes, and whoever buys our apartment some day better really like that sofa, because it's staying with the apartment.)
The bookcase is from Pottery Barn Kids (!) and the print is a page from a turn-of-the-century book of Art Nouveau decorative motifs -- you can have any image from the New York Public Library's Digital Gallery cropped to your liking and blown up into beautiful prints in various sizes. It's the coolest.
My boyfriend always wanted a leather chair and ottoman, and after I won some cash on a TV show that shall remain nameless, I was able to buy him one. I also fell in love with that Ethan Allen etagere, which we use as a bookcase, and blew some of my sweet sweet game show money on that. The painting was a college graduation gift from my dad's crazy hippie cousin in Texas. He made the frame himself out of found wood from the beach along the Gulf of Mexico, which is very cool but not really my style, so I think once I finally decide for sure where I want to put it, I'll get it reframed. It's seriously the most thoughtful gift any one ever gave me.
The bedroom, a bit darker than it actually is. I hate that white Ikea chair with a passion; I think it makes the room look small. It used to live in our living room, and while I was attempting to get rid of it I moved it temporarily to the bedroom -- and of course my boyfriend fell in love with it there and wants to sit in it all the time. I want this totally awesome Tord Boontje chair instead, but the number $996 is kind of giving me palpitations.
We put up this unexpectedly intricate decal from WallTat this weekend, and it drove us to the very edge of despair getting it on our freshly painted wall. Thank goodness you can hardly see all the places we effed it up. I love it.
Another angle on the decal. I just ordered two little white sparrow silhouettes to sit in the bottom branches.
Not a great picture, but the best I could get in such a small room. Our new dresser, with a photographic print of a dandelion I bought from online from an independent artist a few years ago.
Computer cabinet from Ballard Designs -- I thought I was never going to find a computer desk that was a. tiny, b. functional, and c. not hideously ugly, so I was stoked when I randomly got a Ballard catalog in the mail and this was in there. It's got all sorts of great storage inside, too. When I'm not using it, I can just close the doors and push the chair aside, and then we don't have to stare at the printer, modem, phone chargers, etc. I might get myself a laptop for my birthday in August, and then I'll be able to hide that away, too!
Thanks for looking, and hope you enjoyed! Constructive criticism always welcome, although of course general accolades are good, too...
I live with my boyfriend in a one-bedroom apartment on Manhattan's Upper East Side (the upper edge of Yorkville, if you know the area); we share about 700 square feet with our two dogs, Nacho and Bear-Bear, and a gerbil named Eloise. We bought the place about year and a half ago, and we've been slowly chipping away at all the home improvement projects the previous owners had neglected over the last twenty years or so -- painting, scraping the hideous popcorn ceilings, redoing various moldings, etc. The big projects remaining are the kitchen and bath, which are dated and pretty sad so I won't show you pictures of them, and redoing the floors, which are most definitely original to the building's 1980 vintage and probably weren't so pretty when they were new. You can see the "before" pictures from just after we moved in at my Facebook album (don't worry if you don't have a Facebook or aren't on my friends list -- it's a public link).
Our living room / dining room. My boyfriend's got this big plan to hide the cords to the flat-screen TV behind the wall, but I'm not sure when or if that plan might ever come to fruition. I wish I had gotten a better picture of our dining table, which you can just see peeking out in the corner -- it's this gorgeous oval Danish modern thing made of teak that my mother bought from a newspaper classified ad in about 1980. I had to completely disassemble it and cram it in the back of a station wagon to bring it back from my dad's house to the city, but dammit, I had to have it.
Sofa, with dogs. This damn sofa was about half-an-inch too big to get out of the service elevator and down our hallway, so we had to hire a guy to come SAW IT IN HALF internally and then reassemble it in the apartment. I drank a lot that day. (Oh, yes, and whoever buys our apartment some day better really like that sofa, because it's staying with the apartment.)
The bookcase is from Pottery Barn Kids (!) and the print is a page from a turn-of-the-century book of Art Nouveau decorative motifs -- you can have any image from the New York Public Library's Digital Gallery cropped to your liking and blown up into beautiful prints in various sizes. It's the coolest.
My boyfriend always wanted a leather chair and ottoman, and after I won some cash on a TV show that shall remain nameless, I was able to buy him one. I also fell in love with that Ethan Allen etagere, which we use as a bookcase, and blew some of my sweet sweet game show money on that. The painting was a college graduation gift from my dad's crazy hippie cousin in Texas. He made the frame himself out of found wood from the beach along the Gulf of Mexico, which is very cool but not really my style, so I think once I finally decide for sure where I want to put it, I'll get it reframed. It's seriously the most thoughtful gift any one ever gave me.
The bedroom, a bit darker than it actually is. I hate that white Ikea chair with a passion; I think it makes the room look small. It used to live in our living room, and while I was attempting to get rid of it I moved it temporarily to the bedroom -- and of course my boyfriend fell in love with it there and wants to sit in it all the time. I want this totally awesome Tord Boontje chair instead, but the number $996 is kind of giving me palpitations.
We put up this unexpectedly intricate decal from WallTat this weekend, and it drove us to the very edge of despair getting it on our freshly painted wall. Thank goodness you can hardly see all the places we effed it up. I love it.
Another angle on the decal. I just ordered two little white sparrow silhouettes to sit in the bottom branches.
Not a great picture, but the best I could get in such a small room. Our new dresser, with a photographic print of a dandelion I bought from online from an independent artist a few years ago.
Computer cabinet from Ballard Designs -- I thought I was never going to find a computer desk that was a. tiny, b. functional, and c. not hideously ugly, so I was stoked when I randomly got a Ballard catalog in the mail and this was in there. It's got all sorts of great storage inside, too. When I'm not using it, I can just close the doors and push the chair aside, and then we don't have to stare at the printer, modem, phone chargers, etc. I might get myself a laptop for my birthday in August, and then I'll be able to hide that away, too!
Thanks for looking, and hope you enjoyed! Constructive criticism always welcome, although of course general accolades are good, too...