Have You Met My Apartment?

Our New York apartment isn't showy. She isn't decorated with themed rooms or moody decor like the covetous abodes in the Parade of Homes. She's not the type of apartment to parade, anyhow. She doesn't have much furniture to speak of, and most of what's here isn't ours. She's an old girl - an old style in an old building with old habits: leaky faucets, warped floors, cracked tub, peeling paint. 

And we are crazy in love with her.

She's also for sale by our landlord - the woman who actually owns her. So at any moment, she may be pulled out like a rug from under us. The broker, Iris, shows up weekly to show her off in open-house style to any in the market and curious. Iris opens our apartment's doors to strangers while we are away at church. 

Every time I deep clean the place for a showing, I comment to Bill that if only we weren't decent people, we could sabotage the showings and make the place look undesirable so that we could stay here as long as we want. We could let the kids run amok to make it clear that crazy sticky-fingered hoodlum children have been let loose, here. Or I could leave the faucets dripping. Or leave the dishes piled in the sink. Or...when I'm feeling particularly attached to the place, I suggest...leaving a smelly diaper to suggest odorous overtones...

We laugh and laugh while our hearts grimace at the idea that someone could fall for this place and take it from us with nothing more than 30 days notice as a thank you. 

"Good thing we're decent people!" I'd laugh.

"Yeah, good thing!" he would reply. 

It's hard to capture the real feel of a place with mere pictures. The charm is lost in 2 dimensional lighting. Even so, would you like to take a visual tour of our humble contentment? 

Here is the kitchen. 

It is not big, nor does it have much storage - but it's the perfect size for a New York kitchen. Where everything is compact by design, this kitchen feels a lot bigger than it is. 


And I love that my kids know their way around it. They're so independent now that they're city kids that they get their OWN juice boxes from the fridge (with my permission, of course. Let's not get too crazy).

The kitchen has a nice open bar counter that makes the space feel more open, provides more precious counter space and allows room for two barstools tucked beneath the other side.


For a while, this was our only meal-time seating until we invested in this baby:


Yes - that table and those chairs actually belong to us. We bought them from craigslist, and were so proud of ourselves for saving so much money - until we realized we had to rent a Zipcar to get the thing from East Harlem to our apartment in Washington Heights.

We learned fast that furniture moving was impossible in the city - and decided that we didn't need furniture all that much, anyway. The three things we didn't want to live without (a bed for Daphne and desks for me and my man) we ordered online. Make someone ELSE do the delivering! Ha!

(The bed weighed like 700 lbs. The 8th floor is the 8th floor, even if there is an elevator. So to thank the UPS guy, we had a chilled water bottle and a candybar on hand. He was grateful, and guzzled nearly the whole bottle in the few steps back to the elevator. Poor guy.)

Sometimes the table is flat against the wall, sometimes it's long, sometimes it's free floating. Sometimes it's randomly angled to allow for better "lunch and a show" trajectory.


The furniture in our apartment - like our family - is extremely adaptable and moveable. 

The family room/living room/living area/whatever you call it when there's just the one: 


This room consists of four things: The couch (not ours), the lamp (not ours), the rug (not ours) and the ottoman/toy box (not ours).

The couch isn't big, but it's big enough for this: 



And for this...

The ottoman opens and holds all the kids' toys (yes, all the toys the three of them have fit inside that box! It's awesome!). It also makes a great bridge, an excellent pirate ship, and - naturally - a snack table.


This is the bathroom; the moodiest room in the house. The tub doesn't drain when you shower, and won't stop draining when trying to draw a bath. You have to spread the shower curtain against the wall just so or you'll end up with a puddle that pools (uneven floors, remember?) around the base of the toilet. And the door sticks. Sometimes so bad that I have to call for Bill to let me out. We've caught a few visitors inside, too. There's a trick to it that works most of the time. Mostly.


This is the kids' room. Yes - all three in one room. Something Bill has been begging me to let us try since Hank was born. And yes - it works great! (Henry's pack-and-play is near the wall where I was standing to take this picture).


This is the "Master" bedroom - with the air conditioner all its own and the two window view and the huge california closet and the two desks (delivered!) with the two iMacs so Bill and I could work late into the night on our creative pursuits, just like we always dreamed...sigh!


Really, it's just another play room for the kids. And the bed? That's not ours, either. During the day, the kids are either hiding under it, or it's a pirate ship over the hot lava. During nap time (or really, any time the mood takes her) Daphne stakes her claim. At night, Wyatt thinks it's his. 

This bed hain't big enough for the three of us!


 

And that's basically all there is to our little apartment. We live simply, and simply love it!

Because who needs more when just outside, there's ALL OF THIS to explore every day?


 Never a dull moment.



Never.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh my gosh! What an adventure!! I am torn between wanting you to move back to Utah RIGHT NOW and wanting you to stay long enough for us to settle in here and have this baby so we can come see you and NY LOCAL STYLE!

~Ari

Doug said...

I LOVED this post. Your blog is looking awesome, Stepper.

Windy Dawn said...

I absolutely love it!

craftyashley said...

What a sweet place! Thanks for the peek!

cape coral apartments for rent said...

Congratulations in finding a home that works for you and your family. You definitely know what you want in an apartment and I think renters out there should define their search too so they can easily find the place for them. It could be cape coral apartments for rent or any other rentals in the country.