The Pursuit of Happiness in Manhattan
After waking up in our new bedroom for the very first time on Tuesday morning, the feeling that we are home really began to take hold for both of us. We are home.
It doesn’t matter that there are still 120 plus boxes to unpack,
[Photo: Detail of bedroom floor. Unlike the living room and hallways, the mahogany border is only a veneer in the bedroom and you can see where it has worn away in the doorway on the lower right.]
The floors are finished! Woo Hoo!!!!!
Well, not so much in the kitchen, but that will be an entirely different post… I came home from work last night and Yoav and I got to finally get a good look at the results.
Ok, so it’s been a bit more than three and a half weeks, but you get the idea…
There wasn’t much to report at the end of last week, so no post occurred… There still isn’t much to report but I just know you are on the edge of your seat with curiosity…. So, here is a brief update.
[Photo: Hint: It’s Walnut….. But you’re gonna have to read the whole damned post to find out more.]
So, I wish I had a long blog post about all the exciting things happening at our half classic six, but I do not. Instead, I have a post about our renovation progress, a few small victories, and a lot of frustration. I’ll get to the frustration first and then tell you about our small victories.
Well it has been eight days since we closed on our dream home, and the dreams are quickly (as expected) turning into reality. It feels like a lot has happened, yet if also feels like nothing has happened, as we begin to scratch the surface of all we want to accomplish at the new apartment.
It’s Official! (Finally)
We are now the owners of our very own half classic six apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And we are damned grateful for it. The closing went very smoothly, it involved getting nine people in a conference room for about 90 minutes, and lots and lots of signatures and checks floating about. At the end, we walked away with a new set of keys and 30 years of mortgage payments.
We are only days away from finally taking possession of the keys to our new home (I promise a video walk-through) and I’ve been dreaming about all the amazing things I can do with our 785 square feet. I am relishing the idea that I will actually get to decorate more than just the living room and bathroom of my prior 294 square foot studio. While our new home may only be a one bedroom apartment, I count six spaces to design and decorate.
[Photo: Looking up at our Half Classic Six.]
Before the end of this month we will be the owners of our dream apartment… Or to put it more clearly, the dream apartment within our budget. And at the moment, all I can say is that as exciting as this is, it is very bittersweet at the same time.
When we sat for our board interview week before last, excited and relieved to finally be at this point in the long arduous process, I felt a familiar vibration on my butt from my phone and the tone of a Facebook message rang out. A bit embarrassed and thinking it was a reminder notice instead, I ignored it and went on with the interview.
One of the more exciting features of our new home is our delightfully long entry hall (floor plan here) which we have begun to call the gallery. At 4.5′ wide and 22′ long, it is 100 square feet of amazing and makes for one hell of a grand entrance to our home. Our primary reason for loving this space is that along with the ability to use the long walls to create a true gallery space for our art and photography collection as well as add some storage down one side with a “fauxdenza“.
Hi, my name is Devyn. This was my blog about the adventures of finding, buying, renovating, fixing up, restoring, DIY'ing, and decorating a part of New York housing legacy. We have left NYC for a new life in Philadelphia. Visit my new blog Our Philly Row and read all about our "fixer-upper-ing" an 1852 rowhouse
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