The Pursuit of Happiness in Manhattan
You may have noticed a decided absence of posts for the past couple of months. Rest assured we are still here, and things are for the most part, okay. That said, we have both been super busy with heavy workloads, and lots of life, and other obligations… We are also still absorbing the realities of our new political climate and how the impact could potentially change things for us forever. A lot to think about really.
Yesterday marked two years since we closed on our fixer-upper apartment on the upper portion of the Upper West Side of Manhattan (that was a lot of uppers, yes?). Taking a look back, we are both incredibly grateful for having done it when we did. Crazy thing about New York real estate is that our place would cost so much more now. Had we waited to buy as we originally planned, we wouldn’t have gotten our amazing apartment.
In August of last year, within two hours after leaving our closing on our apartment with keys in hand, I created a walk-through video tour of our apartment [view last years video here]. I wanted to document our apartment before we made a single change as a way to look back and remember where we started.
[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.
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.
[Photo: My Hell’s Kitchen apartment last fall. Vintage Burke swivel chair, Ikea cabinets hung on the wall, Weltron 2000 AM/FM 8-Track Stereo (circa 1970), red acrylic string lamp, and photography wall of iPhone shots.]
Before fulfilling my lifelong dream of living in Manhattan (and long before I was married), I lived in Seattle, Portland (Oregon), and Chicago. Each a great city unto itself. While I never had much money during those years, I always placed my priority on location over space when it came to housing.
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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