Paint Color Update

Although my apartment is not ready for "prime time", I thought I would at least share my color choices and what I do and don't like about them. Choosing paint colors is very tricky and it is useful to search the web looking for what has worked for others so I consider this my chance to give back to the online community.

I have huge, expansive walls in my apartment not only because of the high ceilings but also because most of the walls don't have windows. All the windows are along the one wall facing the street. And, although I had the crusty old texture scraped off the ceiling, the cement beams are somewhat uneven and heavy looking. Because of these features, I thought a bold color would be overwhelming and so I did what I have avoided doing for the past 25 years and painted almost everything white. I chose Benjamin Moore's White Chocolate which is warm and creamy white. I could not be happier with this color! It has given me the antique feeling I was going for without being on that pink, dusty side of white. It looks gorgeous with the warm brown blinds I inherited from the previous owners and fits well with my "vintage" (worn out) furniture.

I debated with myself endlessly about whether to keep the bedroom white. I finally choose a very subtle color called Greenmount Silk from Benjamin Moore's historic color collection. The paint chip for this looked pale green in Brookline, MA but when I brought it down here it looked just plain yellow! This caused more debate since I prefer green over yellow. Had I been fooled by the color's name?  I decided to live dangerously and just go with it (I had a pale green bedroom for the past 18 years) and I am so glad I did. This is a gorgeous color! When the afternoon sun comes pouring through the blinds, the walls simply glow. 

As you can see, it is a very subtle contrast to the creamy White Chocolate on the ceiling.

And it does look green at certain angles and behind my Grandmother's pink sofa. Now, this sofa truly is vintage! (and in great shape!)

Now this color is a little more subtle than I had hoped. This is Benjamin Moore's  Lancaster Whitewash  and it is just as it is described on their website: a "greenish-gray tan".  I put this in what you might call my "breakfast nook" which is right in front of the kitchen but open to the rest of the apartment. I wanted a subtle color change just to give that area it's own character.   

Here we are looking from the "breakfast nook" (outer kitchen?) into the kitchen. Notice I had that strange high wall (seen in this blog post) removed so we can see the tops of the cabinets. So glad I did that! Anyway, the little bit of wall you see around the cabinets was a golden opportunity to use a strong color and I decided that color would be Benjamin Moore's Anjou Pear. Wasabi was seriously in the running but I thought the slightly more golden Anjou Pear would work more harmoniously with the orange/gold/brown of the cabinets. 

Now we enter the weird little room. We've been looking at a lot of yellows, creams, yellow/greens, greens. Very hard for me to get away from the warm green family! The best I could do was this lovely green/gray/blue called Tranquility, also from Benjamin Moore. I think of it as the urban version of their Wythe Blue which was their 2012 Color of the Year.

This is almost impossible to photograph, but what I have done is paint the ceiling of the little room charcoal gray. I like to take little rooms and make them feel even more little because there is no way to make them look big. The ceiling color is Street Chic from, you guessed it, Benjamin Moore. I was really worried this would be too dark but now I wish it was darker. Was hoping for more drama.

In the bathroom I had the challenge of dealing with the tile I hated and a very low ceiling. Why they brought the ceiling down in this room, I will never know. Hope to change that someday! To meet this challenge I simply decided to blend with, or play down, the tile. Picked a color that matched one of the lighter tones in the tile. That color is Cedar Key (Benjamin Moore). It looks very beige on their website and too beige in my bathroom. The color chip, however, had a more mysterious grayish pink cast that I liked. The lesson here is: do not believe the color chips.

Anyway, it does what I wanted it to do. It blends with the tile so that the tile does not scream out at you.  It's is also light enough so that the walls and the ceiling could be the same color and not be claustrophobic. I wanted to avoid having a low white square hovering over my head. I get tired of white ceilings especially when the ceilings are low. 

So that wraps up the painting. I am slowly unpacking boxes and hanging artwork in between career fretting and dog walking. The place is looking good and I am very happy with the building and the neighborhood. Moving here was a good decision. 

Flooring for a Coop Apartment

Hello, I've been wanting to share my little flooring episode with you for awhile now but I am seriously in the panic-driven packing mode. As you see on the left side of the page, I've had to close my shop (temporarily!) because all my Yardwork items are packed and ready to move to Brooklyn. I'm exhausted but will catch you up on a little history and thought process around one of the more difficult decisions I needed to make about my new apartment.

You may remember this photo showing the "ceramic stage" of a kitchen floor that I so much wanted to change. Along with that, I knew that I would need to do a lot of touch-up/repair type work on the wood parquet floor that runs throughout the rest of the apartment. Except for the bathroom, of course. Would love to change the bathroom floor as soon as possible, but that may end up being a few years down the road. Anyway, once the previous owners moved out, I could see that the parquet needed more than just a touch-up. It was in very bad shape. This type of parquet floor is very very common around New York City and was in just about every single apartment in Brooklyn that I looked at. So I decided that, if I was going to go to the expense and trouble to remove it, I wanted to replace it with something more unique. So, I began doing a lot of flooring research (i.e. fantasizing).

I really didn't see my apartment as being a slick, contemporary space. Call me crazy, but I was thinking it could be pushed in a Spanish Revival style direction, like this beautiful interior I found at Remodelista. Actually even a little less contemporary than the photo above.  I realize my ceiling beams are not wood as they should be for this style, but the lines are the same. Simple straight lines without any detailed molding. Just the plain strip of wood on the wall right above the floor. So what I needed was an older wood floor.

I started looking into reclaimed wood flooring. And, being an old factory building, I added "factory" to my google search words. I fell in love with this reclaimed factory flooring and it came from a place near my current home in Massachusetts! I even drove out to see the flooring in person. They had a lot of nice options. It would be interesting to see the all-over texture that this floor would create. It would push the decor to a more urban version of my vision, but that was OK. However, I discovered the floor did not come pre-finished, meaning I would have to deal with that expense and those fumes. I was not sure my new neighbors or the coop board was going to go for that. I was lucky to have this work approved so quickly and I did not want to rock the boat. Plus, years from now (many, I hope!) when I may need/want to sell this place, it could be a look with limited appeal. I love it though!

Through one of my favorite websites, Houzz, I found this beautiful reclaimed flooring by Burchette & Burchette in North Carolina. It is called Tobacco Pine. I spoke with this company and they could not have been more friendly! They sent me a few gorgeous samples. The colors in the wood are enhanced with their own handmade tea stains and finishes (pre-finished!). Yes, this was the most expensive flooring I looked at and I sure was tempted! I thought it would add just the right warmth and character to my evolving interior. It was just the look I wanted but I lost a lot of sleep thinking about the cost. Not only would I be paying for the wood, but I would have to have it shipped from North Carolina. Didn't even want to think about what that would cost, so I started visiting websites and showrooms in NYC. I settled on something from PID Floors. Unfortunately, I do not have a picture of the sample. Perhaps because, in the end, I couldn't use it. 

For those who have not been counting the months, I began my search for an apartment in late April. I found the one I wanted and had the offer to buy accepted in August. I had my coop application in by September 19th. I was not approved to be a part of this coop until late November! The much needed before-move-in work could not be started until the beginning of December and there are rules against working on holiday days, something that December/January are full of. My contract on the selling of my apartment in Brookline, MA gave me until January 31st to clear out. I am moving out on January 23rd, so I cut it pretty close! My original plan was to be out by October which obviously did not happen. So, when the super of my new building (who is doing this before-move-in work for me) told me that if I wanted anything but the regulation parquet floor, I would have to wait for the next coop board meeting to get it approved. That meeting was going to be in January - which, at the time, was a month away! Then, there would be ordering the floor, shipping the floor, and then wood flooring has to sit in it's new environment for at least two weeks before being installed. OK, so that meant late February or March move-in. If you calculate all the complications and expense of that, I hope you agree with my choice to go with the parquet flooring. My dreams of an urban Spanish Revival "bungalow" evaporated. So sad.

First thing I did was change the main ceiling and wall color from Benjamin Moore's timid white to Benjamin Moore's white chocolate. Both are creamy, yellowish whites but the white chocolate is brighter and more contemporary than the timid white, which I consider to a brighter antique white.

Then I decided to change the color of the marmoleum tile for the kitchen area. I was going to use a very deep burgundy called "wine barrel" to contrast with the darker wood color I wanted. With the new lighter parquet, I decided to go with a color called "shitake". This will only be in an approximate 4' x 10' area right in front of the kitchen cabinets where the oven and sink are. It's a little better for a an area that needs to survive a lot of spills than the parquet floor would be. Having less area of kitchen tile will open up some of that space, that used to be covered in ceramic tile, to the dining area. Keeping my fingers crossed that this is all going to look good!

So, now we have a second reason not to buy a coop apartment unless you absolutely have to. The first is that you may or may not get approved, in either case it will take forever causing much stress. The second is that you really have to be flexible about what you might want to do decoratively because you don't, in fact, really own your apartment. You own a share of the building, and the square footage of the apartment determines the size of your share. Unfortunately, in New York City, almost every apartment that you can buy is a coop. 

Therefore, I will be flexible!

Because I absolutely have to be.

Renovation Update

I had just a moment to drop by my Brooklyn apartment on my way between Boston and Austin ( I know, long day!). I needed to speak with the man doing the work plus I wanted to get a photo of the floor so you could see what bad shape it was in. Much to my surprise, the existing floor had already been removed! Things are moving along! This whole thing might actually come true someday. By the way, this is another post from my iPhone, testing , testing......

Renovating a Loft Apartment

It's time to move into what will be, most likely, a fairly long period of home renovation blog posts! And that is because, about 2-3 weeks ago, I finally handed over the big check to the previous owners of this old industrial loft apartment and so now it is mine. I have not-so-suddenly found myself with a really run-down space to spruce up! My guess is that any renovations you see in this apartment were done back in the early 80's when this 1920s building was converted from factory to coop apartments. So, there IS work to be done......

I love the big open space. Well, "big" by New York standards. It's 950 square feet, which is a small size for what one thinks of as a "loft" but that is plenty to be an apartment for one person. OK, one person and a crazy dog. I definitely kept Frankie in mind when I searched for the space I would need (but could still afford). Not to mention the fact that it will be a live/work space, meaning I'll spend almost all my time here. And although I like the space open, for my needs, I would eventually like to create a few more clear divisions in the apartment. In the above photo, you are looking straight from the front door into the living room on the right and into the bedroom through the cut-out in that dividing wall on the left. I'm not so excited about myself or anyone else looking straight into my bedroom when they first walk in the door. A simple, non structural change I can make is to have shutters, blinds, or a semi-sheer shade installed in that cut-out to give the bedroom much more privacy. It will be interesting to see how much light is lost because that is the obvious reason for the cut-out. The windows are only along that one front-facing wall. 

This is the view from the living room towards the front door, which you can see right behind that ladder. The open kitchen is to the right and, to the left, is what I like to refer to as "the weird little room". Isn't it odd looking? It reminds me of a structure in a de Chirico painting. The real estate listing had to call it a "home office" because a room has to have at least one window (to the outside) and a closet to be a real bedroom. However, I do think I will be using it as a guest bedroom/storage space. 

This is inside the weird little room. As you can see, it is a small and somewhat narrow room with a very tall ceiling. It's a bit strange, but I think it will work for me and I'm not in a hurry to tear it down. I love de Chirico! By the way, the ceilings in the whole apartment (except in part of the kitchen and the bathroom) are almost 13 feet high! Isn't that wonderful? A 950 square foot apartment feels much smaller with lower, say 8 foot, ceilings. It was probably the high ceilings that sold me on this place.

For some reason Blogger will not allow me to make that paragraph flush-left. Please excuse.

Now we are walking into the kitchen. It is also a little strange. Perhaps all of these strange things are why I could afford this apartment! All of the appliances, except for the refrigerator, are behind that high wall. I was told a wall like this used to be required as an effort to contain the cooking smells and smoke. I suppose they decided it didn't really work because it's not required anymore. I can, and probably will, eventually take it down. However, it will be a long time before I am ready to do a kitchen renovation!

A more frontal view so you can see the cabinets hidden behind the high wall. The cabinets are in good shape and I actually do like them. May not have picked them myself and I don't like the way it goes up and then down on both sides of the sink. But I can work with this, it will be fine! What I don't like is how the kitchen looks like it is on some sort of ceramic tile "stage". It's not very interesting tile, for one thing and, for another, I don't like standing to cook on such a hard surface. And so, this floor will be one of the first things to go. I think kitchen floors should be a softer surface such as wood, cork, rubber, or some sort of vinyl or linoleum tile. There are a lot of fun options in the market these days. 

Unfortunately a similar and bland color was used in the bathroom. This tile probably looked really cool in the 80s but, to me, it now looks very dated. However, I am going to have to work with this because there is no money or time for a bathroom update anytime soon! Plus, I may want to reconfigure the bathroom at some point, hopefully to allow for an extra half-bath. I need to take my time on that thought process.  Plus, being a coop, I have to pass all the plans and materials by the governing board. Not looking forward to that!

But, luckily, I was able to catch the late November coop board meeting in time to have my preliminary work approved. By preliminary, I mean the work that has to be done when the apartment is empty because it's such a big mess! First project: scraping the slightly cave-like texture off of the ceilings. You can just barely see it in some of the other photos, but take my word for it, it was just heavy enough to look oppressive and dirty. I was further convinced when the building's super told me it tended to flake off and make everything dusty at all times. I have to hang on to that feeling of conviction because this is a major, dirty, tedious, and time-consuming job. I had to be there for a few days testing paint colors with all this going on and I felt pretty bad for the guys doing it. Of course, it's a job and they will get paid! I'm just holding my breath that it will be worth the time and money.

Next I will deal with the floors....stay tuned!