“I would have written sooner, but life has been crazy!” Says every blogger mom ever. And I now have a cat (the 22 year old version of having a child) and that means I can call myself a blogger mom when it suits me and it suits me today as I say, I would have written sooner, but life has been crazy! And I’ll say, a somewhat spontaneous international move is, to put it lightly, crazy. Crazy stressful, crazy busy, and crazy fun. Last November we talked seriously about leaving Iceland after a semester of school, last December we visited New York, January 6th we decided to move to New York, January 28th we did. We moved here without a house, without a job, and without a clue. We’re still pretty clueless, but we’re getting away with it because we both have large glasses and we’re feeling the Bern, so Brooklyn has welcomed us with open arms.
After our first week roaming around Manhattan a good family friend (who has lived in the city for the last two decades) let us know that after another nine years and eleven months we could officially call ourselves “New Yorkers” But I recently killed my first indoor cockroach. So I’m pretty sure I’m New Yorker now. (Or maybe I’ll let myself be a New Yorker after I figure out what shape the state of New York is. Or what a bodega is. Or why no one wants to chat with me on the subway.) I might not feel like a New Yorker (I’d be shocked if I ever did) but we feel at home here so far. Because we’ve really lucked out. When we made the decision to move here it was strange how quickly little things began to fall into place. While in Iceland I applied for exactly one job in New York. And I got it. After we moved here we found an apartment. In two days. And the most important proof of our good life choice, every day as I walk the streets of Brooklyn I have a stranger tell me they like my glasses. After seven months of Icelanders staring hard and being so befuddled by my “weird” (because they always said weird) choice of glasses, it’s felt pretty great to drown my vanity in the compliments of kids here. Thanks for getting to them, Iris Apfel.
So much has happened since we moved here that is worth writing about! And so much has happened that isn’t even worth mentioning. I’ll probably write novels about both. But to create an idea of organization (if only you could see my brainwaves recoil at the use of that word) I’m going to write all about the fast-paced and engaging experience of house hunting – and decorating! TLC, come at me!
Let’s first discuss the countless hours I spent searching for apartments on Craigslist, Rentler, and Zillow. Let’s then talk about how all of that was completely useless, because I got it in my head that we would move to Disneyland and I spent all my time in Iceland looking for places in LA. It must have been because of the cold. Because we aren’t in LA, we’re in New York. And spoiler alert, contrary to what my husband lead me to believe, riding the subway is nothing like riding Radiator Springs Racers. Rockefeller Center does not look like Sleeping Beauty’s Magic Castle. And New York is NOT Disneyland. Despite that glaring fact, I agreed to move here because I am young and easily seduced by places where major musicals are set. And I may have already lost the lottery for Hamilton 12 times, but it’s close enough that I can walk by the ticket holder line and see all the faces of those excited to be seeing Hamilton, and isn’t that the same thing? Oh, right, we’re talking about houses. (Feeling my brain once again recoil in frustration – thinking my self proclaimed adult ADD had bested my blog again.)
The more time we spent online looking for houses the more we realized we had no idea how to get a house in New York. At the time, we were staying in an Airbnb southeast of Prospect Park. We walked in, exhausted from our flight, to burning incense and I choked down sobs after seeing the hair and mold in the bathtub. This bathroom was, without a doubt, home to the very shower where The Grudge first made her mark. So I began apartment hunting. That night. And I learned about brokers, and guarantors, and paperwork that proves if you want to live in New York you have to really want it. More than that, I wanted to leave the apartment that was home to so many candy-bar sized cockroaches, so we figured our things out and began to house hunt. We initially attached to a recently updated basement apartment. There were no windows in the living space, Christian’s head touched the ceiling in the kitchen, and the back wasn’t completely sealed shut (ie, there was about half a brick wall behind half a white wall and it could have used a few more bricks to keep out the cats and rats and smaller children.) But with a large wall of painted white brick, the house was very instagrammable, and that’s what counts. We shared the viewing with a charming-but-too-well-dressed-and-intimidating couple who had recently moved here from San Fransisco. Both women were short enough to fit inside the apartment (a feature we previously thought was our win – these ceilings really were low, guys) and they had moved to New York because it was cheaper than living in San Fransisco. We bonded over having cats and having concerns about the cats getting out of the almost-wall in the back. And ultimately, we knew the place belonged to them. Because they embraced the fact that the area was up-and-coming. Christian and I had just landed here, we wanted a place that was already, you know, a place. I like to think that couple is living happily in the cozy basement and that their cat’s animal instinct has kicked in kept the worst of the rats away. Although their cat IS from San Fransisco, so it’s probably a vegan.
Later that day we visited a studio apartment on the other side of Prospect Park that was a bust, and walked home feeling rejected and nervous for the rat race ahead. What we didn’t know was that that race was going to last another 45 minutes, and only because I was about to slowly walk a few miles in high heels. We got a call from a relator who had a loft just come on the market in Clinton Hill. 17 year old Mallory swooned at the idea of a Brooklyn loft and we briskly, but uncomfortably (cool high heels, remember?) walked to meet her.
We bought this poster to help us figure out where everything is in Brooklyn. The cartoons help me find my way far better than Google Maps.
The apartment itself is on the last block of a really fantastic neighborhood. Originally, Clinton Hill was home to many wealthy families. It was thought that living on a hill was healthier, so many beautiful homes were built in the area. Or at least that’s what Christian tells me, but he also told me Manhattan was Disneyland. So. The building was the only ugly house on the entire block, but ugly it is! It’s flat face and garbage-level-entrance is not exactly picturesque. The graffiti on the window and massive slab apartment buildings across the street are not things I would call “charm city” but the detailed gargoyles living on Cathedral at the end of the block were calling my name, and I was stoked to go inside.
If I could give anyone a “tip” about moving to New York it would be to move here after having lived in Iceland. It may be one of the only other places in the world that can make moving to New York seem like a financially comfortable step up. We walked into the 450 sq ft apartment and were, literally, moving up in the world. An above ground apartment with three massive windows, a kitchen in its own (albeit impressively small) room. A bathroom with a door!? And a loft. Sure, the bathroom is covered in excess spackle, the handles fall off of the shower, sink, and toilet, there is DEFINITELY something living under the paint in what we call “the spooky shelf” and the shower is the size of an 15th century adolescent’s coffin, but we hadn’t seen sunshine in 3 months and those massive windows were letting the heavens shine down on us. We were attached, we were willing to make sacrifices, the loft was ours!
Blair working on removing the paint from our pretty pipes.
We moved in just a few days before our cat was coming (that’s a whole other blog for a whole other day) and my nonexistent parental instinct was kicking in and I needed our house to feel homey, stat. But I’m working part time at a toy store and Christian is freelancing his way to a studio, so money was not something we can throw around lightly. Remember my great TLC food show? The one someday that I will start on my channel with all my other TLC shows? Here’s the next one! It’s called Decorating After Dorms and it’s all about how to furnish a new apartment as a newly graduated (and thus drowning in student loans and debt) American. (Unrelated PS, going to a Bernie rally tonight.)
Try to ignore the fact that I stole this photo from my cat's Instagram (you read that right) and pretend it's as high quality a photo as the cool kids with real blogs would post. And don't ask me why I didn't just take a current photo. If you're reading this you know me well enough to know my house is never clean enough to just take a photo of it to show the internet. And no, I didn't think to clean it. Next time. Ignore all that, look at the cool donut pillow and shoulder cat. And I guess all the orange. Since that's the reason I posted this in the first place.
Christian and I had to get creative while finding furniture and decor. Our theme was “Match Everything to the Oversized Extension Cords Going Up The Loft” and we did. Our house is entirely white and orange. And you know, it’s working for me. Fortunately, we got a lot of freebees from this place. Outside our kitchen window is a small balcony. I’m pretty sure it’s the top of a shed for the garden level apartment, but it’s definitely been used as a tanning spot before (says the year old bottle of sunscreen we found among the empty potted plants) and we’ll be taking all the advantage of that, our new “back yard.” Our doorframe is also so massive that our bed (a small foam mattress on the ground of the loft) has it’s own headboard! That’s definitely going to be another tip on my show. Giant doorframe bed frames. People will get it.
I'm posting this photo now even though it's a post winter dead plants photo because with me as a gardener the plants are likely to be more dead this summer.
Yup! That's our front door!
This place is an adventure. We are in love with our home, filled with $7 IKEA tables and hidden litter boxes, our neighborhood, the perfect mix of family-style city and snobby Pratt student artistry, and each other, because we don’t know a lot of other people who would make the choices we do and we’re glad we get to do it together. Let’s see where this next adventure ends up!
