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Thank God for a very tall boyfriend.

When Jeff started work, it was up to me to chip away at the apartment during the day, doing any project a short girl with carpel tunnel could accomplish.  I surprised myself, renovating both bathrooms, moving all the boxes around into each painted section of floor, assembling a lot of Ikea furniture and roughly  setting up each “room”.

Something that we didn’t fully consider when choosing a loft space is that there is no storage.   The basics you might find in an apartment from a closet to a pantry to a room divider did not exist in our place.   If you ever decide to live in a loft that isn’t already packed with closets or cabinets, really consider the cost of these items and the need (or lack there of) for them in the future if you choose to leave.   We bought all Ikea stuff for that reason.  It wasn’t cheap, but it won’t be hard to let go of it when we move.

In the next month, the place slowly came together, broken up by a few floods, mysterious dripping and leaking, and roofing issues.   Everyday, we were living in a construction site, eating our meals on a stool (the cafe table) and sitting on whatever was near.   Our bodies ached, my arm was literally numb every morning, and most of the time we worked in turn-of-the-century dimness, though I think gas light would have actually been brighter.   We ran out of money every week and ate like college students.  Our food rations were so ridiculous, it was almost funny.   Progress was noticed and welcomed, but honestly, there was no escaping the daunting work ahead.  Sometimes I literally couldn’t escape, having to paint myself into smaller and smaller areas of the apartment in order to finish the floors so I could get onto unpacking and setting everything up.

The list on the fridge definitely kept me going, my mood lightening as it got darker and darker from all the cross-offs.

Painting the brick walls...before we had lights...

The original plan:

1. Put all furniture and boxes on the raised platform so we could paint everything around it, and only unpack when we had finished painting.

2. Spend a full 7 days painting the walls and floor with the help of my lovely mother, Joan.

3.  Jeff would start work after those 7 days, Joan would go home to NC and Delia would start to unpack and assemble furniture on her own.

It was such a nice and tidy plan…but it was ridiculous and impossible with everything that went wrong.   To be brief, there was a funeral, no heat, no light, clogged drains, no hot water, snow drifts INSIDE the building, a leaky roof, a bank account with negative money in it, a car accident, a ticket, another ticket, a tow, a flood, another flood, an electrical failure, a plumber who had more “important” things to do, mysterious water under the kitchen sink, and trash, so much trash that we had to hire someone three times to remove it.

So, the original plan failed and we started flying by the seats of our pants.   Between visits from plumbers and roofers, in that first week in the freezing garage, we managed to paint most of the walls, tear up some bad flooring in the bathrooms, and break away cement around the tub and then tile it.  When my mother left at the end of the week, I can’t begin to express how lonely I suddenly felt because no matter how bad something is when a parent is around, and no matter how old you are,  you still subconsciously know that they will make it all okay.    Though she assured us that everything would, indeed, be okay, she also informed me that she literally cheered when she crossed the bridge out of Brooklyn.

Here are some pics from the first week in the space.

Before we had real heat, we stood by a gas fire for warmth.

They were still smiling then.

Joan plastered the wall and tiled around the tub.

After painting, we liked how the bathroom was starting to look like a Russian spa!

This orange wall was my first project. I knew it would go fast and I really needed some immediate payoff.

Joan painted the kitchen this lovely color, but I eventually changed it much to her dismay...

The white walls really transformed the space, and isn't my mother cute in that old flight suit?!

When the plumber wouldn't come, Jeff tried himself, with Joan's and my MANY suggestions.

View from the front door, after the wall was torn down.

When Jeff and I decided to move to the big onion, we knew from the get-go that we wanted to be in Brooklyn where things are a LITTLE closer to Los Angeles living (a bit more space, quiet, and a place to park our car).    One important change we wanted to make was to move into a big industrial space.   Though we loved our quaint little craftsman in LA, with me working from home a lot,  it was time to have something more open so my mind grapes could grow.  Also, my eclectic taste in furniture and art was starting to look more like a crazy grandmother’s house in an already vintage space.   In other words, we needed to put all my old crap in a gallery space to make it cool again.

We looked at about 25 apartments all over Brooklyn in one weekend.   The first place we saw was what we finally settled on, for a few reasons.   It was really big,  1400 square feet with a full roof all to ourselves.   No neighbors, it is one of three garages on an otherwise empty block, and the other two garages belong to our scrap metal landlord who leaves everyday at 4:30pm.   And finally, it was the only place that felt like a home.  It is our own building, with a door at street level, a full roof and it came with permission to do absolutely ANYTHING we wanted with the interior.

Hindsight is a you-know-what, but at the time it seemed like a dream.   We knew it needed a lot of work in terms of painting and cleaning, but what we ended up getting into was much tougher than we ever could have imagined.   In our defense, neither of us had ever tried living in (or renovating) an old car garage, so our life experience wasn’t helping much.

I promise the payoff is pretty great with this renovation, but be patient, there were a lot of steps to make this place a home…

When people talk about New York City, it almost seems like an old friend.

“I love New York.”

“I visit New York a lot.”

“That’s New York for you…”

I have to admit that I have never connected with the city in that way.  It is not an old friend, though it has been the home of many of mine whom I love to visit, but I would never have thought to make it my own.   I’ve always felt controlled by some unnatural force in this place.   For example, if I’d like to stroll one day and that is not a “strolling” day for the rest of the city, then I am out of luck, and rushing it is.    If the weather is bad and everyone is in a bad mood, I will also be in a bad mood, because they will be shouting at me, or pushing me, or honking, or hitting me with their sharp umbrella points.   This is clearly not the place for a waving-to-strangers type of southern girl.

But now it is my home.  Yes, you read that right.  I have moved to Brooklyn from Los Angeles with my lovely boyfriend because he got a promotion and needed to be closer to his family.

When everything went down, and the decision was made, I decided it was an adventure.  It was an opportunity to figure out why this place seems to be everyone’s favorite city.   It was a chance to explore, to start over, to have seasons, and to fall in love with New York.

I’m sure that one day this will happen, but so far,  it has only rejected me…

I have spent the last two months fighting to renovate our garage/loft apartment, and everyday  something goes terribly wrong.  My nerves are shot, I am homesick,  and I have no idea what I’m doing in this place.

I am still hoping that I will find the greatness of the city, but for now, I can only handle one project at a time.