Mike C

A Place in the Life of…well, me!  I thought I’d start with myself on this first entry.  I’m obsessed with design – and not just in the watching HGTV 24 hours a day way – but in a let me decorate everything in the world way.

Although stifled by roommates and a beer budget in my NYC rental, I still found ways to express myself through design.  I tormented my messy mates with a black and white themed living room and a 1950s kitchen re-do.  Granted, I used vinyl floor tiles out of the box and used pillows from the salvation army – I still loved my coordinated scheme dammit!

Years of saving brought me to a champagne budget to buy my first place – not a Veuve Cliquot budget, but maybe that middle of the shelf I can only buy it once a month champagne.  Did I mention that I love champagne too?  More on that later.

I looked at maybe 70 condos in Jersey City, Brooklyn and Washington Heights – which I think drove my real estate agent crazy – but I couldn’t help but want to look inside all the homes I could.  Here’s a secret (and I hope poor Glenn from Weichert doesn’t read this) but I looked up places online that I knew I couldn’t afford just to see them!

I felt cooped up for sooo long in my rental and had so many ideas from years of window shopping online that I knew I needed a super unique space.  I needed a place that could fit the new life of..well, me!  I walked into Dixon Mills – a converted pencil factory in Jersey City – and knew I was home.  Again – I asked to see all 467 units…they said ummmm no.  We needed to focus on my price range and I walked into the 37^th unit of the day and looked up 15 feet to see a 25 foot stretch of greenhouse like sky lights in the living room / kitchen.  OMG!  I knew it right then – I didn’t give a crap what the rest of the place looked like, I wanted to sign on the dotted line.

I totally fell in love with the rest of the place too – beams, two bedrooms and 230 square footage of outdoor space.  Check, check aaand check.  I was totally foaming at the mouth to get decorating but had to slow my roll due to the middle of the shelf champagne funds dwindling away on closing and moving costs.  The forced delay was actually great because it gave me time to focus on a theme and really do comparison shopping and lock in a good plan.  I settled on an urban / industrial theme with antique elements to match the factory feel.  The first thing on my agenda was to tackle the noticeable absence of exposed brick in my place – the one item that was so wanted but not in my unit.

After turning to the blogs, I learned that you can pretty much do anything.  I found www.brickit.com and they offer real recycled brick that is shaved down to a quarter inch thickness and you can just mortar it to  the wall.  Many of the blogs have shown simple videos on how to DIY – I knew I could do it, too!...sooo I hired a contractor.  LOL – it’s not that all the advice wasn’t helpful it’s just that..well, I don’t know what mortar is so I needed some help.  I also had to build my TV mount into the framing so a professional was needed.  Here is the before and after:

...and after

So amazing!  No one knows that it’s been added – everyone thinks it’s real and I certainly don’t tell anyone otherwise. With the biggest project done, I felt a flow of other ideas that really made the space my own.

This was my kitchen and bar before the magic happened!

...and after

 

I added some bling to my breakfast bar with a red oak beam and hanging Edison bulbs - plus some great amber tile around my bathroom mirror.  The tile company delivered the wrong color for my kitchen back splash and I decided to use it for the bathroom at the last minute..from mistake to opportunity.