measure twice...

 ..Cut once. Well, last Sunday we measured the apartment and took tons of photos to devise the plan. We had help! Our friends came too - Megan was kind enough to keep Hudson occupied, Amanda helped me measure and Dave and Ben poked around the attic. Brooklyn had eight(!) inches of rain on Sunday so it was good to see that it was bone dry. Our current apartment building, however, was not. Fire trucks came to help release some of the pressure from clogged drain pipes on the roof that caused a waterfall of water down 12 flights of fire stairs. Thankfully, our current apartment was dry as well!

                                 

So after all that measuring, we headed off to the country for some R&R. In the evenings, I was able to focus on what our apartment would look like and we have narrowed it down to two options. They are very similar. Option 1 gives a bit more room to the washer/dryer closet and requires the demolition of one nib wall (and consequently some ceiling patching). Option 2 requires no wall demo (just the half-wall in the kitchen) and has about 12" less space of kitchen cabinets. Both are workable and we will see what fits more in the budget later on. We met with the contractor on Friday and should have pricing by Monday (gulp!). Will have more detailed posts on the plans for each room coming up! We are excited about the process and hope it will continue to go smoothly!

              

We also bought the first item for the apartment. Dave found an amazing deal on a Bosch dishwasher in black (as shown in elevation D) for 50% off! We hope we can find such good deals on the other appliances too!

in contract

So as many of you already know, we are in contract on a two bedroom(!) apartment in Park Slope (our windows are the top two close together. It is a brownstone that was built in 1910 (featured on brownstoner.com) - our space is on the 4th floor with roof rights. It's been a whirlwind of a week as we saw the place last Tuesday night and have an executed contract as of yesterday night. Getting into contract in 4 business days for a Co-op is pretty darn quick in NYC. The Seller had a deadline of today, so we met that for him. Below are some photos from my walk-through with the inspector last Friday. The kitchen with the ladder to the attic/roof down. We are planning on gutting it and installing something cleaner/more modern. When I say "cleaner" I am referring to 'sanitary' not aesthetics (although truthfully, it will be both).

 This is the fire place in the master bedroom. Love the detail.

 This is Hudson's new bedroom (with a closet!). The inspector is making sure the window works.

 Love the old door knobs and 5 panel doors! I want to soak them in bleach or Simple Green.

 Check out the molding in the master bedroom!

 The bathroom has to be redone due to some missing tiles and wet drywall by the tub.

 This is the skylight that has to be cleaned in the bathroom. It's in good shape though!

So we are renovating directly after closing (hopefully by mid to late September). In the meantime, we are moving in to the 12-foot wide house! Our friends M+B have 2 extra bedrooms and an extra bathroom on the 4th floor that they are not using and are letting us move in at the end of this month to save money for renovations. We know that this process has been blessed as everything could not have worked out more perfectly. We saw the place Tuesday night - an accepted offer by Wednesday. The inspection was Friday and he turned around the report in a day. The lawyer has been excellent at highlighting the risks and putting together a contract quickly. Our mortgage broker has been turning around the necessary paperwork and our kind friends have offered us a place to stay and save money for the renovations. And we got a deal on a place with great bones and in an excellent location (in a good school district for Hudson later on! so glad we don't have to save for private school now...).  The other thing we are looking forward to is having dinner at our kitchen table - not a picnic on the bed. And did I mention we have roof rights? That pretty much sealed the deal for Dave. He's always wanted outdoor space.

And now for some gratuitous baby pictures. We went to the tot lot on Saturday & Sunday. It's amazing how much bigger Hudson is getting.

Hudson decided to try to climb up the slide...

..Amazingly enough, he made it!

turn off the lights!

Sometimes the sun is just too bright. Especially when Hudson's bedtime is 7:15pm and the sun doesn't set till almost 9 (It's been hard to read The Going to Bed Book - "The sun has set not long ago" when your apartment looks like it is 3pm with the shades down!). We've been hearing him toss and turn and whine till almost 8:30 some nights because it's too bright to go to sleep.

We've recently made some updates that has been a huge help (Hudson sleeps longer which is *always* a good thing). We went to Ikea a couple weekends ago with our friends M+B and picked up some black out shades.

I proceeded to chop up a shade to line our existing roman shades (we couldn't mount long panels because there is a radiator cover in the way and short drapes look silly). I used 'stitch witchery' to seam the edges and cut unfinished buttonholes in the back to accommodate the exiitng hardware and sewed the liner to the bamboo shade.

That's Dave re-hanging the shade. I'm sure my mother is asking why, why didn't I use the sewing machine? Truth is that is long gone (a CL sell a year ago) to make room for baby. Sometimes you gotta make do with what you've got and I have an iron board and mad ironing skillz ;).  You may be wondering why is it night outside? Well, Saturday night is our in-house "date night" we put the baby to bed in our bedroom and take over the living dining room to ourselves - make a leisurely dinner and watch a movie. Come bedtime, we either transfer baby, or blow up the air mattress and camp out in the living room. I know - it's the small things in life.

Anywho... below is the final shot. It's hard to tell with the flash, but the liners do cut out most of the light (see the bright sun along the edges?)! We figure it will be great insulation in the winter (and our electric bill has gone down even with all the AC usage :)).

The other improvement to the living arrangements has been adding a curtain to the entrance to the living room. The sunlight from the kitchen was reflecting off the artwork in the hall and still bringing in light to Hudson's sleeping area. A sample from work and 'stitch witchery' and the iron did their magic and we had the shade installed. I got the hardware off of west elm including the drapery clips (a decorator's best friend!) in the gunmetal finish. I liked that the hardware relates the dark bookcase. Below are the open & closed photos. The drape relates to the color of the sofa (it's a light color, but doesn't blend too much with the wall) and looks good open during the day and does it's job at night! Dave installed the rod with lead anchors in our plaster walls as Hudson loves to tug on things. I wonder if he will think his name is "no touch!" soon? Ah, the joys of the active baby!

And we can't have a blog post without at least one baby photo...

irony in ivory

As an expectant mother, I didn't consider a changing table as a necessity. It seemed like 'another piece of furniture' that you didn't need. After reading this post from a child grows in brooklyn, and reading more from the 'baby bargains' book, a changing height surface is a back saver - especially when you are going through ten plus diapers a day.


So I put my friend A* on the hunt (I was exhausted after all that crib research). I gave her dimensions of the space available as well as the dimensions of a standard changing pad. We wanted a simple clean-lined piece for $100 or less that would relate to our crib and our other furniture. Turns out A* is a first-class craigslist scavenger as she found this dresser for $75.

As we were unloading it off of the seller's truck we were pleasantly surprised with the quality of the piece - all drawers were dovetailed and solid wood - the drawers only fit in their assigned opening and the beading detail was quite pretty. The finish had seen better days, but it had beautiful lines. Then we opened the drawer and found the Baker Furniture insignia. The irony was lost on no one.

So Dave painted the piece up - the antique brass hardware is a stunning contrast. We think it turned out quite well and the storage it provides will be invaluable.

                      

the plan

So making room in a one bedroom apartment for a baby is a challenge. We knew we did not want the baby in our bedroom, so we decided to make a 'baby zone' in our living space. The challenge was keeping the areas discrete as we hope to still entertain at some point after our bundle of joy arrives. Selection of each of the pieces of furniture had to be careful as not to overpower the room and not feel too 'baby-ish' but still be welcoming and stimulating for Ella-Hudson. We will detail our finds in the coming posts.