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I’VE LANDED in my friend’s daughter’s room, vacant since Liana moved to London. It’s cozy here, with my pile of belongings in the corner, private bathroom, and great wireless connection. I feel like I’m traveling, in the neighborhood where I’ve lived for 30 years.
But there’s a fine line between peripatetic and pathetic, I realized as I pushed a shopping cart filled with the valuables I didn’t want to entrust to storage (family photos, jewelry, etc.) over here the other night.
The move out of Dean Street yesterday went fine. Six weeks in preparation, it took 4 men 4 hours to load a duplex worth of furnishings onto a truck and take it off to a warehouse. I lingered at the empty apartment after they’d gone, shedding a few tears and taking a few pictures.
This will be hard to replace
Then I went to look at an apartment in Cobble Hill. I’ve narrowed my search now to a parlor floor - that IS the best part of a brownstone – though I’d prefer a different neighborhood, a slight change of venue without a major culture shock. Say, Fort Greene (which one broker sniffed was ‘overpriced,’ and based on what I’ve seen there, he may be right) or Prospect Heights, which was astonishingly beautiful the other afternoon, when I went to see a parlor floor on Prospect Place, laden with gorgeous woodwork but narrow and brutally chopped up into small, dark rooms (overpriced as well at $2,500).
Good address: Prospect Place between Carlton and Vanderbilt
The problem is architectural travesty and it’s widespread. I’ve grown to shudder at the Craigslist buzzphrase “gut renovated.”
The 900 square foot parlor floor on Henry between Kane and Degraw in Cobble Hill ($2,300) had the
Fluted Corinthian columns, hopeless layout
proportions I’m looking for, and the detail (nice plasterwork, right, no mantels) but, oh, the stupidity of the layout. I can live with a minuscule kitchen and bath, both tucked into the space at the back of the front hall, but not with the sheetrock walls and closets with hollow-core doors popping out of the once-grand space to divide it into three un-grand parts.
Today, I see two others, more if I can find them. Meanwhile, the Springs closing is delayed by a C of O situation involving the screened porch and an “open permit,” adding to my sense of limbo. It’s the seller’s responsbility to fix; we’re waiting on an inspector from the Town of East Hampton, and God knows how long that will take.
Suddenly, I’m clinging to my cell phone, my laptop, my car. I even felt enormous affection last night for my gym locker, waiting there for me with all my own stuff in it.
I take heart from some kind and astute phone calls, e-mails, and comments I’ve received, one from a reader offering her Brooklyn place as a sublet. She made me laugh with her own tale of renovation gone wrong, which at one point left her “with a 42″ Viking range but living in my car.”
MazeDancer offered astological advice which I agree with but am finding hard to follow. “Stop looking at apartments,” she wrote, because Mercury retrograde and Saturn return are not good lease-signing indicators. Just as it’s hard to stop compulsively looking at sidewalk tag sales when you already have too much stuff, it’s hard to stop looking at apartments when you’re homeless.
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BROWNSTONE VOYEUR is a joint project of casaCARA and Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn, taking you behind Brooklyn’s intriguing facades to see what’s inside. Look for it every Thursday on both sites.
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REBECCA COLE, a well-known, Manhattan-based garden designer and sometime interior designer, decorated the hell out of this 3-bedroom pre-war apartment on Eastern Parkway, with the blessings of her adventurous clients.
A couple in their 50s with grown kids, this is their empty nest. They moved from Connecticut and settled in Brooklyn to enjoy city life, calling on Rebecca to create a place that would be so much fun to live in they wouldn’t regret leaving their former home.
Among the standout features:
- Brave, bold color in unusual combos like pink, brown, and chartreuse
- Hand-stenciling on walls instead of wallpaper
- The use of garden furniture indoors
- Thrift shop pieces re-upholstered in serious fabrics
- Playful light fixtures and accessories
Rebecca reconfigured the space somewhat, removing a wall between the kitchen and living room (you can see the new steel I-beam) and laid new wood floors. The kitchen is all-new; the piece de resistance is a fuchsia-colored Aga stove. 
She brought the garden indoors with abundant use of leaf and flower images on fabrics, wall art, and ceramic tile. The ceramic tile backsplash, printed with floral images, and the desktop in the chartreuse study, bottom, are from Rebecca’s line for Imagine Tile.
Retro rules in these soulful Brooklyn bathrooms. Whether these sinks and tubs are new or old doesn’t matter. They look old; that’s what matters.
Above: Zen-like in Prospect Heights, with a deep soaking tub and square sink set on an old Chinese cabinet. Original parquet floors are warmer than tile; red walls and shoji-like window treatment play up the Asian theme. Design: Caroline Beaupere
Left: Classic in Boerum Hill. The claw foot tub is original (it’s always easier to leave those in place and have them re-glazed). The new tile floor has an unusual herringbone pattern.
Below: The marble sink and old door (as well as flooring, windows, and almost everything else in this Clinton Hill House) came from Moon River Chattel in Williamsburg. Design: DK Holland
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