A happy home in a Brooklyn brownstone
The top floor bathroom was a real DIY mess; bright blue 70s paint was dabbed with less than what you might call care. New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos On top of that the previous owner’s obsession with partitions was most obvious in this room. Pieces of furniture had been laid with…
When we bought the house there was a covered patio jutting out of the ground floor. It was built cheaply and while it offered some protection from the cold during Winter it wasn’t a pleasant place to sit. New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos Since we knew that we wanted to make…
One day I asked Scott to close the windows and he said he already had. At that point we realised the windows were not going to cut it through the cold New York winter. New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos We were going to need double glazed windows with better seals if…
Part of my daily routine includes a bath, every day that I have time for it. It gives me time to wake up, mentally prepare for my day and stare blankly at my feet mentally processing. It’s where I get my best ideas and I credit a return to regular bathtime as one of the…
The intention with the downstairs kitchen was to modernise as quickly and reasonably priced as we could. We wanted to retain the Victorian charm while still keeping something that would appeal to the local rental market. New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos The old 1970s design choices had made the room seem…
As HGTV will tell you, demolition day is best day! Only we took about 3 weeks … There was plenty of sketchy DIY renovations that could be removed before the contractors showed up. New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos Rental Dining – Demolition New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos…
Like many traditional Victorian Brownstones Minion Manor came complete with a ground floor apartment separate from the main house. If we were going to appeal to the Brooklyn Hipster community something needed to be done about the 1970s orange and brown theme and prepare for renovations! New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos…
New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos Finding a house in Brooklyn that still had original details in a Brownstone took a lot of work most houses that were affordable had long been flipped to generic home depot tile and white formica counters. New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos After…
One of the best things we did before moving to NYC was to spend a couple of days just pottering around New York on the subway getting a feel for various neighbourhoods. After years of apartment living in Sydney and San Francisco we knew we wanted an actual house. While the large houses and commuter…