apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Name: Michele and Brad
Location: SoHo
Size: 1600 square feet 1-bedroom rental loft
Years lived in: 10 years

>> Enter Michele's Gallery!

Walking into Michele and Brad's home elicits a gasp. The gasp is a response to how much creativity, time, talent, skill, and stuff went into its assemblage. Michele is comfortable with her ability to create. After a career in fashion design, she migrated to accessories and tried her hand at sole proprietor. Since 2001, she's been creating pillows and textiles as well as amassing cool stuff for her eponymous store on Crosby Street.

Name: Susannah and Anthony
Location: Tompkinsville
Size: 2000 sqft living floor, 2000 sqft rental apt on 2nd floor, 2000 sqft ground floor (garage), 1800 sqft basement in a semi-converted 19th century firehouse
Years lived in: 2 years

>> Enter Anthony's Gallery!

Anthony grew up in Staten Island but spent most of his adult life in a small rental apartment the East Village. He never envisioned returning to his home island but when he heard about a firehouse for sale, he couldn't resist. Now that he and his family are settled in, and Anthony's sister moved around the corner into a great old Victorian, their mother cannot contain her joy. And the New York City real estate market never ceases to amaze...

Name:Tom and Justin
Location: Brooklyn Heights
Size: 1-bdrm, 410 sqft. co-op in a 1918 landmark apartment building
Years lived in: 6 months

>> Enter Tom and Justin's Gallery!

This is Tom's first owned home and first renovation. An art dealer, Tom is confident of his tastes and preferences, but never had to think about sink faucets and custom cabinetry configurations before. Without reading a single home decor blog, Tom plunged ahead and made hundreds of design decisions on his own...

Name: Jae (architect/interior designer)
Location: SoHo
Size: 3-bdrm, 2600 sqft. condo
Years lived in: 4 months

>> Enter Jae's Gallery!

Jae is an up and coming architect whose housetour you may recall or whose shoe vault you may covet. Or you may have seen him wax poetic at our Small Space Design Meetup last year. Jae recently completed the design and build of a vast loft in SoHo for a client who gave him nearly free reign...

Name: Bradley
Location: Upper West Side
Size: 800 sqft. 1-bdrm co-op
Years lived in: 9 years

>> Enter Bradley's Gallery!

Bradley "feels at home as a foreigner" in New York City. That is why, after moving here five years ago from South Africa, Bradley believes he's here to stay. To compensate for lingering homesickness and South African pride, however, Bradley keeps importing mementos from his country of origin....

Name: Lance and Harry
Location: Murray Hill
Size: 350 square feet rent-controlled studio
Years lived in: 20 years

>> Enter Lance and Harry's Gallery!

One of the first things I asked was how many storage units Harry and Lance rented. Here were two people who had managed to merge their lives, their pets, and their possessions in a less than spacious, late 19th century studio. Built one notch up from a tenement, these Murray Hill units were billed as 'Parisian Flats.' The result is a very narrow, long apartment with plumbing but no light.

Name: Nina
Location: West Village
Size: 450 square feet sublet
Years lived in: 1.5 years

>> Enter Nina's Gallery!

Nina's last apartment was very frilly and pink. This apartment is much more on the opposite end of the stereotypically gendered design spectrum. And Nina loves it that way and feels at home. In addition to being an interior designer, Nina writes a design blog and is about to launch a small design store in NoLita! None of this, however, has stopped Nina from turning her studio sublet into an oasis of comfort and beauty...

In the past two weeks, The New York Times has featured a couple of people who might seem familiar to extra attentive and loyal Apartment Therapy fans. If you read the Home & Garden section, you would have seen a cover page feature on 'fantasy girl' house tour host, Giulia...

Name: Kimberly
Location: Greenwich Village, New York City
Size: 950 square feet mini-loft
Years lived in: 10 years

>> Enter Kimberly's Gallery!

Kimberly — who you will remember from House Call: Kimberly's Renovated Loft — is an architect who bought an apartment a decade ago in a gorgeous landmark cast-iron building. She lived in it as a grad student for a number of years, and then once she mustered the budget and courage to take it on, she transformed it into a shrine to her principles of professional practice...

Name: Nicole
Location: Clinton Hill, Brooklyn
Size: 800 sqft 1-bdrm in a turn of the century brownstone
Years lived in: 4 years

>> Enter Nicole's Gallery!

"We like the monastic style," says Nicole's husband. The first thing one notices upon entering the apartment (first seen as an AT House Call) is the seemingly infinite ceiling height, the extra ornate original woodwork and that the furniture is just the opposite &mdash low to the ground and utterly simple. For every twist and turn of the carved wood, there is a stark right angle and sleek line in a piece of furniture...

Name: Scott
Location: Edgewater, NJ
Size: 2-bdrm, 1400 sqft house
Years lived in: 6 years

>> Enter Scott's Gallery!

One can't help but notice an inordinate amount of outdoor furniture in Scott's patio. He can comfortably seat at least a dozen people. Scott loves to host and can do so at a moment's notice. He has service for dozens, glassware for masses, and enough holiday decorations to put the average urban dweller to shame.

Name: Christiane, Joshua, Isabelle, William and Jake (the 12 yr old lab)
Location: Soho
Size: 3200 sqft. 3-bdrm condo
Years lived in: 2 years in the un-renovated space and 3 years in the renovated home

>> Enter Christiane and Joshua's Gallery!

After learning that she rubbed every piece of fabric considered for the decor of the apartment on her dog to see if showed the lab's blond hair, I realized that saying Christiane has an uncanny attention to detail is a vast understatement. Christiane, owner and founder of Dwell Studio, has the patience, fortitude, style, and skill to take on over 3000 square feet with aplomb.

Name: Diana and Mark
Location: Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, NY
Size: 860 sqft. 1-bdrm condo
Years lived in: almost 3 years

>> Enter Diana and Mark's Gallery!

Some seriously loyal Apartment Therapy fans may remember Diana's first house tour back in 2006. Since then, she got married to a musician/filmmaker and bought an apartment in a beautifully restored seminary faculty housing. So, again, Diana is faced with assimilating a modern leaning aesthetic into the turn of the century detail of a classic Brooklyn brownstone.

Name: Margaret
Location: Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Size: 775 sqft. 3-room rental
Years lived in: less than 1 year

>> Enter Margaret's Gallery!

Last time we met Margaret, she was unpacking. Since that house tour, Margaret has worked hard and it shows! She painted and purged, found a place for all her things, bought and installed strategic lighting, and rearranged to make the best use of a somewhat unusual layout. Margaret let us know that it is still a work in progress and that she is open to suggestions...