apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

So while sitting here with an incipient cold eating my brain cells, I've been comparing photos of a pal's income property when he bought it (staged for sale) versus how it looks now after five months of tenants (don't ask)... And I'm coming down with this terrible urge to "stage" rooms. You know, the open cookbook and the jars of oil on the counter... the artfully folded towels... is this something that a little more Advil would cure? Or is this a sign that it's time to look for new kitchen towels?

Don't forget the batch of cookies or apple pie in the oven to give that staged room a cozy, homespun vibe. I laugh when I see that on home-selling shows but then I realize how weak I am to that sort of sales pitch!

(waiting for a chocolate-scented car interior to get me to actually respond positively to the "what can I do to put you in a car today, lil' missy?" line)

Wende - My personal cold-easing method is boiling fresh ginger then straining it into a nice comfy mug and adding a bit of honey. Bundle up and get well soon! :^ )

Mmmmm... that ginger sounds wonderful! I'll have to see if the corner store has any. Thank you!

We just bought our first house (hooray!) and the realtor staged a bit, even though it was empty. (Halloween candy and leaves on the kitchen counter, dimmers on, fluffy towels in the bathrooms, fragrance diffusers in the outlets, etc.) It did actually make this house more welcoming and memorable, and it cost very little.

We bought it because everything else in our price range was horrible, though.

I'd love to get into space staging as a sideline, after seeing some of those winners.

I dunno...I think hot rum makes a much better cold remedy. Or you just pass out and don't care.

~*~*~*~feel better vibes for wende~*~*~*~

I feel bereft. I have nothing to report but how hard I've been working...on actual work stuff. Bleargh.

Oh, and I broke the glass sculptural lamp that I bought to replace the one I broke last year.

I know glass furniture and accessories are hip and all that, but some of us just shouldn't be allowed anywhere near such things.

I've kept the innards from both lamps. I'm just going to try making something with bamboo bloody placemats.

I am redoing my closet to make better use of the space, besides the hardware that was installed in there was falling off the wall. Went to Lowes last night and I am officially converted! No more Home Depot for me! They have so much cool stuff in there, and everyone was majorly helpful!

We didn't get home til 10:45 so the closet is halfway finished but I am loving it so far.

I'm probably going to Home-a-Rama this weekend. Usually the houes are very grandiose multi-million dollar homes, with huge home theater rooms and cathedral ceilings, etc. This year they are having it in a kind of icky part of town, I guess trying to show "affordable urban culture." Some of the houses are only 1300 sq feet. I'm really looking forward to it, I might actually be able to take some of the decorating ideas they're using and put them into context within my own little (1000 sq foot) space.

Home-a-Rama should be linked. Oops.

http://www.tbaonline.org/homearama/

Amber, I have no idea what the neighborhood is like, but I suddenly have a hankering to live on Princess Anne Road!

Yeah they have totally revamped this one little area just for this event. But seriously, the neighborhoods around it, and that whole area, aren't good. They are really trying to clean some parts of Norfolk up, which I like. But in the process they are tearing down historic buildings and gorgeous old houses to put up new "luxury condos" and such, which I hate.

My idea of actually re-vitalizing a neighborhood is to take gorgeous historical old buildings which have managed to find themselves in a state of burned-out hollowness, but where at least the facade is still pretty, but completely inhabitable and creating nice places for people to live.

But to tear down old buildings, for new ones, I think the old building had better be pretty uninteresting ones, or in a complete shambles; and if so, it's nice when they at least acknowledge the architectural elements of its predecessor.

They sort of did that for that building on the northwest corner of Broadway and 42nd St., where that building that used to be that looked like the Art Deco skating rink in the movie Xanadu. So, that kind of made me less upset that they tore the old one down.

Sorry to break with the topic, but I'm wondering if anyone can help me with the bind I'm in?

I need to get quotes on a new countertop for my kitchen asap. I'm looking for caesar/sile stone but am willing to consider other options.

Before I award the work to a vendor who's price came in much higher than expected, I'd like to know other options.

Curtis and Amber, I totally agree. Where I am, developers practically knock each other over to get rid of old buildings, whether residential or commercial. I hate to add fuel to the Dallas-as-superficial stereotype, but there it is.

The clear-cutting/demolition is maddening, short-sighted, and conveys a lack of respect for community and history.

You should SEE what's happened to some of the quaint older neighborhoods around town. Looking at some of the houses side-by-side, it's like gazing down the Thanksgiving dinner table and seeing serene, eternal Grandma cheek-by-jowl with Daddy's new wife, you know, the one with the whack boob job and Botox.

Just - UGH.

The same sad thing is happening in Ft Lauderdale's quaint Victoria Park neighborhood, where land values are crazy. ALL the new construction here takes the new houses to within INCHES of the lot lines, and new code requires elevation, so the houses are all an odd three-story design, all very bad pseudo-Spanish that ends up just looking like Pirates of the Caribbean McMansions...

It's not SO bad now, but when every single lot is filled, it will be hideous, with no trees and no privacy.

City Planners (if we can call them that, there) should be forced to walk a faux-wood plank...

So sad, since Ft Lauderdale really (other than that) has its act together.

Anne, I feel ya. The abandoned buildings around Downtown Dallas can be vamped. The old Business Magnet high school building can be something really cool, but it just sit there. I'm kind of upset that the "revamping" of Downtown does not have a plan for multi income living. I would love to own a loft there, but it's not worth the price if Downtown is a ghost town. The new condo shuffle is half hazard and lack true city planning. After moving back to Dallas after living 10 years in Chicago, I find it frustrating.

I forgot to express my anger at the boom of McMansions. I hate them.

i have a question about the I've Got Color Contest
why, WHY? are all the rooms so RETRO?
blech, it makes my tummy hurt!!!!
why is it so hard to use color in a modern way without making it look like the spawn of a longago decade who's time has come and gone?
is there no way to use color in a way that screams 2005, as opposed to 1955?

just a thought....
*a

When I first moved into my apt. on 43rd and 10th Ave. I had a great view of the Hudson River/NJ. But with new rezoning going into effect, NYC is turning this 'hood into the "new" midtown west. Apt. buildings and commercial highrises are going up everywhere. I hate it! In the next few years it will be a huge concrete jungle over here and the quaint, smaller buildings will be a thing of the past. Thanks, Bloomberg!

Chris, are you looking for different choices in countertop materials? Of course there's always stainless steel. Or you could do it yourself and use copper sheeting. Just wrap and nail. My favorite is concrete countertops but it may be too cost prohibitive.

Oh, no, P2! I LOVE Victoria Park, and I especially love the little bungalows. I always used to pick out "my future house" when I was in high school, although I never actually planned on sticking around after graduation.

And Ann, I don't think all the entries are so retro, but I guess that's just a difference of opinion. I think Enrique's has retro elements, but they are updated to be modern, and there's another older house, in which I think modern would be thoroughly out of place.

chris – where are you located? if you're in the ny/nj area, call elite granite in freehold nj (or thereabouts). they're doing my countertop in ceaserstone and their price – including installation – was less than some nyc places wanted just for the material.

Okay, guess I'll have to walk the plank, since I'm a city planner! Actually, I work as a consultant in that field, and am a planner by schooling which I decided to do after living in a world where stuff that was happening was just so WRONG. Not to absolve planners from anything, but most planners I know want the right kind of stuff but are powerless to do anything. In many municipalities (most actually, which is why I'm in the private sector), planning just isn't given any priority in government, so even the well-intentioned planners can't do their jobs and become just another part of the bureaucratic development hurdle. The people who need to be criticized are the people who are building the houses in the first place or buying them...which then can bring it down to advertisers who encourage us to acquire more and more stuff and larger and larger houses (like all those frickin' HGTV shows). What kills me about the mcmansions moving into the older neighborhoods is that half the time people moving there are doing so because it's "so quaint", and then they go about ripping that to shreds. Someone mentioned buildings where they keep the facades and build behind...I actually really dislike that...because it's so faux. And, that only usually happens in cases where the market is really hot, and where the developer can get some kind of kickback for it. If the governments put incentives like tax abatements and things in the right places, good things can happen...but in some places, they don't have the luxury of doing that and will let anything fly. Anyway, long post because, as you can tell, it's a topic I could talk about forever!

On the issue of color looking retro... I was appalled when my friend called my bedroom a 60s love nest....I was NOT going for that look at all!

Christina, you have my total sympathy on the Powerless Planner issue! Fairly well-documented legend has it that Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, had in the 1970s an intelligent, well-designed plan for smart growth with mass transit and parks and all those goodies. However, the major city, San Jose, didn't like it -- and San Jose managed to annex huge portions of the county, so that for a while the city limits were 20 miles from the first sign of civilization. Result: uncontrolled sprawl. Ironically, the uncontrolled sprawl didn't prevent a serious housing shortage in the 1990s.

Having lived in an upstate NY 1860s brownstone for three years while struggling with rehab, I'm less opposed to facadism than I used to be. A couple bad redos (1919, 1947, and 1972 in this case), and you might as well gut it and buy someone else's historic detail.

Joe, thanks for the tip. I'm calling Elite and will let you know how it works.

I'm not looking for alternate materials, I'm looking for a second opinion since I'm not comfortable with the other estimate I got.

Christine--
Of course I did not mean YOU! I meant the evil, unscrupulous, clueless ones ruining the neighborhoods we love!! :) (but yes, shame on me for the broad-brushstroke... there's room on the plank for two!)

Actually, South Florida DOES get it right sometimes... Coral Gables and even (in its own weird way) South Beach. And of course, further North, the much ballyhooed (but largely fiscally unattainable) Seaside, Rosemary Beach, etc.

If the urban areas down there would understand the key is MIXED commercial and residential, they'd do so much better...

Ann - easy does it girl. Good question on why we aren't seeing a wider variety of styles in the contest, but no need to poo-poo the one style we ARE seeing. Anybody out there with a more, dare I say, Martha approach to color?

I'm afraid I see the issue of zoning regulations in cities such as nyc very simplistically.

As I intimated in my response in the FD thread
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/072805/food/food-fresh-direct-debate-fullfledged-food-fight-003357
I believe that the people who do not want high rises in their quaint little neighbourhoods are being selfish because the way to provide affordable housing in NYC is to relax zoning regulations to such an extent that we get thousands upon thousands of new units being built to relieve the supply/demand ratio that is tilted so far to the demand outstripping supply end of things that prices stay far too high.
If we could replace the many 5 storey buildings in Manhattan alone with multiple unit high rises then the price of entry would drop.

Like I said, I see it very simplistically, because I think most of the ppl that do not want high rises or more building are thinking less of the infrastrure's ability to support extra households and more about simply losing a view or light. There are bigger issues at hand and if, as Ptoo say, residential and commercial building was done intelligently without the huge number of restrictions that developers face in nyc (which contribute to over half the cost of housing in nyc according to a Harvard study that was done a couple of years ago) then nyc could become an affordable place to live again. It may be ugly but what do you really care about?

Don't know if it's "Martha" but my bedroom is a deep chocolate brown with dashes of pink and white accents.

After seeing the more wild colors (not that there's anything wrong with that), I wasn't sure if my Hasbrook Brown (ben moore color name) bedroom was right for the contest.

With the extension and the call for other kinds of color, I'll send mine in!

Jamie Pup, out here in the dubious West, them's fightin' words. Our brave San Franciscan ancestors decided in the 1960s that high-rises were evil. Our buildings are short; our housing prices are astronomical. (Okay, not as high as Manhattan, but in a lot of things we fall short of Manhattan.)

Now there are plans to build high-rises in old industrial areas. Two more buildings have been approved since this article (#1 and #2):
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/04/BAGMU3FRVI1.DTL&o=0
It'll be interesting to see what happens, as the planned selling prices are right up there in the traditional stratosphere.

Interesting point about high-rises, Jamie pup. It does pain me for some beautiful old buildings to be torn down for high-rises, although your point about affordable living is definitely valid. Gives me a new perspective on some of those buildings.

But, sadly, all these high-rises are aimed at the uber-ultra-luxury market. So people are losing their views AND housing is still out of reach.

Hey ptoo, that's the problem with the additional "zoning tax" that double the cost of development in NYC. With land prices easily surpassing $300 per sq ft, hard construction prices close to $200 per sqft and the cost of complying with the myriad zoning regulations around $200 per sqft with other soft costs, developers must sell at at least $1000 per sqft to just break even. Hence the glut ultra-luxury developments that are coming on stream now and in the next 18 months.

Therealdeal.net had some numbers that showed the actual number of permits issued for new condos and the numbers for 2004/2005 were far higher than in years past. This should ease the supply problem but with construction costs being so high, the units are the same ultra luxury $1000-$1500 per sqft units I and ptoo are talking about.

These two links provide the summary and the detail of the Harvard report I was talking about and the basic gist is that the cost of complying with the zoning regulations in NYC double the cost of nyc homes.

http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/070468.html

http://post.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/glaeser/papers/Manhattan.pdf

It is a supply and demand issue. Housing prices always are and if there were vastly more supply then prices would come down. I know that will not happen in my lifetime but it's still worth knowing about the issues at hand.

some more reading material here:
http://www.felixsalmon.com/000340.php
and, yep, I am jammypup over there.

I just wanna share this with someone other than my mom...

I've had a minor leak from the upstairs apartment for a while, and although I know that my ceiling will fall in eventually, I never really took a look until earlier today. There were these dark spots above my moulding that I always stared at from my bathtub, but I couldn't tell what was going on up there from the ground. So this morning, I got out the ladder and poked at some of the cracks and strange things on my ceiling and upper walls. I had two little woodland black-capped mushrooms growing from the top of my window moulding. My upstairs neighbor has been snotty to my super, so he was really happy to tell her that she has to pay for my walls and ceiling.

Mary--EWWWWWW!

As for zoning, etc...as much of a critic as I am of zoning regs, they were started for a reason, because of "air and light" issues in the early 20th century, so dispensing of them completely doesn't seem like a good idea (look at houston). Actually, NY is so much better on that than most of the country, because of the land scarcity and desirability of manhattan. There are places that are ri-di-culous so that you can't even put a restaurant anywhere near, god forbid, a home! OH the humanity!

I don't mean to spam, but I just got this email at work, and thought maybe some people would be interested. You have to donate by 8pm tonight (Friday the 14th) which was too fast for me, but someone might be able to do it.

Please donate winter items for the earthquake victims.

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) has offered to fly supplies out to Pakistan from New York City. With temperatures dropping to near freezing in northern Pakistan and 5 million people (est.) left homeless, we will be collecting winter clothing and blankets to send to those in need. DIL and YOUR DIL have been designated by the Pakistani Consulate to certify the contents of packages sent and will deliver the items to PIA.

We will collect items at various locations around the city (see below for
details) until Friday October 14 at 8pm.

We encourage everyone to pass this around to your co-workers and friends. If you are able to, collect from other people on your own and drop items off at one of the official collection points.

This is so important. Without these supplies, there is a great danger the death toll in the region will continue to rise. Please take the time out to contribute to this effort.

Thank-you so much,


Instructions for Drop-Off

1. Choose closest collection point from those below.
2. Drop items off no later than 8pm on Friday October 14.
2. Bring clothing/blankets either in a bag or cardboard box with your contact info attached.
3. We have provided phone numbers/emails for each collection point.
Please use email when necessary, phone only if unavoidable.
4. Please leave items with doorman if no one is home.

Items We Need

Blankets (Used or New)
Sweaters (Used or New)
Sweatshirts (Used or New)
Jackets/Coats (Used or New)

NEW Socks
NEW Thermals
UNOPENED Over-the-counter Painkillers and Stomach Medicines (Tylenol, Advil, Immodium, etc)

*Please note that we will not accept items outside of the above list*

Collection Points

Downtown
Aamna Zaidi
250 E. Houston, Apt. 2B
B/W Ave A and Ave B
aamnazaidi@yahoo.com
Subways: F & V to 2nd Ave

Samar Shaheryar
7 E. 14th St, Apt 702
B/W 5th and Union Square West
samar88@gmail.com
917-887-9788
Subways: 1/2/3/9/4/5/6/L/F to 14th St.

Midtown East
Kashif Akhtar
184 Lexington Ave, Apt 6c
B/W 31st and 32nd
Kash.Akhtar@csfb.com
917-683-6786
Subways: 6 to 33rd
St.

Midtown West
Moniza Shaikh
World Wide Plaza, Apt. 3N
393 West 49th street
Corner of 9th avenue
moniza_shaikh@yahoo.com
314-651-3234
Subways: C/E on 50th & 8 Ave, 1/9 on 50th & Broadway, N/R/W on 49th & 7th Avenue

Upper Eastside
Najmi Sarwar
300 E. 77th St., Apt 27A
SE corner of 2nd Ave
najmi@4dil.org
212-396-9777
Subways: 6 to 77th St.

Upper Westside
Rishm Najm
55 West End Ave, Apt 2J
Corner of 62nd
rishmnajm@gmail.com
240-606-8797
Subways: 1 at 59th St./Columbus Circle

Teachers College, Columbia University
120th Street
Between Broadway and Amsterdam
Subway: 1 at 125th St.

New Jersey

Omar Qari
689 Marin Blvd Unit 1106
Jersey City, NJ
Directions: First right out of the Holland Tunnel onto Marin Blvd (Zephyr Lofts will be the last building on the left) omar.qari@gmail.com
201-675-2244



For AOPP Projects and Membership visit http://aopp.org/member.htm Donate Generously, visit http://aopp.org/eq and choose who you want to donate to for the victims of Earthquake

Fiona, not that I'm trolling around all the time, but THAT is one show stopper of a comment. Wow.