This Couple Removed Their Bedroom Door to Make a 415-Square-Foot Apartment Work

“We rented this apartment sight unseen while relocating from Los Angeles to New York City. We knew we wanted to live in Brooklyn, but beyond that, we didn’t have much to go on,” begins C.J. Bennett (@crybennett on TikTok) of this 415-square-foot, one-bedroom apartment on the border of Park Slope and Gowanus.

“A friend generously toured the apartment on our behalf and told us, verbatim, “Guys, if you don’t rent this apartment, someone else will.” After speaking with their now-landlord, they went for it and rented the apartment.

In the year since C.J. and his girlfriend, Zoë (along with Friday the dog and Egon the cat), started renting this apartment, built around 1931, they’ve had to tangle with a quirky layout, add color and personality to a home they don’t own, and learn how to make a smaller-than-they-were-used-to kitchen work.

The apartment’s layout included a curved wall and a bedroom door that opened inward, something C.J. said made it surprisingly difficult to arrange furniture. “We eventually removed the bedroom door and hid it elsewhere in the apartment — don’t tell our landlord,” he admits. (While it benefited the home’s layout, it’s important to consider the potential safety implications of removing a door. Before removing a bedroom door, remember that closed doors can help slow the spread of smoke, heat, and flames during a fire. That’s why the Fire Safety Research Institute recommends sleeping with bedroom doors closed as part of its “Close Before You Doze” campaign.)

The apartment’s last tenant had left up some questionable design choices, like “ugly bronze curtain rods and dirty beige curtains.” So C.J. describes the apartment as a blank slate, but with quirks that needed to be contended with, like “a funny, patchy paint job in different shades of white and hardwood floors, which we weren’t certain had been scrubbed recently.”

There was a lot to like in the small space too, though. “We quickly fell in love with the windows and how the sun passes through the living room in the morning and into the bedroom in the evening,” he writes.

Then came personality. “My girlfriend and I both work in the arts, so we’ve always been surrounded by beautiful paintings, sculptures, and other works of art. We have brought that same energy into our home,” C.J. writes.

“We are naturally drawn to colorful pieces, and living with color is very important to us. It’s eclectic, vibrant, and completely us. It’s made up of artworks from dear friends, artists, and shows we worked on over the years.”

“It feels so special to have a story for every piece in our collection. If you ask about a painting or sculpture,  I can tell you who made it and how we came to own it. There are certainly pieces that we have that our children and our children’s children will own. They’ve become family heirlooms right before our very eyes!”

This tour’s responses and photos were edited for length/size and clarity.
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