Michelle & Jeff’s Stylish Storage-Filled NYC Apartment

Name: Michelle & Jeff
Location: Upper West Side, NYC

I am a journalist and my husband is a photographer, and we live with our two cats, Amélie and Lester. We bought this 650 square foot apartment in 2012. It is in a townhouse built in the 1890s, features a large living room and high ceilings, and is located right across the street from the beautiful Riverside Park. We always loved this part of town and were very happy when we found this place.

The only change we made in the kitchen area (above) since we moved was to replace some fluorescent tube lights with these recessed lights. It made such a difference! The rest was already like this. The saltwater fish tank is my husband’s hobby, and the pictures that we have close to the refrigerator are from São Paulo, my hometown. Jeff lived there with me for five months before we moved for good to New York, and he took both of them.

One of my favorite pieces of furniture that we have is this dining table from Organic Modernism, which features these heavy, but beautiful, brass legs. In order to break a little of its heaviness, we matched it with these Eames molded plastic chairs and with a wooden bench that we bought from TylerKingstonWoodCo, that we found through Etsy (I never thought it would be so hard to find a beautiful and affordable bench, but we finally did it). It was also hard to find pendant lights with an adjustable cord — the first ones we saw were too short —, and then we discovered Niche Modern. Prices were a bit high for our budget at the time, so we waited for their sale and made a good deal.

Couches are from ABC Carpet (the one with thin arms) and Crate & Barrel, and coffee table and floor lamps are from Restoration Hardware. In order to bring some color to the room, we bought this pistachio rug in Turkey, and this artwork from a very talented artist from my home country, Brazil (my husband Jeff is American). Also on the wall are the horns of a sable, which was given to us by my grandfather, who was a hunter in Africa during the 1940-1960s.

Our bedroom is painted in a dark gray — this color was chosen by the previous owners and we liked it, so we decided to maintain. We were lucky that the bedroom (actually, the entire place) came with all of these built-ins, so we have a lot of storage space. Our bed is from Pottery Barn and has large drawers underneath, which keep our cats away from being under the bed. Nightstands are from West Elm and these fun table lamps are from PIXO.

The canvas picture was taken by Jeff when we lived close to the Empire State. He took over 38,000 pictures of the building, which I used to call “his muse”, in order to make some time lapses. We liked this one a lot and decided to print it in canvas.

See more of Jeff’s work on his site: Jeff Alves de Lima

Thanks, Michelle & Jeff!

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