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Refinery29
  • 8 years ago
On this week’s Sweet Digs, we check out the Harlem 2 bedroom apartment of Rachel Herron. Her and her roommate pay $2,480 a month for a space that is calm with great lighting. Watch this episode of Sweet Digs to see how Rachel lives!

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High rent, small spaces, nosy neighbors — we put up with A LOT of things to live where we love. In Sweet Digs, Refinery29 gets a peek inside the homes of the coolest people we know, from tiny studios to sprawling houses, and ask the real questions like, "Wait, how much is your rent?"

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Transcript
00:00Hey there I'm Rachel and welcome to My Sweet Digs. I'm from Maryland so make
00:03sure to keep an eye out for all of my Maryland Easter eggs in my apartment
00:06and before you come in subscribe down below. All right let's go. I live in a
00:12two-bedroom apartment in Harlem with my roommate Remy. We spend $24.80 collectively
00:17in rent and that's $12.40 a piece. I think that's a really good deal. In my
00:21last apartment I was living with three other people and I was spending just a
00:25hundred dollars less. We get great space, great light, utilities are included. I
00:29think it's pretty good. The living room area I wanted to make sure that it was
00:34comfortable and clean but also inspired a lot of creativity and didn't feel too
00:39stuffy because I work from home primarily. My biggest splurge for the apartment was
00:43definitely the couch. I saw this green velvety couch on Wayfair and I just
00:48thought well that's delicious and I have to have it for my apartment. About a 650
00:52bucks but I knew it would be worth it in the end. I'm happy to say that this is
00:56not a television shame household. We have a TV in every room and that's great so we
01:02feel comfortable watching a show together in the morning or in the
01:04evening or something like that but if I want to binge a show on my own I feel
01:09comfortable doing that in my room. I was very lucky when it came to finding an
01:12apartment because my boyfriend lives in this building just 23 floors upstairs. I
01:17found a broker on StreetEasy who works exclusively with the building. I told him
01:21my boyfriend lives here I really want to live here so that anytime there's an opening
01:25available just let us know before it's even on the market which is what
01:28happened. Even before I moved into this apartment I still lived in Harlem. I just
01:32lived about four blocks away. I just love how this neighborhood in particular still
01:37feels like a community. I say hi to my neighbors and I see them walking down the
01:41street and I'm not afraid to stop and talk to them even though the neighborhood is
01:45changing and expanding it really has that old-school vibe to it. And this is the
01:51kitchen. When it comes to the design of my apartment my roommate and I really did a
01:5950-50 split when it comes to furniture so she got this dining room table. I think
02:03she got it from Ikea as well as the chairs. I've always wanted a bar cart in my
02:07place so when we moved in here I knew we had to get one. So I have wine glasses,
02:12port glasses, martini glasses, whiskey glasses. And usually when people see that
02:17they're like man look at all these glasses you must love to entertain. I do. I love
02:22to entertain myself every night. My first job ever was in the restaurant industry.
02:26I actually worked at a fine dining restaurant when I was 16 years old so
02:30I've always wanted to live somewhere that had an amazing kitchen so I had a
02:35separate space to prep and cook while my roommate was in here and we don't feel
02:39like we're on top of each other. There's actually too much space. We have some
02:42cabinets in this kitchen that don't have anything in them because we don't have
02:46anything to put in them which is a good problem to have. I love a really nice
02:50neat kitchen. Nothing bugs me more than coming in in the morning and seeing a
02:54bunch of stuff all over the kitchen. However I will say that because we have
02:58this nice big island the corner of the countertop is okay for piling things like
03:03keys letters you know when you come home and you check the mail stuff like that.
03:07My favorite thing to cook right now is this slow cooked pot roast in a crock
03:11pot with a lot of root vegetables like carrots potatoes onions garlic rosemary
03:16thyme lemon everything that makes food tasty. In my last apartment I had a very
03:22large bathroom that I enjoyed. This one not so much. I would love a free standing tub
03:28because I love to take baths. And then a separate space to shower. I'm quite tall I'm
03:33about 5'10 5'11 so I don't really fit in the bath that feels more of like a kid
03:39bathing in the sink which isn't super fun or relaxing but hey.
03:44This is my room. I work from home a lot so I'm in my apartment almost all day and I
03:50really wanted to make sure that my room was a nice cozy zenned out sanctuary. The
03:56first thing that I wanted to do was fill the room with a bunch of plants. I love
04:00plants. I love green. I like it to feel like the space is really alive. I also
04:04wanted to keep it quite minimalist so that it feels very relaxing to be here
04:10and it doesn't encourage me to make a lot of a mess. I built almost everything in
04:14my room myself. The shelves that I did that was a bit of a challenge. I built the
04:21shelves with my boyfriend actually. We built one shelf that holds my TV
04:25together and it took almost two hours and I thought we were gonna break up so
04:29then a few days later I was here and I wanted to put up the second shelf myself
04:33and I did it in like 15 minutes. Maybe I should never build things with him or
04:39possibly that experience helped me to learn what not to do. The most
04:42sentimental thing in my apartment are all of the different tributes to my home
04:46state of Maryland and the city of Baltimore. My favorite Maryland recipes a
04:51cookbook. I like following the recipes from that book and making them my own which
04:54just means adding more seasoning. I also have a Baltimore pennant pillow in my
04:59room. There's a Baltimore Ravens winter cap that I actually got the last time I
05:03was at a Baltimore Ravens game. I think that's all of the Baltimore things in my
05:07room. I would describe my home style as a zenned out minimalist creative pad. Natural
05:15tones, woods, white. My home style was definitely inspired by this family that I
05:20babysit for downtown. The dad is a photographer and the mom is an artist,
05:25graphic designer. They have a really nice warm industrial minimalist chic
05:30apartment that has a lot of industrial piping and wood shelving. Natural tones, it's
05:35not a ton of color in their apartment but I was very into that. Living in the same
05:39building as my boyfriend is actually perfect. I feel like it's a nice
05:43compromise of sort of living together but also having my own space. It's a nice
05:47baby step before living together. I met my boyfriend Barry on Tinder. We actually
05:53went to this French restaurant that's just two blocks away called Maison Harlem
05:57for our first date and it was really cute and really nice and now we go there all
06:02the time for brunch and dinner and we sit at the bar and the staff knows us
06:06pretty well so that's fun. I went to school here, I went to NYU and I've lived all
06:10around the city. I've had great apartments for different reasons but this is the
06:14best combination of everything. I love the space, I love that I'm only sharing it
06:18with one other person. This is my favorite apartment that I've ever lived in.