00:00Hi, my name's Allison. Welcome to my sweet duplex. I mean digs. Come on in and check it out.
00:05I live in Harlem with my boyfriend Matt. Our rent is $2,750 a month, which we split.
00:11Overall, I think it's horribly inflated, but you know, for here it's good.
00:17It's also an improvement from our last apartment, which was about $200 or $300 more a month.
00:22It was probably about half the square footage that this is.
00:25I think the space is probably 1,200 square feet.
00:27Does that include the garden?
00:28With the garden, I would say maybe a couple hundred more.
00:31We moved in about five months ago from a much smaller apartment on the Upper West Side.
00:36We moved to New York from Kentucky, so there was maybe a bit of a sticker shock.
00:41I actually have a house there, so it was weird to move from a house that I own to an
00:44apartment
00:44that I have to rent for way, way, way more money every month.
00:53So you enter straight into our dining room here, which connects to the kitchen and bar area.
01:00I feel like we split the cooking pretty evenly.
01:02We do not split the cleaning.
01:04Matt does most of it.
01:05I really hate doing the dishes.
01:06I do the dishes probably nine out of ten times.
01:09She uses 19 spoons a day probably, being liberal there, I think.
01:13I like anything that can go in one dish or a pot or the crock pot.
01:17I like things that are more involved.
01:18I like making pasta, some heavier dishes.
01:20One item that we have here that is tied to our relationship is this French menu that I bought
01:24from Matt was the first thing I ever bought him, because he had been living in Paris for
01:28a year before we met.
01:29It was an awesome way to sort of, you know, let me know how much he liked me.
01:32I really liked it.
01:33What would you say our favorite part of the neighborhood is?
01:35Personally, the commute down to 59th Street, where I work, super, super easy.
01:38I guess my favorite part of the neighborhood is how accessible the north side of Central Park
01:43is, because it's not quite as manicured as maybe the middle of it is, and I really like
01:47that kind of wild feeling, because it feels like you can explore and get lost in it.
01:52And then through here is our bedroom.
01:54The worst part about living in this apartment is probably that you have to walk through the
01:58bedroom to get to the bathroom.
02:00It kind of is unfortunate when we have guests stay over.
02:02Compared to our last apartment, we had a bed that was lofted, so you had to walk up a
02:08rickety ladder to get to it.
02:09In comparison, this one seems so much better.
02:12But it's nice that it's spacious, because we have a queen-sized bed now, and if we wanted
02:16to put a king in here, we could.
02:17So the worst part about living with Matt is that he's under the impression that I absorb about
02:21three-quarters of this bed at night, which is not true.
02:25I absolutely stick to my half, but it's a source of tension.
02:29I think she actually lies completely horizontal, so she takes up 100% of the bed, for the record.
02:36I would love to take credit for the wallpaper behind me, but that was actually put in by
02:40our landlord before we moved in.
02:42And over here, we have our very small bathroom.
02:45Hopefully, in our next move, we'll have one that's a little bit nicer and isn't in the
02:50bedroom, especially because I consider this to be sort of a sanctuary for me, which basically
02:55just means I like drinking in the shower.
02:57This is our terrace outside of our bedroom that has a spiral staircase leading down to
03:02the garden area.
03:03There's nothing out there yet, but I'm hoping to put in some fairy lights and hanging gardens.
03:08And then we can head back through here to the living room.
03:09We found the majority of our furniture on Craigslist, but I think it's nice to buy something off
03:15of somebody else because they need the money, I need the furniture, and it's good for the
03:21planet to give something a second life.
03:23For the trash finds, just kind of go out on trash day and wander between the suburban rows
03:28of houses.
03:28You're guaranteed to find something.
03:30I moved to New York City for my master's, which was in History of Design and Curatorial Studies.
03:34I don't think that my budget is quite matched up with my tastes.
03:38Just having studied, like, extremely high-end design in school because that's sort of all
03:43you look at.
03:44So my favorite home find is probably this chair from Crate and Barrel originally, and
03:49I spent maybe three days pulling the stains out of it.
03:52I remember the vacuum was on for like three days straight.
03:54Just like Allison down here trying to get the stains out, but it works.
03:57It looks really, really beautiful.
03:58My favorite home find is probably this lamp we got.
04:00It's a floor lamp from Ikea.
04:01We got off Craigslist for around $15.
04:03Our most sentimental piece of furniture is probably the coffee table, which your dad made for us.
04:08It's beautiful.
04:09It's this live edge table with hairpin legs.
04:11My father's a woodworker, and when we moved in together, he gave us this table as a gift,
04:15as a keepsake, so super sentimental for us.
04:16You might have noticed there's a ton of wall space down here, and a lot of our furniture
04:21is sort of white and cream.
04:23So instead of buying something, I'm actually a trained artist.
04:27So I just went and bought a canvas and painted this huge painting behind me to try to bring
04:32some more life into this space.
04:34It took me several months to do it, but that was probably owed to my own neuroticism about
04:40the colors and shifting those back and forth all the time.
04:43Our strategy for finding this apartment was kind of just, let's hit every button on StreetEasy
04:49that we want, but we don't actually think it's going to be attainable.
04:53And this was the only place that came up, so we jumped in the subway and came up here
04:57and signed the papers.
04:58We met on Tinder about four years ago.
05:00He was the first person that I went out with, and I think it was the same for you, and
05:05we
05:05went to a coffee shop on a Sunday morning.
05:08It went really well.
05:09The best part about living together is that I get to see you all the time.
05:13Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I love your company, so it's great.
05:17Yeah, we used to do long distance, which was really, really hard, and now that we have a space
05:20to share together that's big and beautiful, it makes it a lot easier, I think, on a relationship.
