00:00Hi everyone, I'm Bitt. I'm Ash. Welcome to our Haunted Sweet Digs. Don't worry, she's a friendly ghost. Let's come
00:05check it out.
00:08We are in Bed-Stuy. We're on the ground floor of a brownstone. We pay $19.25 a month in
00:15rent. That's a really good deal for this area right now.
00:18Back in North Carolina, though, we would have paid, you know, a third of that for the same space.
00:22It's about 900 square feet. We found this place through our friend, who is now our landlord.
00:27We came to our housewarming, and it was amazing, and we asked to move in immediately.
00:35Welcome to the living room. My style is very, like, I like old things. I like things that have history,
00:41things that are, like, maybe a little bit banged up.
00:43I prefer things to be, like, clean and modern and bright.
00:46Ash always loves the mid-century modern, and I always love the Victorian stuff.
00:50Fussy. Yeah. Decorative.
00:53It has a habit of collecting old glass bottles, which is really super fine, except for the quantity.
01:02I can never get rid of them because she senses it.
01:05I just, like, feel it. I'll be in another room, and I'm like, ooh. I just got a horrible feeling
01:09just now.
01:10We like to decorate with art pieces that have been made for us by family.
01:13My great-aunt, Alta Simms, made that oil painting. It's a copy of a lithograph that would have been popular
01:20in the 1800s.
01:21My mom was getting rid of it, and I was like, don't you dare get rid of that.
01:24I got a circular saw for Ash for her birthday.
01:27I hated our old coffee table, so I was, like, immediately, next day, in the basement making a new table.
01:33I learned to build things from my dad, who grew up building things on a farm.
01:37Two-year-olds playing with circular saws. It's good.
01:39When we first moved in, this marble fireplace had been painted white, and one day we were like,
01:44I wonder what's at the bottom of all that white paint.
01:46So we got a razor blade, and we chipped some of it off, and it was, like, real Carrera marble.
01:50And we thought it was going to be, like, an hour project, like we were just going to...
01:54But no, it was a month.
01:56There were just so many layers of old paint.
01:58This is our kitchen.
01:59The space is kind of weird-shaped, and there's not a lot of counter space.
02:03Our kitchen table we got from a place called Nightwood in New York.
02:06They make custom wood pieces.
02:08This ended up being about $1,500, all told.
02:11They let us pay in multiple installments, so it wasn't, like, a huge burden.
02:15Definitely our big splurge, but, you know, we'll keep it forever.
02:18I'm a librarian. I work in a video archive for a media company.
02:21I work at a music company as a facilities person.
02:25I do a lot of the same stuff that I do around the house, which is, like, you know,
02:29home improvement type stuff.
02:33Here's the bathroom.
02:34I really don't like having a windowless bathroom.
02:37There are so many plants that thrive in the bathroom environment, like ferns and orchids.
02:41I just feel really sad thinking of all the things I can't grow in here because there's no natural light.
02:46This is our bedroom.
02:47We love IKEA, and our favorite IKEA furniture is just the lowest-end plain pine pieces.
02:54They just last forever.
02:55Like, since it's just screws and wood, you can take them apart and put them back together.
02:59Definitely the way to go.
03:01Like, our bedroom was, like, 50 bucks.
03:02The side tables were, like, $11.
03:04This is also the room where we had our first experience with our ghost.
03:08The basement ghost.
03:09We were falling asleep one night, and Ash was suddenly wide awake, and she was like,
03:14Did you hear that?
03:15I was like, no, I didn't hear anything.
03:16She was like, something just knocked three times under my side of the bed.
03:19And I was like, you're dreaming.
03:21Go back to sleep.
03:23So, then I was falling asleep, and I heard it.
03:25It was just, like, and I was like, Ash, I heard it.
03:28Did you hear it?
03:29She was like, no, I didn't hear it that time.
03:30When we first moved in and realized that maybe we had a ghost, we did a thing where we just
03:36sort of asked the ghost to protect the apartment instead of harming it.
03:40In the mail, two days later, we got a fire extinguisher that was misdelivered to our house.
03:45It was a very literal interpretation of, like, protect the house, but, I mean, I'll take it.
03:50Yeah, she's pretty chill, though.
03:51Like, as far as roommates go, she doesn't take up a lot of space.
03:55She's pretty quiet.
03:59This is the second bedroom, but we use it as a combination workspace and plant room.
04:04So, on this side of the bookshelf is mine.
04:07I don't like about this room that it's just really narrow.
04:09It's supposed to be a second bedroom, but you can't really use it that way.
04:13If I could redo the space, I would just make it, like, a normal shape.
04:15This is my corner of the workroom, and this is my cozy little nook with a heater right
04:21next to me and my, like, favorite chair and then, like, all my books.
04:24This is basically where I hang out when it's cold.
04:26And this way to the backyard.
04:29When we first moved into this house, collectively as a household, we were prepping the backyard.
04:33When they tested the soil, they found out that it was actually really high in lead and arsenic,
04:37which is apparently a big issue in Brooklyn.
04:39Everything that you see that we grow to eat is in soil that we had to, like, carry in through
04:44our apartment in buckets.
04:46Usually we grow salad greens in there.
04:48We have a lot of herbs over here.
04:50Yeah.
04:51Strawberries, blackberries, apples, cherries.
04:53And I think that's a great find, growing up the water tank.
04:56Yeah, Concord.
04:58When Trump won the election, we were like, oh, okay, it's the apocalypse.
05:01We're all gonna die.
05:02In the coming starving times, we want to at least have some protein, so we decided to raise quail.
05:09They each produce a single egg a day, so when we have a full flock of ten hens, that's
05:14ten quail eggs a day.
05:16I make a lot of quail egg soufflés.
05:17One thing that we're really gonna do this year is raccoon proof, because it turns out
05:22raccoons can open latches with their little hands, and they're very smart.
05:26The baby quail that we have inside were hatched from these.
05:29We hatched them in an incubator, and we just gathered the eggs out here.
05:32We met at a party in North Carolina, a pig pickin', which is where you put a suckling
05:38pig over chicken wire, cinder block, fire, which is very southern.
05:42Yeah.
05:43So I was super nervous, and I had this big plate of pork in front of me that I just
05:47couldn't
05:47eat.
05:48Too nervous to eat.
05:49Like, I'm also, like, scared of parties, so I had, like, found a vantage point at the
05:53beginning where I could, like, sit and observe everybody and, like, chain smoke and, like,
05:57act like I was too cool to talk to everybody.
05:59And I saw her from, like, across the yard.
06:01She had just shaved her head, and I was like, I'm gonna talk to that one.
06:05And then Bit just walked up to me, and she was like, are you gonna eat that?
06:07And I was like, no.
06:09And she was like, okay.
06:09And then she just literally took it in her hands and ate it.
06:13Like a wild animal.
06:14And so we were kind of, like, glued to each other for the rest of the party because I
06:17was like, she's awkward.
06:18I'm awkward.
06:19Like, this is gonna work.
06:20I talk to people at parties now.
06:21Yeah.
06:22Congrats.
06:23We've both grown as people.
06:25We got married at the courthouse in Brooklyn.
06:27Gay marriage had just been legalized.
06:29We were really excited to get married.
06:31We spent, like, a hundred bucks on, like, a giant keg of beer and just invited everybody
06:37we could think of.
06:38Yeah.
06:38And just threw a huge party.
06:40I don't think we're gonna move until we're ready to buy a house.
06:43Yeah.
06:43Which could be never.
06:43Yeah.
06:44I mean, our situation is, like, one in a million, like, beautiful situations, so.
06:48We're never gonna get a place this nice.
06:50No.
06:51And with the current market rates, we're never gonna buy a place either.
06:54Ahaha.
06:57Ahaha.
