I am back from my leave of absence from the blogging world! I will do my best to recap the last couple of months with this blog. We have been busy with buying our first house! We are all moved in and are trying to get back to our normal life! We are loving our apartment! Bee has settled back into her sleep routine too! For a few weeks life was really challenging with all of the preparing and moving! We still live in Brooklyn but we live in Park Slope which was recently named the best neighborhood in New York City! We also now live on the best block in all of Park Slope! We can even see Prospect Park from our window! We are very blessed to be here. Our block is a historic block which includes a lot of one family mansion homes. Our new place is a modest 1 bedroom which we use as a 1 bedroom, plus office, guest loft, and nursery. Our place is small but don't worry, it looks even smaller in these pictures! We would like to thank all of our friends, family, Zerline (our lawyer), and Ken (the fantastic real estate agent), who helped us along in this journey!
Bee likes to mimic actions that she sees and in this picture she is trying to tie her shoes!
Our new street. Now the trees have all their leaves!
Bee and Ilsa at church on Easter Sunday.
We were scrambling at the end to finish packing. Bee is helping me sort her room!
Joe and Jessica came into town just before we moved and Bee enjoyed hanging out with them! She loved "flying!"
Toddler meeting with Felix, Edgar and Bee.
Video chatting in our old apartment.
We had one last party at our old apartment!
Annie, Anna and Kristy.
Bog, Cory, Jessica, Hillary, Joe, Bryant, and Ellie.
Ellie, Jessica, Joe, Teddy, Cory, Azell, Bryant.
Jessica and Bee! Jessica helped me put Bee to sleep for the night!
Clem, Annie, Bee and Joe!
The transformation of our bedroom...
1. This is how it looked when we first looked at the apartment.
2. Bee helped us do the "walk through" of the apartment before we closed on the deal.
3. Hours after we closed on the apartment Cory go to work on removing the closet wall. Our apartment was built over 100 years ago so the old building materials made it difficult for Cory to take out the wall. The wall was made out of cement and wire mesh. I forgot to take a picture! In this picture Cory is cutting a hole in the ceiling of the closet to get an idea of why the ceiling was dropped in the closet. We were afraid to find something that they were trying to cover up. Turns out the closet had a shorter ceiling for no reason at all.
4. No more wall!
5. Cory removed the entire wall by himself! Thank you Anna and Mike for lending us some tools! With the wall gone it really helped to open up the room! We removed the closet wall because it was a poorly designed closet and was really unusable so we wanted to make the bedroom more user friendly!
Here is part of the closet!
A big thanks to Teddy for all of his help! He helped Cory a lot! Behind Teddy is the other remaining closet in our apartment.
Cory went from full time filmmaker to full time construction worker. He did not get much sleep the first couple of weeks of owning our apartment. Our closing of the apartment kept getting pushed back which meant we did not have much time until we needed to be out of our old apartment so we were in a hurry to get all of the renovations done!
6. We hired Sean to come and fix up the wall!
7. Sean did a great job! No one will ever know!
The closet floor had the best looking wood floors of the entire apartment. Our apartment was not always a one bedroom because it was converted in the 20s. We think that this pattern had originally been in a hall way near the stairs.
The floor after they were refinished.
8. Cory primed and painted the bedroom! We wanted to keep it light but have a little color so we picked out a nice shade of blue.
8. Molding was almost finished. You can see the molding in the upper left part of this picture. When we removed the closet wall Cory had to add more trim to match the rest of the 100 year old trim.
4. Wall is complete!
9. A loft for our double size bed and a loft for Cory's work space. Our ceiling are about 10ft 3 in which helped us be able to put lofts in. We are doing our best to maximize the vertical space! I was a little concerned about sleeping under a loft but I have been doing it for a couple of weeks now and I love it! There is actually a lot of room!
10. Moving day we put our belonging in the apartment any where that we could.
11. The most current picture of our bedroom. We removed the ladder from the right side to make it movable. The close wardrobe keeps our clothes tidy and acts as a room divider. Cory's work space is on the top. His office takes up the same square footage as it did in our old apartment except now he is 5 feet off the ground!
The parquet wood floors were original to the building. To help protect them we had them refinished. Here are some pictures of the before and after. Thanks to Brother's Wood Flooring of NYC for doing a great job!
Before...
After! We were going to use an oil based polyurethane but last minute we decided to use a water based finish. We are glad that we did! We used
Bona high Traffic.
Before...
After...We added some extra moulding and have given it all a fresh coat of white paint!
Before... We have three original radiators in the apartment.
Stephen from
Sticks for Stones Woodworking custom made our three lofts! He did a great job!
The loft in the main room which will currently be a guest bed on top and Bee's room underneath. Down the road we plan on giving Bee the bedroom and we will sleep on the top loft in the main room and Cory's office will be underneath it!
We found this old door near our old house and we had Sean trim it to fit our door opening. Cory painted it a fun color!
A view of the main room.
This is what our house looked like our first night.
Couple of days later...
After a big Ikea shopping trip.
Current! Thanks Ikea!
The past few weeks we have spent a lot of time at Ikea.
Bee signing "water" and wondering why the facet does not work.
Too much Ikea for Bee!
Bee helped Cory put together the Ikea furniture!
We went back and forth from our old apartment to our new one and I made sure to walk by the Brooklyn Museum. It is really pretty at night and of course the blossoms on the trees are beautiful!
Bee, Annie and Clem
Sari and Leila live two doors down from us. Leila loves strollers as much as Bee!
They switched strollers!
More stroller action at the playground. The toddlers are never satisfied because even Bee had her own stroller she had to try out everyones!
The view from our center window.
The view from the window on the right. The sun was setting so it was kinda hard to take a picture!
Bee's room!
Bee's room consists of two real walls, one wall is an Ikea closet and the other is a curtain! It reminds me of a stage because I used a thick purple velvet! Bee loves her new room. She has been sleeping really well! We have yet to accidentally wake her up!
In this picture you can see the tall Ikea closet, the guest bed loft, bee's curtain to her room, the dining room (our table has yet to be installed) our shoe closet and the kitchen.
Part of the living room.
My tiny kitchen! To the right is the door to the hallway and to the left is the door to the bathroom.
Bee has fun with the refrigerator magnets!
Bee and Ellie!
Bee got a new baby stroller! She loves it!
We went to Chokawma's 3rd birthday! His mom Lily made him this delicious cake. He loves trains and fish!
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Bee got a new toilet seat when we moved in. She loved it for the first few days, she even used it! But the game wore off and now she doesn't want to go potty in the real toilet! I thought for sure she was ready to be done with diapers. This is not the case!
The bathroom as the original tile! The last owner re-grouted and refinished the tub before he put it on the market.
Bee had a sleepover at Hillary and Joe's house the first night we moved into our house. Moving in one day is possible but setting up a nursery for a toddler was not possible! Hillary and Joe are expecting their first child at the end of May so they graciously let Bee sleep in their brand new crib! Thank you!!!
Edgar and Bee! During our move Brooklyn was having a heat wave! So, Bee was too hot for her clothes! I want to thank Edgar, Felix and Oscar for sharing their mommies with Bee. My awesome girl friends helped watch Bee so I could get moving work done!
Thank you Ryan and Teddy for helping us move! It took them two 10' Budget truck loads to get our belongings to the new place!
From our windows we can see who is coming to our door!
Cherry blossom time at the BBG!
My favorite time of the year! Jennifer, Bee and Oscar holding hands!
Both Bee and Oscar have their mouths full of food! We love that Oscar lives less than a block from us now!
Cory, Tatyana, Astrid, Jens and girls at the BBG!
Bee in her new dress from Grandma Robert, Grandma Jill, Aunt Melissa and Uncle Jason!
Bee was enjoying throwing leaves in the stream.
Bee loves her trike (and her snack in her hand).
Daddy's hat!
Scott, Michelle and Edgar stopped by!
Daddy and Daughter! Bee is wearing a dress made by her Mimi!
In the morning from 7-9am Prospect Park turns into the biggest dog park! Bee loves to go watch the doggies! She loves it when she can throw a ball for them! We have made friends with Sarah who lives above us and she has two little doggies. Finn (pomeranian) and Tulip (chihuahua). Bee loves to walk Finn! Thanks Sarah for sharing your cute little doggies with us!
