you could do that but then you'd run the risk of the blinds and your paint not matching. and then you live in a cartoon where objects that move are a slightly different color from the background
I can certainly relate...I put a cat door in a metal door. I was in tears halfway through it but persevered and got it done. My cat was very happy lol.
One time I was renovating my bedroom and decided to get rid of my ugly roller blind that was really old and the rolling mechanism was stuck so I decided to remove it all by myself as I felt brave. I had to yank on it to unroll and cut it piece by piece. As I was yanking it down, a giant fking black DEAD (thank god) spider fell out of it and onto my window sill. I nearly flew off the chair I was standing on as I have pretty bad arachnophobia. I had to take a moment to say goodbye to all the courage that left my body that day and after that I called my mom ?
Had to build a wardrobe for my lil brother by myself because I was the only one who remembered the manual. Lack crews, had to climb a ladder to place the top. Had a mental breakdown because of fear and my body was not following it. I was proud but that make me realise how unreliable is everyone else
Yeah, let's not glamorize this shit lmao. I live in the Netherlands and the housing situation is wild. The kinds of houses I visited when househunting... Reminded me of this. It's hilarious but it's not fun to live in. Being young you make do with what's available, but this should never be the norm.
@@dshe8637it really aint How tf is a bath or shower unhegynic to have near food Its like a sink Its not like they have the toilet next to the kitchen counter You get clean in a shower Meaning its actually very hygenic if you clean it Just like a flipping sink dude
That apartment is so old it probably didn't have hot water originally. You'd see tubs built next to kitchens a lot because you had to boil your own water to draw a hot bath (cold water flats).
@@Butcho22absolutely not true, I would probably do myself in from the depression+panic this small a living space would trigger. It's really impressive to see someone be comfortable and have fun in a space like this but I could NOT do it myself.
I think he set the bar high by not only painting the blinds but painting a line that has to match the line on the adjacent walls. Then he had to iron it vertically to avoid cracking. I would have left everything beige because I don't like the smell of paint. No aesthetic would be worth having to sleep in a small room with one window for ventilation.
Very good idea! I love it! My dad grew up in a tenement building in Brooklyn during the 1930's and 1940's. There was a kitchen, basically the family room too, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom. Heat came from a wood burning stove in thw kitchen and once a week they'd heat water up and get a bath in a metal tub, in the middle of the kitchen! I recently looked up the address and saw a cute cafe underneath on the bottom floor. My dad is in his 90's now and does a lot of reminiscing about growing up in Brooklyn.
Mine grew up in a three room house on a dirt road next to a cotton field on a small Mississippi delta farm. Nine boys in the family and they took baths the same way, except they didn't have indoor plumbing, it was pumped from an outside well and hauled in by hand. He's 83 and still remembers picking cotton all day long as a.five year old boy. A world away.
That sounds so much like the description of the tenement apartment they live in in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn! The layout must have been pretty standard then.
I think bathing in a metal tub was a common experience during that time. My grandparents grew up in terrace houses in Glasgow and Liverpool and all got bathed in tubs in the living room sitting next to the fireplace.
My grandma was from NYC and worked in garment factories in the late 1920s-1930s (Depression era) because work was hard to find, and she shared tenements like this with several other women because the rent was super cheap. She talked about having a setup like this, where the cooking and bathing areas were more communal because it was less expensive and they could run the plumbing in one area. You really took the character of this unit and embraced it, and worked with it...what an amazing solution!
I guess you get really used to nudity living in that situation. You can’t avoid seeing your flatmates naked when they’re bathing in the middle of the kitchen.
Just thought I would let you know there are a few channels on here that show restored videos from that time period. Lots of them taking place in NYC or NJ. You may see a relative!
@@rebeccacarraway480 No. In earlier tenaments, there were outhouses in the back. 4th floor, cold water walkup? Go down three flights and outside to the row of outhouses.
That's neat, but you should have started by making a frame out of galvanized square steel, covered it in eco friendly wood veneers, borrow some expansion screws from your aunt to fix it to the wall, and then put a squat toilet directly under the showerhead.
I also live in NYC with a bathtub in the kitchen when I was little,it wasn’t fun in the winter because of the cold or when someone knocked on the door 🤦🏼♀️ great Job on your apartment 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
These buildings were often built with no indoor bathrooms in the 1800s, so tenants would use a communal outhouse. By the early 1900s it became more common to build communal indoor bathrooms, 1 or 2 per floor. Some of these buildings still have communal bathrooms on each floor today. But it's pretty common for small in-unit bathrooms to be added in over the years as they get renovated. If there is a toilet in his apartment, it's likely in a tiny closet sized room
Honestly, nah. Most of our prewar NYC apartments have old steam heat radiators which make the apartment crazy dry. In multiple apartments I've used the steam from my shower to humidify my apartment to a liveable level. It's cheaper than investing in a humidifier. Also if it's too much you just use the fan over your oven range.
@@theboujieproletariathave you not seen some south east Asian countries where their entire house is literally coated in water due to the humidity? Windows don't work in all situations. Plus, who wants their apartment to smell like New York air?
I'm surprised these still exist. I lived on a 5 flight walk-up in the so-called East Village, 1976-1995. Stall shower (no tub!) in the kitchen....wait for it....toilet down the hall!!! Did not share the toilet, but still. But I thought all these kinds of apts had been renovated a long time ago. (A friend of my mothers' had their tub in the kitchen. They called the room the Bitchen 😅.)
Tbh, I prefer the curtains. They're more practical and fast. 😂 But man, I respect people who can live with such a bath/shower. Living in the tropics, sometimes I bathe 5x a day...such hassle will frustrate my lazy @$$ too much. 😅
I am an Interior Designer - I like what you did - very creative use of space and especially with blinds. Have to agree that it is easier to install blinds of that dimension with help. Awesome job
He will probably never see his landlord and sends the rent in to an actual rental agency. Oh and as far as deposits go I don’t care where you live, how clean you left the place, what improvements you made.., you ain’t gettin that deposit back.. that’s just the way it is!!
@@wendyhanberg8733 you should care where they live, in most European countries, he would get his deposit back. This does not count as destroying anything here.
Well landlords here in America kind of suck (not all of course) and it’s even worse if it’s a huge rental agency. I’m a home owner, but I used to be a renter also and a few times I literally left the apartment better than I found and still didn’t get all of my deposit back. Rental agent found a cigarette burn in carpet (it was there when I moved in) and I don’t smoke. So of course they took a hundred for that, and the list goes on.
Because NYC is effing amazing. I was born and raised there. Lived in the city till I was 25. Moved out because I didn't want to spend a billion dollars on rent but if it wasn't for money I would still be there.
Yeah the amount of cope by new yorkers is unreal This guy is decorating his pod that he probably spends more than 2 grand on and acting like he doesn't regularly have panic attacks bc his life sucks
@@samhill3913 I lived in New York. Its a cesspool. "its good for the most part." I don't feel bad when you are knockout game'd (only happens if ur white), squatted, force shut-down, foreclosed from housing prices, or just straight arrested for speech. 💀
Finally a person who admits their mental breakdowns when redecorating. That was me when installing custom lighting.. never again WTH I’m an accountant not electrician
People rent crappy-looking apartments because a few hundred dollars in paint and rollers to make their apartment look more expensive and nicer works out way cheaper in the long run than renting out a place that is more expensive and nicer.
Well while you're living in it you might as well make it look less depressing for your own sanity. Color improves your mood and will get your mind off the fact that you're living in a box.
What a lovely apartment. Admiring the colors and patterns. Excellent! That hiding trick seems to really work! Hope it stays good over time. My anti-mold blinds got... mold. Within a year. Last time I bought those! Guess the trick here is to have the bath dried up completely and then lower the blinds.
Did a great job but really the NYC shoebox thing is terribly depressing. Go somewhere else and have a life. NYC used to be inexpensive in parts making nonsense like that bearable $$$ math wise. However since the 2000's it has become a harridan. Now it is laughable even for the wealthy.
Good job, very creative 🎉. It's just half green half white reminds me of soviet time building colour scheme. It's always white top with some shade of green on the bottom 😂.
I think a barn door set up, made with 2 or 3 panels of plywood, would’ve worked well. Then you could’ve painted anything on the wood. In the mid-1980s, My brother lived in a turn of the century shotgun flat in the South Bronx, NY. His bathroom was next to the kitchen, and it had no wall to close it off from the hallway. It was the first open concept bathroom I ever saw. You could watch someone take a shower or a dump, on your way to the kitchen. The place had 2.5 bedrooms, exposed brick walls, and a view of Manhattan and Queens, NY. The bedroom windows looked out at brick walls, but one room had a skylight. His rent was $450.00. It probably costs at least ten times that much now.
Well tbf, the other commenters, sliding doors are just awesome and space savers. Doesn’t have to a barn door, you know? Even a lightweight sliding door would be great. Honestly more apartments should utilize sliding doors.
Barn doors are not very practical and tend to break. Sliding doors have their place, but they actually don't always make sense, sometimes they need to be pocket doors and that isn't feasible. Seeing this very limited space, the curtains make a lot of sense. They probably cost a lot less than wood, are going to stand up to humidity from the shower better, have all the space saving you could possibly want which a sliding door wouldn't have and he clearly customized it and was successful at it.
We have a barn door for our en suite bathroom, and it involves serious hardware - nothing a renter would ever be allowed to install. We had to replace it, and it was pretty complicated. And it is SO heavy. I'm sure there was a regular door there once, but it's too close to the bedroom door, and due to utilities a pocket door isn't possible.
Me, I would use light weight curtains because they will not lose shape from the moisture from showering, washing dishes, winter humidifier, and cooking. They are easy to wash and hang to drip dry, less wrinkles. Put in sash hooks to the side, two for the closet and one or two for the shower, faster than all that pulling, which has to go slow because chain quality is poor. Blinds can be damage easily, tearing, cracks in the paint, food splasher, and so on. With curtains I can change colors and can have a pattern on the cheap from wall hanging covers like a tapestry. Or real cheap buy a flat twin or full sheet. The top border usual has an opening, or use a seam reaper to open each end. Slide a rod though and you are done. You can leave the full length which is a fashion statement or have your local dry cleaners tailor length to your choice. One sheet for a more flat picture look or two sheets to have swing open sash look with a center for your closet, with the gathered look when closed. No chain slow pulling up and down, so as not to break the chain if not heavy duty. When you do any decorations of any thing maintenance must be a factor. To put in that much work only to have to replace because of dirt or damage in six months later. 😮😮😮❤❤❤😊😊😊
@violett874 what do you mean "like this"? He lives in a tenement. I live in a tenement. Millions of people do all over the world. Whats wrong with it !
I really think it would be cool if you framed out the edges so the curtain wasn't loose ( kinda like sliding a paper into a protective sleeve) that way the curtains would look less like curtains and more like a wall panel or painting.
