Finding my box

Deciding to take a leap of faith and buy my first apartment was the first big step! Trying to do it while traveling around the country with work make this difficult feat nearly impossible. Countless hours were spent on zillow.com, the nytimes real estate website, trulia, and any other website that might shed some light on what on EARTH to expect when I finally got to see some of these places in person. I traveled back from Boston, Philadelphia, and even Seattle to make it all happen, I looked at over 20 apartments in three boroughs of New York City, met with over five brokers, and finally landed on a location...a good place to start.

I never thought of myself as a Brooklyn guy. I don't know...I work mostly in midtown, I had lived in Queens because of the proximity (and price), and most of my friends who lived in Brooklyn were a little more "hipster" than my taste (and worked downtown). Then I found Clinton Hill. I LOVED the area....right near the Brooklyn Flea market, Fort Greene Park, minutes from BAM (and Target...just saying), and shopping on Myrtle avenue, half hour to midtown, on the way to JFK airport...this was beginning to look real promising! Then it came down to finding my box.

I knew I wouldn't be able to afford the classic Brooklyn Brownstone dream home, with multiple floors, beautiful bay windows, a small garden outside, and a stoop to sit on while I drink my coffee in the mornings. It wasn't a pipe dream, but just wasn't my dream at the moment. So I settled on finding a "box"...a lovely space that I would be able to make my OWN! I checked out some brand new buildings, some lovely apartments with awesome history and character, but knew that, wherever I ended up, I was going to add my own character, my own flair, and make my box my own.

Well, I found much more than a box....a beautiful, large, one-bedroom recently-renovated apartment with more windows and light than I know what to do with (my dorm room in sophomore year in college had no windows, and I vowed at that point to ALWAYS have tons of light wherever I lived). I had prepared myself to find a "dump" and put in all the manual labor and build it up from the ground up, but here I was starting with a cleaner slate...and some really nice new kitchen appliances!

It was the feeling I had been looking for...I walked in the apartment and just felt like I was home. My friend John was with me and saw it too. "This is where you need to live!" And now I do.

And so, my experiment begins. Can I take one white-washed, cookie-cutter co-op "box" and make it my own?

Let's find out