00:00Hey everybody this is Julie and welcome to My Sweet Digs. Just so you're aware
00:04we have a cave troll and before you come in make sure you subscribe right down
00:10here. I'll wait a little bit. All right come on in. I live with my husband Kyle.
00:17We live in downtown Brooklyn. I bought the studio in 2012. We paid a little
00:22under $300,000. I don't think it's market value anymore. We pay $1,000 in
00:27maintenance and $800 in mortgage. So all together $1,800 per month. We've got a
00:32doorman, we have in-building laundry, and we have a roof deck which is pretty cool.
00:43So hello from the kitchen. One of the cool things that we did here was renovate the
00:47countertops and the sink and the faucet. It was probably the moment where we felt
00:52most like adults I think. More so than just like living in an apartment but
00:56actually having to fix it and pick out things that have to be permanently
01:01glued in places. I felt like that was a big moment of adulting for us. We have
01:06one of the holy grails of New York City living in that we have a working
01:09dishwasher. Except I grew up without using dishwashers so when I first tried to run
01:15it I flooded the kitchen. So I thought the dishwasher was broken. I had to hand wash
01:19dishes for a year and a half. Then finally at a party one of our friends bumped into it,
01:23ran it perfectly. There was a moment of much embarrassment on my part because I
01:28realized it wasn't the dishwasher it was me. I feel very guilty that I misled Kyle
01:32but it's not my fault. I didn't grow up with dishwashers. My parents used it for
01:36storage like most Asian immigrant parents do. But I also feel like
01:40dishwashers in general are dumb. First off you have to pre-clean it to put it in
01:46the dishwasher which makes no sense. Like shouldn't the dishwasher just clean it to
01:49begin with. That said I guess it has been a lifestyle improvement to have a
01:55dishwasher in my life. And here we have the bathroom. The previous owner has sort
02:00of chosen a brownish taupe color which we didn't really like for the bathroom so
02:04we went with full-on white. We replaced the faucets, we replaced the countertops and
02:09we also retiled the floor so it's all nice and shiny. This is our dining room area
02:14which we have all of our meals at. This dining room table came from Ikea but
02:19then by slapping some paint on it it's now personalized. We picked up this
02:23really cool art print. One of the things we're probably gonna do with this
02:27painting is scare our future children. Basically tell them that their parents
02:30are witch hunters and if they don't behave the witch will come out of the
02:33painting and eat them. So I think we're gonna be really great parents maybe. When
02:37Kyle and I travel I think we always end up gravitating towards the weirdest
02:41thing to buy. Among our creepy acquisitions is a Norwegian troll, a marionette from Prague
02:48and a golem. We have a cave troll or an apartment troll to be more accurate and he
02:55kind of finds different places to hide. The troll was originally brought back from
03:01Norway by my grandmother and since then it sort of passed around between various
03:07cousins houses. The troll's never been to the big city before so we decided to bring
03:10him down to the apartment, give him a change of scenery. People I think were so weird. I know.
03:15My god these guys collect like weird paintings and talk about their troll as if
03:20it's a new roommate. Kyle and I love to collect board games and one of the
03:24problems we were having was that they were just kind of shoved into this one
03:28corner of the apartment and looked really cluttery so we recently got these
03:32doors to kind of cover it up. So when you walk into your apartment you're like oh what a
03:36normal apartment and then when we're ready to play board games boom. I'd love to hear
03:41what you're collecting because I know we're collecting weird stuff. Let me know
03:44in the comments. And then this is our living room. I think our home style is kind
03:49of geeky quirky collector hoardy. If our apartment were a character I think it would
03:57be most like Kaylee from Firefly. That was a one season wonderful science fiction
04:02series by Joss Whedon. Kaylee is just a very bright cheerful person who just likes
04:07collecting things on sentimental value and I think that reflects us. I've lived
04:11in this apartment for about five years and since then it's gone through multiple
04:15evolutions. The biggest one being when Kyle my husband moved in. I think the
04:20hardest thing to merge was actually our book collection. There were a lot of
04:23duplicates. There was a lot of discussions about whose edition should
04:26remain and whose edition we should give away. I work at Random House as a marketing
04:30director specializing in science fiction and fantasy books. Nerd. I also in my
04:35spare time write children's books. I wrote a middle grade trilogy called Mice of the
04:39Round Table. It's about anthropomorphic mice in King Arthur's Court and I also sold a
04:44picture book recently. Hopefully one day if we ever move out to a real house we'll
04:48have one of those Beauty and the Beast libraries or maybe open a bookstore or
04:52something. Our tastes are probably very well matched for a couple. Kyle tends to
04:57like a lot of wooden things. When Kyle first brought in the ship I thought it
05:01kind of didn't make any sense. It doesn't necessarily fit with Julie's more modern
05:06decorating style but the apartment itself actually has a lot of dark hardwood
05:10floors and the loft area as well so I feel like that ties the modern furniture in
05:17with the rest of the apartment. Our compromise is that we put little
05:20Christmas lights on it so it acts like a nightlight. Julie was not a fan of the
05:25ship at first but I think she came around. It just really doesn't fit. We also have a
05:31projector set up here which is just pointed at the wall there. It's a pretty
05:36big screen so we can host movie nights and Oscars parties. I just want to brag on
05:41my husband for a little bit. We can play music from like anywhere in the house and I
05:44know that doesn't sound like voodoo magic but it is to me and if it was just me I
05:49just be playing anything through the computer. So I think Kyle really brought
05:53an awesome part of the apartment into the house when he moved in.
05:58It's just a sound system. Kyle and I met on OkCupid. We went on five dates and I
06:05actually ghosted him which I am very sad and regretful of. I didn't really notice
06:13because Kyle's a pretty quiet guy that he was awesome. After I want to say three
06:18months Kyle messaged me about Game of Thrones and how you know we could just
06:25watch his friends. I hadn't heard from her in a couple months at that point but I
06:29still couldn't stop thinking about her so I gave it another shot and thankfully
06:36she responded. I was like I don't have HBO so I said yes. I do. And he had HBO.
06:43So really this is all to say that Game of Thrones brought us together and we also
06:49have two shelves dedicated to George RR Martin books now.
06:52When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.
06:59This is sort of the workstation slash dressing area. This apartment is super
07:04interesting in that it has really really high vertical space and not a lot of
07:09horizontal space so instead of just leaving the dressers as is we try to put
07:13shells on top of it. I've put jewelry on mine and also just a row of little knick
07:18knacks that I've collected in my travels and Kyle keeps our wedding cake toppers
07:23which are actually our D&D characters. Now we're walking up to the loft area. This
07:29is my least favorite part of the apartment if only because there's only
07:33four foot clearance and we are kind of removed from the windows so when we wake
07:38up we actually don't know what time it is. The loft is probably my favorite part
07:42of the apartment because it's just so cozy up here. We also have a pretty obnoxious
07:46beam in the middle of the loft and the previous owner had to wrap it in bubble
07:50wraps because it's so easy to bump your head against it. I'm lucky in that I'm only
07:53five foot two. Poor Kyle over here has to pretty much bend at the waist. It's not that bad.
07:59I can't go anywhere. Just crab walk. Crab walk. Okay now I'm curious what were your
08:05experiences coming into this apartment? It was great. I just fell in love with
08:13the apartment. Love at first sight. And me. He fell in love with me. And you. He fell in love
08:18with me.
08:18Not the apartment. Okay wait a little squishy now. When Kyle moved in I think it kind of
08:23was the perfect fit because he kind of brought in all this cool stuff even the
08:28dumb ship. But it made it seem like a more whole like life. New York is really tough and
08:36to have a sanctuary you can come home to and feel safe and feel at peace is really important.
08:41Our lives together meshed really really well so I have to say we kind of moved in. It felt like
08:45home.
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