| About Three weeks ago I moved into my new place. A downtown Brooklyn loft shared by four, including myself. Keila, the main resident, has lived in the place for over 10 years. She is a dance coreographer. Albert, Keila's long-term friend, moved in with Keila, from San Francisco, over a year ago. He is a corporate office interior designer. The third roommate, Kendal, hasn't moved in yet but should be moving in this weekend. I know nothing about him. |
 | The loft is, by New York standards, extremely large as are the rooms. We all share a common living room (left), kitchen, work area, and a shared bathroom. Since we are on the top floor of a 4 floor building, we have rooftop access. The roommates are great, the loft is spacious, and major subways line | |
| are well within walking distance. I love everything about the loft and the room except for one thing. My room was peach. Yes, peach. Not only was the room painted peach but it was sloppily painted. The fixtures and trim were painted over along with random splotches on the |  | |
 | on the roof and floor where the roller had gone just a little too far. I couldn't take the color or the horridibly done paint job. So, after moving in, and catching some sort of week-long illness, I began painting. I decided on a color scheme of two oppsoing gray walls | |
| and two dark blue walls, all with blue trim. The ceiling I was going to "sponge" a mixture of blue and gray. It was going to be a lot of work but without a job and no internet connection what else was I going to do? 4 days later the painting started |  | |
 | After the main walls were painted I started to "sponge" the ceiling. Using a large spong and a mixture of blue latex paint and gray oil based paint (so the colors didn't mix) I went to work. You can see result in the photos above and to the left. | |
| While I was "sponging" the ceiling Diana decided to "splash" the wall opposing the dark blue wall (pictured above) with any remaining paint. She hhad no design, pattern or real intention other than to have fun with the wall. |  | |
 | I was a little apprehensive at first but the end result was actually quite nice. I accented her masterpiece with a few lights that I picked up from Ikea, well over a month ago. The lights turned out to be a perfect addition to the wall. | |
 | After I had finished painting I started working on the other features of the room. The room has no closet but I wanted to be able to hang up my clothes. I created my own "closet" out of a dowel rod, 30 feet of rope, 3 pullies, a rope cleat and a few sturdy eyelets. | |
| The eyelets are screwed into two ceiling studs and the pullies are attached to the eyelets. I drilled a hole in each side of the dowel rod and attached a separate piece of rope to each end. The ropes go up to the ceiling through the pullies and down to the rope cleat which is |  | |
 | fastened to door frame. I wanted to attached it to the wall but the wall is brick. The total cost of my closet was $25-30. The next thing I needed were lights. The room was lit by a single round bathroom light fixture, situated just above the door. It provided poor light at best. | |
| I decided to use paper laterns with flourescent, energy efficient, lamps to light the room. Fortunately I live in New York, home of the greatest chinatown outside of... well. China. Diana and I searched all over chinatown before we finally found a place that had two of these square |  | |
 | square leafed patterned lights. They were a whopping $4 each. I went to the hardware store and picked up 30 feet of lamp wire, 2 plugs and 2 bulb outlets. I stapled the wired to the wall and dropped them in the middle of the lamps. Total cost for both, $12. Fun. Finally | |
| I accented the room with a metal light switch plate and a nice metal bathrobe holder that works perfectly to hold my cloth grocery bags and my messenger bag. Sweet Jesus I'm a genius! ;) Total cost on my room. Paint: $90
"closet": $30
Shelves: Free (scraps and leftover paint)
Lamps: $12
Misc items: $5
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Total Cost $137 ; Whoo Hoo! |  | |
