In 2005 I moved to Manhattan.

I hated living in New York at first. Being from California the East Coast never really felt like home. I barely tolerated the city’s idiosyncrasies–the noise, the crush of people, the pee smell–and I felt the city did the same of mine–my West Coast attitude, my inability to layer in winter, my pee smell. Not to mention living here takes sacrifice. Some of us sacrifice space, others sacrifice money but all of us sacrifice our sanity, and when I moved here for work I felt like I was giving up all three. I missed home all the more only when I realized New York wasn’t going to be mine.

By 2012 I was feeling adrift. I needed to clear my head and find a space of my own, so I started looking for my first [gulp] apartment. That summer I signed the lease to a quaint studio on the Upper East Side and soon thereafter my feelings of rootlessness began to slip away. By living on my own I expected some things would be different but I didn’t think that nagging feeling of lonesomeness could change. But it did. And slowly New York and I began to turn a corner.

This blog is an extension of that feeling. I write about turning a house into a home through cheap, cost effective and totally accessible DIY projects. You don’t need money to give your space a facelift, and you most definitely don’t need to own the walls make them your own!

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