Hi, I’m Marcella, welcome to your AirBnB…I mean my Sweet Digs.
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I live in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and rent is 2900 dollars with all utilities included.
Plus the 10,000 dollars that I invested into the space.
It was just one big empty rectangle.
So I turned it into what essentially is a four bedroom, one bath, bed and breakfast
in the middle of Brooklyn.
It’s also my home, and then we also rent it out for film and photoshoots.
For what the space was when I found it, it was too much.
With the work that I put into it, I think it might be a little too little, but it’s
definitely more in the ballpark.
So this is my kitchen.
All of these knobs I’ve been collecting for maybe a decade or so.
My favorite one, probably the elephant or the dinosaur.
I’m actually thinking about changing the kitchen cabinets to be like a powder yellow.
I’m not sure.
Let me know what you think if I should paint them yellow or keep them blue, in the comments
below.
Going over here to the refrigerator.
This is definitely one of the most expensive things in the apartment.
I bought it for around 1600 or 1800 dollars.
In Burbank, California there’s this store that refurbishes old stoves and refrigerators.
And I found this guy and they paint it whatever you like.
So I had them paint it red, and then they had a Coca-Cola decal that they put on it.
And now it’s just my Coca-Cola refrigerator.
Because it’s from the 1950s it has little things inside that they just don’t put in
refrigerators today.
They have like 12 eggs for you to put all of your eggs in.
The lazy Susan shelves come out, the shelves rotate to show you what you need that’s
all the way in the back that you can’t reach.
So my dining table.
I pretty much stalked it for about three years.
I found it at Cost Plus World Market, and it was $800 but I couldn’t afford it.
I am a regular CraigsList searcher.
After 3 years eventually someone posted it for $300 and I bought it up really fast.
Yeah it’s a pretty cool piece.
This is the washer and dryer.
Obviously having a bed and breakfast where you need a lot of sheets and towels to be
constantly washed, I needed to have a washer and dryer in the space.
And then we built this box that hides the washer and dryer as well as a countertop for
our dumping ground.
Over here is our bathroom.
When we first moved in it was just white and bland and boring.
I wanted to do something really wacky.
The wallpaper I found on etsy, so there was a seller who sells a bunch of vintage wallpaper.
I wanted to do all of the bathroom but there just wasn’t that much, so instead I matched
the orange in the lion and just painted everywhere that the wallpaper didn’t cover.
I know it’s very loud and very kitschy, but when you put all of these things together
it just works.
I’m gonna go over here to the rest of like where we kinda hang out.
The swing, um, I just wanted a swing in my home.
It’s 40 dollars worth of materials at Home Depot.
My handyman came over and did it in a couple hours and I paid him 70 dollars for him to
do it all.
A cheap little thing that can be really fun.
These are blue velvet chairs.
I am a little tired of them.
I’ve had them for 5 years and I look at them every day, so part of me wants to either
reupholster them or completely get rid of them and get new chairs.
I’m kinda curious, do you think I should keep these guys?
Reupholster them?
Or start fresh and get some new chairs.
Leave your answers in the comments below.
One thing I will never get rid of is this poster of the cigarette girl from the 40s.
It’s from my parents.
Every time I see it I remember my home that I was raised in, I was also born in, I was
born in my living room.
I moved to New York a little over 2 years ago.
I’ve always wanted to live in New York, and I just thought why not?
I was searching for a loft that was either big enough for me to build inside it or that
already had rooms built out.
Then eventually I found this space.
The windows and the natural light that came in were just gorgeous.
I was like like, ugh I can do something with this.
Then I wrote the landlord asking if he was okay with me building.
Told him about AirBnB, about film and photoshoots, and he was totally okay with it.
I was making his investment a lot nicer.
I built out the layout of the loft so the three bedrooms and the upstairs balcony and
stairs.
We just kinda added all of that in.
Luckily it did work out.
I made it back in just a little less than three months.
But it definitely was a gamble.
The guest rooms are all right here.
Two of them with the sliding barn doors.
This is the “Room with a View.
Because you have a view…of the living area but still.
It gets really beautiful light in throughout the day.
It’s an old reclaimed window, and we kinda built the wall around it.
I’ve been doing AirBnB for a pretty long time, and I’ve met people from all over
the world.
I remember a couple from France, they brought us bamboo toothbrushes with our names on them.
It was so, so, so incredibly sweet.
Bad experiences?
Hmmm.
If you are staying in someones home in a shared space, don’t walk around in your underwear.
This is the “Tropical Getaway” … in Brooklyn.
I found this bedspread on Urban Outfitters.
I also have the Edison bulb marquee lights around the top.
The worst part about the loft, we have a big wall heater and it makes like a, a loud sound
but it just kinda sounds like white noise.
When the heater shuts off you can hear a pin drop, it’s super super quiet.
IN the middle of the night if we have to go to the bathroom and the heat turns off, I
have to be really quiet, otherwise somebody might hear me.
This room which you don’t really realize is a room.
This is the “Backpacker’s Dream” room.
Originally this was going to be our walk-in closet.
Then we thought, well why don’t we just rent this room out to also make back some
of our money, and then we’ll turn it into a closet again, and this is actually the room
that everyone started booking non-stop.
So we were like okay, well then maybe we should just fix it up and make this a proper room.
Upstairs is my room.
This is my boyfriend and my room.
This ledge is where all my books are.
And this is my kinda work space, even though most of the time I’m on the bed with my
laptop.
This is my husband pillow.
I have have my boyfriend and I have my husband.
Whenever we set up to watch a movie or hangout in bed or something like that, he’ll ask
me do you want your husband, or am I good enough?
I usually go for the husband.
My home style, um, it’s basically a collage of many styles.
I buy what I like.
If I see something and I like it, I don’t think oh is this going to match what I have.
Because nothing matches, and when nothing matches you can get whatever you want and
you don’t have to worry about that.
Funky, that’s why it’s the Funky Loft.
Sharing the space with my boyfriend and other people, guests, we haven’t come up with
any issues yet.
They’re out most of the day and night seeing the city, being tourists, doing what they
came here to do in New York.
So we definitely get a lot of private time to ourselves.
I don’t want to live alone, I like having people around me.
Especially if you have such a big space.
So it was just like, you know always having friends over to visit.
One of my favorite things is when someone comes in and the look on their face of just
like *gasp* this is so great, I’ve never seen something like this, this is so homey.
It always just reminds me oh okay, ya know, this is a cool thing that you did, and maybe
it is worth it.
What is something that you have taken a gamble on that you’re not sure if it will pay out,
or maybe it has.
Write it in the comments below.
Thanks for watching my Sweet Digs.
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