et voila!

As some of you may know, we've recently moved from the 4th floor to the 3rd floor of our building. Alas, the move was not to a bigger apartment (the new place is exactly the same size, just flipped over) and most people wonder WTH we went through all the trouble of moving.

The picture above is a big part of why I wanted to move. In NYC most pre-war studio apartments are dark dark dark. Why? Because they were the maids' rooms! Think about it. Would you keep a nice sunny room for yourself or give it to the maid?

People like me don't have maids, and apartments like mine don't have sunlight. The 4th floor apartment had one window that looked across at another window. So we had to keep the curtains closed all the time. But on the 3rd floor the single window faces a brick wall, in other words...no curtain required! For someone like me, who can't live without plants, this was a major selling point.

After fitting the window frame with fluorescent grow lights on three sides, I hung two, 8-foot acrylic poles across the window and filled them with my Rhipsalis collection. (Ok, there's one Ceropegia in there. Can you spot it?!)


Next I went on line and found a template for making the window treatments. Bought the insulation board at the Depot, cut and glued (and glued and glued) the pieces, went fabric shoppping in the garmet district (that was fun!), hauled out the Singer sewing machine I got for my 14th birthday, et voila!

There's still a lot to do in the apartment: I haven't got a desk and we need bookcases. But now that the plants are in place, I can relax a little. When plants are in the house, all is right with the world.