What $2,800 gets you in the Bushwick, Brooklyn | NYC Apartment Tours

Auto-captioned from the film, lightly cleaned. Elena's words, not edited prose.

hello hello how's it going it's lena you know what time it is it's time for another apartment tour i am so excited because today we're gonna go see tara and bushwick she's basically an og youtuber at least to me i watched her videos before i even moved to new york city so she has been here for a moment she has this beautiful loft in brooklyn where she's been doing some remodeling and done a lot of gorgeous decorating she has a whole instagram handle for it and i've loved kind of seeing that process it's like this gorgeous mix of like minimalism but also with like really beautiful art it's just such a cool spot i am so excited to get to go tour it uh if you've seen my other apartment tour videos you know the drill let's talk about a little bit of the history of the area like much of new york city this area was first founded by the dutch when the dutch were essentially colonizing the americas in the 17th century what i found really interesting was it actually was named boss boss week how do we pronounce this hold on for a sec it was named boss week in 1661 meaning the neighborhood in the woods so i guess boss week turned into bushwick over time essentially so in the 1800s this area saw a lot of western european immigrants coming in to work on agriculture as well as the factories and with time it actually came really big area for brewing as well then after world war ii so in the mid 1900s there was an influx of immigrants from puerto rico the caribbean and more i feel like to a lot of you know local new yorkers it's kind of known for being a mix of new and old it's definitely known for its artistic presence there's a lot of studios and artists out there and it's just a very interesting funky neighborhood in new york i'm gonna let tara talk more about it before i forget make sure to subscribe leave a little comment it helps me out a lot and on that note let's go head on over to our apartment hello everyone my name is tara i'm an instagrammer and youtuber based in brooklyn bushwick specifically and this is my space let me show you so um i live in a studio loft it's pretty pretty basic pretty straightforward in the layout i live here by myself and a space that works really well for me the layout is a little bit unconventional but it works really well for my needs as a photographer and a content creator one of the reasons i love this apartment is the light and i've just had so much fun decorating this space this is primarily left quite open i've got this huge mirror which everyone loves this is kind of the area of the apartment where i like to show a bit more of my personality i'm honestly a bit of a minimalist but i recently finished my gallery wall and i'm super proud of it this is probably one of my favorite areas in the apartment it's kind of like a window seat slash storage so this was something we actually built initially just to hide this like super gross new york furnace heater um but it's a really great unit just provides like extra storage and it was also just fun to build stuff i feel like it's great to have a space that i can be creative in in terms of turning it into something that i really love my landlords were really great that way they kind of let us change a lot of things in the got my crystal singles my favorite daft punk poster the gallery was a mix of everything i've kind of some of these like art pieces i've collected over the years they're quite meaningful to me but um some of these ones are newer and the apartment is so i suppose bare in a way some would say that um i kind of just wanted to go like a little bit crazy and a little bit bold with this this is from a kind of a graphic design artist who i love hotel maggie this was actually a gift this is a vintage um exhibition poster so that one's very special to me any kind of like expensive prints i do like to get them framed properly that's like a really big thing for me and kind of supporting local artisans like framers like that that's probably my favorite print on the wall i love the colors i've got the one plant that i managed to keep alive the entire time i've been in new york this beautiful plant has never done me wrong i did recently invest in my first designer furniture piece which i'm so happy about because i am a huge design nerd um and to be in a spot where i could invest in a really great piece was amazing so this is a late 1970s peter danko chair and i love it it's so quirky and weird it's made out of one single piece of plywood and the other one the matching one is in the smithsonian which i think is so cool very happy to have it in my home i think no matter where i move it's a chair that'll be coming with me the craftsmanship is incredible this is another piece that i built i was just looking for something that would fit into this corner again just to hide a bit of an ugly nook um and it's really great to finally have somewhere to kind of display all my books i feel like you can tell so much about a person by the books that they have this is probably the thing that everyone gravitates towards as soon as they get in this is the weird thing it's not actually a glass mirror it's a glassless mirror wait what's so strange it's like going into another dimension it's so strange oh my god it's fantastic for a good selfie good outfit pick and uh anytime my friends come over they're like straight over to the spot to take a picture so the couch is just an article couch i got it a couple of years ago i've been trying to kind of like jazz it up a little bit with these like beautiful blankets i collect a lot of stuff from like designer makers i went to a textile college so a lot of appreciation for people that design hand make their own products so i like to kind of support people like that as much as i can so i've got two really great blankets and layers up there tvs are something that every apartment i've had they've always been a super awkward thing to fit in the space so i felt like the best alternative was a short throw projector which is great like i think they're the most genius inventions ever because most projectors you have to place them on the other side of the room and they can be super noisy and like i didn't want to do this big fussy mounting situation so this is just right next to the wall this wall is basically my tv so i'll show you a little later what it looks like really really great investment then this is my bed my favorite place in the whole entire world is my bed i work for my bed i eat from my bed i know that's really controversial but it honestly is where i spend the most time a lot of people think it's on the floor it's actually not it's on a really low profile box spring i just think low profile beds look amazing in a loft area it makes the ceilings feel like even taller everything is kind of exaggerated when it's low to the ground in general i think people probably think it's a bit of an odd furniture layout like to kind of be looking at the couch or not section things off but i feel like people are like obsessed with like boxing things off and like sectioning off their space i've always styled for the apartment and not for what i think a typical apartment should have it's an unconventional space so why decorate it in a conventional way it was intended to be a work desk dining table i rarely ever use it to be honest are you djing i'm trying to learn this is the year i said that i would pursue all of my interests and hobbies so i've got my little my dj deck set up at the bottom here it's kind of just like my little admin worky area but it's really great i've actually gotten my friends to make a bunch of these covers to like hide weird logistical things in the apartment so there's a printer the tables i think and the chairs were from france and sons do you have a built-in closet but i've taken this old ikea closet just for more space everything that i kind of need is in this three drawers it's very messy pack a lot in here for a girl that loves clothes and i also got these lovely flowers for you guys oh this is an over alto base by the way it's a vintage vase i get a lot of vintage pieces like these and this mirror both from a store in brooklyn called home union which is one of my like favorite stores i seem to gravitate towards these weird like wavy lines like the wavy chair and this beautiful little mirror this is my favorite area actually my coffee station this was already in the apartment this unit really great it's just extra counter space make pasta on it but yeah this is where i kind of have my little wake up in the morning coffee situation more hotel magique i love love love her prince and this is a poster from my favorite club it's technically like i think in queens but nowadays it's one of my favorite place to go dancing so highly recommend you check that out but last year they did these limited edition kind of pandemic posters one of my kind of things that got me through the pandemic i would say was watching live sets this is the actual only built-in closet in the apartment um it's pretty big it's kind of full of all of the junk i like to hide like my laundry winter clothes spare bedding all that stuff really really beautiful you want to know where i hide my mess this is my bathroom it's probably my least favorite room in the house it serves its function everyone's a bit shocked when they see a new york kitchen i would say but it has everything that i like this is like a shelf that i put in when i moved in it was originally like these really unfunctional cabinets i was able to remove those and kind of just i don't have a spot to display all of these lovely ceramics and glasses that i like to collect also the floors weren't always white it was something that i did after i moved in they were originally just regular wooden floors they were damaged they did have paint on them so i didn't really feel too bad about switching them off painting the floor white just helps lift the space and bounces light all over everything in the apartment is from like a practical standpoint a functional standpoint and then if i can kind of work design into that as well like that's what i love to do i'm originally from ireland and i've been in new york for about five years the rent here is 2800 which is very expensive however i always envisioned a dual purpose for this space for it to be a home but also a creative space for others been making content online for way too long probably about 11 years i do mix of fashion a little bit of beauty a lot of stuff around the loft it's got its own instagram it's at a brooklyn loft where you can kind of see the transformation of what i've done to this space it looked very very different when i moved in at the time as a content creator i would be renting out a lot of spaces for shoots and just for like work and i kind of wanted a space that i could save my cost and i could shoot in as well and the thought of potentially decorating it in a way that i could invite other content creators to come and make content here was just something that really inspired me and i love interiors i love um doing projects so doing this place up and opening it up in the form of kind of a place that's available for day rental hourly rentals for other creatives to come was just kind of like what i always intended for this space i'm an easily kind of stressed out person so the main reason why my space is a lot more minimal than a lot of apartments is generally from a place of like my mental health especially throughout the pandemic having this sort of zen uncluttered space was so so good for my mental health i don't really like to keep anything in the apartment that doesn't either serve a function or bring me joy really fun thing about this apartment and having it so white my intention was always to bring the color in through the furniture so like a blue couch like really rich wooden furniture pieces so even though i am a bit of a minimalist and i do love white i love color also at the other end been a really fun process of kind of merging my kind of crazier side and my really calm zen side and kind of fusing it all together to make a space that is really a bit neat when i moved here five years ago this neighborhood in bushwick was actually the first one that i landed in it was my first experience in new york i automatically felt quite at home here and even though the neighborhood is constantly changing constantly evolving i have found such a home in the people and the locals here and it's such a beautiful fusion and i think that there's this really interesting kind of synergy and friendliness that just makes it such a beautiful neighborhood to live in and i'm just getting to know my locals getting to know my neighbors that's a really important aspect for me the really interesting thing about this neighborhood is it just has so much going on like it has a really interesting eclectic mix of artsy people and nightlife and restaurants there's just always something cool and new going on in this area it's also a place that i've found and to be so accepting of everyone in every style and for everyone to be themselves and i think that's the really special thing about this neighborhood like really represents what new york is all about my favorite thing about new york is generally how welcoming people are i know new yorkers get such a bad rap they're being short fused or impatient but i genuinely believe that new yorkers have a great heart and they will always help out a neighbor a friend somebody in need as somebody that moved here completely on their own not knowing anybody i felt truly welcomed in new york and that's kind of what's made me stay there's a lot of other cities that i've tried that i haven't had that welcome from i just love the opportunity for everyone to succeed in this city and just like the endless possibilities in my heart