A Writer Tried to Get an ELLE DECOR Interior for $500. Here’s What Happened
It was all about the green curtains.
In 2008, to my great surprise, I was offered a nine-month fellowship based in New York City. I had lived there twice before, both times unsuccessfully, meaning I had failed to create any kind of significant social life, and so this was a chance not only to do research for my new novel, but also an opportunity to get things right. I swore I wouldn’t let the city break me a third time.
But how? I knew from experience that New Yorkers (who use their ovens as sweater drawers) cannot resist the exotic rarity of a dinner party, so if I threw at least two a week, I should become the toast of the town. But where? Since my first swing at the city, in 1992, almost every writer had moved to Brooklyn, and so it seemed obvious that I should follow—except this was in the days when Manhattanites would not visit Brooklyn, but Brooklynites would happily come to Manhattan. Nobody dreamed of a day when the reverse would be true. I settled on somewhere along the F subway line, which led me to a search of Greenwich Village, and I found an ideal property, within my budget, about one block from where I used to live fresh out of college.
What could be better?
A furnished apartment could have been better, but I was undaunted. I had assumed I would spend time combing Housing Works and other thrift shops, but I had the great luck to find, online, a young woman who was moving back to Kansas. The city had broken her, and she was selling the contents of her apartment for $500. She had everything I needed—sofa, armchairs, cocktail table, bed, bedding, shower curtain, kitchen implements—everything except style. The moving truck arrived with her bland beige vinyl sofa and greenish glass tables, and I put everything in the empty apartment and stood back, wondering how I could ever throw a dinner party in such ugliness. That is when I was saved by ELLE DECOR.
I must have picked it up at the airport, in those days when all there was to do on an airplane was read. With my hideous apartment lurking always in my mind and my fear that I had already failed a third time, I came upon photographs of a Brooklyn townhouse decorated by Jonathan Adler in precisely the style that would save me. Green curtains, of course! A glamorous chandelier! Pops of brown and deep red! Mirrors! I would turn this beige assemblage into a salon.
And so I did.
I found half of what I needed at Ikea in Red Hook, hiring a van to bring it all home, and I hung the curtains floor-to-ceiling just as in the photograph. I put the mirrors beside the windows. At Urban Outfitters I found pendant chandeliers, which I hung at table-lamp level with the sofa between. I wandered the streets of New York, picking up canvases left on the curbside, which I decorated with fabric samples, and I found some pillows that matched the colors in the story. I bought a long board and some trestles at a hardware store, which would become my dining room table when needed. And loads of folding chairs.
I held my first dinner party one week later.
From then on, I kept to a firm schedule of Tuesdays and Thursdays and, rather than put myself on people’s calendars weeks ahead, I simply texted them around five to see who wanted dinner; many were delighted not to make a plan, and I always had a full table. I realized that my choice of the F train, specifically being near West Fourth Street, meant I was reachable from almost anywhere in the city, especially for those headed home to Brooklyn from Midtown. Why not stop by for dinner? It was an election year, and so I hosted a party where I filled the room with balloons; I held a birthday party for myself in November with dancing and nibbles. I was, if not the toast of the town, at least a cracker. Third time was indeed the charm.
In May, however, when the nine months were up, I had to decide whether to stay in New York or move on. I had made so many friends and enjoyed my time so thoroughly, and yet with the fellowship money gone, I knew there was no way for me to remain. So I had to bid my beloved new city goodbye. And my new apartment. I sold the furniture online to someone for $500, and who knows? It might have survived to this day. I may walk into some Brooklyn flat or Queens apartment and see my old place preserved in the city for me, as if in a museum of that blessed time when I finally got it right.
This story originally appeared in the October 2024 issue of ELLE DECOR. SUBSCRIBE
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