The Pink Lady is a 2-family house. We will be living on the parlor and top floor and renting out the garden level apartment. The previous owner had the reverse configuration (lower duplex with top floor rental). After being downstairs neighbors for all of our married life, we decided it would be exceedingly luxurious to be upstairs neighbors for a change. This of course presents some fairly immediate renovation challenges (as in get it fixed up and rented sooner rather than later).

This is what the garden level looked like. Since this was the owner’s living space, the kitchen is really large – way way too large for a one bedroom rental in New York, that’s for sure.

Looking into kitchen from living room. Hello plastic chandelier!

Kitchen

Bedroom (ignore the couch and the flower arrangement)

Hallway leading to rental unit: super skinny & gloomy

The challenge is to make the kitchen smaller to allow for more living space in the middle room without disturbing that super loud tile in the kitchen, as there reno budget does not allow for a floor do-over.

This is what we plan on accomplishing:

Make kitchen smaller, make living area larger

Add French doors to divide bedroom from living area

Re-arrange entry way to create private entrance that is wide enough for an actual person

Make the bathroom bigger, comfortable  for a regular size person

Replace plastic chandelier

Replace garden access door with an exterior door (current door is just a cheap hollow core door meant for indoor use)

Move thermostat to parlor level

Paint

It’s a lot to do….