What $3,500 Gets you In the Upper West Side | NYC Apartment Tours

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

hi hello how's it going it's Elena and welcome back to my channel if you're new here so happy to have you I make videos here on my Channel about apartment tours in New York City I've been knowing for about two years now so there's quite a few in the archives if you're looking for some more and I'm very excited for today's apartment it is stunning today we're visiting Marianne in the Upper West Side which I'm so excited about her apartment is gorgeous I thought I was just mindlessly scrolling through reels and I was like oh my gosh I have to go tour this apartment if you watch these buzzed in videos touring people's Apartments I love doing a History Section but this is actually my third apartment in the Upper West Side so if you want to have a little History Section you can search for this video here I'll have a link down below as well if you want a little history lesson before we head Uptown I have a quick word from climate power who was working on this video to talk about their vote for our future campaign so if you haven't seen my other content I like to talk about sustainability and climate action so I felt like this was a very well aligned part owner young voters particularly those showing up for their first ever elections are often the most motivated by climate change they showed up in record numbers in 2020 in their prominent role in that election can be credited with really keeping climate action a priority for congress so we made that same turnout now in 2022 the passage of the inflation reduction law is definitely a celebration of pressure from this younger turnout and is one of the biggest climate investments in U.S history which is amazing it ramped up the production of American-made energy it lowered energy costs for families address long-standing environmental Injustice and set us on a path to cut climate pollution by 40 by 2030.

it is vital to The Climate fight but this is kind of just a starting point and that's why we need more people to essentially sign up and get out there and vote so vote for future.org is super helpful it helps you check your own voter registration and find local polling booths near you or maybe you live in a state where you can sign up a bit earlier or you can vote by mail so definitely go to votefuture.org sign up if you're not already signed up or make a voting plan with your friends and encourage them to sign up voting is really crucial to keep building momentum for environmental progress which is something I'm definitely passionate about so if you're not already registered please register I'll have a link down below and encourage those in your life as well to sign up and vote so that's a little word from me and climate power let's get back to the apartments and let's head to Upper West Side and go see Marion's beautiful place hi come on in I'm Marianne sides I am a full-time content creator we live on the upper west side and we pay 3500 in rent for a one bedroom and we are in a beautiful 1925 pre-war apartment as soon as you come in you are greeted by this Gallery wall which is one of my favorite things we've done in this apartment it is a true reflection of my husband and I's personalities we've each picked out a few things that really means something to us on this wall we have some pieces we've found at thrift stores we really loved a couple prints that we found at westsider books on the upper west side and then we also have a couple of original picassos my husband loves to find them at auction some of his lesser known work you can actually find them for Fairly inexpensive so he does a ton of research and we have a couple of those on this wall in our entryway one of the things we wanted to do was have something kind of statement that welcomes you into the apartment so we switched out this chandelier it was just a very standard apartment light before and we found this one on Wayfair and changed it to this grand chandelier we've actually changed out a lot of the light fixtures throughout the apartment which is a great rental tip if you want to make it feel more like you so coming in this way this is my husband Ryan and our dog Astor and this is one of our cats Luna she's one of two cats that we have in here when you walk in through the entryway this is our dining space this space has actually been a lot of different things in the year and a half that we've lived here it really took us a while to figure out how to best use this apartment space because it is such a big room and there's a lot of furniture we played a game of Tetris a lot of the time to figure out the best arrangement that maximize the space for us this table is one of our most recent additions it's a 17th century Italian dining table like I drove it down from upstate New York work we found it on Facebook Marketplace for very inexpensive and it was such a good find this curio cabinet was another second hand find it was kind of this orangey brown color and we sanded it and primed it and painted it black and I love how it turned out so coming in this way is our living space this is where we spend most of our time it's also the room that had quite a few changes done to it when we moved in we actually added this wall molding ourselves in a DIY renter friendly way it's just polyurethane molding that we have used command strips to stick up on the wall I think it adds a lot of character and really ties into the pre-war elements of the building another thing I love is this mantel this was another Facebook Marketplace find the first week we moved here there was a girl selling this for forty dollars in Washington Square Park it was snowy that day we ran out in the snow and we were like I have to have this mantle so now it is my favorite thing in this apartment and I don't think I'll ever get rid of it so on this little wall right here we filled the space with another Gallery wall but what's a little bit different about this one this is actually our TV this is the Samsung frame TV and when it's not in use it displays artwork it's really nice just because it doesn't make the TV the center of our living room or the focus so when you're in here not using the TV it just is a nice decorative wall moving this way we move into the kitchen something I did when we first moved in is I painted all of the archways in this apartment black I get a lot of inspiration from Pinterest and I notice a lot of the Brooklyn Brownstones have these beautiful black archways so this is my little tribute to maybe having a Brooklyn Brownstone one day so moving into our kitchen it is actually a fairly decent space for New York City Apartment we have tons of cabinet room and one thing we did was add this rolling cart which gives us additional counter space and we also added the shelving unit which again you can never have enough storage so I keep a lot of our decorative plates and glasses up here and then this is our little coffee bar area where I can stand here in the morning make my coffee or tea we love to collect menus from some of our favorite places so this is a menu from Ralph's coffee shop it's on the Upper East Side but it's one of our favorites in the city so we have that here in our little our own little coffee station it's coming out of the kitchen we are back in the little hallway entryway area and if you go this way our bathroom is at the end of the hall it's nice for a New York City bathroom and then coming in here is our bedroom it also doubles as my office area this little corner over here is my office again in this room we added the renter friendly wall molding and again the molding just turns a basic room into something a little bit more character more charm I also added another fireplace surround in here because I have a bit of an obsession they remind me of Parisian architecture and so I really love incorporating a touch of that into our space little renter hack that I love to do these sconces are actually not hardwired we saved a lot of money by just mounting them on the wall the true star of the show in here really is the chandelier this is the Vintage Murano chandelier there was a girl who just bought a house and it came with the house and she said it wasn't really her style and luckily for me it's my style and she was selling it for I think it's thirty dollars so we drove to New Jersey and grabbed it and I love it for this room what I was going for is I really wanted somewhere that was fresh and calm but still had a little bit of coziness to it so I added just a lot of texture I have a lot of pillows the rose just something that's really cozy to curl up in at the end of the day at Marion sides on Instagram and the MA times is the blog that I run and I'm from North Carolina we've been in New York for about a year and a half and we're loving it so far my interior design style it's always a hard question for me to answer I feel like it's a bit of a collection of stuff from flea markets and second-hand Pieces Just anything that really speaks to us but if I had to say I would say it's a mix of mid-century modern and then also some old world European charm tied into that I joke that I am never finished decorating my apartment which is the truth the more pieces we find the more space sort of comes to life and we really find our own unique style I am very fortunate that my partner Ryan he absolutely loves interior design and creating a cozy space as much as I do so he is pretty much in charge of the artwork his passion is really finding unique pieces of art that reflect our personalities and then I do a lot of the furniture and kind of making all the elements tied together so it's a matter of teamwork we had a house in Raleigh and that house was actually a craftsman style house so I feel like my design style really catered towards that style of home there so when we moved here we moved into a pre-war and I really got to play with a lot of the interior design elements that I love like the wall molding and the Vintage pieces so I feel like it really tied into my true style more and I was able to exercise that and also a huge perk design wise of moving to New York is the Facebook Marketplace finds are so good so I love all the pieces we've been able to add to our collection from being here a couple of my favorite pieces are actually pieces that we found second hand the fireplace that we have in our living room is one of my favorites some of our other favorite pieces we have a couple of Picasso prints that are really special to my husband and I they're just pieces we've collected and mean a lot to us the upper west side it's our first apartment in the city and we love this neighborhood because it feels really neighborhoody there's a strong sense of community here felt like a good transition coming from the suburbs into the city there's also a lot of really great restaurants we're made in is one of our favorites we go there all the time for their happy hour we just love being right next to Central Park and then we also have Riverside Park in our backyard so we can pick and choose between the parks but I would say Central Park it's definitely my favorite let's not have that oh now she's gonna go to the litter box great