I met my husband at the apartment in the city on Friday. I drove in, unloaded my stuff, my son loaded his stuff in the car and drove the car home to Long Island, to return sometime on Sunday, at which time we returned to the Island (yesterday evening, car in front of the building, he again unloaded tons of laundry, still undone.)

So, my husband walks in the apartment door at 2:45 pm on Friday, I had just arrived a little earlier, and we both look at each other and know that noisy work in the building has to be done by 3 pm, Monday to Friday, no weekends. He has 15 minutes to cut through the kitchen walls with his sawzall, or whatever it's called. Twenty minutes later (so shoot me!) the wall is cut in half, via horrible noise! Yay!

Just enough time to get cleaned up and go off to see Martha Stewart, in person, at the NY Times Talks series, her biggest fan (HE is.) The walls remained in place until the next day, Saturday, at which time he removed the sheetrock, twisted out the studs and cleaned up the mess. That's all relatively quiet work.

Me? I was out on a girls' day with my daughter...one she owed me for my birthday from July! MOMA, lunch, walk through the park, it was lovely. Trust me, my husband prefers to be alone so he doesn't have to tell me what to do. I'm fine with that!

Upon my return, around 3 pm on Saturday, I opened the door to the apartment, and WOW, what a reaction I had! It looks fantastic...so open! So in need of emergency surgery!

What I felt right away was that this kitchen (obviously) needs to "talk" to the living area in an important way. I want to make the place really flow. In an apartment this size, this kitchen is actually big! I think that's a good thing. I think, to be able to:

a. have great counter space

b. be able to be at the main counter space and communicate with someone beyond

c. stand at the sink and look toward and out the window

d. watch the tv when desired

e. have nearly full size appliances

is a really, really, great thing in an otherwise tiny New York City apartment!

I won't go into ALL the ideas I have, that's for later...but, I wanted to share this progress with you. A few things I WILL tell you:

a. the tv cabinet goes...a flat screen will take its place

b. the cluttered looking green dining chairs will go...maybe an Arne Jacobsen Series 7 chair?

c. the black sofabed will go...in its place will be a loveseat with legs and arms back a bit, for a lighter look, but we definitely want two sofas in the space, and that's the best place, I think, for them to go. Putting them opposite one another makes the floor space very narrow, too narrow IMO.

I'm also up for suggestions! Please take a look at the flikr slideshow for more details.

Here's the before, that's a mirrored wall (came with the apt.) behind the black loveseat:

This is the after:

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