Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/realestate/23habi.html?ref=garden
Published: May 19, 2010
ERICA BUCKLEY has long since left the ranch house near Saratoga Springs, N.Y., where she grew up. But she has vivid memories of trotting across the yard and visiting her grandmother’s house, which was just next door.
“My grandmother had a guest room with twin beds,” Ms. Buckley recalled, “and when I was a child, I used to lie down on one of those beds and take a nap. I immediately felt relaxed.”
Ms. Buckley, a lawyer in the New York StateAttorney General’s office, now lives with her husband, Jeffrey, a legal research analyst at Debevoise & Plimpton, in the Seward Park Cooperative, a complex of red-brick high-rises on the Lower East Side. The newest member of the family, the couple’s son, Rainier Thomas Buckley, was born March 14.
Yet despite the obvious differences, something about this apartment strikes Ms. Buckley as deeply, powerfully familiar.
For nearly half a century, the apartment had been occupied by one of the complex’s original tenants, a widow now in her late 70s. After she moved upstate to live with her son and his family, the place was offered as a sublet on Craigslist. The Buckleys, who pay $2,300 a month, arrived in January.
The widow left behind many items that speak eloquently of another era, among them a crystal chandelier and, in the guest room, a pair of brass and crystal lamps, the frames for twin beds and an oak cabinet for a manual sewing machine.
“It reminds me of my nana’s house,” Ms. Buckley said of the apartment. “The furniture is from the same period, the years after the war. The place even has the same smell, maybe of perfume, or something that makes you know an older woman lived there.
“Whatever the explanation,” she added, “it’s all very comforting. And sometimes when I go into the guest bedroom and lie on the bed, I feel exactly as if I’m in my grandmother’s house.”
Shortly after the Buckleys, now both 36, married in April 2009, they moved to a one-bedroom walk-up in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn. It was fine for a couple, but Ms. Buckley found it hard to picture a baby on the premises. Or, as she summed up the situation to her husband, noting the absence of a washing machine and the prospect of lugging a bulky stroller up and down stairs, “Honey, I don’t think so.”
Their new home offers more in the way of amenities, among them elevators, a laundry room and 1,100 square feet of space. But when they arrived, they were taken aback by what they found.
“When I first looked at the place, it was jampacked with furniture,” Ms. Buckley said. “There was peeling and chipping paint. There was a rickety ’60s fridge. The drains were clogged.
“Most people would have walked right out,” she added. “But I’m thinking, wait. There’s a ton of space. With a good cleaning and a paint job, this could be amazing. I saw potential.”
The potential was there, but the journey to rescuing the apartment, begun when Ms. Buckley was seven months pregnant, involved one crisis after another.
Once a new dishwasher was installed — a feat in itself, given the tight squeeze in the little ’50s-style kitchen — the original 50-year-old stove started leaking gas.
The kitchen and bathroom sinks were clogged, “and oh, my God, it was over President’s Day Weekend, and the maintenance guy said it was too big a job for him and I’m freaking out,” Ms. Buckley remembered. “Then my mom says, ‘I know you want to keep the old fridge, but if you ask me, it smells very weird.’ ”
Ms. Buckley will always be profoundly indebted to her older sister, Erin, who got down on her hands and knees to scrub the parquet floors with Murphy Oil Soap and washed every piece of the crystal chandelier by hand.
Today the apartment’s star occupant is clearly Rainier, who was named after the mountain near his father’s native Seattle, though the couple’s prized Siamese cats, Mr. Suki and Ms. Rama, give him a run for his money. The baby’s age is meticulously tracked on the blackboard in the kitchen bearing the words, “How old is Rainier?” The small living room is dominated by his kiwi green Peg Perego stroller (“the mack daddy of strollers,” as Mr. Buckley describes it) and the black leather Dutailier rocker ($1,700 from Giggle, the baby store) where Ms. Buckley sits when she is nursing her son.
Throughout the apartment are items that speak of affection from a far-flung network of relatives and family friends.
The cherry wood cradle was made by an uncle of Ms. Buckley’s. When his wife was unable to have children, the cradle was promised to the first niece to become pregnant. (“I was the dark horse,” Ms. Buckley admitted.) Rainier is not yet old enough to sleep there, but the cats have gratefully adopted it for their afternoon nap. Atop the cradle is a handmade blue and yellow quilt made by a patient of Ms. Buckley’s mother, a nurse.
As new parents, the Buckleys are finding their lives very different from the way they were a couple of years ago. Time is precious, but so is money.
“We used to go out five nights a week,” Ms. Buckley said. “We’d have drinks all the time, on the Lower East Side or the East Village. Every night we’d have a bottle of wine for dinner.”
Now she cooks breakfast waffles and oatmeal in the tiny kitchen, and packs tuna sandwiches for her husband’s lunch. As for drinking, onValentine’s Day they each had a glass of wine.
“We’re so mature,” Ms. Buckley said a bit wistfully. “We were both crazy kids, and now here we are.”
Although the apartment these days is very infant-centric, it is home to one item totally unrelated to Baby Rainier, a two-foot-tall white plaster statue of the Virgin Mary stationed near the doorway. The statue has stood in every one of the 13 apartments in which Ms. Buckley has lived since moving to New York in 1997.
“This used to be in my grandmother’s front yard,” Ms. Buckley said. “My mom said, ‘You know, you could probably get rid of it at a garage sale.’ I told her, ‘Mom, no way.’ ”
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