Whether you're a stuff person or not a stuff person is entirely based on personality I think, and agreeing on what you want to see in your space.įor those that are newer here, the giant media unit was Trevor's grandfathers that I stripped down through so many layers of varathane it was ridiculous and that beast looks perfectly old to us now. I run a retail store, smalls are a thing but I think because I deal with it on a daily basis in the shop I needed some areas of our home space to just be clean and non-stuff-y. Put all the main furniture in one space and got rid of many small items. I changed out the textiles to make them more neutral and cohesive. The above is where I landed after a couple nights of picking away at things. I was grooving to a Willie Nelson record and had the room torn apart. Trev just came downstairs and shook his head. I also removed 7 pieces of furniture from the space. That option obviously didn't end up winning.
During the movie I wasn't paying attention to, one option going through my head was drywalling over it and making it a normal wall again.
Putting a space back together and not breaking the bank while knowing exactly what you'll use the space for is a challenge many face.Īnyways, long winded way to say I threw all the textiles in the middle of the floor on a Monday night, ripped the shelves out of the niche, sorted our stuff that was in the niche [this niche held dvds from the previous owner and it's a wierd space but we decided to keep it. Or don't they anymore? I don't know, it's what works for us.Īlso, if you have followed the blog part of this business for the length of time it has run you know our basement has flooded not once but twice so we have had to put this baby back together a couple times. We are often down here hiding from the world watching Emma run in circles, listening to records and discussing life the way people do. Let me also preface this blog post by saying that there was nothing wrong with our space. Trevor and I were "attempting" to watch a movie 2 weeks ago and I couldn't even focus on the screen because my inner nutter was mentally ripping apart our basement and changing things, throwing things out and changing pillows etc.
I spend a lot more time with music in the background and consciously making myself walk away from the tv that is like a friggin drug this time of year. Therefore, I start ripping closets apart, working on projects, amidst the chaos of running 2 businesses, and chasing a 2 year old. I start getting gnarly about being in the house (even though I leave it daily but not for prolonged periods of porch hanging, garden digging time) Well kind of real life.Īnd there are not actually black market goods in this post however I did whip out some black paint and make a niche black so that title still makes sense. If we’d just had some mid-century couches in the window, they probably would have kept walking.Time for a real life blog post again. “Last week, I was in the shop, and these two 10-year-old black girls came in. The physical space, they say, has allowed a whole new type of customer to engage with their wares. A couple of months ago, the pair opened Blk Mkt, a 900-square-foot store (465 Marcus Garvey Blvd.) in Bed-Stuy bursting with trinkets and art and other vintage pieces you won’t find anywhere else - from an original FBI wanted poster for Angela Davis to ’70s Afro picks (which Handy was surprised to find, she says, at an antiques store “in a very white town in South Jersey”). “I’ve seen boxes of black objects in the dumpster at auction houses,” says Handy. “Eventually, we made a decision to focus on black ephemera.” The choice stemmed from a desire to both normalize black representation in antiques stores and change the value of black antiquities. “We’d find some cool industrial pieces and a collection of Jet magazines, and we’d put both up for sale,” Stewart says. At first, they grappled with how much of what they took home should be black. The artifacts we’d see in these places did not represent us or our history,” says Stewart. “We realized that older white men run this industry. Their pastime had them combing regional estate sales and flea markets, then selling what they found on Etsy later, they created a website. So when we started dating, it’s something I’d do to spend time with her,” says Handy. Jannah Handy and Kiyanna Stewart began going to thrift stores together in 2014 while both were at Rutgers University.