How an Artist Filled Her Brooklyn Apartment With Secondhand Treasures _ Architectural Digest

Since I was a kid I always sort of knew that I was going to land in New York. I ended up looking at this building on street easy and I discovered this unit that had been rented for quite a long time. But I did see that there was an available unit two floors up and I rented it. I had a feeling that if I got close to this place eventually I could weasel my way in. Lo and behold I think three weeks after I moved in upstairs it was vacant. I called the landlord and we sort of insisted I'm moving downstairs, thank you. This space is just the best canvas I could have asked for. If anything I only wanted to amplify the bones of the space through the art that I brought in. Sifting through websites like Facebook Marketplace, like Etsy, I totally feel like an archaeologist when I'm on Facebook Marketplace and finding these pieces sort of yanks me out of my neighborhood, yanks me out of the same people that I'm with all the time and all of a sudden I'm in you know someone's living room somewhere that I've never been before and that's actually one of my favorite parts of living in New York. I think that is such a privilege and like really really fuels me creatively. I'm Talia Maiden and this is my 850 square foot Brooklyn apartment. So this is the living room. I love to collect things. I try to be really disciplined when I'm collecting things but it still manages to like climb up the walls. The piano is one of the first things I brought into the apartment so I remember when I was looking for it on Marketplace I was sitting in like a folding chair with a folding table because I hadn't bought like real furniture yet. I found this one and I liked how it's fairly unadorned. I didn't want anything too ornate because I didn't want to compete with all the molding etc. in this space and the best part of course was the price which was free so it was the one. I went to art school and what I learned there really deeply informs the art that I bring into the space. The piece all the way over there was a Craigslist find from when I lived in Los Angeles. Next to that the ballerina shoes that is a street find. My friend Lorenzo, Craigslist, Marketplace, Marketplace, New Year's Eve party, it's a long story, my friend Riley. The second hand market is so different in New York versus LA versus Tennessee versus Michigan. Everywhere that I've lived I would say that New York is a Facebook Marketplace city, LA is a Craigslist city. That's an important dichotomy to understand if you're going to get into this. So obviously a space should be super functional but because of my art and photography background I really think in terms of the shot. When I got here this bookcase I knew was going to be a shot. This was a painting that used to belong to my grandmother and something that I like about this is it's a little bit of a polarizing thing to put the painting on the bookshelf but it does have a good use case because, bear with me, if you take it off it's all the ugly stuff that I don't want people to see like Catan and my camera bag and like random CDs and stuff. So it actually serves a functional purpose as well and I think it makes a great shot when it's up and centered on the bookcase. I often just slap art on top of things that I don't like. For example, I'm not like the biggest fan of this light switch but I had this tin type taken last summer. Boom, now nobody's seeing the light switch. One day I was deep in Facebook Marketplace as I often am. I was looking for a white slipcover sofa and I had honestly seen a lot of duds but then this one popped up. By the time we got it to the apartment I realized that it couldn't fit through my front door. It wasn't even closed. So I had heard of someone called The Couch Doctor. I think I had seen him on TikTok. He arrived with a literal hand saw. He sawed the couch in half like right here. You can't even tell anymore but he sawed it in half to get it through the door and now it's as if it never happened. So because the couch was so beat up they sold it to me for $300. The Couch Doctor actually did end up costing more than the couch but totally worth it to me. I think this is a piece that I'm gonna have forever. It's a great napping couch, great friends in town couch, so I'm happy with it. And all the furniture in this spot is secondhand. This table is Craigslist, the chairs I got on Facebook Marketplace, and the rug I found on Etsy. A few of my other favorite things that I found for the apartment are this lamp. This is one of the few things that I've taken from apartment to apartment as I moved throughout my 20s. I found that lamp on Craigslist when I lived in Los Angeles. And then these paintings I found just stooped on the street. I can't tell if an adult made them or if a child made them. I think it's an adult pretending to be a child but those are a little kooky and fun. And then this cast aluminum vase I found on eBay. So of course the real star of the show here are these stunning windows behind me. When I first walked into this space and saw these windows, my jaw dropped. I was just like, holy ----. Am I allowed to cuss? Okay. I'm just like, holy ----. I cannot believe someone, anyone could live here. I've really never seen anything like them in New York. And I love how this shape is echoed on the latticework on the ceiling, although in wood it looks like little chocolate bars. So it took me over a year, maybe closer to two years, to find the right dining table for this space. When I first saw this table, and this is often the case with my best finds on Marketplace, the photos that this woman took of it were horrific. Like it looks like she took them with a toaster. Really poorly lit. You couldn't even tell that it was green. Really hard to get a sense of the scale, but I had a feeling that it might be magnificent in person. So we entered the negotiation portal. You're gonna hate me, but I did get this table for $300. Often when I'm sourcing furniture for clients or just for my audience on the internet, a lot of times I show people pieces that are photographed poorly or they're not styled, and I have a hard time convincing people that like, listen to me, this is the moment. A lot of my clients find me via TikTok, and being online is a bit of a double-edged sword because it is how I connect with clients. It is also a style killer. I think that like the more strict I try to get with my style, the more that I try to niche it down to feed the algorithm, the more insincere I feel. The pendulum has certainly swung on the internet from that stark Kim Kardashian minimalism to ultra-maximalism. In an ideal world, I could stay completely outside of that conversation, but it is interesting that I have received some maximalist allegations on the internet because I don't think of myself as a maximalist. When I think of maximalism, I think of saying yes and bringing everything that you love into the space. I think that is a lovely way to approach design, but it doesn't necessarily feel like what I've done in here. I think just because it's such a small space, it might feel like a lot, but I've been trying to be pretty disciplined about it. So when I look around and I see my art on the walls and the books everywhere, I don't think of it as a maximalist design choice. I just think of it as proof of life. So now we're in the kitchen. It looked pretty similar to this originally, so I just wanted it to be what it is. I put on a fresh coat of paint, a little bit of styling, and here we are. So as you can see, it's a bit of a tight squeeze in here. It is not a two-person kitchen. When my fiancé moved in with me, we really quickly realized that it's a one-at-a-time situation or we might start getting in fights. So if I'm cooking up something beautiful on the stove and my fiancé is trying to get into the fridge behind me, we're ass to ass and it's a problem. There's just not enough room in here. I mean, even when I'm opening the oven, I'm fully backed into the fridge. I can't open it all the way down without banging my knees. So that's just the reality of the situation, very New York. So this vessel was actually an anniversary present from my fiancé. He got it off eBay because he knows what I like. This is a cutting board by a maker in Fort Greene called Bartleby Objects. This I actually got on Craigslist when I lived in Los Angeles. The guy that sold it to me told me that he salvaged it from the Bloomingdales in West Hollywood. I don't know if that's true, but I like to believe that it is. And another anniversary eBay find from my fiancé. This is a 90s vintage Sumi ink piece that I found on Etsy. And then we just keep all of our cookbooks on top of the fridge for easy access. It's funny. I didn't think twice about putting art on the fridge. I was like, we have blank space. I have art. I'm going to put it on there. And I just did it in magnets, but it does get a reaction as if I'm doing something new and crazy. So it was a non-negotiable for me to have an office in this apartment, but I couldn't stomach putting my ugly work stuff in such a beautiful room, like in my living room. So in such a small space, you had to get creative, make a couple compromises. So now my office is very much in my kitchen. I have a lot of my film and my digital cameras here, some paints that I've used in the space, very many hard drives. I worked with the container store to custom cut these shelves to fit perfectly into the space because I knew I had to get really into the minutiae to make this work. So we're in a really high traffic area right now. We have kitchen, bedroom, living room. So it's not the best place to take video calls because you're getting a lot of company in the background. This definitely isn't the most aesthetic zone of my apartment, but it is so hyper-functional and enables me to work from home, enables me to store all of my creative gear. So I definitely have no shame about it because of what it lets me do. This table lamp is a recent Facebook marketplace find from a nice man named Bob on the Upper East Side. Thank you, Bob. Welcome to the boudoir. I completely color drenched this room. I decided to paint it based off of the color of the figure in this Paris review print. I liked how it was like a very in-betweeny, not quite red, not quite purple, not quite brown, and decided to do the whole thing. Something I love about a color drenched room is when you walk in, it's super transportive, especially because we're right next to that office kitchen space right there, which one could say lacks sensuality. The moment you walk into this space, you are completely enveloped by it. The wrought iron bed I found on Marketplace, and this was a good lesson for me because it wasn't the first bed that I bought for the space. I originally bought a pretty low dark wood platform bed. After having it for a couple weeks, I had to admit to myself that it just didn't suit the vibe of the room. So I took the effort to post it, to sell it, and then the Marketplace gods reward me with this beautiful piece. I know I sound like a broken record, but almost everything in this room I found secondhand. This dresser I found on Marketplace, this nightstand, Marketplace, this sculpture, Craigslist, this pencil sketch I found on Etsy, the linens I did not buy secondhand. That's where I draw the line, but I did get these sheets custom made. This is a little bit extra of me, but I got Paradiso stitched into the sheet. It's the last word of one of my favorite poems by Dana Levin, and I thought it fit the sensual vibe in here. It's definitely tight here between the bed and the dresser. I made sure I gave myself just enough room to be able to sit here and open the dresser drawers all the way, so it's still functional, but it's definitely not roomy. So the rose taped over my bed, I originally put it there as a placeholder for a larger piece, but I stuck it to the wall, took a step back, and was like, huh, there's something to it, and then I never took it down. Okay, so now we're on the patio, which is kind of like the apartment secret weapon. I found this bar on Marketplace when I was scrolling, but I didn't love the color of it, but loaded it in here anyway, and then painted it black, knowing that it would wear and show a little bit of patina over time, and I really like how it's turning out. This was a rare case when this was actually pretty seamless to get in here. The man that made it just dropped it off, and called it a day. Love it when that happens. And something I love about this place is that it's set up really intuitively, so I can make my friends a drink here, and then bring it over to the table, plate it like a regular Martha Stewart. For these chairs, I was dead set on these Giacometti chairs. That's what these are called. That's the designer. So I changed my search radius on Marketplace to, I think, 40 miles, which is bigger than New York City, if you didn't know that. Sometimes it can be worth it to expand that radius on Marketplace, but just know you're going to have to rent a car, or you're going to need to bother a friend with a car, so it's only for those high-ticket items that you're dying for. This view, I think, is so pretty. This is what makes me feel like the luckiest person living in New York to be able to have this view. It's just like chef's kiss. I do think that being in a space that I found so creatively inspiring encouraged a ton of growth in my life. My career exploded, and I was honestly really prioritizing romance, so I didn't know yet that that's what I was coming to New York to do. I just knew that I love decorating my apartment. Even when styling my bedroom, for example, I made sure to have two nightstands, even though it was such a small space, because I wanted to encourage the idea that one day I would have a partner who would sleep in my bed with me and use a second nightstand. I met a wonderful partner who I'm marrying, and I mean, I don't credit it all to this apartment, but it was certainly a magnificent backdrop to this era. I think coming to New York and landing in a space like this proved to me that those like big dreams that I had when I was younger of what my life could look like, you know, there are pieces of that that really are possible. Maybe not all of it all at once, but like a slice of something as heavenly as this is wonderful proof that some of those things can come true.