fiyel levent of levent and romme has been living in this apartment for the last three years, in clinton hill, brooklyn. she went to high school in the area and ever since then have been enamored with the architecture. it was a rather dangerous neighborhood back then, and that was only ten years ago, but has changed a lot since then. so after returning from scotland where she completed a creative writing degree, she decided it was time to move back. and with the help of a friend, found this place in the same building (convenient for meeting for drinks). fiyel jokes that generally she tends to like whiter colors and interiors with modern furniture, but somehow this apartment turned out to be the complete opposite – but still remains cozy and comfortable. click here for more images of fiyel’s lovely home, and here to find all of our sneak peeks! {thanks, fiyel!} -anne
It’s the fourth and top most floor of the brownstone and we have a skylight in the bathroom and in the hallway. There are three or four huge trees in the backyard so it often feels like we are living in a tree house of some sorts. My boyfriend (turned husband) (who is one of the founders and partners of Situ Studio in Dumbo) and I didn’t change anything, really, just painted the living room and bedroom white. We had mixed feelings about the blue and orange kitchen, but after having painted the two other rooms, decided to just leave it. We also left the red room as it was, a tiny little space in the back of the house which we turned into our library, and which is the messiest room in the apartment.
I didn’t have much when I moved here, only a few pieces of furniture such as the dresser in my bedroom which used to belong to my grandmother and her sewing table which I use as my computer desk. Gradually, I began to collect things and since I didn’t have that much money to buy furniture, everything was either inherited, found on the street, bought for less than $300 or we ourselves made. I try to edit our belongings, but it’s difficult because I tend to have emotional ties to every piece. It’s a bit of a clutter house right now.
My grandfather used to be an art collector in Finland, and the two wooden Chinese dolls are from him. The painting of the two donuts in the living room, made by Jonna Johansson, was a wedding gift from my aunt who happens to be an architect in Finland. The Mies Cantilever Cane chair was something we picked up off the street. It was very disheveled looking and I re-caned it myself. My husband is from Turkey, so his grandmothers sent us many carpets/kilims which we’ve put in the living room and bedroom. We also have many plants in our living room, two of which were presents from my husband, a rubber tree plant which was given to us by my mother, and a seven foot tall fern which we found discarded on the street. So it’s a bit of a jungle.
The headboard and the coffee table are my own designs, and my husband designed and built the bed as a wedding present. He also bought me the little table by the bed for one of our anniversaries, I forget which one. Since we live on the top floor, there is only one small window in our bedroom and the ceiling has a slope. It reminds me of living at home in my parents’ house, where my room was in the renovated attic space. We don’t get much light in there in the morning, making it quite difficult to get up, particularly in the winter.
CLICK HERE for the rest of Fiyel’s sneak peek after the jump!
Right at the beginning of our relationship, my husband went to India for three weeks and came back with bag full of gifts, little statues, bowls and things. They are strewn throughout our house. The clarinet and the skies I found in a junk shop upstate, when I went tubing for a weekend with my best friend last year.
