There are good Brooklyn apartment deals, and then there are the kinds of finds which feel so cosmically unlikely in this economy—reasonably priced, flush with amenities, with a frictionless leasing process—that you start to wonder whether you’ve stumbled upon some kind of grift.

The rental in question is a large studio in prime Greenpoint with a basement and a private outdoor space, not to mention an extremely generous broker who was willing to show it to the prospective renters—GQ commerce style writer Gerald Ortiz and his partner, fashion designer Kate Walz—ahead of the market, and hold it until they’d mulled it over. As Gerald tells it, “We didn’t even know a place like this existed.”

In early 2022, they’d explored southward in neighborhoods like Clinton Hill and Dumbo, but nothing compared to the studio space in the basement of this apartment—already kitted out with a bench table for Kate to store her sewing supplies so she could work directly out of the home.

Kate, a Nebraska transplant, was taken by the spaciousness of it all. “I’ve always had kitchens that are, like, a tile wide,” she jokes. “Now we have an outdoor space where I can have my coffee every summer morning.”

Even the landlord—an established artist who once lived in the building—is “crazy nice,” Gerald says. Perhaps there’s a certain goodwill grandfathered into this place that’s yielded such a lucky streak.

One of the previous tenants had a thing for replacing the door handles and drawer pulls with funny ones shaped like animals, and as we traipse through the place (full disclosure: I’m a friend and former colleague of Gerald’s), the couple point out mermaid-like women on the bathroom cabinet doors, lions on the kitchen cabinets, and a tortoise-shaped metal doorknob in the basement.

“I’ve always wanted to have our creative friends make drawer pulls for us, and then when we got this apartment, I was like, ‘Oh, somebody else had a similar idea,’” Gerald recalls. They’ve since leaned into the tradition by swapping out some of the existing kitchen pulls with cast-iron hardware formed into faces, all made by their pal, designer Mike Ruiz Serra. “All the faces are different,” Gerald explains, since they’re handmade.

bought it off a none-the-wiser Facebook Marketplace seller for $200. A few outliers are the side table by Alvaro Ucha Rodriguez for Lichen and the floor cushions, curtains, and white couch slipcover (all handmade by Kate)." layout="wide" credit="Add credit" photoUserId=""/>

Other personal touches around the house include the thick floor cushions Kate made from recycled shearling, deadstock fabric, and “legit upholstery foam” that remind her of little cakes. Or the vintage jewelry she had soldered into a hook for Gerald’s keys. “He loses his keys every 10 seconds,” Kate says, “So I was like, ‘I have to fix this issue.’”

The main furnishings were sourced by Gerald, a vintage obsessive who loves to collect chairs in particular. Off the top of his head, he counts 30 chairs he has lying around: Eames chairs, Judd-style constructions, a Peter Danko chair with a kooky shibori-dyed cushion.

He admits that he can spend hours trawling Facebook Marketplace and Goodwill’s online store for deals, forgoing keyword searches for detailed sweeps of everything—just in case someone misspells something or the photos need a closer look.

Many of the other furnishings, trinkets, and art pieces in the apartment were either bought from or gifted by their creative network of friends, which gives the space an eclectic, lived-in feeling—like the sentimental painting in the dining room that an artist friend of Kate’s made her when they were teenagers. “As much as I like the furniture and pieces that we’ve collected (or got a crazy deal on), the ones that mean the most are the things made by our friends,” Gerald says.

Have you taken on an ambitious Rental Revamp—or do you know someone who has? We want to hear about it! Reach out to edit@dwell.com with photos and a brief description.

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An Architect and an Engineer’s Netherlands Home Was Designed to Soothe

Project Credits:

Interior Design: Gerald Ortiz / @geraldortiz and Kate Walz /@katewalz

Appears In

Rental Revamp: A Fashionable Couple’s “Pinch Me” NYC Home Is Full of Quirks and Handmade Details