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Today, AD steps inside artist Talia Mayden’s 850-square-foot Brooklyn apartment, a space expertly filled with secondhand treasures. When designing her New York rental, Talia avoids anything trendy or new and has become nothing short of a Facebook Marketplace wizard. From trusting the process—even when the photos are bad—to navigating the Facebook Marketplace vs. Craigslist debate, discover how Talia thoughtfully brought her dream Brooklyn apartment to life, one secondhand find at a time.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Since I was a kid, I always sort of knew that I was going to land in New York.
00:13I ended up looking at this building on Street Easy and I discovered this unit that had been
00:18rented for quite a long time. But I did see that there was an available unit two floors up and I
00:24rented it. I had a feeling that if I got close to this place, eventually I could
00:31weasel my way in. Lo and behold, I think three weeks after I moved in upstairs, it was
00:36vacant. I called the landlord and just sort of insisted, I'm moving downstairs.
00:42Thank you. This space is just the best canvas I could have asked for. If anything,
00:48I only wanted to amplify the bones of the space through the art that I brought in.
00:52Sifting through websites like Facebook Marketplace, like Etsy, I totally feel like an archaeologist
00:59when I'm on Facebook Marketplace and finding these pieces sort of yanks me out of my neighborhood,
01:04yanks me out of the same people that I'm with all the time. And all of a sudden I'm in, you
01:08know, someone's living room somewhere that I've never been before. And that's actually one of
01:13my favorite parts of living in New York. I think that is such a privilege and like really,
01:17really fuels me creatively. I'm Talia Maiden and this is my 850 square foot Brooklyn apartment.
01:24So this is the living room. I love to collect things. I try to be really disciplined when I'm
01:48collecting things, but it still manages to like climb up the walls. The piano is one of the first things I've
01:54brought into the apartment. So I remember when I was looking for it on Marketplace, I was sitting
01:58in like a folding chair with a folding table because I hadn't bought like real furniture yet.
02:03I found this one and I liked how it's fairly unadorned. I didn't want anything too ornate
02:07because I didn't want to compete with all the molding, et cetera, in this space. And the best part,
02:12of course, was the price, which was free. So it was the one. I went to art school and what I learned
02:17there really deeply informs the art that I bring into the space. A piece all the way over there was a
02:22Craigslist find from when I lived in Los Angeles. Next to that, the ballerina shoes, that is a street
02:29find. My friend Lorenzo, Craigslist, Marketplace, Marketplace, New Year's Eve party, it's a long story,
02:36my friend Riley. The secondhand market is so different in New York versus LA versus Tennessee
02:42versus Michigan, everywhere that I've lived. I would say that New York is a Facebook Marketplace city,
02:46LA is a Craigslist city. That's an important dichotomy to understand if you're going to get into this.
02:51So obviously a space should be super functional, but because of my art and photography background,
02:57I really think in terms of the shot. When I got here, this bookcase I knew was going to be a shot.
03:04This was a painting that used to belong to my grandmother. And something that I like about this
03:10is it's a little bit of a polarizing thing to put the painting on the bookshelf, but it does have
03:14a good use case because bear with me. If you take it off, it's all the ugly stuff that I don't want
03:21people to see like Catan and my camera bag and like random CDs and stuff. So it actually serves
03:28a functional purpose as well. And I think it makes a great shot when it's up and centered on the bookcase.
03:34I often just slap art on top of things that I don't like. For example, I'm not like the biggest fan of this
03:40light switch, but I had this tintype taken last summer. Boom. Now nobody's seeing the light switch.
03:48One day I was deep in Facebook Marketplace, as I often am. I was looking for a white slipcover sofa
03:53and I had honestly seen a lot of duds, but then this one popped up. By the time we got it to the
03:58apartment, I realized that it couldn't fit through my front door. It wasn't even close. So I had heard
04:04of someone called the couch doctor. I think I had seen him on TikTok. He arrived with a literal hand
04:10saw. He sawed the couch in half, like right here. You can't even tell anymore, but he sawed it in half
04:16to get it through the door. And now it's as if it never happened. So because the couch was so beat up,
04:21they sold it to me for $300. The couch doctor actually did end up costing more than the couch,
04:27but totally worth it to me. I think this is a piece that I'm going to have forever. It's a great napping
04:31couch, great friends in town couch. So I'm happy with it. And all of the furniture in this spot is
04:37secondhand. This table is Craigslist, the chairs I got on Facebook Marketplace, and the rug I found on
04:43Etsy. A few of my other favorite things that I found for the apartment are this lamp. This is one of the
04:48few things that I've taken from apartment to apartment as I moved throughout my 20s. I found that
04:53lamp on Craigslist when I lived in Los Angeles. And then these paintings I found just stooped on the
05:01street. I can't tell if an adult made them or if a child made them. I think it's an adult pretending
05:05to be a child, but those are a little kooky and fun. And then this cast aluminum vase I found on eBay.
05:11So of course the real star of the show here are these stunning windows behind me. When I first
05:17walked into the space and saw these windows, my jaw dropped. I was just like, holy
05:23shit. Am I allowed to cuss? Okay. I'm just like, holy shit. I cannot believe someone, anyone could
05:31live here. I've really never seen anything like them in New York. And I love how this shape is echoed
05:36on the lattice work on the ceiling. Although in wood it looks like little chocolate bars.
05:41So it took me over a year, maybe closer to two years, to find the right dining table for this space.
05:47When I first saw this table, and this is often the case with my best finds on Marketplace, the photos
05:53that this woman took of it were horrific. Like it looks like she took them with a toaster. Really
05:59poorly lit. You couldn't even tell that it was green. Really hard to get a sense of the scale. But I had
06:04a feeling that it might be magnificent in person. So we entered the negotiation portal. You're gonna hate
06:10me, but I did get this table for $300. Often when I'm sourcing furniture for clients or just for my
06:17audience on the internet, a lot of times I show people pieces that are photographed poorly or they're
06:21not styled. And I have a hard time convincing people that like, listen to me, this is the moment.
06:28A lot of my clients find me via TikTok and being online is a bit of a double-edged sword because it is
06:35how I connect with clients. It is also a style killer. I think that the more strict I try to get
06:43with my style, the more that I try to niche it down to feed the algorithm, the more insincere I feel.
06:50The pendulum has certainly swung on the internet from that stark Kim Kardashian minimalism to ultra
06:57maximalism. In an ideal world, I could stay completely outside of that conversation. But it is
07:04interesting that I have received some maximalist allegations on the internet because I don't
07:08think of myself as a maximalist. When I think of maximalism, I think of saying yes and bringing
07:16everything that you love into the space. I think that is a lovely way to approach design, but it
07:21doesn't necessarily feel like what I've done in here. I think just because it's such a small space,
07:26it might feel like a lot, but I've been trying to be pretty disciplined about it. So when I look around
07:31and I see my art on the walls and the books everywhere, I don't think of it as a maximalist
07:36design choice. I just think of it as proof of life.
07:39So now we're in the kitchen. It looked pretty similar to this originally. So I just wanted
07:54it to be what it is. I put on a fresh coat of paint, a little bit of styling, and here we are.
07:59So as you can see, it's a bit of a tight squeeze in here. It is not a two-person kitchen. When my
08:05fiance moved in with me, we really quickly realized that it's a one-at-a-time situation or we might
08:11start getting in fights. So like if I'm cooking up something beautiful on the stove and my fiance is
08:16trying to get into the fridge behind me, like we're ass to ass and it's a problem. There's just
08:20not enough room in here. I mean, even when I'm opening the oven, I'm like fully backed into
08:26the fridge. I can't like open it all the way down without banging my knees. So that's just the reality
08:31of the situation. Very New York. So this vessel was actually an anniversary present from my fiance.
08:37He got it off eBay because he knows what I like. This is a cutting board by a maker in Fort Greene
08:42called Bartleby Objects. This I actually got on Craigslist when I lived in Los Angeles. The guy that
08:49sold it to me told me that he salvaged it from the Bloomingdales in West Hollywood. I don't know if
08:53that's true, but I like to believe that it is. And another anniversary eBay find from my fiance.
08:59This is a nineties vintage sumi ink piece that I found on Etsy. And then we just keep all of our
09:06cookbooks on top of the fridge for easy access. It's funny. I didn't think twice about putting
09:11art on the fridge. I was like, we have blank space. I have art. I'm going to put it on there. And I
09:14just did it in magnets, but it does get a reaction as if I'm doing something new and crazy.
09:20So it was a non-negotiable for me to have an office in this apartment, but I couldn't stomach
09:24putting like my ugly work stuff in such a beautiful room, like in my living room.
09:28So in such a small space, you had to get creative, make a couple of compromises. So now my office
09:33is very much in my kitchen. I have a lot of my film and my digital cameras here, some paints that I've
09:39used in the space, very many hard drives. I worked with the container store to custom cut these shelves
09:45to fit perfectly into the space. Cause I knew I had to get really into the minutia to make this work.
09:50So we're in a really high traffic area right now. We have kitchen, bedroom, living room. So it's not
09:57the best place to take video calls cause you're getting a lot of company in the background.
10:01This definitely isn't the most aesthetic zone of my apartment, but it is so hyper functional and
10:06enables me to work from home, enables me to store all of my creative gear. So I definitely have no shame
10:11about it because of what it lets me do. This table lamp is a recent Facebook marketplace find from a nice
10:18man named Bob on the Upper East Side. Thank you, Bob.
10:38Welcome to the boudoir. I completely color drenched this room. I decided to paint it based off of the
10:45color of the figure in this Paris review print. I liked how it was like a very in-betweeny,
10:51not quite red, not quite purple, not quite brown and decided to do the whole thing.
10:56Something I love about a color drenched room is when you walk in, it's super transportive,
11:01especially because we're right next to that office kitchen space right there, which one could say
11:07lacks sensuality. The moment you walk into this space, you are completely enveloped by it.
11:12The wrought iron bed I found on marketplace and this is actually, this was a good lesson for me
11:18because it wasn't the first bed that I bought for the space. I originally bought a pretty low
11:22dark wood platform bed. After having it for a couple of weeks, I had to admit to myself that it just
11:27didn't suit the vibe of the room. So I took the effort to post it, to sell it, and then the marketplace
11:33gods reward me with this beautiful piece. I know I sound like a broken record, but almost everything in
11:40this room I found secondhand. This dresser I found on marketplace. This nightstand, marketplace.
11:47This sculpture, Craigslist. This pencil sketch I found on Etsy. The linens I did not buy secondhand,
11:54that's where I draw the line, but I did get these sheets custom made. This was a little bit extra of
11:59me, but I got Paradiso stitched into the sheets. It's the last word of one of my favorite poems by
12:05Dana Levin and I thought it fit the sensual vibe in here. It's definitely tight here between the bed
12:11and the dresser. I made sure I gave myself just enough room to be able to sit here and open the
12:16dresser drawers all the way. So it's still functional, but it's definitely not roomy. So the rows taped over
12:24my bed. I originally put it there as a placeholder for a larger piece, but like I stuck it to the wall,
12:29took a step back and was like, huh, there's something to it. And then I never took it down.
12:46Okay. So now we're on the patio, which is kind of like the apartment secret weapon.
13:00I found this bar on marketplace when I was scrolling, but I didn't love the color of it,
13:05but loaded it in here anyway, and then painted it black knowing that it would wear and show a
13:10little bit of like patina over time. And I really like how it's turning out.
13:13This was a rare case when this was actually pretty seamless to get in here. The man that made it just
13:18dropped it off and called it a day. Love it when that happens. And something I love about this place
13:24is that it's set up really intuitively. So I can, you know, like make my friends a drink here and then
13:29bring it over to the table, plate it like a regular Martha Stewart. For these chairs, I was dead set on
13:37these Giacometti chairs. That's what these are called. That's the designer. So I changed my search
13:42radius on marketplace to, I think like 40 miles, which is bigger than New York city. If you didn't
13:47know that sometimes it can be worth it to expand that radius on marketplace, but just know you're
13:52going to have to rent a car or you're going to need to bother a friend with a car. So it's only for
13:56those high ticket items that you're dying for. This view I think is so pretty. This is what makes me
14:02feel like the luckiest person living in New York to be able to have this view. It's just like chef's
14:08kiss. I do think that being in a space that I found so creatively inspiring encouraged a ton of growth
14:15in my life. My career exploded and I was honestly really prioritizing romance. So I didn't know yet
14:23that that's what I was coming to New York to do. I just knew that I love decorating my apartment.
14:29Even when styling my bedroom for example, I made sure to have two nightstands even though it was
14:34such a small space because I wanted to encourage the idea that one day I would have a partner who
14:39would sleep in my bed with me and use a second nightstand. I met a wonderful partner who I'm
14:43marrying and I mean I don't credit at all to this apartment but it was certainly a magnificent
14:50backdrop to this era. I think coming to New York and landing in a space like this proved to me that
14:55those like big dreams that I had when I was younger of what my life could look like you know there are
15:00pieces of that that really are possible. Maybe not all of it all at once but like a slice of something
15:06as heavenly as this is wonderful proof that some of those things can come true.
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