[NATE DAY] Nate Berkus's W. Village Apt Is My Apt's Bro

 

Yo, today is Nate Day! The @moggitgirls hit the Twitterverse, and they hit it HARD by organizing a special day for design bloggers near and far. So today we're all sharing our most favorite-ist Nate Berkus-ified products and rooms (because Nate rules all our faces), but also in anticipation of the premiere of Nate's new show! It's on September 13th! And I will soooo have that shit Tivo'd! So herewith, is the Nate Berkus room that rawked my world the hardest. Follow all the #NateDay action on Twitter here.

Ok, so if "imitation is the most sincere form of flattery," I'm hoping Nate Berkus will feel totally fucking flattered when he comes over to my apartment for dinner (that's part of #NateDay too, right?). Cause true confessions: pretty much the whole frigging joint was inspired by his W. Village apartment.

I saw it originally when he first revealed it on an Oprah ep, and I literally stopped breathing for a min. Kind of like Steve Sanders did in this pic from the OG 90210. Srsly, I died. If I could have asked Nate's apt to marry me, I would have.

Unlike Steve, however, I didn't have suitcases full of cash money under my bed, and so I needed to file away my Nate apt obsesh for a later date.

But here's the thing: I COULDN'T. I saved all the pics from the Oprah.com slideshow in a folder on my desktop entitled "OH YES, YOU WILL BE MINE" and every few days I'd open em up, lick my LCD screen, and then go back to whatever I was doing. At the time, Greg-n-I were renting a place, and it just wasn't possible for us to totally recreate this shit like I wanted to.

But two years later, we bought our own little co-op in Brooklyn! And amongst my stacks of Domino mags, and endless design blog trolling, I kept going straight back to Nate's place. Most astonishingly, this was like the ONE place, from top to bottom, that my husband and I *both* agreed that we completely fucking loved. And I mean LOVE loved. Like the real thing.

So after spending a week or so agonizing over whether or not it was actually ok to copy Nate, we just said fuck it and decided to Nate-ify our place full throttle. I felt slightly lame, but then justified the whole thing by telling myself that people pay bazillions of dollars to Nate for design advice, so why would I not do the same? Duh?

Now, as it turns out, we wound up with something that was very much *inspired* by Nate's place. Obvs its not as killer as Nate's place cause it was designed by my ass instead of his. But I still like to think of our apt as Nate's apt's bro.

Here's what went down (please forgive the shitty pics):

 

Our apt faces the courtyard of our building, and while super quiet (srsly...it rules how quiet it is in hurr), it doesn't get a ton of light. So the white floor thing, in addition to looking like sex on a stick, appealed to us as we felt like it would really brighten up our place (SPOILER ALERT: it totally fucking did).

We went for carrera marble in the kitchen (DO IT ppl...do not be afraid!) and I used wallpaper in the back of my kitchen cabs to create some interest and tie things into the adjoining living room (see below).

While we went full-on white for floors, ceilings and walls, we ended up using different whites to create more of a "layered" feel to things: so we used white Benjamin Moore porch paint on our floors, and different whites for our ceiling, walls (Benjamin Moore Decorator's white), and our trim. The look is subtle, but I kinda dig it....oh and I stole that trick from Nate too.

The other element I loved, loved, LOVED from Nate's place, was the idea of painting all the doors in the apt a different color. And I thought this dark, rich, inky blue he used was gorge:

 

We found a similar dark inky blue and went for it. Turning a closet into an office was pure genius, as obvs space is at a major premium here in NYC. Also, NATE IS A MAC!! YAY!!

Finally, despite the fact that I've never been a brown girl, for some reason I totally dug the brown leather couch and accessories with the white floor at Nate's pad. We already had one brown couch and ended up finding another killer one at ABC Carpet & Home on sale.

I dug the sisal rug too (and natural textures hat he always uses at his place), but we have a dog (Oliver!) and despite the fact that he's been housetrained for 7 years, anytime we get a rug, he feels an overwhelming need to piss on it. So yeah, I ditched that idea. The gigantic piece of artwork on the wall is from Etsy (sadly, the seller isn't active anymore) as are all of the other pieces of artwork in the corner (we have a dark, moody chicks thing going there).

I dug Nate's use of black accents as well (cabs in the kitchen, striped rug in the bedroom, etc), but we decided to take things a bit further with a striped black foyer. Rather than paint (which I had been prepared to do, I found these amazing vinyl wall decals called Wall Pops! Basically you just stick em to the wall, and voila. This turned out to be soooo much easier than painting (and so far everyone has mistaken them for paint!)--best of all, they're removable if I ever change my mind.

I also love that Nate always makes use of chic, thoughtful light fixtures and lamps, so I tried to embrace that shit too. Here's the light fixture in our living room from Jonathan Adler:

Phew!

So yes, THANK YOU Nate...thank you for so much:

• For having great hair.
• For being nonchalant about your great hair.
• For helping people do cool shit with all of their family photos and encouraging them to save their memories in unique ways.
• For teaching me to edit, edit, edit!
• For making luxury woven mohair throws that only cost $29.99. Nate-a-licious!
• For hating ceiling fans.
• And most of all: for letting my ass kind of copy your NYC apt. I mean, I know you didn't give me your permission or consent, but now that I've confessed, I'm realllly hoping that you don't hate me.

Cause I seriously love to love you!

Nate Day!

TO DO:

Check out all of the other #NateDay bloggers here. And follow Nate on Twitter! Also, tune in to the new Nate Berkus show on September 13!