Interior Designers

Michala Monroe

Interior Designer

M | Monroe Design LLC

T - 518.330.3655

m@mmonroedesign.com

Website

The Person You Need By Your Side

Buying or selling a home is an emotional and financial obstacle course. Doing it in New York City means every obstacle is higher and wider. In order to come out on the other side happy and confident in the decision you’ve made, you'll need an expert by your side. Not someone who has a real estate license because of Groupon. Not a part-time actor. Not someone who always lets your calls go to voicemail. You need a dedicated partner who:

• Can predict every step.
• Is sensitive to your needs.
• Understands what you want.
• Knows the terrain intimately.
• Will not let you make a mistake. 
• Has a tested network of real estate professionals.

Jeff Nolan is that partner. A natural advocate for his clients, he is ranked in the Top 1% of 45,000 Sales Associates in North America for the largest Real Estate holding companies in the country NRT or more commonly known as Realogy (RLGY). Since 2011, he has been a Multi-Million Dollar Club Member in one of the most prestigious agency in New York City, The Corcoran Group.

An Advocate

Jeff has a simple sales philosophy: he gets you the Highest Amount of money in the Shortest Amount of time possible. He believes in doing the research and applying his real estate knowledge to make sure your property is priced correctly. Why waste your time waiting for an unreasonable selling price at some vague, future time, when you can get the amount you deserve right now?

As an investor in Real Estate in upstate New York, Jeff knows the longer a property stays on the market, the more money the owner loses. When he began analyzing New York City Real Estate 11 years ago, he was shocked to see so many people losing money by leaving a property on the market for too long. Reasons ranged from: overly high asking prices to rundown kitchens, the #1 feature buyers care about. Jeff quickly realized many real estate agents either didn’t know why the property wasn’t selling, were unfamiliar with its true value, or they were afraid to tell the seller the truth.

Over time, Jeff used these observations, along with over a decade of market analysis and first-hand experience, to perfect his system for selling properties. To get you the highest amount of money in the shortest amount of time. The plan hinges on four principles that work in concert:

• Create a targeted marketing plan.
• Leverage his knowledge of the market, the brand identity of Corcoran, and the many tools Corcoran provides to create maximum exposure.
• Create a sense of urgency in the market.
• Capitalize with his excellent negotiation skills, first honed in the luxury automotive business.

It is a plan that gets results. Jeff consistently provides his clients with the highest price per square footage in the building. He sells apartments other agents can’t sell – even at the same price, and he always gets his clients the highest amount of money in the shortest possible time.

A Stealth Negotiator

Almost 80% of homes in New York go to a bidding war. You may have experienced a situation like this in the past. At this level of negotiations, you want a partner on your side that has done it hundreds of times. Before becoming a real estate agent, Jeff worked for Ford Motor Company for 13 years. His job was to negotiate directly with the owners of luxury automotive dealerships. He learned how to win a negotiation from some of the most savvy business people in the automotive industry. The most important lesson: the negotiation is won before it even starts.

Jeff has taken this key principle with him into the world of Residential Real Estate. When you’re out with Jeff, you’ll find he’s always asking the right questions at the right time – of the listing agent, managing agent or the seller. Some of his questions may not seem relevant to the purchase of the property, but while you’re looking at kitchens and closets, Jeff is already preparing for the negotiations, uncovering valuable information:

• What motivates the seller and the broker? Is it the asking price, emotional ties to the apartment, the fairness of the process, a non-contingent deal? 
• How savvy are the seller and broker about New York City real estate? 
• How will other bidders and their agents act? What motivates them? 
• What is the true value of the property, regardless of the asking price?

All of these questions are asked with one goal in mind: to save you time, energy and money. He’ll also go the extra mile to protect you from a poor investment by uncovering undisclosed information, discovering costly aspects of the property and evaluating recently sold comparables to determine whether a building is the right fit for your needs. 

Always a good listener, Jeff asks many questions of his buyers as well, making sure he fully understands what you’re looking for. Your needs, your wants, your financial picture and what you are willing to do to get your dream home.When the fit is right and you have to have a particular condo, co-op, or townhouse, regardless of the terms and conditions, he’ll figure out a way to achieve your goal.

You’ll Want to Have Him Over for Dinner

Working with Jeff Nolan is great, because he manages to reduce the stress and increase the excitement of finding your home. One of his recent clients described it this way: "Jeff negates every cliché you hear about NYC brokers. He is smart, savvy, incredibly concerned with his client’s financial well-being as well as their happiness. He is tough negotiator and runs his business as if every client was family.”

Laid back and funny, Jeff is originally from Detroit. He spent his childhood in London and graduated from the American School in London. He later moved to Denver, Philadelphia and Syracuse, NY, where he met his wife. Originally from Lima Peru, Lorena was most recently a Creative Director of a Manhattan based brand/strategy/packaging design firm.

Jeff and his wife share a love of travel, and after visiting over 40 countries, he plans to keep on going. Jeff is also a runner, who completed the NYC half marathon and is an avid cyclist, riding in the DALMAC quad-century with his father and brother four times. Next he’s working on completing his first triathlon. Jeff currently lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with his wife and daughter, Valentina.

2018 Skyline Preview: Super Skyscrapers to Change Manhattan Skyline

City Realty made the rendering above, providing us an idea of what the city will look like in 2018 based on projections for buildings currently being planned or already in construction. The photo illustrates a NYC skyline 2,500 feet above Central Park. This image focuses on Billionaire's Row, the set of seven sky-high luxury apartment buildings such as One Vanderbilt, 53 W 53rd, 432 Park Avenue, 225 W 57th, and 111 W 57th Street. You click through to the full article to see a few more renderings offering some different perspectives of the area, but the story is the same; Manhattan skyline is changing more dramatically than in decades. Major residential buildings are headed ever more skyward, meaning eventually we'll all be  all living in the clouds. Full Article

The Fashionable Homes of Fashion's Finest!

With Fashion Week upon New York City once again, we trolled the internet for an inside peak at the personal spaces of some of Fashion's biggest names and found an exceptional gallery of 12 of the most stunning rooms, in some of the most stunning homes in all of fashion. All, like the parlor of President of Marc Jacobs, Robert Duffy's Manhattan brownstone, are to be envied for sure. These insider views are a gift from reporteres at both Elle Decor and Architectural Digest as compiled by Racked in honor of Fashion Week. It includes the living rooms of Cynthia Rowley and Milly designer Michelle Smith, the dining rooms of Christian Louboutin and Trina Turk, the study of Anna Sui, the library of Mark Badgley and James Mischka, Ralph Lauren's kitchen and Nannette Lapore's to die for closet to name a few! Have fun peeping, and for more follow the links to the original full house tours on both Elle Decor and Architectural Digest! Designer Homes

For the LOVE of Fashion: Real Estate as the Ultimate Accessory

If, as Coco Chanel once said, "Fashion is architecture," then architecture, by way of residential real estate, has become fashion. Apartments make as much of a statement about their owners as a bespoke Savile Row suit about its wearer. A person who buys in 165 Charles is visionary and exacting, uncompromising on details. Fifty Gramercy Park North: refined. The Urban Glass House: bold. Donald Trump's Riverside South: arriviste. We cloak ourselves in these spaces the way we do in designer clothes. If you live for Prada, chances are you'd like the Richard Meier towers in the West Village. (It could become a parlor game: Does Frank Gehry link to Giorgio Armani or Tom Ford?) Real estate has become another luxury good. "In a way, it's the ultimate luxury good," says public-relations guru Harriet Weintraub, whose client roster used to include Christian Dior and Burberry, and who now also reps high-profile buildings. Full Article  

A One-of-a-kind Residence

Interesting homes and interiors are often created by the past lives of the buildings. This gorgeous loft in NYC provides a good example. Regarding its past life, the loft has served a lot of different functions. It started out as a place to host dances, conventions and social events. After a huge renovation at the end of the 20th Century, the loft provided space for galleries, restaurants and bars, a lecture hall and a library. Artists also used it as a living and studio space. With its porthole windows, barrel arched ceilings and old wood floors the loft was a perfect choice for all of its former functions. All these elements of industrial design combined with its history make it easy to describe the loft as a one-of-a-kind residence. Right now it's available for sale with a $24 million price tag.

 

New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion

The New Amsterdam Plein & Pavilion is a gift from the Netherlands to New York, to honor 40 years of friendship. The Pavilion designed by Ben van Berkel is located in Peter Minuit Plaza, just outside Battery Park in Manhattan. The Pavilion is equipped with different displays and functions that are supposed to encourage visitors to interact with them. There is a display that provides information about the surrounding neighborhoods, another one serves as a information desk and another one gives information about events in the Netherlands. There's even one facade that will present a food and beverage outlet; seats and tables can be found outside. The Pavilion's wings represent a well thought out design as they point towards historical places. One wing, for instance, points toward Hudson and another one points toward the future skyline. Furthermore the pavilion is equipped with an electronic facade LED system that creates a changing light show at night.

New York Penthouse turns into a Child's Paradise

Manhattan's skyline is well-known for its extremely luxurious residences - one more expensive than the other. Money is no object, what usually counts is: who has the biggest room, the highest ceiling, the best whirlpool. The penthouse we're talking about today is different though. It's not about creating a ultra luxury residence, it's about a child's dream coming true. The owners of the home intended to create something completely new, something exciting and advanced. The New York Architect David Hotson made their dream come true. He created a penthouse that seems to be a three-dimensional puzzle. Being inside the apartment can be very confusing as Dave Dotson combined childlike playfulness with mathematical complexity. Walking around you can sometimes look through to other levels, but you don't understand why and how it's possible. The highlight of the child's paradise penthouse provides the 80-foot slide that wends its way through the 4-story residence.
 
To get a better impression of how it looks like, watch the video below:
 

Johnnie Walker’s Diamond Jubilee Whisky



To celebrate Queen Elizabeth II’s 60 years of

reign, John Walker & Sons produced the Diamond Jubilee. There’s only a limited edition of 60 bottles available for sale. Each decanter is priced with an incredible value of $156,000. It’s the whiskey inside the decanter that justifies the price as it’s a special blend of grain and malt whiskies, all distilled in 1952 – the year Queen Elizabeth acceded the throne. All the profits will be directed to a royal charity, the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, which supports British craftsmen and women. The crystal diamond-shaped decanter from Baccarat is enclosed in a cabinet which has been made with wood from two of the Queen’s estates. Hamilton & Inches has fashioned the collars set with a half-carat diamond and each crystal decanter is accompanied by two hand-engraved lead crystal glasses.

Growing Panes: Homeowners Go Big on Glass Walls

People want natural light and open space in their homes, this has led to houses being built with entirely glass walls to allow for open views and as much light as possible. With new technology allowing for self-tinting windows and blinds controlled with an iPhone app this is becoming a viable proposition.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303795304576455953749984270.html?mod=WSJ_RealEstate_RIGHTTopCarousel

Summer Enjoyment takes New Form in Sweden

Last week I introduced an architect from Hong Kong who managed to evolve a tiny 344 square-foot apartment into a “domestic transformer”; by implementing a clever system of tracks and wheelies. The owner is now able to change the apartment into a distinct 24 architectural designs. You can find more about the house under “Tiny Transformers” and see a video here:

http://jeffnolan.blogspot.com/2011/07/transformation-of-tiny-spaces-imagine.html



Continuing with the theme of tiny dwellings, I present a cool project from Stockholm-based Sommarnöjen (Summer Enjoyment in English). Sommarnöjen recently released the designs for five tiny, yes 15 square meters is very tiny, summer cottages. The size is exactly what makes them so alluring. They are incredibly versatile and the mini-houses can be treated as stand-alone units as well as additions to larger houses. Their size and customizability allow them to be used as anything from guest houses to saunas. In fact, as The Cool Hunter notes, people with Scandinavian backgrounds will be pleasantly reminded of the cottages so often encountered all across Scandinavia. See more

http://www.thecoolhunter.net/article/detail/1551/summer-cabins

These tiny abodes can be used in a variety of settings and whatever the use, their owners will enjoy their time in them and their new surroundings.

The Strangest and Most Unusual Homes on the Market

The ‘Mushroom House’ is a strange mix of a glass bottle and a flowering plant; it has been attracting attention since it was built in 1971 and now it is up for sale. Originally envisaged by James Johnson, the house has become a local landmark and, after being renovated, has gone up for sale. According to five leading real estate web sites there are eleven other houses across the country which are all just as quirky and vary in price from $250,000 to $13 million.

http://blogs.forbes.com/morganbrennan/2011/07/13/strange-and-unusual-homes-for-sale/

Design Tips for Homeowners on a Budget

It is a commonly held belief that it costs a lot of money to renovate your home; however it is possible to transform any room for as little as $100. Basic changes such as curtains, pillows and wallpaper can alter the dynamic of any room, here is a perfect guide for anyone who wants to improve their home without breaking the bank.

http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20110714_designtips.htm

Growing List of Park Rules Irks Some New Yorkers

Authorities in NYC have been implementing many pieces of legislature over the past few months trying to improve the quality of life in our parks and public spaces. There are now restrictions on smoking, selling art and playing music. The parks of Manhattan are vital to the people using them – they provide an escape from the stress and intensity of the city. Such restrictions are seen by many as a violation of their first amendment rights. It also affects people making a living selling art or playing music. Advocates for the plans say it will benefit everyone in the long run making the parks more pleasant.

http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/parks/20110701/14/3555

Glassy condo, with controversial design, coming to Flatiron District

The Flatiron district will have a large glass condo building at 39-41 West 23rd Street, the design was approved before the downturn and despite urges from the community for planning to be denied it was granted with only minor changes. The original plan was for the development to be a hotel but it has changed hands and is now slated to become a condo building. The project is being run by Anbau Enterprises who also developed 110 Central Park South and 136 West 22nd Street.

http://therealdeal.com/newyork/articles/glassy-condo-with-edgy-design-by-carlos-zapata-and-developed-by-anbau-enterprises-is-coming-to-39-41-west-23rd-street

Transformation of Tiny Spaces

Imagine owning an 8,250 square foot apartment in the heart of any neighborhood you want for less than 1M. While this may seem unrealistic an architect in Hong Kong found a way to make it possible.

Many of us understand what it is like to live in small spaces. Hong Kong is no different. They are very familiar with cramped living – to the extreme! The population there is enormous, and there simply isn’t enough living space to house everyone comfortably. Large apartments are extremely expensive and only available to a small number of people. Thus, entire families are forced to live in tiny apartments.
For one man, however, living in a 344 square foot apartment with his parents and sister was simply not an option. He transformed his apartment into… well… a transformable apartment. Through careful use of wheels and tracks, the entire apartment can be customized into 24 distinct designs. 344 square feet, 24 different designs, 8,250 distinct square feet.

You have to see the video for yourself:

Markets of New York City

Who doesn't love the outdoor markets in NYC? Even on a partly cloudy day like this one, the markets were in full bloom. I caught a ride on the heels of Karen Seiger - author of Markets of New York City: A Guide to the Best Artisan, Farmer, Food, and Flea Markets, aficionado/lover of the markets, and promoter of artisans, farmers, food purveyors, antiques and flea collectors, and visionary market managers who keep these traditional-style markets alive and vibrant.

It was so fun walking around with her at the Smorgasburg in Williamsburg. She knows many of these fascinating people working their owns booths; promoting their businesses. Each with amazing products and interesting stories. Chefs, authors and entrepreneurs to name a few with creative ideas and oh, did I tell you - the food was amazing. If you want to know what going on in NYC, love to people watch, take in the action while walking the flea/food/artisan/farmers markets - grab her book and check out her blog @ http://www.marketsofnewyork.com/category/markets/

Historic & Modern Merge - Maff Studio

Cool architectural designs where traditional and modern merge; this is an absolute gem – The Maff Studio. It’s a masterpiece housed inside of a refurbished townhouse and designed by RDKA. Located in the center of The Hague, the Maff studio resides in between historic buildings, and thus juxtaposes the modern with the historic. The house features a private entrance, heated flooring. The ground floor has all the amenities needed for private life, with a completely modern kitchen, a washer and dryer, as well as all the standard appliances needed for a home. An open staircase leads up to the first floor. The first floor has a lounge featuring a Dutch 3-seater sofa, an entertainment unit and the master bedroom. You will be amazed at the different custom designed lighting selection in the Maff Studio – some eye catching and mood setting choices.

The beauty of the apartment, however, lies in its interior design. Maff uses three separate open spaces, each with a unique feel and character. Together, the three spaces instill a feeling of peacefulness and contentment in anyone. The designer crafted furniture and lighting provide the inhabitant with modern surroundings, which go in stark contrast to the neighborhood where the building is located. However, the contrast only serves to further underline the uniqueness of the home. The industrial-looking metallic railing on the upstairs lounge is a nice touch, bringing in a bit of roughness to the otherwise tranquil interior design. In fact, most of the metal in the apartment is unpainted stainless steel, coming together at strong angles. One thing is certain; one would never get bored of living in the Maff Studio.

You can find more photos of the Maff Studio RDKA’s website as well as on the website of the Maff Studio itself.

http://www.rdka.eu/Werk/W_Studio-Maff.html

http://www.maff.nl/fotos_villa

If I ever decide to return to den Haag, the Maff Studio will surely be my preferred choice of accommodation.

Casa no Geres

I recently stumbled upon a post by The Cool Hunter detailing the Casa no Geres, a house designed by Corriea/Ragazzi Aquitectos. The pictures of the house took my breath away. Nestled in the middle of the countryside, this home looks as if simply was not human made. A single-story structure, half of it overhangs a ravine, complete with a lake at the bottom. At the overhanging far end house, you are afforded a stunning view of the lake and the mountains surrounding it. The part of the house that rests on land has walls made of sliding glass, offering the inhabitants a gorgeous view. The interior is designed in a way to reflect the simplicity of the house’s surroundings. The furniture is simple and the overall pastel colors give the home an idyllic quality. It is a magnificent house.