When the singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles came to New York from her native California in 2013 and rented what she described as “a really sweet one-bedroom” in the West Village, who knew — certainly not Ms. Bareilles — that she’d soon be crooning a love song to the city?
“I was just testing the waters. I thought I would only be here for a year,” said Ms. Bareilles, 36, who composed the Tony-nominated score for the Broadway musical “Waitress” and is a five-time Grammy nominee in categories including song of the year and album of the year. She would have her New York adventure, she figured, then happily return to her life in Los Angeles and her house in the seaside neighborhood of Venice.
“And that didn’t happen,” she said. “I love the life that has blossomed here.”
But blossoming sometimes involves transplanting. That delightful place in the West Village was on the corner of Seventh Avenue and Christopher Street, “so it was very vibrant in the evenings,” Ms. Bareilles said. “In the beginning, it was sort of what I was seeking. But as time went on, it became clear to me that I needed a place that had a little more sense of sanctuary.”
She found just such a refuge, a two-bedroom rental in a loft-like space, several blocks east of her freshman apartment, on a street she’d wandered during an early visit to New York. “It was years ago,” Ms. Bareilles said. “But I remember this euphoric feeling of possibility and excitement and optimism. When my real estate broker showed me a place on that same street, it was a serendipitous moment. The stars were aligned.”
The apartment was more spacious than the dimensions of the low-rise building suggested, with large windows and the natural light Ms. Bareilles craved, to say nothing of fully functional bedroom doors. “My previous apartment had French doors, and they were beautiful,” she said. “But they didn’t really close, and I didn’t feel I would have privacy if someone came to stay.”
There was also that real estate intangible, a feeling of calm and peace, critical for Ms. Bareilles, who works at home in a music studio she set up in a corner of the main room. “I’m not the sort of person who can sit down anywhere and write,” she said. “Things need to feel safe and comfortable and warm and welcoming. The aesthetic of what you’re trying to create is reflected in the space where it’s created. I think it does make a big difference in my music.”
A palette of creams and ivory has helped foster the right mood. “I tend to love color,” said Ms. Bareilles, whose house in Venice gives full expression to that love. “But I realized I feel much more serene when things are little more neutral, and I just have pops of color.
The pops come courtesy of a cherry-red poster with white script reading “I Love You,” an aqua throw pillow on the sectional, a striped Peruvian rug on a wall in the studio and a pair of poufs — Ms. Bareilles calls them sister poufs — one turquoise, one red.
Because she figured she’d just be passing through, she was thinking more in terms of a fling than a serious relationship when she bought furniture for the West Village apartment. “I got a cute but not really comfortable couch,” Ms. Bareilles said. “It was form over function. I’m a homebody and a nester, and my space was getting filled up with things that I only sort of liked.”
Ms. Bareilles has taken more care this time around, shipping out some of her favorite pieces from California. “That made a huge difference,” she said. The haul included a chair and a half where she reads and meditates; those two poufs; a wood-and-metal cabinet; a stained-glass guitar lamp made from found materials, a gift to herself when she finished her third album, “Kaleidoscope Heart”; and a Yamaha upright piano.
“I love the sound and temperament of an upright piano,” Ms. Bareilles said. “It has a lot of character. I play mostly with the damper on, because I try to be a good neighbor, but I’ve become attached to the muffled sound of the muted strings. There’s something sort of intimate about it.”
She bought some pieces for the new apartment, including a sheepskin-covered bench and a custom-made table for the kitchen nook — “I’ve always wanted a kitchen nook,” she said — where she has her morning coffee and answers email.
There are also a few holdovers from the Christopher Street apartment, like the bed from the home-design store Blu Dot — “a splurge, but I love it,” Ms. Bareilles said. “I have such fond memories of landing in New York and having a mattress on the floor, and then my first purchase was a place to lay my head.”
A feng shui-minded friend urged Ms. Bareilles to reposition the bed so that her feet would be pointing toward the door. She acquiesced, and “I swear to God I started sleeping better.” Consequently, when this same friend advised that the first thing you see in the morning should have special meaning, Ms. Bareilles needed no convincing. On a trip to ABC Carpet & Home, she saw a pink wire sculpture spelling out the words: “You always had the power, my dear. You had it all the time.” It now hangs on the wall opposite the bed.
Guests should be ready for their close-ups: Ms. Bareilles keeps a pink Instax mini camera on a console table. Those who are staying overnight will be sharing the guest room with prayer candles that feature the likeness of the four actresses who starred in the sitcom “The Golden Girls.”
“These are precious to me,” Ms. Bareilles said. “I grew up watching the show, and they are my most beloved TV friends. They are a perfect example of the expression about the whole being more than the sum of the parts, or whatever that expression is.”
Because her house in Venice is small, Ms. Bareilles had no difficulty adjusting to apartment living. Actually, she relishes it.
“I think I’m well suited for it, because I like cozy. What my house has that I miss is an outdoor space, but I have a little fire escape and I sneak out there,” she said. “I really don’t have a large sense of lacks: I like the security of an apartment as opposed to a free-standing home; I like having neighbors above and below me; I love walking out the front door of my building and immediately being in the middle of the city.”
She added: “For right now in my life, this is feeling really good.”
Resource : http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/11/realestate/sara-bareilles-of-waitress-on-her-sanctuary-in-the-city.html?_r=0
