She Taught Herself to Renovate Her Own Apartment

Amanda Weil found her village apartment by “kismet,” visiting it on a playdate with her daughter, Samantha. Its parent owners were thinking about selling, and she needed more space. That was 18 years ago. It wasn’t until the pandemic that she decided to renovate it. Her first move was to hire an architect whose name she says she has forgotten, probably because “if he didn’t like an idea I had, he wouldn’t draw it, so I fired him.” Liberated, Weil felt she could do it herself. It was a learn-as-she-went process. “It was like problem-solving, one thing after the other,” she says. She had a particular idea for her bedroom, though. “I am very into boats, so I had this vision in my head of a ship captain’s bed and then literally went on Amazon and bought a porthole and told the contractor where to put it.”