Where Edition01's Director of Operations Finds Unique Furniture

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New York City has more stores than anyone could physically tackle, but somehow we always keep returning to the usual suspects. To break out of the rut, we've asked some local shopping and fashion gurus to provide their hidden retail gems—those unique stores around our fantastic city that we might not all know about. Cue the Beatles: We're about to get a little help from our friends.

Mariam Chubaryan-Holleville is the director of operations at Edition01.com, a New York City based luxury website that teams up with the world's best fashion and accessories designers to create limited-edition, special collections. Prior to joining Ed.01, she worked at several small start-ups and acquired a great appreciation for bargain hunting, especially when it comes to large-scale purchases like furniture. Here, she shows us her favorite spot in Astoria for office decorating and more.

In the end, Ikea always beats out any competition when you have to decorate an entire office on a tiny budget. So I get the basics like shelves or tables there. Then the rest of the time I hunt for decorative pieces that would make the space I am decorating have its own personality and flair. Build It Green was recommended to me by creative director at WeWork when I had a particularly tight budget. It houses the biggest hodge-podge of furniture, left-over building materials, home accessories and other strange cast-offs.

It's perfect for people who have lofty ambitions of making their living space or office unique in some way. You can find anything from 1930s-style street light shades to ornate house doors to water pipes to perfectly unused wood planks that were left over from someone's construction project. And the fact that you are re-using an existing object rather than consuming something new is a great bonus. For me, it was an amazing alternative to ABC Carpet & Home (and its steep prices) but I did spend some time cleaning and restoring these spectacular picture frames I bought. Still, it was totally worth the drive out to Astoria.

· Build It Green [Facebook]
· Edition01 [Official Site]
· All Shopping Confidential Posts [Racked NY]