Things You'll Notice When You Move Into Your Loft

No Storage

The first thing you'll notice, which you may not have truly noticed when you first saw the loft, is the lack of built-in storage. Be prepared to live out of boxes for a while, rooting around for your pants and stacking the important things you find into piles. If you brought the "this might come in handy one day" junk from your old house, it will be part of the decor until you build something to put it in or finally put it by the dumpster for a neighbor to take. If you had notions that you'd be unpacked in a week and your friends could come over to check out your cool new pad, you thought wrong.

No Walls

Aside from the walls separating your loft from the neighbors and the walls around the bathroom, there may not be any other walls. So your dining room, living room, bedroom and kitchen are one big space until you make separation walls. Think of it as "the great room." 

No Kitchen
If you like to cook, you'll notice there is nothing that qualifies as a kitchen. It's up to you to install what you need to store your food and cook it on. And if your loft doesn't come with an oven, you'll go without one until you buy it and install the 220 line to the area you designate as your kitchen. Until then, it's portable burners, the toaster oven and a microwave. On a table. Connected to a power strip with a big reset button for when the circuit breaks.

Noises

Industrial buildings are echoey and make clanking sounds. The artiste next to you may have a rolling cart of paints he rolls around the room. You can hear it. The girl above you may dance for a living and her high heels tap all the way across the ceiling when she comes home at night. The pipes that drain everyone's bathwater run right through your living space. When water rushes through them, you can hear it. But these aren't unpleasant sounds -- they make the building feel alive. And you're in its belly.