our brooklyn home.

back of the house is done

2010-06-06T14:17:00.000-04:00

the crew finished up work this past week, and the back is done! we like it. the bottom pic is included as a reference of what the back used to look like.

painting

2010-06-06T14:12:00.000-04:00

a new coat of tharacoat; a stucco/cement type paint. the crew also chipped and ground off the old paint on the fire escape and repainted it.

work on the back

2010-06-06T14:10:00.000-04:00

here's what the house looked like with the work crew's homemade scaffolding system in place. they replaced the asphalt shingles on the top level, fixing some leaks, and repaired and repainted the cornices and moulding (at the top). they also repaired some brick/mortar issues, and then repainted the whole house.

these are the new shingles that went up.

new concrete

2010-05-17T10:29:00.000-04:00

concrete has been jack-hammerd out and re-poured in the courtyard in front of our house and our sidewalk. check out the tree ring/square ready for a new tree!

you can see a little bit of the new cellar door too. the old one literally fell apart from rusting. one of the next things on the list is to paint the bottom door under the stoop and to replace the main door to the house. then put up a light.

front o' the house.

2010-05-17T10:25:00.000-04:00

here's some pictures of the outside front of the house, 90% done. new "slate" shingles on the top, brownstone completed, new rain spouts, brickwork done, and cornice completed.

looking up

2010-04-24T08:58:00.000-04:00

at the cornice, which has been primered.

outside work

2010-04-24T08:57:00.001-04:00

Here's more pics of the outside work. Our house is shrouded with a dust cloth, giving it a decidely funereal quality, except for the blue tarp on top...

Second pic shows some brownstone color samples that the crew put down for us to look at. Last pic shows some of the detail work that they did recreating the original design.

grout and cornice

2010-04-24T08:41:00.000-04:00

Here's some pics with the new grout that has been installed between the bricks. Looks really good.

And pics of the cornice repair, where they've matched the old moldings with new.

Some of the bigger curved pieces they made by hand from an 8"x8" treated post in our back yard. Kind of neat to see the guys carving the curve with chisels.

Repointing and repair to the front

2010-04-24T08:36:00.000-04:00

For reference, the first two are a couple of pics of the house, from 2007 when we bought it. We decided a few months ago to start contacting contractors and price out repairing the brick and brownstone, the concrete courtyard, and our sidewalk. After getting a recommendation from a neighbor, we found a great guy who started right away.

The bottom two pics show brickwork; they've removed all of the old grout from between the bricks and cleaned the paint off of the outside of the brick. They've also ground/chipped down the brownstone around the windows and doors, and are prepairing it for a base coat.

The cornice can be seen in the bottom picture (looking up). They have stripped the old paint from it and are replacing rotted and missing pieces. They are having the moldings cut to match.

laundry room counter

2010-04-24T08:28:00.000-04:00

These are from 01/10, and show the installation of the cabinet/countertop configuration of the laundry room. We went back and forth on whether to tile this, and ultimately decided to go with cabinet-grade plywood and some polyurethane, with the idea that if we didn't like it, we could tile it later. First pic shows the countertop upside down with the cutouts for the toilet and the back door.

Here's the countertop on and the hinged lid above the toilet installed.

Here's the sink installed and cabinet doors.

This is what it looks like when you open up the hidden super-secret toilet compartment. The idea being that when there are events in the backyard, this toilet can be used instead of going all the way up to the third or fourth floors. There will be a blind on the back door window, and a sliding door/screen on the other side of the washer/dryer for privacy.

blog neglecter

2010-04-24T08:22:00.000-04:00

dear blog, I'm really sorry for neglecting you for so long. I thought about you, but...it just didn't feel right. It's not you, it's me.
The last post was almost a year and a half ago. Since then, it's safe to say that the interior of all three apartments are pretty much done, and work has slowed waaaay down. What work we have done has been here and there, small projects, and a focus on getting the laundry room up and running. Below are two pics from 11/09 that show the washer and dryer installed, and the toilet. There already was a hookup for the toilet, so we decided to put one back in to be hidden under the countertop that we are installing.

this view shows the toilet, the sink base, and the back door of the house.

painting the fourth floor

2008-10-30T22:36:00.000-04:00

painting has come to represent the near-end of any given project. notice the smiles. everybody is happy to be at this point. and the apartment is really starting to feel good, and come together.

this is the new wall, with one of the two french doors hung. you can't see it very well, but on the left side of the picture you can make out a

frosted window we hung, to let a little more light in from the bedroom window to the rest of the apartment.

fireplace discovery and cool light.

2008-10-30T22:32:00.000-04:00

so, while replacing/tearing out the old baseboard, i accidentally broke the cover that someone had fashioned before we came along. after some on the spot deciding, the fisher's decided to go ahead an uncover it. it's pretty neat, and has potential to become a nice feature with a little tlc.

and here's the new dining light the fisher's installed above their table.

4th floor mayhem

2008-10-30T22:29:00.000-04:00

we just came through a big push on the fourth floor. here's some pics that capture the general feeling of those weeks. most of the fisher's apartment was piled in their kitchen area so we could refinish some parts of the floor that hadn't been done earlier.

cindy caught drinking paint.

2008-10-30T22:24:00.000-04:00

it's the ones you least expect.

installing the fourth floor kitchen floor

2008-10-20T21:49:00.000-04:00

not really pics of the process, but more of the finished floor. it really came out nice, and looks like it's been there for years. fits right in.

work wound

2008-10-20T21:39:00.000-04:00

thabo used his eye to pry some nails out of an old board. this is what happened.

first blue crabs cooked in our apartment

2008-10-20T21:38:00.000-04:00

in some ways, this is what it's all about. blue crabs from brooklyn chinatown, cooked up by our friend jonny. you may remember him from earlier posts where he was caught painting our front door a controversial color.

tearing out the fourth floor bedroom wall

2008-10-20T21:36:00.001-04:00

i've decided not to comment on the ridiculous amount of time that's passed since i last posted to this blog, in the hopes that it's gone unnoticed. here's some pics of the 3rd floor bedroom wall coming down. we took it out after we took the closet out, to make room for a new wall. the new wall will (does) allow for a larger bedroom and french doors. dust, dust, dust. yes, that's the fisher's bed under the plastic sheet.

tearing out the closet

2008-08-10T22:46:00.000-04:00

fourth floor closet being torn out. we did this in one night, and it really felt like the four of us were a well-oiled machine. we quickly took down the plaster and lathe, cut the studs out, bundled and bagged everything, and started a fire line down the stairs to get rid of the trash. i don't know if it's getting easier, but we certainly know our way around demolition in this house at this point...

preparing to tear some stuff up on the fourth floor

2008-08-10T22:41:00.000-04:00

thabo and melissa are jumping into final renovations on their apartment, and here we are covering their stuff up and preparing to demo a closet and wall. the bottom pic shows the closet on the right side of the picture. it will soon no longer exist.

crown moulding

2008-08-10T22:38:00.000-04:00

putting some of that crown moulding up (with the help of my dad's borrowed nail gun). i look happy in the bottom pic, but i'm pretty sure that's delerium from making so many wrong angled cuts...

trim in the third floor apartment

2008-08-10T22:36:00.000-04:00

here's what the apartment looks like without crown moulding, but with pretty much everything else finished.

3rd floor trim and shelf

2008-08-10T22:33:00.000-04:00

putting up crown moulding in the third floor apartment. it's amazing what touch-up paint and caulk can do at this stage; they can really make things look finished. in the pic is a shelf we hung in the kitchen, too.

some thoughts on the project.

2008-07-30T11:35:00.003-04:00

no pics this time, just a quick post to say that life is moving forward at ourbrooklynhome. we're in kind of a transition phase, i think. we're all still settling in/getting used to having our own apartments, and cindy and i are setting up house for the first time ever by ourselves (this place was our second communal home since being married). the third floor apartment is 99% complete, and i will post pictures of it soon to prove it. it feels very nice, we love it. this weekend we ordered take out and watched a movie in our living room...it felt so normal and special and celebratory to be doing something like that in our own clean space!

spending the last month or so working on our own apartment has been an interesting experience. i feel really lucky that we got to design our own space, and pick out furniture and fixtures, etc., that we picked because we like them, they represent some expression of our personalities. at the same time, i've felt sort of overloaded by spending time and attention on material things; especially when outfitting the apartment with chairs, curtains, etc. i realized i've never spent this much time or energy on thinking about my shelter/housing before, at least not all at once the way we have over the past few months. i think a lot of this has to do with feeling shell-shocked from multiple trips to ikea. those of you who have been there, you know the exhaustion that no amount of cheap swedish meatballs can assuage. still, thumbs up for ikea.

we're gearing up for some demo work on the fourth floor in august. more on that as it develops. i'm recommitting to posting more frequently too.

new countertop

2008-07-14T23:28:00.000-04:00

we installed butcher-block counter top in the third floor. we likey.

4th floor tub

2008-07-14T22:40:00.000-04:00

before i forget; we rented the duplex out! june 15th came and we successfully have renters in place. another reason why we've relaxed a bit.

but, not before we tackled the 4th floor tub. as you can see in the pics, the tub was in REALLY BAD CONDITION. yes, this was the tub our previous renters used. no, they never complained. and if anyone has been following this blog for a looong time, this is the same tub we tried to re-porceanalize. it didn't work at all. frankly, it was a bloody mess. so, we took it out and replaced it. of course, once we took the tub out, we found some gross pipes full of hair and gook, and a couple or disentegrated pipes.

no pics, here, but we did successfully install a new tub and retiled the area around the tub.

the fence

2008-07-14T22:32:00.000-04:00

here's some pics of the fence thabo and his grandpa built, that effectively gives our new tenants a bit of private backyard space. it was a bit of a quick fix, but it does the job and didn't involve any plastic fencing.

a lull. catch up time...

2008-07-14T22:29:00.000-04:00

so, this poor blog has been neglected for ages! no excuse, except to say that life in this house is constantly changing, and the past month or so has been one of change. as the pressure has decreased to get projects finished, other parts of our lives have pressed in, and on top of that, i think we've all just needed a minute to NOT think about house projects.

these pics are a bit dated now, but continue the progression. third floor apartment kitchen being installed, with paint done and cabinets being put in.

our friend greg stopped by to say hello from texas, and we promptly put him to work helping to move cabinets around. thanks, greg!

kitchen.

2008-05-28T23:56:00.003-04:00

some pics of the third floor kitchen in various stages of completion. last night beth and cindy painted two walls of it an orange (terra-cotta?) color, to give the apartment a little separation and add some color. they also painted new drywall and old walls white in the rest of the apartment.

currently working on setting cabinets and installing butcher block counter tops.

and this weekend, we move stuff. lots of stuff.

kitchen cabinets.

2008-05-28T23:55:00.002-04:00

we're supplementing the cabinets that were in the third floor apartment with a few more, to make an L shaped counter top that we can sit at. this is us, screwing an ikea shelf back together after taking it apart and cutting four inches off of it to make it fit under the counter top.

beth and cindy put all of the new stuff together (bottom two pics).

chimney

2008-05-28T23:54:00.001-04:00

here's the chimney project in the third floor apartment. we took the plaster off and repointed the brick. this is jake and annie carefully filling the cracks with dyed mortar. and me, fixing a hole that was a stove pipe and mortaring too.

props go out to austin; no pics of him, but he painted a bunch of trim and helped us carry heavy ikea stuff in from the car.

the fireplace area of the chimney has to rebuilt, you can see in the pics. i'm hoping to build an arched opening, but have to put that off until i have time to focus on it. too much other stuff to do at the moment.

chelsea and sylvia

2008-05-28T23:52:00.001-04:00

memorial day weekend, a bunch of friends stopped over and helped us work. i only have pics of two of them, chelsea and sylvia. anthony, and leigh anna did a bunch of work too.

i've said it before, but i'll say it again: this house project has really made all of us feel grateful and amazed at the outpouring of support and friendship from our community. it makes this place feel like so much more than just a house.

beth!

2008-05-28T23:51:00.002-04:00

she's here all week, ladies and gentlemen!

beth is one of a kind, and she's spending a week with us, helping us work on the place. we heart her. she's helped out so much on our house that we will be forever in her debt. no amount of indigo girls and Rent viewings can ever really pay back all of her hard work...

3rd floor floor

2008-05-28T23:49:00.002-04:00

here's some pics showing part of the process of refinishing the floor in the third floor apartment. i will remember this project as the one that almost broke me; i WAY underestimated how much work this floor needed. it was in pretty bad shape and needed a lot of boards replaced and a million small nails pulled. we worked a long time on this floor before we were able to stain and polyurethane it. now, it's looking really nice. we immediately covered it with paper and started working on other projects, so no pics of the finished product yet.

duplex 99% done and ready to rent.

2008-05-28T23:46:00.002-04:00

some pics that we posted on craigslist of the duplex apartment. it's looking really good, and we're hoping to have a renter soon to make it their home. this weekend, we move out of this space and into our own apartments!

paint in hair

2008-05-28T23:45:00.001-04:00

when humans congregate in communal settings, many tasks our shared. here the female humans pick paint out of each other's hair. paint thinner and olive oil are applied, and the female human uses her fingernails to scrape and pull the paint off the hair follicle.

bedroom wall

2008-05-28T23:43:00.001-04:00

i'm waayyy behind in posting pictures, so i'm backing up and starting a few weeks ago. we're working on the third floor apartment this month. refinishing the floor, hanging drywall, rebuilding the kitchen, and building a wee bedroom for cindy and i. it will house an ikea wardrobe, a murphy bed, and a few inches of space around the bed. more like a sleeping chamber than bedroom, but it's the best we could come up with. the main idea is that one person (cindy) can sleep with the doors shut if the other person (dan) is up late playing recording music or watching movies.

we're loving the french doors. lots of light, and most of the time we'll leave them open for the extra space.

may is busy, bordering on crazy.

2008-05-12T13:34:00.002-04:00

no pics at the moment, but:
now that our third floor tenant has moved out, we are really going at the work on the third floor. exhausting is a word that comes to mind. the reason we're in such a rush, is that our goal is to move in there (dan and cindy) by the end of this month. and there's a lot to do before it's in good enough shape to be lived in. once we move in, and thabo and melissa move in to the fourth floor, we hope to find a renter, and have the duplex rented out june 1. because mortgage payments don't make themselves, you know...

this past weekend we continued floor work, among other projects. in order to make a usable floor, we stole floorboards from the 1st floor hallway (which will eventually get tiled or linoleumed or something). we took out bad (cracking, cut-up) boards and replaced them with ones from the hallway that were in better shape. we also took the opportunity to blow in insulation into the floor, with the hopes that it will help with sound deadening. the plan is to forge ahead this week, and refinish the floor, so that we can stain/poly it before the weekend (so we can continue on other projects).

the fireplace that we exposed last week is looking better and better; cindy and melissa have chiseled out the old mortar between the bricks and cleaned out loose bricks. it's now ready to be cleaned, have the loose bricks reset and remortar the whole thing. this may or may not happen in may. maybe. mayhap.

pics to follow soon, hopefully.

weird chunk of concrete and fireplace marble and tile.

2008-05-05T08:11:00.002-04:00

this was covering an old hole in the floor, that at one time was a bathroom/toilet fixture. it was a pad of concrete, that had chunks of the old fireplace mantel in it, as well as some other tiles. it was serving as an extremely heavy and solid closet floor until we pulled it up and busted it into chunks. that's jad proudly displaying the weird chunk of concrete and tile.

layers of flooring. and more layers.

2008-05-05T08:10:00.003-04:00

we pulled up old layers of vinyl and linoleum to get down to the pine flooring. there were at least 5-6 different layers of flooring, and at the bottom of it all was a layer of newspaper from 1951. really interesting to stop and read about what was going on the year they put that floor down. lots of people still worried about the Reds (not the baseball team). and a surprising number of women in bathing suits...

behind melissa is the fireplace that we uncovered. it seems to be in fairly decent shape; better than the one we redid in the duplex apartment.

tin ceiling.

2008-05-05T08:08:00.002-04:00

underneath a layer of fairly new drywall in the kitchen of the third floor, we could see tin ceiling. we really like tin ceiling, but we were worried it would be in bad shape if we tore the drywall down. after some deliberation, we decided to take the plunge, and were pleasantly surprised; it's in really good shape. at least good enough that we can make it look nice.

the metal pieces are what held the drywall up to the ceiling. all of that came off very easily.

3rd floor weekend explosion of work happiness!

2008-05-05T08:07:00.002-04:00

okay, after a week or so of relative down time for the four of us, we have jumped back in. the third floor tenant has moved out as planned, and on saturday we started work up there. that's where cindy and i will live, and the work we are doing to the apartment feels a little more exciting for us, because it's stuff we want to do to make it our home. so, we tore out two closets to open up the apartment and give it more floor space, pulled the plaster off a fireplace to expose the brick, and pulled up flooring. our friends annie, jad, leigh anna, and tracy all came over to help us, which was SO NICE OF THEM! thank you friends, for being friends, and for helping us. with all of those people helping, we formed some pretty effective trash lines out the back window and down the fire escape to add trash to the giant trash pile. saturday was an amazing and productive day. and very dirty.

fishers at work

2008-05-05T08:05:00.002-04:00

the other kind of work. as in, their jobs and school work. either that, or they're playing battleship...

spring and our trash pile.

2008-04-19T06:58:00.000-04:00

it's ugly, but i thought we should document the trash pile in all of its glory before we get rid of it. it's been growing for the better part of the past eight months or so.

lowell and floor

2008-04-19T06:54:00.000-04:00

our good friend lowell popped in last weekend, and helped us do some painting.

putting on the first layer of polyurethane.

more floor work

2008-04-19T06:50:00.000-04:00

refinishing the floor

2008-04-19T06:49:00.000-04:00

the last floor to be done in the duplex apartment!

First signs of spring

2008-04-12T10:07:00.004-04:00

Melissa planted some bulbs in some old plumbing fixtures (sink and tub) and installed them in our lumber yard / trash heap of a back yard. Now we're reaping the benefits. She and Daniel Talstra also pruned the peach tree last fall and I think the new shape gives a Japanese aesthetic to our garden.

Dan pretends we live a normal life

2008-04-12T09:46:00.004-04:00

We're suddenly feeling ahead of (our revised and extended) schedule. Our upstairs tenants don't move out until May 1st so we can't move up until then, no matter how soon we finish the bottom two floors. So we are making a few tentative forays back into our social lives. Here Dan bakes a d-licious cake for our oktoberfest celebration. His drywall skills were applicable to the icing procedure.

the spiral stair dance...try it at home!

2008-04-01T22:41:00.003-04:00

sylvia!

2008-04-01T22:32:00.000-04:00

tonight, sylvia came over and brought us dinner and helped us work. thank you, sylvia! in the bottom picture, cindy is painting the new doorway into the 3rd bedroom. behind her is the new kitchen pantry we built this week (pantry door provided by our friends ryan and janell from philly).

new living room fan!

2008-04-01T22:30:00.000-04:00

this really made the room look better. we also added the medallion above the fan. mood lighting galore!

cleaning the walls before painting...

2008-04-01T22:29:00.000-04:00

drywall and jean!

2008-04-01T22:28:00.000-04:00

thabo's mom came to visit us, and brought encouragement and helped us get a bunch of stuff done, including painting and pulling nails and old flooring off the last bedroom floor to be redone. it was really nice to have her visit.

our kitchen, so convenient to cook in...

where's cindy?

2008-04-01T22:23:00.000-04:00

our relaxing, and feng-shuied living room.

more work.

2008-04-01T22:20:00.000-04:00

cindy caulks...

dan insulates...

thabo hangs a door.

thabo cuts a new door hole in the wall with his teeth.

2008-04-01T22:18:00.000-04:00

aarrghh!!!!

more work.

2008-04-01T22:16:00.000-04:00

pic of the floor/stairhole. here i was working on building back a small corner of the stair opening, since every inch counts in a new york apartment. the part i was working on are the boards that aren't stained.

the half-wall that we built at the top of the spiral stairs, in the middle of drywall mudding.

melissa painting in the living room. this particular section of wall almost broke our spirits. the reason had to do with shades of white paint that didn't quite match, not remembering what we painted the room, many trips for paint and many shades of white, lots of head shaking, and finally, a close match. whew.

sunshine...

2008-04-01T22:11:00.000-04:00

staining the floor, more staircase

2008-04-01T22:10:00.000-04:00

first layer of poly put down on the living room floor (before we realized it went down just as well and about 5 times faster with a roller). and a pic of thabo and melissa installing the spindles and handrail to the staircase.

staircase, part IV

2008-04-01T22:08:00.000-04:00

staircase, part III

2008-04-01T22:06:00.000-04:00

staircase part II

2008-04-01T22:05:00.000-04:00

staircase arrival...

2008-04-01T22:03:00.000-04:00

sorry for the major delay in poostings; somehow whole chunks of days and weeks go by without having a spare minute to download photos and get them posted to the blog. so, the next few blogs will be an attempt to get up to date with some of the action around here. some of which was the spiral staircase! above was the start to the project...actually we've been shopping around and researching for months, and then ordered it, then my family picked it up and delivered it to us, so there was a lot of legwork before this point. anyway, the top pic is the stair opening, with thabo putting up some of the last drywall. second pic is the stair kit (some of it), and the third is melissa with a plumb line, finding the center of the opening to position the staircase.

mason is an awesome guy.

2008-03-09T00:50:00.000-05:00

here's why:
1) he worked really hard on our house today.
2) i'm pretty sure i'm his favorite uncle.
3) he's fun to hang around, and he's thoughtful and nice to people.
d) he worked really hard on our house today.

that's him in most of the pics, suited up for serious battle with a wall. the plaster didn't stand a chance.

more sanding.

2008-03-09T00:45:00.000-05:00

check out the stairhole shot! the black post is the center column for the spiral stairs that we will install.

sanding floors

2008-03-09T00:43:00.003-05:00

today, my sister heidi and bro-in-law rod and nephew-most-awesome mason drove up (at 5am no less) from PA and spent the day helping us sand floors and expose a brick wall. wow, did they get a lot of work done! we sanded three floors and cleaned plaster from a brick wall, and i think they still made it back to PA by 8pm. plus, my dad picked up our spiral stairs for us in Philly, and they brought them up on their truck. big day for us today. big day. thanks family!

check out the fireplace in the first pic. melissa has put a bunch of elbow grease mixed with baking soda and eye of newt into bringing back some of its luster. many poultices were applied, and the cement/plaster middle is going to get a fresh coat of paint. it won't look perfect, but it will look a lot better than it did, thanks to melissa. plus, if it looked perfect, i'm not sure it would fit in this house...

painting the duplex living room

2008-03-09T00:39:00.000-05:00

leigh anna came over last sunday and helped us do a bunch of painting. she's awesome. this room was a pretty depressed gray color; we think maybe it was an attempt at "off-white." it had a debilitating effect on the psyche.

he came from under the stoop...

2008-03-09T00:37:00.000-05:00

thabo builds a sink.

2008-03-08T07:41:00.000-05:00

bedroom floor part deux

2008-03-08T07:40:00.000-05:00

the floor went together fairly easily and quickly, and made the room look much nicer. cindy and i promptly moved in. it's tight, but it's clean and private, which is saying something.

bedroom floor

2008-03-08T07:37:00.000-05:00

this is from a few weeks ago, too. scott and i laid this bedroom floor, with a pergo-type product. the pine boards weren't in good enough condition to refinish here, and the pergo won out over carpet. scott is a natural at this, just look at his poise and grace.

thank goodness for good friends.

2008-03-08T07:33:00.000-05:00

some pictures from a few weeks ago, when our good friends adriana and scott came over for a saturday and helped us paint and lay flooring. we heart them and it was really nice to get to spend a day with them. so much of this house has been made better by friends and family lending a hand....kind of like an amish barn raising, except in brooklyn and not a barn. so far, no actual amish either.

chowtime

2008-02-24T21:55:00.002-05:00

i took some pics of us eating lunch on saturday, in a room filled with dust and construction tools. it struck me that this was something that would be important to remember; these makeshift and tasty meals that one of us throws together quickly so the rest of us can keep working. we eat together often, and i think we all enjoy it quite a bit. sometimes, we light a candle so we feel fancy.

but, point a camera at these people and this is the kind of picture that comes out. once we're done with this house, i think we should post at least one picture in which we're wearing clean clothes, and not looking tired and half-crazed. to balance out the perception that we're creating here, that we're, you know, unclean, tired, and half-crazed.

there's gold in them there walls! gold, i say!

2008-02-24T21:52:00.003-05:00

painting pocket doors.

2008-02-24T21:52:00.002-05:00

dreaming of a tree.

2008-02-22T11:09:00.003-05:00

yesterday we put a call in to the city of new york, and requested that a tree be planted in front of our house. it looks like there used to be one there, and the houses on each side of us have trees in front, but ours does not. so we called 311, and requested one through this program. hopefully, sometime this year, a tree will magically appear, courtesy of new york and mayor bloomberg.

late entry: working on bathroom/hall joists

2008-02-11T21:51:00.000-05:00

here's thabo, making sure our house doesn't fall down. so far, so good.

staining more doors

2008-02-11T21:47:00.000-05:00

lots of staining happened this weekend. four wood doors, both sides, two coats each.

cutting linoleum the easy way.

2008-02-11T21:45:00.000-05:00

linoleum floor

2008-02-11T21:43:00.000-05:00

after we took up the tile we patched a bad joist, put down a subfloor, and then some linoleum. this part of the hallway will be a laundry room/work sink, so we decided it didn't need to be too fancy. linoleum for now. we had to roll the glue out from under it. unfotunately, it didn't work to well because we hadn't screwed a layer of the floor down well enough, and thabo and melissa had to peel this up and do it again tonight. always use a lot of screws.

2008-02-11T21:38:00.000-05:00

more weekend work. the top pic is the ceremonial handshake that thabo and melissa performed after re-opening the door that had been part of the bathtub/shower wall. now it's a door again! second pic is busting up the old tile from the bathroom/hall (there was a layer of little pink tile under the big white ones). third one is melissa rolling a layer of paint on the tin ceiling. we put the crown molding up around the tin ceiling this weekend, too. that was a challenge.

sailing...takes me away..to where i always dreamed...

2008-02-11T21:34:00.000-05:00

tearing out the old bathroom

2008-02-11T21:32:00.000-05:00

we dubbed this bathroom 'dusty rose' for its color scheme. it's been our main bathroom for the past four months or so, and it's really gross. a lot of you have seen it, so judge for yourself whether that's an exageration. anyway, saturday we tore it out to return it to its original glory as a HALLWAY TO THE BACK YARD. the good news is that the new bathroom is up and running and finished. everyone rejoiced!

almost done with the warsh room.

2008-02-06T23:25:00.000-05:00

check out the grout in the first pic; cindy did that last monday while the rest of us were at work. tonight we caulked, towel rods and the vanity, installed the toilet for the final time (after an extended saga involving dan buying the same toilet twice, moving the plumbing two inches, arguing with the lowes plumbing staff, sponging toilet water out of a used toilet, trolling the internet for info about why the heck our toilet doesn't rest against the wall, and finally just putting the original toilet back in). we've got to paint some trim, clean up some caulk, do a little bit of grouting, patch a tile that is loose, and it's basically done. at which point we will all rejoice because we will not have to use the crappy bathroom that some of you have seen. we get to demolish it.

thabo on a hot tin roof...

2008-02-06T23:19:00.000-05:00

or ceiling. thabo on a hot tin ceiling. here he is patching a spot that was left open when we extended the room and turned it into a bedroom. not bad for a first year MBA student who just landed a killer internship. not bad at all.

dan paints piece, entitled "door."

2008-02-06T23:08:00.000-05:00

staining the door. something about staining wood is very pleasing; the way it brings out the quality of the grain.

tiling the tub.

2008-02-06T23:06:00.000-05:00

after the bathroom floor, we tackled tiling the tub. thabo and melissa got most of it done in one day, and i finished up a bit of it the day after. the tile saw is awesome!

pocket door

2008-02-06T23:03:00.000-05:00

one of the things we decided to do to help save space, was to install a pocket door in the bathroom. here's some pics of it partially completed. turned out to have some serious issues because our house sagged a bit in the last hundred years, and the walls/floors/ceilings aren't plumb. in some places they REALLY aren't plumb. which made for some creative construction techniques. in the end, it looks like it's going to work out great. we stained the door too; i'll post some pictures of the finished product eventually.

grout on...

2008-01-26T09:05:00.000-05:00

cindy and melissa grouting away. while they were working on this, i overheard a conversation between them that started with, "which do you like better, lowes or home depot?"

bathroom floor

2008-01-26T09:02:00.000-05:00

last weekend we pushed through on sunday evening and got the bathroom floor tiled too. that felt good, since we realized that we need to up the progress if we're planning on trying to stick to our timeline. we used larger size tiles for the floor. had some issues lining things up, but eventually it came together pretty well.

2008-01-26T08:59:00.000-05:00

melissa grouting away...

more tilin'

2008-01-26T08:58:00.000-05:00

here's the kitchen countertop, with the backsplash tile on (we used the nails for temporary spacers). this is kind of a unique counter/kitchen; since it's a pretty tight, galley style kitchen, we used shallow cabinets in front of the chimney (where the exposed brick is), and normal depth cabinets by the stove and sink. thanks to my mom and dad, we found a smaller size used sink for $15 at the habitat store in lancaster, pa. that goes in the hole you see in the pic.

2008-01-25T21:54:00.000-05:00

last weekend, we tiled the kitchen countertop. bought a tile saw, tile, mortar, grout, and got to work. thabo had done this before, so he led the way. it was a lot of fun, actually, and one of those empowering moments that happens in this project, when i realize that i'm diving in to a project i've never done before, and feeling like it's going to work out. cindy did a bunch of tiling, and then she and melissa did the grouting. we're waiting on some bullnose tile for the corners to finish it up.

2008-01-15T23:19:00.000-05:00

cabinet wrestling.

2008-01-15T23:04:00.000-05:00

working on the duplex kitchen

2008-01-15T23:03:00.000-05:00

here's a bunch of pics from the past weekend. putting in the new cabinets (they're not blue, that's just a protective sticker on the fronts). getting them level was a chore, since the floor is sort of bowl-shaped. we painted the pipes next to the brick, too. then came a 3/4" plywood layer for the countertop, the first layer that will hopefully end with nice looking tile. more on that as it progresses. hopefully we'll get that done this week.

2008, kitchen, ikea fiasco

2008-01-15T22:57:00.000-05:00

okay, 2008, we're back at! no more time off for the holidays, now we have to finish this project that we call home. we decided to try and get the kitchen done, since we're using it, and it would be really nice to have a finished kitchen to use for the next few months, while we work on the rest of the apartment. we ordered ikea cabinets in november, they came in early december, and this weekend we started to put them together....only to quickly learn that they sent us three wrong ones! argh.

the first pic is thabo pretending to read the instructions that come with the cabinets. don't be fooled. behind him is the temporary kitchen we'd set up with old cabinets. the new ones are skinnier, to allow more space in an already tight galley kitchen.

so, not to be swayed, and with a weekend ahead of us, thabo and i decided the best option would be to get out to the ikea store as early as possible, since we couldn't get anyone from ikea to answer our calls on friday night. next morning we got up early and took the FREE IKEA BUS from port authority station directly to ikea in new jersey. no kidding, they provide a free bus to and fro for cheap-minded-but-design-oriented people like us to buy their products and whisk them (and us) back to nyc.

here's thabo expressing his feelings of wonder and amazement at standing in a bus line on saturday morning in port authority (which is quite possibly one of the ugliest structures in new york). note the glazed look in his eye...

the bottom pic shows him much happier, comfortably seated on a free bus ride. ikea is directly across the freeway from newark airport, which led to a lot of conversation between us as to whether it would be possible to utilize the ikea bus as free airport shuttle of sorts.

anyway, i forgot to take pictures of ikea and the outside of the bus, so you'll just have to dream... we got the cabinets but forgot to buy the shelves that go in them. dang. thankfully, once i got ikea on the phone to discuss the wrong order, they credited us for the cabinets they sent, and told us to just keep them. so now we have three cabinets we can put somewhere else. nice ending to ikea saga.

drywallin'

2007-12-16T22:17:00.000-05:00

some more pics of the drywalling that happened over the past few days, and our friend gary. i took a few days off from work to work with gary, and we listened to a ton of music while working. lots of conversation about bands, music styles, faith, new york, friends, life, love, and drywall.
thanks, gary! you are one of a kind.