some thoughts on the project.

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

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

4th floor tub

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

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...

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.