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Albemarle Reno

A Peek at the Kitchen Plan


Of the many benefits that come with getting Landmarks’ gold star on our reno plans, my favorite is that we can now order our kitchen cabinets, windows and appliances — the dimensions and layout of which were waiting on Landmarks’ approval of our window and door placement. (more…)

By albemarle | 06/01/2010 10:14 AM | Comment

LPC Hearing


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We’d been anticipating/dreading our Landmarks Preservation Commisson hearing for as long as we’ve known there would be one. One factor mitigated our anxiety: Intrepid Architect. Her scope of vision, knockout drawings and love of historic detail reassured us that we had a fighting chance of getting our proposed changes to the exterior of our house approved. (more…)

By albemarle | 04/23/2010 11:25 AM | Comment

Electric Boogaloo


I’ll start with a short a refresher on the state of the electrics when we purchased our house. We had two of these Federal Pacific boxes running power to the basement and parlor floors

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Each were equipped with this “stab-lok load center” feature, a post-WWII breaker system that became synonymous with fire-starting

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This sub-panel of fuses below, located in a clothes closet, behind a wooden door, supplied power to the second and third floors. It was running off a 40amp 220v breaker in one of the basement Federal Pacific boxes.

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The sub-panel also has the haunted house-ish distinction of continuing to be powered up even when the breaker it was attached to was switched off.

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A wooden stake through the heart by a garlic-wearing electrician finally did the trick. (more…)

By albemarle | 04/19/2010 10:15 AM | Comment

Interior Demo: The Final Chapter


We’ve come to the last section of interior demoliton! So we head up to the 3rd floor — the future site of Mr. Albe’s office.

The floor plan below shows the layout as it was.

before%20office.jpg (more…)

By albemarle | 03/30/2010 10:15 AM | Comment

Interior Demo Part 3


The next section of the house to get the sledgehammer treatment was the doctor’s suite of exam rooms, which I’ve labeled Office 1, 2, 3, and Storage on Intrepid Architect’s drawings

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By albemarle | 03/19/2010 10:46 AM | Comment

Thank You HBO!


The neighborhoods of the Ditmas Park area have long wooed location scouts for film and tv projects with their Siren songs of spacious layouts and varied architectural details. Audiences ’round the world have had a voyeurs-eye view into Victorian Flatbush homes countless times as they provided a dash of authenticity to period films, or served as a neat double for far-flung locales. Sophie’s Choice is a memorable early example of filming in Prospect Park South. A Rugby Road home is essentially type-cast, born to play the eccentric, mysterious rooming house and keeper of its boarders’ secrets. (more…)

By albemarle | 03/02/2010 10:42 AM | Comment

Interior Demo Part 2: Kitchen Hearth Uncovered


The interior demolition reveal I was most into seeing lived on the other side of this chimney.


(more…)

By albemarle | 02/09/2010 3:18 PM | Comment

Here We Go A-Salvaging…


Given the current state of our house, it’s hard to imagine a day when sinks will be installed and light fixtures will be hanging from a freshly painted ceiling. We’ve been encouraged to start shopping and I’ve been noodling around on various architectural salvage websites to see if we can get some old stuff to put in our old house. (more…)

By albemarle | 01/27/2010 10:42 AM | Comment

Interior Demo Part 1: Bye-Bye Kitchen


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Sometimes it feels like this house is swallowing me whole — and not always in a bad way. There’s been so much going on in and around the joint that there’s been little time to blog it.

Much to roll out in the coming weeks so I’ll get right to it. (more…)

Categories: demolition
By albemarle | 01/22/2010 3:01 PM | Comment

Tapestries Revisited


You may remember these tapestries

in our dining room

from an earlier post. The opinions from the Brownstoner community about what to do with them were, as always, plentiful, varied, and informative. Architerrorist mentioned a carpet and textile specialist living in Ditmas Park. That very specialist’s husband commented that his wife would be willing to lay her discerning eyeballs on our tapestries and tell us what’s what.

Elizabeth Parker is Department Head of Rugs and Tapestries at Christie’s and PBS tapped her expertise and telegenic visage for several seasons of their popular The Antiques Roadshow. See her impressive resume by scrolling down to the bottom of this page and passing the mouse over her name. She trudged over in the aftermath of the season’s first snowstorm and enlightened us about the age, condition and value of our wall-coverings.

They are early 20th century machine-made tapestries woven on a Jacquard loom that uses a punch card for the design and requires some human oversight to produce. They are likely based on 16th or 17th century Flemish or French tapestries. and were very common wall-coverings in turn of the century houses. Ours are too faded and damaged to bring back to anything resembling their original condition. We told her commenter Brenda From Flatbush’s idea about preserving some pieces in frames and she agreed that that would be a nice way to save some of the less damaged parts. Some possibilities:

Elizabeth saw a lot of our type of tapestry on the Roadshow and when it came time for the iconic treasure chest to slide across the tv screen, sparkly bells of valuation a-ringin’, Elizabeth would have to break the news that the worth of the tapestries were “less than $100.” She told us this is the show’s lowest price category and basically a nice way of saying they’re worth about $10.

Fantasies of funding the renovation from record-breaking auction spoils aside, this is great information to have. It gives us permission to not be precious about the tapestries and to do whatever we decide best suits the look and feel of the room as it starts to come together. We’ll protect them from the dust for now and entertain all options as the reno moves forward. Many thanks Elizabeth!

Categories: Dining Room
By albemarle | 01/06/2010 1:40 PM | Comment