BedStuy Reno: April 2008
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April 14, 2008
200th Posting Spectacular: Lower Level Half Bath!
Unbelievably, this is the 200th (!) posting of the Bed Stuy Reno. I feel like attaching a cheesy 1995-era animated gif of balloons and streamers. But I wouldn't know where to find one, and I'm not sure it's a gif I'm even talking about.
Appropriately, this posting is about tiling. Above is an image set from the Lower Level half bath - you can see the floor prepped and ready for tile, G (on the phone even) preparing the tile and pattern, and then me installing it.
We had fun with this one. G decided to invert our typical field of white hex with black hex making the pattern. Where the star shape is corresponds to the future placement of the little wall-mount corner sink above. And near the toilet, G added a randomly placed Spirit Flower, inspired by one reader's comments in regards to the top floor bathroom tilework. So web 2.0.
April 11, 2008
Kitchen Chronicles, Part 3
People have asked for complete pics of the island, and I promise I will get to that. But first I want to document the progress. Here you can see shots with the complete wall cabinets in place - including the missing cabinet, picked up by P's brother R in Boston. After the countertop installation on the island, G set out to tile the the backsplash with leftover subway tiles. Her efficiency is crazy at this point. But we ran out of tiles. This is as far as we got before a trip to Nemo to get more. After we used up what we had, we cut and installed the wood countertop on the back counter - the cutout you see is where the gas cooktop will sit.
April 9, 2008
Kitchen Chronicles, Part 2
On continue!
The first round of installations took care of the wall, minus one wall cabinet that was mysteriously missing from our order . . . we were able to fill in that blank thanks to P's brother, R, who went to the Stoughton, MA Ikea before coming for a visit to Brooklyn one weekend. He bought and brought us the missing wall cab, doors for said cabinet, and some Behandla, Ikea's proprietary oil for their wooden countertops (which we bought, incidentally). "Behandla" was said about a thousand times that weekend. It's a funny word.
So, the second round, or weekend, basically, of installations netted us our island. This was a little more complicated since the cabinets wouldn't be attached to the wall. We had to locate and mark carefully the island boundaries on the floor and then arrange the cabinets accordingly. Each cabinet did connect to its neighbor, so that gave the whole assembly some strength and rigidity as an object. We also had bought what are basically finishing panels to cover the exposed sides of cabinets, which we cut to size and then attached by screwing through the cabinet walls into the finish panel. At the island, where we have back-to-back cabs, this is especially important for hiding seams. In the pictures, the finish panels are the ones with blue tape around the edges. We put that on to protect the edges while cutting the pieces.
The island came together quickly, so we kept going, following up with . . . the countertop! Unbelievable, to get to this moment. These things were just giant boxes for so long, it was crazy to open them up. The wood countertops are really nice, they are solid strips of wood laminated together in a butcher-block style. Super solid, and super heavy, by the way. Cutting these to size was nerve wracking, since we didn't want to screw up. We didn't have a lot of room for error. Cuts involved cutting two giant boards to size to cover the countertop, and creating the cutout for the sink. (The sink is Ikea's version of what people call a "farmhouse" sink. It's large. It looks cool, but what's strange is for its size, the basins are kind of shallow. Oh well.)
Cutting the countertops was hard, we used a circular saw, when clearly a table saw would have been ideal. But we don't have one, so, circular saw it was. We did ok. Seams are not perfect where the two pieces butt together. Decent, but not perfect. G told me not to stress it, so I didn't, and I don't. We screwed the countertop pieces into place and then lifted the heavy ass sink into place, and caulked like crazy around the edges where it meets the countertop cutout. Not bad for a weekend's work.
April 8, 2008
Here Comes the Kitchen!
With the floors finished and the walls primed on the Lower Level, G and I finally got down to the moment we'd been waiting for: installing our kitchen. Now, whenever I say this to people, they are shocked - how have you lived without a kitchen for all this time? Well, we haven't. We have been using the small kitchen on the top floor in the future apartment, where G and are living while we do all this work. In the meantime, our future kitchen has been sitting in boxes on the Lower Level for about a year and a half.
The boxes had been stacked inside the future little half bath on the Lower Level, so getting set up to install the kitchen involved first moving all the boxes into position, sorting out cabinets from doors, and setting up a staging area for cabinet assembly. As I've mentioned, we got our kitchen from Ikea, and the running joke is that by the time we're done, we'll be able to grab any missing parts from the new Ikea in Red Hook, which at this rate, will certainly be open before we are done with our place!
The first order of business was to install this track on the wall where the wall cabinets were to hang. The Ikea system is pretty brilliant. Hang the track, tying back to the studs in the wall, and the cabinets can slide into place anywhere along this track. Once the wall cabinets are up, you are supposed to follow up with the base cabinets, where, along the wall, you install a strap which the back of the cabinets rest on, so they are all in line, and the front of the cabs rest on individual legs. The whole thing works nicely.
The first wall cabinet we had to cut to allow the vent for the microwave/exhaust to pass through. Same for the second wall cabinet, which we also had to cut at the base where the microwave vent would pass through it. The microwave took a couple of tries to align with the holes in the cabinet above, but once we got it, everything else moved along pretty smoothly. We felt pretty damn cool after getting the microwave up - our first appliance! We hung it ourselves! Let's hope it doesn't fall down!
As the kitchen started to take shape, it was super encouraging. These are pics from the beginning of that process, basically taking you through the first wall of wall cabs and base cabs, before we started to install the center island. Stay tuned for another kitchen installment (pun intended).
April 4, 2008
Lower Level - Finish Floor
Here's a look at the finished salvage pine floor before G and I began the installation of the kitchen. As our readers will know, we sanded and then finished the boards with Waterlox. The first coat went down really orange, and a lot of people were very supportive about, telling us not to stress too much. With each successive coat of Waterlox, the orange became slightly more intense, until finally, we finished it up with a coat of satin finish, which really mellowed the whole thing out, and gave the boards a much more finished and subdued look. Success! In the end, it was four coats of Waterlox - three Original, and one Satin.
April 3, 2008
Catch-up Work - Front Parlor
We have been hard at work chez P+G. Hence the lack of blogging! But a lot of great stuff has been going on, and I'm going to attempt to catch you all up on it. One of the major developments has been the nearly complete installation of our new kitchen, setting another of G's tile creations in the little half bath on the Lower Level, and a lot of plaster work and some last drywall work.
One of the things we've been doing is addressing the front parlor - we've finally got walls! It is awesome after staring at studs for so long. We decided to laminate our ceiling, to save what detail we have left, but to smooth things out in general. In the top four photos, you can see the beginning of that lamination process - we took 3/8 sheetrock and laminated it directly over the plaster ceiling - conveniently hiding holes and cracks and all the other imperfections, yet being thin enough to allow the mouldings and medallion to still have relief depth.
Stay tuned for some kitchen updates!