Et voila. The lowboy, or the first piece of our bookshelf project we finally built. The R&D phase for our bookshelves was about three years. OK, maybe two years. It was just something we were constantly planning and talking about in the background of everything else that was going on at the time with the house. So we had a lot of time to think about how they should look, and how we were going to build them.

G and I had grand aspirations of interlocking horizontals and verticals, but after buying a router and trying out some interlocking mockups on my own, it became clear I just didn’t have the control or know ability to get the look we want.

Similarly, we had some big ideas at first about the material – we wanted something solid and with real weight, as this would be the anchor piece for the lower level. We looked at walnut, cherry, birch, and pine. We wanted something thick – at least an inch, but every place I was calling quoted prices out of our range on the amount of wood we estimated we needed – even simple pine was going to cost us upwards of a thousand dollars, and that was before we even started figuring in hardware and tools.

SO, it was back to the drawing board a little bit – we went to Lowe’s to check out their lumber, and G flashed on their construction grade pine. We liked the look of the 2x8 boards. Actual size is more like 1.5” x 6.5”. They came in 8 and 10 foot lengths, and they were cheap. Maybe $5 a board. Really cheap.

And then we looked at hardware – joist hangers in particular. We thought we could use them to tie our verticals to our horizontals, instead of routing the verticals and locking in the horizontals. And they looked cool to us. We liked the industrialness of the hardware, with the rough unfinished look of the lumber. We bought a chopsaw with a blade big enough to handle the 2x8s in one go, and spent two hours picking through the stacks of lumber at Lowe’s two find the boards we liked.

When we got all the stuff back home, it was actually not hard to get the lowboy done. We did it in one day. With all our drawing and planning, the thing actually came together as planned. And, we thought, it looked pretty good!

First order of business before G and I could really get into building the new bookshelves on the lower level was to paint the exposed brick wall. The lower level does not get a lot of light, and the unpainted brick wall tended absorb light rather than bounce it around. G and I had seen friend's apartments with painted brick walls, which we really liked, and we started to get into the idea of painting ours. We thought painting the wall white would bring light coming in through the windows deeper into space, and brighten it up in general.

The painting took a while - we rolled what we could, but it took a lot of hand painting to get into all the nooks and crannies of the wall, and cover all the mortar between the bricks. We really dug the result in the end - the space was transformed, the white made the room look more finished and bright, but we still had the texture of the brick wall we liked. And we were now ready to get into actually building our bookshelves.

G and I had been planning a large scale built-in bookshelf for the lower level for a long time. We knew we wanted to build it long before the space was even ready for it. We would have friends over to the house, and walk them through it, pointing out how it would work on either side of the fireplace wall, where the return would pop out, how the built-in desk would work. And they would just nod and not really understand what we were talking about, because, well, didn’t we have to close up the walls first?

Above is an early sketch of the bookshelf. As I mentioned, the key features were a low shelf on one side of the fireplace wall (to accommodate a flat screen above it), a full-height section on the other side of the fireplace wall, then a “return” that would pop out, and divide the kitchen area from the living room area, and finally the built-in desk (which I’m sitting at right now to write this post).

We went pretty crazy planning the thing ahead of time, even modeling it in 3d to understand the dimensions and proportions we wanted for the verticals and horizontals, and the size of each compartment.

Apartment Before and After - Rear Room

Apartment Before and After - Front Room

Apartment Before and After - Bathroom

The top floor served as our base of operations for the better part of two years. It was also supposed to be what made buying a house sustainable – before buying our house we reasoned that yes, we will have a mortgage, but the house is a two-family, so we will have income from renting out the apartment to offset the cost. But when G and I bought our house in May 2006, the bottom two floors were a wreck, and the top floor was somewhat livable. So that’s where we first moved in. And it’s where we stayed for those first two years.

At that point, we just took it as a given that people normally live in the place they are gut renovating, but in hindsight, it was pretty nuts. I realize now it’s not always the way people go about it. And why.

Future Shelving Project Inspiration

The front parlor major works are done. It's painted and the floors are sealed. But it hasn’t received the full treatment yet. The front parlor still serves as a flex space of sorts – G uses it as a studio for her artwork, and it’s also our guest bedroom for out of town guests. It also functions as storage space for all our still unopened boxes going way back to when we first bought the house and moved here from the East Village. It’s a large room that frankly we still need to figure out what we’re doing with.

The wall that we built in the room to create our pass-thru closet into the back parlor is pretty flat and uninteresting – the other walls still have some remaining plaster “frieze” details, or the wood moldings around the pocket doors, or in the case of the window wall, giant shutters. So for this wall, we’re thinking of building a floor to ceiling bookshelf wall around the door opening, like in the above inspiration image. Could be pretty cool.

Work in Progress

After a Day of Sanding

Sealing the Floor After the Guests are Gone

Sanding the front parlor was our most intense sanding experience of all the rooms we sanded. We were on a tight time constraint. G’s sister and her husband and their two kids were coming to stay with us for a week that night – they were flying in from Brussels and were landing at JFK at 11pm. We had a friend’s car and were picking them up – but first we had to start and finish sanding the floor of the room they would be staying in. That day. And then vacuum the hell out of it, getting all the dust and things off the floors, walls, and out of the air. Also, we were trying to minimize the amount of dust spread throughout the house, which is always excessive when sanding floors, so we sealed ourselves into the room by taping closed the doors with plastic.

It was hard work, and there was the added stress that we HAD to finish that day. Sanding really is fatiguing. G did passes with the drum sander, we started with a heavy grit and worked our way down to a fine grit. I was on edger detail, which I hate. I absolutely hate the edger. It kills your back, is loud, aggressive, heavy, and the particular edger we borrowed had a broken off switch. The only way to turn it on or off was by plugging it in or unplugging it, which always added another layer of danger to something already kind of scary.

We did get through it, and spent an hour vacuuming the place down. Then we had to scramble to set it up as a bedroom. It was one of those things where it was so down to the minute, we had no time to shower after our day of work. We finished setting up the room, and jumped in the car, covered in saw dust. (Temporarily, because after G’s family left we had to clear the room out so we could actually seal the floor).

Our friend Jace, an artist from La Reunion, a small french island off of Madagascar, was staying with us a couple of winters back and asked if he could paint our garden. Jace is known around the world for his "Gouzou" figure, which pops up everywhere. It being winter, and the grass thinned out as it is, we said go for it. This certainly won't be for everyone, but we love it.

Update: This post got picked up by the Wooster Collective! Check it here.

Finished Product - Next Up: Sanding the Floors!

The most ridiculous part of painting our front parlor was the fact that we didn’t have any paint for it. Not specifically, anyway. We knew more or less what color we were looking for – G and I both felt that since we had gone bold with the back parlor, what would be our bedroom, that for the front parlor we were feeling something more light and airy. The idea was that the walls would be light, and that the moldings would pop subtly by being just a bit lighter. We still had a white for the moldings leftover from the back parlor (Benjamin Moore’s Swiss Coffee, in semi-gloss), but we did not have a paint picked for the walls.

We had a lot of leftover colors though. We had quart cans of orange, purple, yellow, and blue, all the crazy colors G had picked for the doors in the apartment on the top floor. (Which reminds me, I should do a post showing how the apartment turned out . . .) We also had large 5 gallons of the basic white by Behr’s you get at Home Depot. So, we just decided to go for it. We mixed. It’s hard to tell from the pics, because it shoots different in every picture, but the color we got was pretty much what we were looking for. Kind of a mayonnaise-y beige-ish light color with a lot of cream. And the white moldings subtly pop.

Again, it was one of those nerve wracking should-we-or-shouldn’t-we moments, but we went for it. The downside of course is that the paint can never be recreated if we ever need to touch up or put a fresh coat on areas. The upside was that we got a color we liked, and didn’t have to leave the house (taking away from precious production time) to get it. And of course didn't need to shell out any more cash. For the moment.

The front parlor always served as the forgotten step-child in our house’s family of rooms. We used it for storing materials, tools, supplies, bath tubs, pianos, the usual stuff. Much like the rear parlor, we had to crank the front parlor out quickly all of a sudden, since G’s sister and her family were coming to town. G’s sister is married, with two little daughters, so we needed a lot more space. The front parlor is a large room, so the plan was to get it painted and sand the floors and let it serve as a bedroom.

The room had been sheetrocked, taped, spackled, sanded smooth, and in some cases skim-coated already. So prep work was a matter of moving all the remaining stuff into the middle of the room so we could access all the walls for priming. We primed everything, put up some trim around the front windows, reattached old baseboard trim that we had saved, put up some trim around the pocket doors that we added to the room, and G did some scraping of the pocket doors too.

In the back of the house, there are no built-in shutters like in the front of the house. So, in order to have privacy, we were going to need some type of window treatment. For the kitchen, we wanted to bring in some color and visual interest, especially since the walls are white, and the tile backsplash is also white. But, like everything else with the house, our budget was tight, and when we looked into different window treatments, a lot of what we liked was expensive. So we had to figure something out on our own.

The concept was born that we would create a sort of collage pattern for our curtains. The above sketch showed our idea for a roman curtain, something that could completely cover the windows when lowered, but still be colorful above the windows when open. G and I both went to our respective architecture offices and raided the materials libraries for cool samples that had a lot of flash and pop, and were of significant size. We each came back with bags of material samples and sorted through the mess, separating by color and pattern and texture. G does a lot of collage artwork, so she had an eye for laying out our curtains.

The project really came together with the help of G’s mom, R, who was in from Brussels. She is incredibly handy herself, and great with crafts. R has experience in the curtain department, and came with all the equipment required to make a roman curtain. G and her mom spent the better part of three days sewing together the material samples into two curtains, and then outfitting them with the roman shade equipment. In the end we had two very unique curtains, made with “borrowed” materials and at a cost that was really within our budget.

The First Pass with the Drum Sander

The Finished Results

After painting the back parlor room, G and I switched gears the following weekend to sanding the floor. We still had the sander and edger we were borrowing from our generous neighbor, with which we had previously sanded the kitchen floor.

We needed the back parlor habitable by Thanksgiving, since G’s mom was coming from Brussels to stay with us. At the time, G and I were camping out on the bottom floor and trying to get the top floor rented. The last time G’s mom had come for a visit, we were still living on the top floor, where we had just finished painting and sanding, and the bottom two floors of the house were still deeply “in progress.” We wanted to show G’s mom that the house had evolved since her last visit, and also give her a comfortable room to stay in.

We had about three weekends to go before T-day, so we needed to crank through the sanding and get on to the sealing, so we could let the floor dry, and then try to furnish the room in some kind of inviting way.

When sanding, G works the drum sander, and I work the edger. I hate the edger. It’s heavy and awkward to use, and extremely powerful and aggressive, so requires a lot of control. It’s also incredibly loud, and the whole thing creates a lot of dust too. The experience of sanding is really intense, kind of like spending a day inside an airplane engine. But the best part of it is the transformative results.

The back parlor floor cleaned up pretty well – I wouldn’t say perfect, being that there were a lot of stains and weird marks to begin with. We got maybe 80% of all the stains and marks up, but the floor still bears some evidence of its history.

Ceiling Painted with "Swiss Coffee," Priming Moldings and Taping Off

Cutting In and Painting the Walls with "Desert Twilight"

Ok, so with the Kitchen mostly buttoned up, G and I moved upstairs to the back parlor room. This room was to become our bedroom, and we wanted it to be both warm and comfortable as a space. I had seen some images at the time of a bedroom with a bold grayish-green set off with some warm rich wood tones that I was really digging. We decided to search for our own bold grayish-green color, and thought that someday, when our fireplace was stripped (and the firebox rebuilt and working as a wood-burning fireplace, you know, sometime after that fireplace grant came through), it would act as the warm rich wood tone that would go nicely with the beautiful bold walls.

We looked through our Benajmin Moore color fan, and settled first on a color called “Durango,” which I was all for. It was deep and rich and almost a greenish brown, or brownish green, whichever you prefer. For the ceiling and molding colors, we wanted a white, but something that was also warm and rich itself. G liked a color I think called “Mayonnaise,” which is funny because in Belgium (where G hails from), they eat their fries with mayonnaise. But then we settled on “Swiss Coffee,” which I think is a winner as a paint name. We used a matte for the ceiling, and a semi-gloss for the moldings.

Once we had the “Swiss Coffee” picked, we sort of chickened out on the boldness of the “Durango,” and hedged to a lighter version of grayish-green, Benjamin Moore’s “Desert Twilight.”

We started first by getting all the crap we had been storing in the room out of the room. The focus had been on the Kitchen and Lower Level after all our work in the Apartment . The Parlor Floor, once we finished closing it up and dealing with the ceilings, was where we stored things that we didn’t know where else to store – tools, pianos, G’s giant puzzle-piece artwork, etc.

Once we had the room cleaned out, and radiators removed (heavy, heavy radiators) we began by painting the ceiling and one remaining area of wall that still had the picture molding and lincrusta paneling. Generally, when painting, I’m on rolling and G is on cutting in. Over time, we’ve both gotten pretty good at our roles, and can knock stuff out fairly quickly when we need to. We got the painting of the room done in one weekend, working a full Saturday and Sunday. (The room had previously been primed with the help of G's friends.)

When it came time to get to the walls, we opened the can of paint and said, “well, here goes.” Along with the “Piano Concerto” of the bathroom, this was our boldest color yet on a wall (not withstanding the orange door in the apartment). But we were pretty happy with the results in the end, and thought the room looked both warm and inviting, but also somewhat sophisticated (at least by our broke-ass standards).

Kitchen Space - Ready for Kitchen Install

Kitchen Install - G and I get to know Ikea

Kitchen Final - Up and Running

When we last left off, G and I were just about done with the kitchen install. (It had been a long haul since Day One, and the maggots we found there found there). There were some odds and ends left – cabinet doors and drawer pulls and things like that. We had successfully assembled our Ikea kitchen – put together the base and wall cabs, put them in place, installed the microwave, installed the range top, assembled the island, cut and installed the countertops, installed the sink, and then called the electrician and the plumbers to come back and hook up the appliances. (By successfully, I mean we finished, but not without some hiccups – we ordered the kitchen from Ikea our first summer in the house, thinking, hey, we’re gonna need this new kitchen pretty soon! But in reality, it took us nearly two years to get the point where we were ready to actually assemble our new kitchen. This meant limited warranties had expired on the appliances we had bought – microwave, oven, range top – and that we were only now, two years later, finally opening the boxes and seeing what was there, and what was missing. And there were some things missing! See previous posts for more on that...

We had planned the kitchen space when we first designed the layout of the house, and when we decided we would go with Ikea, we spent some time with their kitchen planning software laying out their cabinets to suit our original design intent. We had to modify our own plans (the kitchen along the wall was expanded by one cabinet), and to achieve the island we wanted, we had to go off of Ikea’s grid somewhat, and used some wall cabinets as base cabinets to get deep cabinets on the sink side, and shallow cabinets on the other side, with a sort of cutout where we could sit two stools with space for legroom.

Once we had put everything together, the electrician was able to wire the dishwasher and install two outlets on either side of the island. He also wired the oven and the range top igniter (range top is gas, oven is electric). The plumber hooked up the sink, installed the faucet, connected the dishwasher, connected the range top to the gas line, and hooked up the fridge to its water supply. (G and I had decided to spring for having the plumber run a water line to the fridge so we could have water and ice through it – our own American luxury! Which took a little time to convince G of its necessity, or at least benefit. She never uses it. I love it.)

Et voila! Looks easy, in hindsight. Really, the hardest part for us was cutting the countertops to size. We used Ikea’s butcher block counter tops, for their warmth and also their price point, but to really cut it perfectly, you should have a table saw. We didn’t, so we did our best with our circular saw, using cutting guides that we screwed into place to keep the cuts straight as we went. Results were decent, not perfect. But overall, we were really happy with how it turned out. And pretty impressed with ourselves that we were able to pull it off. Sort of like that scene in the Matrix where Keanu Reeves says, “Whoa, I know kung fu!” For us it was like, “whoa, we built a kitchen!”

Some previous kitchen-related posts, if you're interested:
Here Comes the Kitchen!
Kitchen Chronicles, Part 2
Kitchen Chronicles, Part 3

Update:

It’s been a long time, folks.

Why the year-plus hiatus? To make a long story short, G and I had been in touch with the New York Times last summer, and the House and Home section was planning to run an article about our house, and the ways in which we have managed to renovate it on the cheap.

There were two caveats:

One, we finish the renovation before the story could happen.

Two, no blogging.

The Times wanted the story to be an exclusive, and they couldn’t have finished images of our house being published elsewhere before they had a chance to publish the story themselves.

But, I pointed out, I’m sure the Times readership dwarfs the readership of the Bed Stuy Reno! It really shouldn’t be an issue.

Still, that’s how they operated, I was told.

So, I had to make sure then, if I was going to stop blogging, that the article would be a sure thing. Since it would be some time before the reno was really done, to cut myself off from blogging about the work was a real sacrifice for me.

No problem, I was assured. Just finish the project, and when you’re ready, we’ll be here to do the story.

About a year later, with the renovation more or less done (is it ever really done?), and phonecalls and emails back and forth between the writer and myself, a date for the interview was scheduled – October 15th, with the story to drop sometime by the end of the month.

Until I get the call today. The House and Home editor has decided to put the kibosh on the story. It turns out too much time had passed, and the editor now deemed that our “on the cheap” renovation wasn’t cheap enough. Or the aesthetics no longer exciting enough. Or the whole story not unique enough, since other similar articles are scheduled to go to press soon.

All of which I completely disagree with! Similar stories? I think in order to fully understand the project, you need to get the full story, of how we went from crackhouse with maggot-infested fridge, to pretty-nice house, with a lot of salvaged original details mixed with our own aesthetics and sensibilities, all on a shoestring budget. Not to mention the fact that we updated our electric, plumbing, and put in a new three-zone heating system.

AND blogged about it! Garnering advice, counseling, materials, help, and new friends. I really think the Times missed the whole importance of the blog. The Bed Stuy Reno has been as useful a tool in our renovation as any of the number of others sitting in our basement. I mean, what other way to ask people how to sand and seal a floor, and get 40 responses back in a day? And all speaking from first-hand experience. We're not the first people to renovate a house of course, but using the blog as a critical resource in doing it yourself, that's a story I have not personally read about yet.

Needless to say it was very disappointing, and, I thought, pretty unfair to boot. In the end, we were penalized for taking a long time to finish our renovation, despite being assured it would not be an issue. And ironically, the time our renovation took was a function of being “on the cheap,” the whole point of the article in the first place!

So, while I have lost a year of blogging, with no Times article to show for it, there is a bright side. G and I have done a lot of work on the place in the past year (less blogging meant more working), and have taken a lot of pictures to prove it. Seeing as how I’m no longer bound by an exclusivity agreement, I’m going to start updating the blog again, both with work already done, and the projects that continue.

Yes, work still continues, but it’s of the more finish and design-y variety, and less the necessities of the basic shell and enclosure. We’ve got some great stories to go with the projects, like how we built a complete built-in custom floor-to-ceiling bookshelf along the lower level wall, complete with a built-in desk and return, all for about $650 bucks all-in. (Hint: the Home Depot and Lowes both have loose return policies.)

Stay tuned!

Here are a couple pics from our nearly complete kitchen. All the appliances are in and working, plumbing is all hooked up, and the lights are on! The problem is, now that the lights are on, we don't really like them. In an effort to be energy conscious, G and I selected compact flourescent downlights for the kitchen, without really evaluating the quality of the light they give off. Now that they're in, we can see that the light they give is too cold and antiseptic.