G's own inspiration, from sketch to realization. If you look at her sketch, you will see that she actually counted the exact number of tiles we needed - bright yellow turns out to be a pricey color. Basically, any tile that is a bright color is expensive. The half bath is unfiltered. It's just this tiny little room, that will have a lot, really a lot, of color. The sink will be mounted in the corner where this crazy yellow tile wall you see will frame two mirror panels. The color palette is as bold as the tile, I'll post pics as soon as we get the paint up.

Since we didn't plan all that well ahead, G and I had a washer and dryer hookup plumbed on the Parlor Floor pass-thru closet we created, but we didn't put a drain in the floor for under the washer in case it ever leaks. Since the machine would be sitting right on the wood floor, we decided to build a pan and tile it - in case the washer leaks, which can happen, at least the water will be held in one spot until we can figure out what to do with it.

I installed cement backer board on top of a layer of plywood and then tiled on top of that. We had really limited time before we needed to get the machines in, (we were having some help with the lamination of the ceilings, and the same guys would be connecting the machines in this spot) so it was really 1-2-3, get it done. We had leftover white hex tiles and subway tiles for the curb and walls, which we got on really quickly. After I grouted, we let it dry overnight, then protected the floor and G came in and primed the new drywall in this closet nook with white primer, before the area behind the machines would be too hard to access.

The other week we had our appliances delivered. Fridge, dishwasher, and . . . washer and dryer. I can't really express how happy G and I are to see these beautiful, incredible, life changing machines, inside the house, so let's just take a moment to look at these pictures.

Earlier I had posted the beginning of the lamination process to deal with the ceiling in the front parlor.

http://www.brownstoner.com/bedstuy_reno/archives/2008/04/catchup_work.html

We had wanted to save the remaining detail there, and clean up the field as best we could without a major replastering project being on our hands. We did that by "laminating" thin sheetrock to the existing cracked and hole-filled ceiling, covering up the problem areas, and then taping and spackling the sheetrock. The thinness of the sheetrock still allows the remaining detail to have depth.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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!

Ok, here are shots of the first coat of Waterlox going down on the floor, and it looking quite orange. We were hoping for a very light clear coat, but it's looking orange.

Also, shots of the lower level hallway (the level on which we are building our kitchen), which changed quite dramatically after the first pass of the sander! This had been covered in carpet, linoleum tile, and finally there was this mess and remnant of mastic. The boards cleaned up so well, and what is great is that these are the subfloor boards we have throughout all the hallways of the house. Which means of course, that when we get to it, we can make them all look this nice.

Some images of the next pass over the salvage pine boards with a finer grain paper. After the first pass, the boards still had some remnants of their old top layer, but with the next pass, they really started to look nice and clean, really light too.

A long long time ago, G and I laid down the salvage pine planks we had gotten from friends of ours in Carrol Gardens in what would be our future kitchen. The tradeoff was sweet - we got the boards for free in exchange for removing them ourselves. We were really pysched, and we finally installed them in out place on New Year's Eve, 2006-2007, and you can read about it here:

http://www.brownstoner.com/bedstuy_reno/archives/2007/01/le_nouveau_plan_1.html

http://www.brownstoner.com/bedstuy_reno/archives/2007/01/le_nouveau_plan_2.html

One year and change later, we have finally cleaned up said planks. How do they look? Awesome.

We borrowed our neighbor's drum sander and edger, and went over the floor for a first pass with some incredibly heavy duty sand paper to get the first layer up. G worked the sander, I worked the edger. It wasall really loud and slow-going. We wore earplugs and respirators, and being all locked in like that makes for an intense experience. It was sort of like being inside an jet engine for a day. But what really motivated us was how good the boards began to look.

After a first pass with the super-rough grit paper, we followed up with finer and finer grit papers, eventually finishing with 150 grit paper. The pictures above show the floor during and after the first pass with the super-rough paper.

Here are some shots of patching in the missing tiles from the re-rough with new tiles. The shape and color is off. At first we wanted to try to match the tiles that are there, but then, noticing that in spots the tiles had already been patched by the square tiles (as opposed to the existing subway tiles), we decided to not sweat it and add our own layer of input to the collage.

At this point, everything is grouted and sealed. G spent a lot of time digging out the old grout on the wall tiles and re-grouting. That work completely transformed the look of the tiles - it looks a whole lot fresher and cleaner, and the fresh grout also helps unify the collage of wall tiles.

With the floor prepped and ready, we began the ritualistic transfer of G's pattern from the adjacent room to the bathroom floor. It's looking pretty good. Up next, grout and seal it, then patch in the walls with our own mismatching green tiles.