Brownstoner Reno: Monthly Archives: September 2005

The carpenter is in the process of concealing the ACs and building more shelving for the record collection in the “music room” in the center of the second floor.

This is how the partition came out in the front hall of the parlor floor. A necessary evil given how we are dividing the house, both to create separation from the garden floor rental and the private “studio” for our sister at the back of the parlor floor. Notice the pipe molding that we rescued from another part of the house to try to make the doorway look more at home. It is what it is though: Out of place. But what can you do.

The front room on the parlor floor has been the repository for most of our boxes since we moved. Only in the last few days have we been able to chip away at them to the point where we’ve restored some order. Ultimately the office/grown-up playroom, this will probably be the last room that gets set-up for use.

Okay, we promise we’ll stop obsessing about our closet after this post. By tonight when we return home, we’re hoping our clothes will have magically moved from our bedroom floor onto these shelves.

Here’s a shot of the third floor hallway leading to the walk-in closet. When the closet is done, the door will be put back on and kept permanently closed. We’ll access the closet through a doorway in our adjacent bedroom. Note the temporary Home Depot sconce being used as a placeholder while we figure out our sconce scheme.

The walk-in closet needs one more coat of paint and some hanging rods and we should be good to go. We’ve designed the built-in shelves to accommodate two stacks of wire baskets for socks, t-shirts, etc.

The doors that were on the house when we bought it were in such bad cosmetic shape that the only inexpensive way to pull them together was to paint them black–as probably two-thirds of the doors on our block are painted. At some point we’d love to buy original rounded-top doors that are natural wood, but in the meantime, this is a decent compromise in our opinion.

Here’s the bannister leading up to the top floor. It still needs a final light sanding and final coat but that will have to wait until we clear out for a long weekend–don’t want the little ones breathing that stuff.

The last major project is to build out the walk-in closet off the master bedroom. We looked at all the off-the-shelf solutions like Ikea, Container Store, California Closets, etc., but our GC cut us a deal to build the whole thing for $1,500, so we drew up the plans and he got to work earlier this week.