Crown Heights Reno

or
these walls come fully loaded

for the past couple of months we have been focusing on finishing up all the systems so that we can (finally) close the walls. basically that work is now finished though finding the right person to do the heating took a while: we are not only replacing the 50 year old boiler, we are changing from a forced air system to hot water heat, this work is about to start so i’ll leave that discussion to a later post.

A/C

we did take advantage of the walls being opened to install central a/c.

the units for the top 2 floors sit on the roof (back & low)

the maze of ducts: amazingly, not visible through the top floor skylights

our a/c contractor has done an incredible job of hiding the duct work.
left: the vent cut into the parlor ceiling (which is in the process of being restored)
(also visible are low voltage cans that we added at the 11th hour feeling that they were necessary to light the walls properly for paintings).
right: the duct that feeds that vent set into the closet floor; there are only two places (here in the closet and at the top of the 3rd floor stairs) where we have to build something to hide the trunks; we were able to do the whole house without dropping any ceilings.

some flexible duct work on the top floor and the unit in the basement for my studio which will have one long round exposed duct down the middle.

ELECTRIC

the electric was a huge job; with only 60 amps coming into the house we definitely need to bring in new service

this requires digging up a portion of the new cement since it is necessary to replace the wooden trough that the electric currently sits in with a metal pipe (seems reasonable). the silver lining here is that we can rethink putting some plantings along the edge of the yard where the cement has been removed.

(left: new meters, right: old)
con ed also wanted to install our new meters on the outside of the building which did not seem reasonable. i would much prefer to let them in to do readings once a month (until the digital read outs become available) than to have 2 meters hanging out in the front.

the electric in the extension wall: my studio will have a combination of lights; florescent fixtures for day to day activity and incandescent fixtures for showing work.
the jury is still out on whether or not to go low voltage here.

some of the massive mess of conduit running through the house
but what a joy to be able to flick a switch and have lights come on!!!
we went with low voltage 3″ cans throughout much of the house and find the light to be very pretty.
& a big shout out to joe at lendy electric (137 bowery) for all his help and patience; great service, great prices.

some of the wiring on the parlor floor;
left: new panel
right: preparing for the wall o’ appliances in the kitchen

SIDEBAR

in the snap above is a picture hanging on the (soon to be) wall,
it is a rendering of the kitchen;
a little reminder that things won’t always be this way

briefly all our appliances will sit on that west wall with the exception of the oven which will be under the island.
on that same wall will be a combination of wood cabinets with horizontal hoppers in glass & metal.
we are foregoing a dining room table and building a large concrete ovoid counter to serve for both prep and dining.
(we are really excited about this so play nice, remember you don’t have to live here)

LOW VOLTAGE

or “the information highway starts here”

you might ask, why all this cat 6 in the age of wireless???
i promise you, for some of the work that i do, wireless just doesn’t cut it
and again; the walls are open

we still haven’t finalized the headache of alarms, intercoms, etc. though i must admit, the prospect of keypads, thermostatic controls, detectors of all sorts, etc. distributed liberally throughout the house in their lovely shades of decorator plastic is beginning to wear rather thin.