P's Profile
- Peter
Author's Posts
November 6, 2008
Carpet and Install for Stairs
Anyone have advice on companies who can supply and install affordable, durable carpeting in my front entry hall and stairs up to the top floor apartment? Does Home Depot do this?
July 29, 2008
Lower Level: Kitchen Updater
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.
July 24, 2008
Top Floor Apartment: Sanding the Floor
After we had finished painting, the apartment was looking good and was nearly ready to welcome G' mom. She would be staying in the back room of the top floor, where previously there had been a nasty green carpet covering the floor. We removed this and found two layers of linoleum. This wasn't really nice or welcoming for G's mom, so we decided to take up the linoleum and at least get a first pass done at sanding the old subfloor boards underneath before her arrival.
The linoleum was easy enough to take up, but the remaining mastic coating the floor proved persistent. It took several passes with the ridiculously tough sandpaper on the sander to get the boards looking good. We left the boards raw since any sealer we put down would not have time to dry before G's mom showed up. Instead, we left the final passes with the superfine paper for after her visit.
July 23, 2008
Top Floor Apartment: Painting in the Hallway
The hallway at the top of the stairs is hard to photograph because the space is tight. It's hard to tell the complete story. On the wall on the outside of the bathroom, we took down the cracked bulging plaster, left up the lathe, and resurfaced with new sheetrock. This had to be primed, along with some other cracks and holes I had patched. Then all surfaces in the hallway - except for the stairs and railings - were given two coats of white. Out here we also painted the baseboards white.
As I mentioned in the previous post, there are 5 doors in this hallway (kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, second bedroom, and closet with ladder to roof), and G selected 5 different colors, one for each door. The door in the last picture shown is to the bathroom, which we painted with a semi-gloss black (I think called blackberry?), which we had also used for the baseboards and mouldings in the bathroom downstairs.
July 22, 2008
Top Floor Apartment: Painting Jam, encore
More pics from our second weekend of intense round-the-clock painting in the top floor apartment. After we had primed where necessary, and applied two coats of white everywhere, the apartment looked mostly like the first picture above. Then we began hitting the mouldings and baseboards with the khaki-ish color G selected. For the 5 doors in the top floor hallway, G selected 5 bright colors to add some fun and energy. My favorite: the orange door.
July 20, 2008
Top Floor Apartment: Painting Jam, con't.
A before pic from the back room on the top floor, and a progress pic from the front room. When we began, we needed to prime the ceilings which had been laminated with the new sheetrock, and also prime the various holes all around the apartment that we had patched after the electricians finished their work up there.
Top Floor Apartment: Painting Jam
. . . and we're back. Though it may seem like we've taken a break, the opposite is actually true. We have been hard at work on the house, and as such, the reno blog has suffered. We had a serious push on the top floor, what will be the apartment, when G's mom came for a visit from Brussels. Since she would be staying with us, we needed to make a nice and homey space for her. It gave us a good reason to really crank on the top floor.
We emailed everyone we could think of and arranged for two back-to-back painting party weekends. The turnout was solid. We got a lot done, painting the hallway leading up the stairs to the apartment, the hallway at the top of the stairs, the two large front and back rooms, and all their respective mouldings and base boards. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, we had had our ceilings cleaned up by having them laminated with thin sheetrock, thus saving what plaster details remained, and covering up a lot of cracks, holes and imperfections. On the top floor, the ceilings had been "stuccoed," and it was nice to see that go.
For our choice of paint, we went with a simple satin white - the most basic 5-gallon jug you can find at Home Depot from Behr. For the mouldings and baseboards inside the rooms, G selected a light khaki-ish tone from Benjamin Moore, AC-1.
May 8, 2008
Lower Level Half Bath - Tile Wall
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.
May 1, 2008
Washer and Dryer: Building a Pan on the Floor
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.
Washer and Dryer: The Holy Grail
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.
Author's Comments
Yeah, the helmet is priceless! We have really nice and weird friends, it's true.
Thanks for the kind words. We're really happy with how the whole top floor is looking.
Posted by: Peter at August 4, 2008 9:04 PM in response to Top Floor Apartment: Painting Jam
Favorite door in the house. Trust me, you gotta see it in person.
Posted by: Peter at August 4, 2008 8:59 PM in response to Top Floor Apartment: Painting Jam, encore
Thanks for the positive words.
Yeah, the black comes out looking great, very polished and pro looking.
As for the composites, I use photoshop to put those together.
Posted by: Peter at August 4, 2008 8:57 PM in response to Top Floor Apartment: Painting in the Hallway
All Ikea, all the time. Cabs, wood countertops, built-in oven, cooktop, microwave, sink, soul, you name it.
Yes, we have storage on the back of the island. The idea was stolen from G's sister's house in Brussels.
Stove is vented through the microwave/exhaust vent contraption. Vent goes up, takes a left through the cabinets and out the back wall of the house.
Backsplash is done, we used our leftover white subway tiles from the bathroom. We're now wishing we had used some color, but oh well. We've got some ideas for other ways to bring color into the space.
So it sounds like maybe we need to just experiment with the CFL bulb type to get a nicer light. Man, I hope we can get something better in there.
Posted by: Peter at August 4, 2008 8:41 PM in response to Lower Level: Kitchen Updater
Sure, we've got some experience under our belt at this point. Send me an email at bedstuyreno@gmail.com whenever you like.
Posted by: Peter at August 4, 2008 8:33 PM in response to Top Floor Apartment: Sanding the Floor
Responses to Author's Forum Comments
call them and they will come to your house. dont do it yourself. some places have a free estimate, like empire carpet
Posted by: karo25 at November 7, 2008 2:54 PM in response to Carpet and Install for Stairs
Yes, i know a company that has beautiful carpets and they also install.
Just visit their site @ http://www.wholesalecarpets.co.uk
Posted by: wholesalecarpets at November 17, 2008 3:14 AM in response to Carpet and Install for Stairs
What is the process to get an estimate? Do they come to you, or do you go to them? How do you measure approx square footage - or yardage? - needs for stairs?
Posted by: Peter at November 7, 2008 12:56 PM in response to Carpet and Install for Stairs