Renovations

In one week, we ripped out what is going to take us a year to rebuild.  We can now see our house in all of its glory (as well as discovering some of the structural issues that will need to … More

Major step in March — the windows are in!  The day it happened I got a text from Mr. A, “The new windows are beautiful!” And I think they are. Suddenly the house is beginning to feel like it has … More

After the Second Look presentation, I had more specifics and direction to go on. The design was being refined by our meetings and discussion, with special attention being placed on the kitchen and its function. General Comments: -          The entry moment built-in was a go, and Jeff wanted to explore adding a tufted cushion to bench back, and add door to coat closet portion. -          The idea was floated to shrink the kitchen island, yet allow the kitchen canopy to still stay aligned to... More

I’ve been finally roused out of my long, post-less spell by the kiss of spring and the end of Mr. Albe’s six-day work week. The holidays, too — making ready for a series of family visits over Thanksgiving and Christmas — and the snow, the beautiful, exasperating snow — kept me away from my computer for long stretches. I busted out my homegrown NH shoveling skills all over that driveway. It seems a fitting time to feature our guest room, as it’s gotten a nice workout the past... More

Parlor Level Fireplaces – Left Col: Back Parlor / Right Col: Front Parlor Back Parlor Fireplace, Stripped and Stained Front Parlor Fireplace, Stripped and Stained On our parlor floor, we have two fireplaces. When we bought the house, both fireboxes were closed up with gyp. We opened them up out of curiosity, but we never really addressed them – seemed like to make them safe and functioning wood-burning fireplaces would cost roughly $5000 a pop, and that was on the cheap side. G and I always thought... More

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... More

Back Door One of the big reasons I was able to convince my husband to buy a house and leave our comfortable condo in Clinton Hill’s Graham Home – where we had one of those two giant balconies – was because our house would have a backyard. But thanks to our stalled renovation, we really couldn’t access it for almost two years. As part of the normal course of things, the old door was removed and a new doorframe built. It was covered with a piece of plywood, screwed in with about a... More

While we still have some projects to go and the backyard needs some serious work after two pigs ate the whole damn thing, I thought it was time to share how the entire house looks these days.  To take it one step further (or backwards) I have gathered a “best of” collection of the stills the wife and I took along the way.  It’s not every single pic, but damn close.  Over 400 to be precise. To not be a complete slacker about this I will note a few things for those of you who may care or would... More

When last we recapped on brownstoner, we were entering the end of summer and waltzing our way into our fall projects in our ongoing backyard reno. After working with Diana at Fun City Design, we had the game plan of using quite a few of the plants we had always had in containers, starting with our roof top garden back in Ft. Greene before moving in 2004. We have a ton of tropicals as container plants, thus part of the moniker of “Tikihouse” (as they all come inside during the winter), but we also... More

Well, we’ve seen the door in the shop. Now it’s time to get it home. Of course, there is still one issue to be resolved: What hinges do we use? Nathan has quite a store of old hardware, and if you see what you like, you are welcome to it. This is a heavy door, that will require large hinges. We went through his hinge drawer, and there was nothing that was both pleasing and heavy duty. I was about to give up and order some, when Nathan opened another drawer and says, “hey, what do you think about ... More

A couple years ago I proclaimed that the last remenant of purple would be purged. Little did I know that the purple would cling desperately and that it would take us close to a year to eradicate it. Things started off well enough. I was feeling confident. I had all kinds of scrapers and dental tools. I had all kind of chemical strippers. I have a heat gun and the silent paint remover and I had EXPERIENCE stripping the downstairs newel post and the bannisters. I felt READY. Here she is in all her purple... More

Hmm..could it be that this is the final renovation update? Hard to believe. Have I missed anything you want to see? Of course, there is a lot more on my personal to-do list but putting the renovation part behind me seems almost surreal. Unfortunately, I didn’t leave a very exciting one for last. You’ve already seen this room a few times in prior posts (save the tile, power of paint, flush me down, etc.). But just for completion sake, I figured I’d do a post dedicated to the upstairs/guest/hallway ... More