South Stuy Reno

Yeah, its been awhile but we are still alive and kickin over here at SouthStuy. We have had more trials, tribulations, and road blocks than we would like to recount but are thankful that we have made it through them (at least thus far) and we are thankful, not to mention considerably warmer, now that we finally have a ceiling on the parlor level.

When we bought the house, the parlor had a drop ceiling that was demo’d fairly early on.

Earlier this year, part of the tin ceiling was installed.

We also had insulation and soundproofing put in.

Unfortunately, the tin ceiling was neither properly installed (fish-mouthing throughout) nor even completely installed. In fact, that contractor measured the room incorrectly and did not order sufficient cornice panels. When we tried to order the missing panels several months later, we were disappointed to find that Abbington Tin had gone out of business (which is really too bad because the place was an old family-owned business). We searched the web and found Tin Smith in Bushwick and although they carried the same panel designs, they did not have them “pre-treated” as Abbington did. Another thing that made Abbington so great was that they built their own corner pieces on site, as well as providing a number of other basically custom treatments that they didn’t really charge anything for. The problem now, though, is we don’t know how Abbington treated them–we have tried a number of treatments to no avail.

As you can see, there is quite a difference in color between the treated panels and the non-treated panels (which are bare tin meant to be painted).

Any Brownstoners out there have any ideas how or with what the panels were treated or how we can get in touch with anyone who used to be at Abbington Tin?