South Stuy Blog: February 2008
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February 27, 2008
Small Space, Big Work
So while T and I are renovating the small kitchen in the 3rd rental ourselves, we had to hire some professional help for the bathroom. The job was just too big for us, involving plumbing, electrical, carpentry, tiling, the whole nine. Early on in the reno, we discovered a wicked leak where the bathtub connected to the drain and once we pulled out the tub, sink, and toilet, and scraped off most of the linoleum tiles we discovered that it had been a problem for a while. YIKES.
They ripped through the floor in a couple of places to get at the plumbing for the toilet and to move the tub drain in order to build an entirely new shower. The new wall is framed with 2x3 studs; it will hide the plumbing and make up the few inches we need for the 48" shower base to fit correctly. The vanity we bought months ago at Ikea on the advice of our first contractor won't actually fit into this bathroom, so T built a top for it (where the sink would've gone) and we're mounting it into the new wall above the toilet as a storage cabinet. The floor is getting retiled, as are the walls in the shower area, though we will be keeping some of the 1930s subway tile from when the building was converted into a five-family. Some electrical wiring is getting moved so everything is up to code. And we're changing the door so that it swings out, since you won't actually be able to step in and close the door if it swings into the bathroom. New York, baby.
Basically there is very little that isn't being done in this little room.
Because we know enough to know what we're not ready to do ourselves, and we don't have the time to spend the next several weeks or couple months learning how to do most of it ourselves (all but the plumbing and electrical, that is), and mostly because we simply didn't want to screw it up, we brought in a number of contractors over the last couple weeks to get estimates. And of course, they were all over the map in price and plan. But we settled on one and he started yesterday and even showed up again today (I'm right now listening to the sweet sounds of him and his guy drilling the hell out of something upstairs), so here's hoping for the best.
February 26, 2008
Laying...in wait
With the groundwork all but done in the kitchen--it is only a matter of days before the tiles
and cabinets
take their places.
February 23, 2008
The Sky is Falling
Just kidding -but the ceiling in the third floor rear apartment had to come down. It was saggy and uneven in places so I took a crow bar and a hammer and got set to bring that baby down. Having never done this before -I was amazed that such a small space could have so much debris. I must admit I was feeling sort of badass with my respirator, googles and crow bar and got about half of the ceiling down until T came up and started pointing out the various dead bugs and other nastiness that had come down with the plaster and were now covering my head shoulders and floor. I didn't get much done after that--I am not the biggest fan of dead bugs raining down on my head so I passed the crow bar to T while admitting my wussiness (is that a word?).
stripped to the lathe
Anyway, last weekend we put up the dry wall. Again, we had never done this before so it took us a couple of tries to get the board cut correctly for the space and to fit over the light fixtures.
Yep believe it--we re-purposed the clawfoot into a work bench.
We eventually succeeded and I have never thought a piece of dry wall could look so pretty.
February 12, 2008
Strip Happy
We can't do very much else until we get the first round of drawings from our newly hired architect, so we are tackling the ornate wooden columns in what will one day be our guestroom/office.
An ambitious project indeed, but weghaddado wha weghaddado.
We are currently using Citrus Strip on the column. We have found that the trick is to paint on the thickest coating of the stuff as possible, wrap the thing with plastic wrap to keep it from drying out, and let it do its work over a 24- to 36-hour period. We then get to scraping using sharp pull scrapers (we bought them through the Silent Paint Stripper site). If the paint doesn't come off, we no longer fight it or curse at it like we did when we first began learning how to strip--we just throw on another coat.
Look at all these lovely colors--sort of psychedelic, man
We needed to repeat the process 3 times for this result.
We have no idea what kind of wood this is or why some of it is light and some dark--if anyone has some insight, let us know. We plan on staining this woodwork at some point in the future so if anyone would like to post some pointers, we would appreciate it.
February 7, 2008
Stripping......the door
A century plus of use and abuse have taken there toll on a number of our grand ole doors--there have been locks and door handles and hinges and bars and hooks and tacts (T's favorite) that have been put on and taken off that a couple of the doors look like some monster alien termites have had their way with them (we don't have termites--I am just trying to give you an image here). Anyway, the point being that some of these doors will not be savage-able--at least not by us (don't worry-we aren't going to throw them away--we will either keep them in the basement or drop them at Eddie's).
One of the quirky things about this house is that no single door in the entire house is exactly the same in any dimension so even though we plan on closing up some doorways we can't necessary re-purpose those doors to another portal. Which brought us to Eddie's Salvage--where we have spent hours on end measuring every door in the place (and if you have been to Eddie's you know there are a helluva lot of doors). We did find one door at Eddie's that was pretty close to the dimensions we needed for the garden floor entrance and now fits perfectly thanks to T's handy new electric planer.
We have been stripping this ole door on and off since December-outside when weather permits (yes it has been cold but with the chimnea going, winter gear on, resperators, goggles and 2 heat guns going--we have managed not to freeze to death) and more recently inside with chemicals--(the details work lends itself better to the chemical method)
Outside with the heat gun
The good news is we have discovered a use for our overpriced silent paint remover--it takes off a couple of layers of paint on the flat large surfaces and makes it faster to use the more traditional heat gun to take off the rest.
Inside with chemicals
Detail
Unfortunately-I do not have any before pics of this door but it was the typical, coated with more than enough paint to obliterate any detail.
We plan on painting it the same color as the Parlor entry doors--a deep dark red.
Hope to have more pics soon.