Renovation blog-like post

We’ve finally got our plans and permits and are moving right along with our gut reno! And like most renovators, we plan to document the project the whole way.

This is a South Slope 2-family semi-detached brick house. It’s 16′ x 66′, so, about 1000 sft on each of the two floors. Plus there’s a tall dry basement. When the rest of the house is finished, we plan to turn most of the basement into a library, when our finances recover. Right now most of my books are in storage.

We’re planning to convert from a 2 family to a single family home. So the kitchen comes out of the second floor (although we’ll be leaving the plumbing for it behind the walls just in case). Also we’ll be opening up the staircases.

Currently it’s configured as two apartments, with the bath and kitchen in the middle of each, and 2 bedrooms on one side, and a LR/DR on the other. There’s a second exterior door that enters into the kitchen from the driveway. We’re going to seal that up and replace with a new door that opens up into the back yard.

On the ground floor, from front to back, we’re going to have a large L/R, then a small bath with shower, and a large kitchen with all the latest goodies like a 6 burner range and a wine cooler. After the kitchen comes a full dining room, and that will open up through the new door into the yard.

Upstairs there will be our master bedroom and a walk-in closet that will also open into the master bath, which will contain a bathtub. I’ll have a small office for myself, followed by a larger office/guest bedroom for my wife.

We had hoped to do radiant heat, but the cost got out of control, so we’ll be taking out the old steam boiler and non-functioning gas hot water heater, and installing a high-efficiency boiler, indirect water heater, and baseboard hydronic heating. We’re also going to be insulating the wall that is not attached, and making sure the attic is well insulated. And we’ll be putting in central air. Heating and A/C will be multi-zone.

We’re not going to get completely crazy with the electronics, but we do plan to make sure that every room has a network connection, a cable connection, and two phone jacks. We’re going to install in-wall speakers in the DR, and a small home theater set-up in the LR with all the speakers (except the sub-woofer) and wiring in-wall and in-ceiling.

My wife and I are fairly resilient people, so the plan is to live in the house while this happens. Most of our stuff is in the basement. We are living on the first floor with minimal stuff, and the second floor is vacant. The second floor is to be gutted and re-built first. When it’s done, we move upstairs, while the same thing happens downstairs. We realize that it won’t be perfect, but that’s the plan nevertheless.

The house leaked for years. At some point, some repairs were made; new windows, new roof, etc. But the damage was done. Many parts of the walls and floors have significant water damage. The baths and kitchens had dropped ceilings installed to hide the damage. We looked into saving some of the things like the floors, moldings, and so on, but in every case they were either of poor quality of not viable to save.

I know everyone complains that no one shares contractors or pricing. I will later in the process.

Here’s a photo of the second floor just after a closet was removed. The place looks much nicer than it really is.
http://www.pbase.com/image/96230631

The kitchen comes out. That aluminum foil on the ceiling was taped there to hold up the falling plaster under the dropped ceiling.
http://www.pbase.com/image/96230632

The debris builds up until the dumpster is ordered:
http://www.pbase.com/image/96230633

Getting down to nothing:
http://www.pbase.com/image/96230634
http://www.pbase.com/image/96230635

Zulu, the demo foreman, checks the work.
http://www.pbase.com/image/96230637

The bathroom:
http://www.pbase.com/image/96230638

I never thought the debris would fill this huge dumpster, but it did. Here it’s being picked up:
http://www.pbase.com/image/96230630

Demo complete, wall studs going up:
http://www.pbase.com/image/96230640

The many additions and changes to bath and kitchen through the years, not to mention the water leaks, had pretty much destroyed the floor, and even the joists had been cut through. And the whole area was very saggy, So here we have two new joists installed, and the neighboring joists being leveled to match.
http://www.pbase.com/image/96230642

And that’s it so far.