While We Wait

The demo is just about complete and we are waiting on construction permits so there are not as many visible signs of progress.  We thought we would use the time to finish plowing through important ( and fun) design/material decisions.  In the next few weeks we hope to have most major kitchen and bath items squared away so we won't have to make too many decisions mid stream.  We'll also be kind of distracted come late April and May when little boy Starbuck arrives!

Tomorrow we have a little "shopping" trip planned: Drimmer's Appliances on Coney Island Ave, Classic Tile in Bay Ridge then a quick trip to NJ over the Verrazano Bridge to a place called the Great Indoors.  Should be a fun filled day!  I'll try and remember to take some pics.

 

Feeling Joisty

Also happening on the garden level is a little joist replacement.  Once again I forgot the real camera so these are kind of crappy camera pics.  These joists are being replaced in the space that was occupied by a staircase and part of the old nasty bathroom...I think.

Look out below!  The scary basement as seen through the joists.

Guess what thing just doesn't belong here

Any idea what you are looking at?  Or what used to be there?

A staircase or two!  These pics are from the garden level where 2 staircases were removed: one between parlor and garden and then garden down to the basement.  We're going to make an external entrance to the basement for storage so we won't have to go through the rental apartment.  Basically there will be two very separate spaces 1. the garden rental 2. our upper triplex--no internal staircase to the rental needed and we gain some much needed storage space under the stairs!

Sorry Clause, no way in.

We are having some of the chimney breasts removed and rebricked so the walls can be flat. Mainly so we won't have a weird bump out in the kitchen to design around.  All mantels except one had been stripped from the house and the fireplaces had been covered up and sheet rocked so they did not look like fireplaces anymore anyway... just bumps in the wall.  Its quite an interesting process and also more complicated than one might imagine as part of the structure of the wall has to be addressed and the roof has to be capped.  We had a little scare the other day when one of our neighbors called and said a brick had come through her wall--yikes!  There was a little damage to the plaster where a brick had moved in a weird way but thank goodness she did not really have a big hole in her wall!!  whew.

Demo mid January

This is the parlor floor, looking to the back of the house.  You can kind of see the stairs peeking out.  Ryan, the contractor did a cool thing:  they completely ensconced the staircase in plywood to protect it and then created a little "chute" down the opening in the center of the staircase with a pulley system so they could lower debris through there.  Demo starts at the top of a building and moves down--for a number of reasons but mainly structural.  They would rip out stuff on the top floors, stage all the debris on the parlor floor then when it got chock full, call for a dumpster. This is also smart because any half filled dumpster left on the street overnight does not stay half filled and then you have to pay to have someone else's junk hauled away. 

parlor looking to the front

second floor bedroom

garden apt looking to the front

the best tile ever!

future master bedroom (old shared kitchen on top floor)

Happy Holidays

We hope you--our large readership of six--had a wonderful holiday season.  We certainly did in part because demo finally came to 46A Irving Place!  Not like something you can fit down the chimney, but what the heck... the chimney was being torn out anyway.

Autumn

No pics to represent the fall since nothing happened to the house for a while.  We got the place cleaned out in August, had the oil tank removed and then it was time to get busy on initial design and demo stuff.  We spent time meeting with our friend and architect Steve K, talking to a few contractors and getting that sorted and awaiting our permits for demo.

After a bit of drama with the DOB our permits were issued and we were finally ready to roll       (okay smash) in December.  I think it took much restraint on Steve's ( hubby steve not architect Steve) part to not get a sledge hammer and go over there and start knocking down walls.  We were anxious and excited to see some action!

Closing Time

We closed on a steamy and rainy August afternoon.  Left the closing with our knees knocking to go meet a locksmith at the house.  Much to our dismay ( though not a complete surprise) the house was NOT broom clean.  A little sampling of what we found... yes that is half eaten food and dirty dishes in one shot.  The strange orange monkey thing was in the main floor hallway crammed behind the vestibule door.  I thought it was funny only because it was doing this crouching, hiding its eyes thing which is pretty much how we felt after we opened the front door.  Thank goodness we had a babysitter that day!  It took MANY hours and some rubber gloves to tame the beast.  These were taken with my phone so they are kind of dark.

Interior Shots 7/07 and 8/07

Weird--but kind of neat in an old way--sink in the corner on the back part of the parlor floor.  Most of the rooms had sinks in them, some looked original with interesting details others were home depot specials.  They all lent a nice air of SRO to the place.

shared kitchen on 4th floor--will become master bedroom

one of the second floor bedrooms

stairs...duh

parlor floor--this was one of the more "quaint" rooms aka not totally skanky!

Back Yard 7/07

The Good Ol Days

This is what the house looked like back in July.  It still pretty much does--on the outside only. The house is 4 stories but the top floor is hard to see from the street.  It was chopped up into many, many small spaces and mainly rented for a while to various Pratt students.  There was a shared kitchen on the 4th floor and the garden apartment was a 1 bedroom with a kitchen and bath as well.  It is 15 feet wide by 45 deep and the backyard is another 55 for a total of  15 x 100.  This gives us some room to add on in the back if  we ever found that magic bag of money we keep looking for!

Back Tracking

Today is January 27th and we've owned our house for about 5 months now.  We had the best of intentions to begin the blog right after we purchased the house, but things happen yeah?

In the next few days I will post pics from July and August:  before and right after we took possession of the house.  Wow.  Can't believe its already January, but the good stuff has just started happening recently anyway!