"Before" Pix & Story

This is the condition in which we first saw the apartment almost a year ago. Steve saw this tiny ad in the NYT real estate section:

Prospect Heights

Sprawling 3 bedroom coop in premier pre-war full service building on Eastern Parkway. High floor provides spectacular views and lots of light. Apartment features 3 generous sized bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, formal dining room, large eat in kitchen, great closet space and a laundry room.

We called and the broker wasn't ready to show it (?). But we persisted and were the first people to see it that Sunday night. It was getting dark and the place was a mess. And what's up with that column?! But we saw that square footage, knew the building well, and made an offer the next day. It was accepted before the listing even hit the web.

Vote for your fave

Okay, all you lurkers out there. Tell us what you think of these three candidates for DR lighting. Use the "add a comment" option below.

Another boo-boo

First two pix are of the drop ceiling in the room behind the kitchen a couple of weeks ago. Its purpose was to house the electricals and the duct for the range hood (which exhausts out the laundry room). But when it got built, yuck. Totally killed the feeling of spaciousness near the windows. And far too many planes colliding in the second photo. So we tore it out & moved it to the other side of the room, above what used to be a hallway (third photo). Much less conspicuous and a shorter run for the electricals. Now we have our unobstructed windows back. We'll run the duct without a casing straight back to the laundry & paint it to match the ceiling.

The Funk Chart

Ok, here's how to understand where we are in the reno process. They're doing all the rough-ins now (plumbing, elec, mech) and we've gotten a few "Bills for Extras" (big plunge). I would add a downturn for "shopping for finishes" (tile, light fixtures, dimmers, etc.). So many decisions to make! So much surfing for products...

Click on the chart to see the details -- pretty funny & accurate.

Cherry on top

Here's the sink we also picked up at Green Demolitions, donated after a Villeroy & Boch trade show. Again, the exact style & width that Erin had spec'd. Ah, the imminent joy of brushing our teeth side-by-side!

Green Kitchen

So, many of you have heard the incredible story of the kitchen we found at Green Demolitions. Here's the summary: GD raises over $1M/year to fund substance abuse treatment in CT by reselling donated kitchens. Most of them are fairly large country & suburban kitchens. Rarely do they get anything modern or apartment-sized.

So, the night before we were to meet with Erin (our architect) to go over the contractors' bids, we were desperate to find savings. Steve went to bed and THIS popped up on GD's website at about 11:30. I stayed up until 2 am measuring and scheming. At 15' it was EXACTLY the width of our desired kitchen but L-shaped where our drawings called for a straight line. Still it looked gorgeous in walnut & black granite.

At 9:30 am we were in Erin's office sweating until GD opened. We called at 10:00 sharp and found out the kitchen was still for sale and the price had dropped further! But they wouldn't hold it for more than three hours. Erin was great and agreed to hotfoot it up to Norwalk with me to check it out in person. A couple hours later I asked him what his gut said and he answered, "I don't think we should fight this."

So this is the "before" photo of our recycled kitchen in the original owner's Manhattan apartment. Fingers crossed that it will look this good in our space in a couple months. The appliances were not included.

The open shelf & microwave hang between the fridge & upper cabinet in the back left corner. The island's got a 24" hole where the wine cabinet used to be. We're putting in a drawer & trash pullout. Nice shoji-inspired doors in the back, similar to the Raydoors we just ordered.

Yikes!

Last Saturday Steve & I were doing our usual weekend inspection and realized that the wall separating the master BR and master BA/closet was about six inches farther into the room than we'd assumed from the plans. Instead of dropping straight down from the beam, it was creating some very funky chi around the doorway and crowding the bed. Six inches doesn't seem like a lot until you feel it.

With the plumbing roughed in, we also realized for the first time how ugly it would be to see the toilet (or worse yet, the toilet user) through the bathroom doorway. Y'know, you look at your drawings a million times but some things only hit you in 3-D.

The fortuitous part of the story is that Sunday night, Maya, Mini & I were coming home from Times Square on the subway and ran into our upstairs neighbors Tai & Cass -- the architect duo from 11C! I hijacked Cass for the entire ride and she basically came up with the fix right then & there: reverse the sink & toilet placement and make it fit by stealing a few inches from the closet for a small toilet alcove. Brilliant! Tai was very helpful too. Nothing like 18 years of living in and thinking about the same floorplan.

You can see that the risers leave plenty of space for the new configuration, so we bit the bullet and put in the big first big change order. See second photo below for new wall framing and third photo of the ceiling that shows where the first wall was framed, then torn out. The pink color is plaster sealant. See very first blog post for comparison pic of the riser wall intact.

Ah, feels right now.

We Have Framing

Our new walls are being framed & the new ceilings dropped. Maya's room is now closed off from the public spaces and, while I miss the flow of light & air, she won't need as much therapy down the road....

The new drop ceilings in the foyer & ex-hallway look GREAT. They're functional because they hide all the electrical lines but they also help to define the K/DR and LR which are taller by a foot -- whoosh!

The closets are going in and they seem HUGE to us. We are determined to limit our wardrobes and stuff to only what will fit inside i.e. no dressers in the room. Now that we'll also have a separate office, I have dreams of reading in a chaise lounge by the window...

Election Break

Brooklyn for Obama! Yes, like many of you, we got completely swept up in the jubilation. See our election photo diary:

http://www.kodakgallery.com/ViewSlideshow.action?&collidparam=42866929103.872363685603.1227214506343

Blueprints

Some of you have asked to see the before & after floorplans. The front door is on the left. Dotted lines show demolition. You can click on the image to see detail. Sorry, I can't seem to turn the pictures to the left!

Inside & out

Last view before Maya's room is closed off. Look at all the light! Down below are panoramas from the LR window. In the close-ups you can see the Empire State Building in the distance and, much closer, the Williamsburg Savings Bank.

Bad news/good news

Uh oh, the walls in both back bedrooms were "delaminating" from the exterior wall, probably due to moisture before the building was repointed. Better to find out now than in a year. So down they came, leaving a pretty bleak facade. Amazingly, the building's agreed to reimburse us, yay!

Goodbye small, hello big

Maya's bathroom looks much bigger already. The stand-alone shower was massive, but cramped on the inside. Not a good combo. Some of our neighbors came and salvaged some of the original tile, which is out of production. Unfortunately, there was no way to save the checkerboard floor tiles.

Demolition Derby

Kaboom! The walls came down this week and light is streaming where it never streamed before. It's not a stretch to call the newly combined living, dining, kitchen, hallway & foyer a "great room." Here's the view from the entrance:



















Turning slightly to the right, you can see where the remaining hall to the bedrooms used to be. Maya's room is on the right and that big hole will become the back of her closet.



















Standing where the kitchen island will be, you can look out the northside windows almost 40 feet away! Maya's room on left & LR on right:



















From the entrance you can now see the entire LR where french doors used to frame a much narrower opening. We'll add sliding translucent doors later (very cool & made in Brooklyn http://www.raydoor.com/):

Other Transformations...

Maya's bath is losing its dark claustrophobic shower & gaining a vanity:

























After 83 years as a kitchen, this will be the new den/guest room - yay!

Here's our room with the bathroom & closet walls ripped away.