Friends are about to start renovations on their South Harlem brownstone. Their place is a total wreck and there aren’t enough original details to warrant a renovation with a traditional aesthetic. Still, there are some original details left and instead of just throwing them out they let Demolition Depot come in and rescue what could be rescued – mostly door and window moldings…

Demolition Depot is giving our friends a small store credit with which they hope to buy an “original” front door. Mind you, to actually use whats being rescued you’d need to strip 100 years of lead-based paint – so there’s a reason why the store credit isn’t all that large.

Below is one of the window frames Demolition Depot took out. It’s not all that special (I wonder why they wanted it), but some of the woodwork on the parlor floor was pretty cool and more interesting.

One item Demolition Depot discovered were pocket doors on the parlor floor that our friends didn’t realize were there. I was there when they were taking them out…

Our friends are now thinking they may use those doors as their front doors…

So if you’re doing demolition, don’t just throw everything in a dumpster – if you let a salvage yard rescue what details you have left, it may come in really handy to one of your neighbors. For example we got our front doors from Demolition Depot, and we’ll probably get a bunch of stoop ironwork from them as well.

The Electrician’s guys were in today installing a few fixtures here and there. One place where they put in lights was in the bathroom and the effect was pretty dramatic. On the left is an incandescent bulb, on the right is recessed lights with MR-16s (I think).

(You can click on the images above to see larger versions.)

Here’s an image looking out of the bathroom into the hallway – the lighting makes the brick look pretty great as well…

Looks like a great place to hang art

The floor guy stained the top floor today. We’re using “5% white” Monocoat which looks a lot like an unfinished floor, but with hints of white in the grain.

We’re bucking the whole dark floor thing which has been popular the past 5+ years. We’re noticing more and more design magazines and new condos featuring light colored floors and we like the look. It’s a very different look than dark floors – should help keep the house light and bright.

However, we’re noticing the white in the stain isn’t having much effect on the parts of the floor that are quartersawn. (Most of our floors are quarter and rift sawn white oak, but the rental and the rooms on the top floor are flat cut). Here is what the flat cut parts look like you can see how the grain has picked up the white…

But on the quartersawn parts there’s less grain, so less white – but there’s still some…

The lighter the color of the piece of wood, the less white seems to get picked up – or perhaps there’s just less of a color difference.

The floor guy had never used Monocoat before and seemed a bit apprehensive about using it. He just couldn’t believe that he was only supposed to use 1 1/2 pints on an entire floor – with other products he uses that much on half a room, but he seems to have done a good job on his first floor.

Monocoat is an oil and it needs to dry out for 36+ hours and then they’ll seal it with 2 coats of Bona Traffic HD. At the end of the project they’ll put two more coats of Bona. Bona Traffic HD is water-based but it has hardeners in it that make it harder and more durable than oil-based sealers. The first two coats will be glossy since the floor guy says glossy is more durable than matte, but the last two coats will be “extra matte” which, combined with the subtle color of the Monocoat, should give the appearance of unfinished wood floors that are actually really well sealed. And unlike oil-based varnish it won’t yellow over time.

Great progress has been made on the bathroom tile in the last week or so – but that’s another blog post…

Going into the renovation process we had never chosen a heating and cooling system before. Our tilt-n-turn windows meant we couldn’t have window air conditioners. And when I initially thought through the HVAC choices I wasn’t really in favor of forced air since it tended to be expensive, dusty, and take up a lot of space.

We wound up going with with hot water radiators plus mini-splits. Some of the money we saved going with rads, we spent on expensive European radiators (Runtal). We also didn’t go overboard on a zoned system with lots of thermostats. Instead we opted for pretty simple Danfoss valves. The end result looks like this…

The exposed pipes will be painted white when it’s all done. Most of the radiators in the house are two units high – that one is in the rental bedroom wall and shorter than the rest – so to get the same BTUs we have everywhere else we had to go with the model that’s 3 units high.

That’s inherently a pretty low-tech solution – a valve and a radiator. It’s just the radiator looks better than most and the valve is thermostatic – so it’s based on temperature works better than regular radiator valves.

[Incidentally - avoid steam radiators - there's no such thing as a high efficiency steam boiler. To get high efficiency you need hot water radiators, not steam radiators.]

Because there’s a valve on every radiator we sorta get a zoned system where every room is a zone. It won’t work quite as well as a real zoned system with thermostats for every zone, but it also cost a lot less. And if we stay on top of it, it will probably perform about as well as a more sophisticated system.

There will be one thermostat for the heating system. A friend’s post on Facebook turned me on to the Nest thermostat. If you haven’t checked it out, take some time and watch the promo videos on their site – it’s incredibly cool. I can’t wait to get one.

The one “problem” that we’ve realized is the issue of curtains. With radiators under all the windows – if we hang curtains all the way to the floor they’ll cover the radiators…

That’s a bit of a problem because the tilt-n-turn windows limit our window covering choices. They swing inwards, so putting blinds at the top of the window framing is sorta impossible. We were thinking of doing a lot of curtains, but now worry the radiators won’t work very well when the curtains are pulled.

One area where a forced air system might be better is air exchange. Since the house is well insulated, we may not have enough fresh air entering the house. That is easier to solve with a forced air system – you just incorporate a fresh air intake. But honestly I don’t think we’ll have much of a problem – 2 people in 3,000 sq. ft. shouldn’t be a problem.

We are happy that we have mini-splits and that they’re both heating and cooling. The house is warm enough down to about freezing. It maintains 50+ degrees when it’s in the high 30s outside. That means we probably won’t turn on the boiler until it gets down around freezing. If we just need to take the chill out of the air in a single room (or if our tenant wants it to be warmer than we do) we can use the mini-split.

The mini splits are a bit of an eyesore – we tried to hide them the best we could, but they’re still there hanging on the wall. I don’t think that will bother us too much. To us the visual noise of the mini split unit isn’t any worse than the soffits you often have with forced air systems. If you’re the type who doesn’t want to see a mini-split hanging on your wall there’s always the concealed models you can tuck inside a closet. Those have the advantage of being able to cool/heat two rooms (like a bedroom and an en-suite bathroom) – but the concealed models aren’t quite as efficient due to the ductwork.

One other thing to mention is that we have radiators at each end of the house, and since the bathrooms are in the center of the house we were worried they could get a little cold. We were worried they could get a bit cold, so we put under floor heating pads in each bathroom with programmable thermostats. It’s not very efficient heat, but it won’t be used all that often – so it should be fine.

We’re definitely on the home stretch – final finishes are starting to take shape. The ceilings are getting painted with their final coats of “ceiling white” and tile is starting to be installed in the bathrooms.

The rental bathroom was the first to get tiled. The guys tile the walls first – starting a bit above the floor. Then they do the floor, and then they come back and do the bottom part of the wall.

In the picture above you can see we’re using 12″ x 24″ porcelain tiles on the walls in a staggered pattern. They’re pretty inexpensive – $5.50/sq. ft. from Italian Tile NYC in Brooklyn. Despite the name of the store, I’m pretty sure the tiles aren’t from Italy. The tile came in unmarked boxes. The Italian tiles almost always advertise that fact on the outside of the box with “Made In Italy” (as required by US import law). Honestly though, I don’t care where they came from – I like them and the quality seems pretty decent.

Since we’re going for a pretty contemporary look, the edges are being finished with Schulter edge trim, not with bullnose pieces. I’ll go into more detail on that in another blog post.

Since that picture was taken they’ve put the electric heating mat on the floor and covered it with leveling cement. I think they’ll be putting the floor tiles down today. The floor tiles will be a Basalt Limestone – which is really dark gray. It looks really good against the off-white wall tile.

The staggered pattern is one of the trends we’re noticing in tile these days. In the past people usually did a linear grid pattern (like a spreadsheet’s grid lines) or they did a brick pattern. The staggered pattern is a bit like the brick pattern, but instead of being offset 50% it’s typically offset by 1/4 to 1/3rd of the length – but not done as a stair step.

The guy who did the rental bathroom has also been working on the powder room. Here we’re doing 2″ x 4″ carrara tiles on the walls in a brick pattern…

These came in 1′ x 1′ sheets, so they were pretty easy to install. We got them from CarraraMarbleTiles.com over the GW bridge in New Jersey and they cost us $9.95/sq. ft. which is a great price, BUT we’re pretty convinced they’re not actually Carrara tiles, or even Italian (despite what the sales people told us). They also came in white, unmarked boxes… A lot of tile is coming from China these days. Honestly, we like how they look and don’t really care where they came from.

The floor in the powder room is going in today. It’s little 5/8″ Bardiglio squares (a dark gray marble). Again, we’re not sure it’s Italian, but it looks good, so who cares. They’re polished, so it’s a bit “bling” for our tastes, but the powder room is so small it’s not an issue. Plus, it’s just of the living room and tiny – so we didn’t mind it being a little showy.

The tile is also going up in the master bathroom. There we’re doing “Carrara” 3″ x 6″ subway tiles in a brick pattern as wainscoting on the walls, with a mini brick above them just in the shower area. There will be a dark brownish-gray porcelain random brick mosaic on the floor. The carrara subway tiles are pretty inexpensive – just $6.95/sq. ft., however installing them is more costly since they’re individual tiles (not sheets) and the guy who’s putting them in is a perfectionist who’s a bit slow, but they will look great when they’re done…

We had picked out the tile before 105 West 122 sold for $2.85M. Since they’re they high comp in the neighborhood I was glad to see that they also used Carrara subway tile in their bathroom – though theirs is clearly the real carrar – it has much darker grays (though I sorta prefer the look of lighter grays in our tile).

Tomorrow morning we need to run around and buy grout. After renovating the kitchen and bathrooms in our apartment we wished we had insisted on epoxy-based grouts. Epoxy grouts don’t change color, they don’t absorb water, etc. – they’re just far superior. This time we’re going to use SpectraLOCK everywhere we can. It’s an epoxy-base grout that is about as easy to use as the regular grouts (some epoxy-based grouts are really difficult to install). But SpectraLOCK isn’t recommended for use on carrara marble and other natural stones that are light colored and permeable. So on those we’ll use regular Laticrete mixed with “1776” instead of water. The 1776 makes the regular grout more flexible (less likely to crack), more resistant to water penetration, and less likely to change color – not quite as good as SpectraLOCK, but better than average grout.

If you’re contemplating a renovation and doing things on a budget realize that it may be a bit silly to go for inexpensive tile and then pay a lot to have it installed. For example subway tiles are cheap – you can get them for just over $3/sq. ft., but then they’re labor intensive to install. Pay a little more and get something like a marble subway tile that justifies the installation expense. If you’re budget conscious, pay a bit more for something like a nice 12″ x 24″ porcelain that’s far easier and less expensive to install – the total cost should be less than cheap tile that’s time-consuming to install. If you’re cutting the budget to the bone, just tile less of the room – don’t do wainscoting – just tile in the shower/tub area. There’s really no reason to use low-end ceramic tile – there are nice tiles out there that don’t cost all that much and are inexpensive to install – though, from experience – you have to hunt and shop around to find them.

Things are gradually taking shape – the staircase has been primed, so it’s pretty close to it’s final color. The steel needs to be painted, and the side panels need to be put in, but we’re starting to get a sense for the light that the bulkhead brings into the house. We opted for big windows in a bulkhead rather than the more traditional skylight because it should give more light in the winter and less in the summer.

Here’s a picture looking up, showing the bulkhead windows…

On a sunny winter day the light is really bright right at the top. On the opposite wall there’s the clerestory window into Dan’s “gallery” / “clean studio”…

It looks really dark below that flight of stairs, but actually it really isn’t… It’s just a bit of a photographic trick since the direct light is so bright it makes other areas look dark by comparison. As you can see below, there’s plenty of natural light one flight down where there’s a clerestory window into the den / TV room on our master bedroom floor…

It’s only below that point that the light bulbs are brighter than natural daylight. [All of those pictures were taken within a few minutes of each other.]

Of course, the light will change when we put in the plexi panels on the sides of the stairs. We’ll either do a milk-white plexi or a frosted plexi – either one will block a lot of the direct light and make the light that gets through more diffuse.

I gotta say, I really like the whole clerestory-over-a-closet detail in the den. I wouldn’t want it everywhere, but it’s interesting. Here’s a couple pictures…

Those pictures were taken a different day (the stairwell isn’t primed yet in those pictures) – and it was later in the day when there was less light coming down the stairwell. In person the clerestory window has more depth to it, which you can only sorta get from the pictures.

One thing we noticed a few months ago is that on summer mornings, when sun hits the front of the house, light goes from the den into the stairwell – opposite of what we expected. But we’ll need to wait a few months to see that happen again

And, in case you’re wondering, we’ll be putting wire glass (fire rated) fixed-pane windows into those openings.

Today they’re putting the first of two coats of ceiling white on the ceilings. And they’ve started tiling the bathrooms – I’ll do a post on that soon…

We like art. When we move in our walls will definitely not be bare. Plus, Dan has an MFA in sculpture from Cranbrook – that’s sorta the point of the entire top floor (his art studio). So one of the issues we had to resolve was hanging art on the exposed brick walls. We didn’t want to be putting nails into the brick, so we needed an art hanging system. Our solution looks like this…

There’s some cleaning up to do (joint compound on the brick), but you can see the thin track right along the brick. There are special hangers you put into it that let you hang art – up to 65 pounds per hanger.

We did it a little differently than the architect planned. He proposed it be recessed a bit and hidden…

But the problem with that was that it was impossible to get the hangers into the track with his solution and even if it had worked, it was a lot more work for our contractor. Our solution is easier and since the track is so minimal it still looks pretty good.

Here it is going in. it has a flange to one side that gets taped and mudded to the drywall…

There was another type that could have worked well. It was much bigger and was made to go next to 5/8″ drywall. It would have worked, but it was 2 1/2 times the price and still only held 65 pound – so we stayed saved some money and went with the smaller one.

May seem like a little thing, but the primer went up in one of the rooms today (Dan’s “dirty studio). It’s really feeling like the home stretch (even if it’s going to take another couple months to be done enough to move in)…

And here it is in daylight…

Just finish the floor, add a workbench in the alcove, put up the track lights, and the room is all done. The concept of nearly finished rooms almost feels alien. It’s taken so long to get to this point, I can’t believe it’s happening…

You can see the baseboard in the picture with the Z-bead reveal above it as well as the Runtal radiator (though it’s taped up to keep plaster dust out of it).

DOB never ceases to amaze me… Yesterday we found out that the appointment we had today for a sprinkler PAA had been canceled because the plan examiner retired a month ago.

In the grand scheme of things – I’m glad he retired – his level of incompetence was dumbfounding (our engineer said he’s never seen him review a set of sprinkler plans correctly). But it’s also a bit dumbfounding that DOB would book an appointment to meet with someone who no longer works for them and not catch the error until the day before the appointment. I mean how many people had to show up to meet with the guy before they figured it might be a good idea to stop the appointments and contact the people who had appointments scheduled?

Thanks DOB – more completely unnecessary delays…

A lot has taken shape this week. Another fairly significant item is the decorative ironwork – gates and grilles. Some of our sibling townhouses still have their original gates and grilles – here’s one example of an under-stoop grille…

And here’s an example of the original gates under the stoop…

We’ve modified that design slightly…

While it’s generally similar (or at least “contemporary & compatible), our bent metal isn’t quite as elaborately bent and the openings are bigger than the originals. Those were both cost saving measures – though I have to say I prefer the bigger openings aesthetically.

Our gates are also different in that they open out rather than in as the originals did. For the little door into the apartment, opening in restricts the already small passage way – it just made more sense to open that one out. On the gate down into the cellar when we recreated the missing arch we modified it a bit and made it slightly higher than it was originally to get more light in under the stoop. Because the arch is higher, if we opened the gate in we’d hit the bottom of the stairs above. You can see on the originals that they lowered the arch and lowered the gates even further to avoid that problem. But opening out meant that we couldn’t take the gate below the bottom step as they did originally. One of the items they still need to resolve is to put a small “foot” on the gate so a small person can’t shimmy under it.

Because we had bigger openings in the ironwork, we needed to do something to prevent someone sticking their arm through and unlocking the gate from the other side (fire code requires that it be easily opened – not a keyed lock). In the picture below you can see the solution a fairly clearly… There are little spikes in the openings radiating out from the lock…

It’s actually an approach that blends well with the overall design without blocking light as a plate would. If you look carefully at the picture of the gates under the stoop you’ll see our ironwork guy forgot that the right gate needed a radius to protect the left gate’s lock – he’ll fix that.

We’re going to paint the gates the dark bronze color that other metal work is painted, which will blend nicely with the brownstone color which still has yet to be applied (it’s too cold to do the work).

The other thing we were worried about was that the tenant would feel like they were trapped in a prison since every one of their windows and doors has an iron gate or grille on it. If we had gone with run-of-the mill vertical bars I’m sure that’s how it would have seemed. But when you have the window or door open the gate/grille is actually rather pleasant – almost pretty – you don’t think security when you see it – at least not too much.

We also made it so the bedroom window grille (pic above) was operable. The tenants have the option of opening the gates and getting them completely out of the way so they’re not visible at all – probably something they’ll do when they have parties. Here they are closed…

And here they are open…

Ever since we’ve been robbed (actually before then) I’ve been wanting the gates and grilles to go in. I’m glad that layer of security is almost complete – it’s one thing I’d get done earlier if I had to do it all over again.

One of the ways the architect stamped his mark on the house was that he’s decided to go with no mouldings anywhere in the house. No crown moldings, no frame around the doors, none around the windows. There is a baseboard, but it doesn’t look much like a baseboard – it’s flush with the drywall with a reveal between the two.

Here’s a picture of what I’m talking about…

It needs to be cleaned up, but you can get the idea… That’s pretty much the finished trim. We just have to figure out whether we’re leaving the metal visible or painting it.

The way you achieve that look is to use what’s called a Z-Bead. They’re pretty expensive – 15 cents/linear foot and there’s well over 1000 feet of reveal in the house – so it adds up. plus it takes a detailed oriented workman a while to install it. It’s much easier to just slap a piece of wood trim over the imperfections. It’s funny how “minimal” is often more complicated.

While it’s more expensive, I gotta say it will be one of those subtle details that make people know some care and thought went into both the construction and the design.

One of the many little things that goes into building a house in New York City is fire stopping. Not many of us stop and think like a fire would – about all the holes fire can find and spread through. We just think in terms of the obvious things like doors.

One of those little areas is the plumbing wall. There are big gaps around the pipes and fire likes to spread vertically. I didn’t see it going in, but they put some cement-like stuff in the wall around the pipes to stop fire from traveling up the pipes.

The other area where you wouldn’t think of needing firestopping is between the brick wall and the subfloor. Here they put a special sealant that can withstand fire.

I can start to see how when a fire occurs it take fire fighters are always concerned about where it might be hiding after they’ve got the fire “out” – how it can smoulder in a wall and start back up. Fire is a tricky thing. But NYC’s code is relatively good – someone has to certify the fire stopping measures before the job can be signed off, so contractors can’t ignore it.

The house has been so drab for so long it’s sorta interesting to see color come in…

They’re using “green board” in the cellar. Even though the cellar is pretty dry that should help avoid mold. The color of the green board is pretty dramatic especially when it’s put against pink fiberglass insulation…

The tenant’s laundry room has become really small and dark since the green board went in – but honestly how many people in Manhattan have a proper laundry room? And it will get painted an off-white and it will get lit better, which should make it seem a little bigger.

I took the picture above after dark – so there’s no light coming in the windows – the dim light just makes the color seem all that more dramatic. In reality that’s not what we’re shooting for at all. We want the cellar area to be fairly light bright and warm. Well have an off-white on the walls and the floor will be a fake wood tile.

Tile that looks like wood is sorta the new thing in tile. It used to be pretty expensive – $12-15/sq. ft., but the price has dropped a lot as the competition kicks in. After all, it’s just another pattern on a ceramic tile – there really isn’t all that different or special. We were able to get ours for $5.75/sq. ft. (including special shipping) from Italian Tile NYC in Brooklyn. They were by far the least expensive option. The others were coming in around the $7/sq. ft. mark, maybe a little lower. Mind you, we got 12″x24″ tile and wood tile really should be done in planks (e.g. 2″x18″, 3″x36″, 4″x36″, 6″x48″, etc) – so it’s not going to be a perfect wood effect. But that would have cost more and at 350 square feet on a rental unit we didn’t want to spend more than we had to.

Planking is another of the new trends in tile. It’s sorta cool actually and only a few companies are offering plank-like sizes (Nemo seems to be the best source in NYC for planked tile). But I think in a year or two the price of planked tile will come down as well – though more sizes adds more distribution and stocking costs.

The whole fake wood floor idea was something I strongly favored from the get go. Dan was pretty reluctant initially but finally we got to the point where he thought it might be OK, the price was right, and we couldn’t find anything better – so we went for it. The reason why I wanted a fake wood floor was because it’s a cellar area so I wanted to go overboard on not making it feel like a cellar. You can’t put a real wood floor in a cellar – it will buckle with the moisture. Laminate floors sorta look like wood, but they sorta look like plastic as well. To me, tiles feel cold. I was pretty picky about the tone and warmth of the tile. We found one that seemed pretty much what we wanted, but it seemed a little dull. The “wood” we went with was the same tone and warmth but would be more visually interesting. Dan’s still a little apprehensive about the choice – so fingers crossed

Another interesting view color-wise was the green-board for the rental bathroom leaned up against the exposed brick wall in the bedroom. It’s a bit Christmas-like… But in general it’s just good to see color in the house.

There’s one other type of drywall going in the front part of the cellar – the boiler room and the meter/storage room. It’s an outdoor drywall that’s made for exterior ceilings (porches, etc.) It’s dark gray…

I really like the color of that – goes well with the stone walls. We may actually paint the ceiling the same color after it gets taped and mudded.

In the past week the contractor (and his sub-contractor) made good progress on drywall. 95% of the drywall is up now. As you can see in the pictures below, much of it is taped and mudded (though more coats may be necessary).

Above you see the Den on the master bedroom floor, below is Dan’s dirty studio on the top floor…

And here’s green board up in the wet studio…

We’ve also picked out the last bit of tile this week (though there’s still a little ordering to be done). I’m excited about the tile choices… We wound up going all over to find tile we liked at a price that was in our budget – but more about that later.

Tuesday the wood floor guy will resume work, and the plumber got back to work a little bit this week and should get more done next week – though there is a delay with the sprinkler PAA – and that has to be complete before we can get the sign off and get heat and water meters (delays, delays – but luckily the weather is warm and it’s not all that critical).

I’m still not exactly sure when they’ll be done. I’d like it to be in the next 4 to 6 weeks, but our architect told us 3 months today. I really just want things to be done and wish I could quickly fast forward to the end.

The other day someone asked me what I would do differently if I had it to do over again. I gave a few examples (the biggest being to get water and electricity up and running before you start construction), but I’d add a better soundproofing strategy to that list. In our case it’s mostly an issue between the two units, though we are a bit disappointed in how you can hear footsteps on the floor above you in our unit. We’re scrambling to try to come up with a better solution for between the two units. In hindsight it’s something we should have taken more time to consider during the planning phase.

The main issue is that our living room is on top of our tenant’s bedroom. If we don’t take soundproofing seriously we’re going to have a very unhappy tenant every time we have people over for dinner or a party.

The first thing we did was an $800 change order to upgrade from fiberglass batt soundproofing to open cell foam soundproofing between the two units. I know there’s some debate about which is better. The fiberglass folks say fiberglass is better, the foam folks say foam is better. Fiberglass apparently has a better (or similar) STC rating (Sound Transmission Control), but open cell foam is supposed to be good at blocking mid-range frequencies like voices. But, that said, we’ve noticed you can still hear voices through the open cell foam – which worries us. Mind you, the ceiling/floor isn’t finished – it’s just a plywood floor subfloor plus the 5+ inches of foam at this point, but we figure we need to do more.

The next big thing we’re doing is metal channels that hang perpendicular to the floor joists. Between the joists and the metal channel is sound proof caulking/foam. Here’s a picture of the channels…

You can also see all the open cell foam in the picture above.

The channels screw into the joists on one side and then the sheetrock screws into the channels. Because the channels are just screwed on one side they bounce a little – that bounce is a good thing when it comes to sound.

I’m pretty sure we need to put two layers of 5/8″ drywall on the ceiling since the ceiling has a 1 hour fire rating. So there will be more sound proofing foam between the layers of sheetrock and all the mass of the drywall will really help cut the sound as well.

With any luck our tenant will sleep soundly – even when we’ve got guests over…

Update:

Two layers of 5/8″ drywall have gone in on the ceiling and things are MUCH quieter now. They still need to tape and do the wood floor, but so far voices and footsteps are significantly muffled – though still sorta audible. And the resilient channel does indeed help things. When I walk across the floor with heavy boots Dan could tell when I was over the section with channel.