reno stories! demo and reno…

this is continued on from “finding the apartment“.

as you can see, the apartment was dark, dingy, and sad. the patchwork linoleum on the floors had to come up, the wallpaper had to come down. speaking of coming down, the doc had put up a sheet rock wall between the dining and living rooms, and that was the first thing i decided had to go. i wanted the office to stay for my biz, but i needed the door to the office moved to the living room end, so that i could have the door open and watch the kids if necessary. but i immediately saw potential. so much potential.

we started with the floor plan, and as you can see, removing the wall between the living and dining rooms helped with flowthru. then we moved on to the needed-to-be-gutted kitchen. ::shiver:: i found an amazing kitchen guy in the area who offers locally made, all-wood cabinets at very reasonable prices. we wanted something classic, but not traditional, and we wanted wood so that it would still look great if we wanted to sell in 10 years. i always wanted a white kitchen, and that went double for this space, since the kitchen itself did not have a window, only access to the window from the dining room. together, dave and i chose a shaker style door, and a classic setup, with black iron hardware and butcher block countertops. the only real color is coming from the amazing spanish tiles that we chose for the backsplash, in lieu of moroccan tile since that was not in the budget. this was the first room that we planned, and from there we planned the rest of the apartment.

if you are undergoing a renovation, i highly suggest working with people that you know and/or trust. i am lucky — a good friend of the family, danny bahno, is a contractor. he came in to see the apartment before we went into contract, and has been coming back on and off ever since. the going joke is that he’s going to set up a cot in there… but he and the men that work with him make our lives easier. i can trust him, they come in when they say they’re going to, it’s a joy. if anyone in the SI/Brooklyn area needs a contractor, please ask me for his info. i’d recommend him to anyone. the other vendors/contractors i have commissioned have also been fantastic so far. we went through lumber liquidators for our floors, and are using one of their flooring contractors, finishline, for the installation. my electrician happens to be my current super’s son. and as i mentioned earlier, my kitchen guy (jan at enterprise cabinets) is a total sweetheart with amazing product. all in all, we consider ourselves very lucky to be surrounded by these professionals.

and so danny began the demo. wall down, door moved, kitchen out. what a difference all that made already! taking down the wall brightened the whole space! linoleum pulled up, subfloors fixed. yay! moving forward!

poor dave… this is where he starts down the never-ending road of wallpaper removal and wall smoothing. the walls were in pretty good shape, they just had a lot of ugly wallpaper on them. we thought we’d save some money and dave could just remove the wallpaper himself, then sand the walls in time for painting. yeah… several weekends later lost to the apartment, we had a fine on us from the building for sanding on the weekend (yeah, coop rules and all), and therefore not-fully-smooth-walls, because he works during the week. so we had to pay for the walls to be sheet rocked anyway. a big boo to that. poor dave. poor bank account. you learn a lot during reno…

and then there was the realization that the electrical lines needed a lot of work. there was nothing dedicated in the kitchen for modern appliances, the box needed to be replaced, all our receptacles needed to be switched out to grounded. this realization came, oh, LAST WEEK. thankfully we have an awesome super and he raised 2 awesome sons, so they were by doing the insane amount of electrical work necessary. we nixed some of it, thank god, and somewhat saved our budget. not really, but it was better than going whole-hog.

we are putting off the bathroom reno for a while. yes, they are ugly and dirty and all that. but the tile is neutral, and they can be cleaned. and the shower doors can be removed. and we are putting in new medicine cabinets and light fixtures, and a necessary new vanity in the master bath. so they will be spruced up and useable for a while until we can get up the guts to go through reno again. sigh…

coming soon: on the hunt (finding what we need to make this place a home).