Now you see it. Now you don't.

Upon finishing the demolition for the second floor and basement, I got a hold of a clean out company and said goodbye to the evidence of all our hard work. Finishing the demo doesn't keep me from waking up in the middle of the night thinking of some small thing that we forgot to take out or remove before the cleanout crew paid us a visit. That sounds very ominous now that I think about it. It brings to mind big white vans from Jersey pulling up to "clean up a nasty mess". But they were very polite and even attempted to half-heartedly sweep up after themselves. The great news is that we can see the floor! The bad news is that we can see the floor! Here are some before and after shots for your viewing pleasure.

basement bedroom and game room

basement exercise room

2nd floor kitchen and living room looking into bedroom 

2nd floor small front bedroom and back yard

The clean out ended up costing us in the ball park of $1500. Yet when you consider all the concrete block hiding under that red awning in the middle of our back yard, concrete backed tile from the basement demo, and the plaster and lathe we took out from the second floor, it was a heavy truck and a half of trash we got rid of. They did recycle the metal. We didn't see the money from it, but I do like that it was recycled. I can't imagine finding the energy to take it down to the recycle center myself at this point, so someone else might as well.

I'd rather spend my energy fixing up the items going back into the house. I've been working on picking paint colors for the cabinetry and stumbled across a great clean white from Benjamin Moore called Snow Fall. I decided to test out their Advanced Alkyd Paint on something small before tackling all of our kitchen doors and drawers. I am in no way feeling like our kitchen is small when I look at the pile of doors that I have to paint. I tried finding a company in town that would take them and paint them in a spray booth setting but alas, for NY, our job is too small and no one wanted to mess with it. So, that leads me to this:

I love the size and quality of this bathroom medicine cabinet but I do not love the faded gray-brown wood finish that has antiquing in all of the crevices. It doesn't go with anything else I have picked out for the bathroom but I figure a lovely semi-gloss paint job will spiff it up nicely. I prepped it per instructions, cleaning, lightly sanding and wiping off any excess dust with a tack cloth. I removed all the hardware and the two mirrors that were accessible. I patched a few dings in wood as well. I bought the brush that the Benjamin Moore dealer suggested and went to town. I was a bit bothered by the bubbles that formed in the self leveling paint. For the most part, it did indeed smooth out over the course of it's drying cycle but there are still bubble holes that I had to sand down and I am hoping a second and third coat will alleviate the problem. 

I am suspicious that the brush I used for the first and second coat, which super smooth, wasn't soft enough. I ended up with some fine brush marks left in the finish. The whole reason I threw down the cash for the Advance paint was for its durability and smooth near factory finish. I will be sanding between the second and third coat and using a different brush for the top coat. Fingers crossed.

Demo Down

OOPS, left this post languishing in "drafts". UPDATE: Our portion of the demo for the second floor and basement are complete! The back yard is also in a much better place. Update to follow.

We are nearing the end of demolition that we can accomplish on our own. We have one more opening to create in the upstairs unit that will be used for the new laundry closet! We've finished opening these two bad boys up so that we can get new doors in the right place for the closets and Jack and Jill bathroom that will occupy the left hand side of the middle room in the photo. 

And speaking of laundry closets, our new washer and dryer was delivered a few days ago! We have no hookups yet, but I lovingly caress them everytime I pass them, letting my hand trail languidly aling their glossy white...ahem...yes, we have a washer and dryer. There was a slight scratch on the door of one of them so I refused delivery.  They got it back on the truck and called Lowes back, they didn't want to gonthriugh the return as I am sure they would loose money having it returned then having to sell it again as damaged. C agreed to take it back into the house if they refunded $100. Soufs like a win-win to me. We can use every cent we can get and I figure everytime I see that scratch I'll see $100 instead of a brand new machine already dinged. 

While we wait for another cleanout to clear away our demo debris, we gave our hands a break from the power tools by spending a few hours in the back yard cleaning things up. 

It still feels like America's Most Desperate Landscape to me but it is getting better bit by bit. 

And for the daily pretty, we pulled the trigger on this queen pullout couch from West Elm. It is on sale now and hopefully will arrive just about the same time we are ready to finish up the basement recroom. 

Come to me my pretty!

Waiting, and Not Waiting

We have new steps! The small dog LOVES these. It took her a few days to get used to using them instead of her human elevator. But now, there's no waiting to ascend or descend, just boogie on down. And with the summer weather, it has been awesome to be able to just step outside and cool off in the evenings.

We're waiting to hear back from the National Historic Tax Credit Program. We're waiting for our finalized plans. We're waiting for our expediter to being pulling permits. We're waiting to hear back about ordering windows for the back of the property. We're waiting, we're waiting, we're waiting.

However, we are not waiting for the second floor tenant to move out! Huzzah! After 4 months of being in the drivers seat of the housing court proceedings, the tenant finally left. This is in addition to over a year of housing court BEFORE we closed on the property. The tenant story is huge and amazingly complex with a little bit, okay, a lot of crazy mixed in.  But, a large part of the delay was still due to the previous owners attempting in multiple ways to wiggle their way out of the sale. The property was under contract to be delivered vacant. They only made any steps to provide the property as such, under threat. Once they were finally convinced we would still close on the property with the tenant(s) still in place, they decided to sign another lease with another tenant in the basement of the property... which is not recognized as a separate apartment unit, I will add. This has been a bit trickier to deal with as we only learned about this tenant on the day before closing during the walk through. They were not there during the initial showing, nor were they there during any subsequent inspections. In truth, their "lease" was signed the day before our first real closing date was to occur. The sellers also, according to the "lease", took a deposit, which they refused to admit to having at closing time. In essence, they stole the deposit as they had no intention on ever paying it back to anyone. That aside,

This first particular real closing date never occurred due to sellers telling us that they had a death in the family and they requested a religious mourning period of 100 days. In my mind, part truth, part evasion tactic. Seeing as how they blatantly disregarded the sale contract and signed a new ILLEGAL lease a day before we were to close, I find much of what they ever said suspect.

But the good news, the tenant has found a new place and put down their deposit. They will be moving out soon which takes away some of my late night worry and anxiety. Things are moving along.

And to top it all off, the construction crew, who I can't praise enough, is here hauling away all of the garbage left upstairs. Hoarders you know, they like to keep the strangest things. I spent a few hours yesterday deconstructing a man cave or sorts in one of the bedrooms. There was a lofted bed, a bar, tv mount, boxes of Spanish vhs pirated pornos. And to top it all off, everything was bedazzled with glass beads. It was a treat.

Welcome to the second floor unit, post clean up, pre clean out:

 Kitchen

Livingroom

 Bedroom #1

 Bedroom #2

Bedroom #3 (Man Cave)

Gussying up her Back Side

Plans have a tendency to change during the course of a renovation. Our first change occurred with a hefty price tag, but it was a necessity in order to preserve the structural integrity of our home.

We were planning on removing the old peeling latex paint from the back facade and then coating it with a breathable finish designed for brick.

However, it turns out that that ugly peeling paint was hiding TONS of ugly crumbling mortar. So much of it simply turned to dust and blew away that we had no other option but to repoint the whole back side of the building. It was even looking like we'd have to remove and replace several sections of brick.

Still, this change meant more money, and more time.

The two days that it took to remove the remaining crumbling mortar was some of the dirtiest home repair work I've been around. This of course doesn't top the time I helped vacuum 5 gallons of rat poo out of an attic. But I digress. Just a few days ago, the back of the house was completely covered in a blue tarp turning the inside of the house a hazy glowing blue that quickly filled with a swirling layer of dust. Unfortunately, our windows and back door are useless, and even after taping all the cracks, I was left with 3 hours of cleaning each night trying to get the back two rooms into livable shape again.

But the dust and the work was worth it. The mortar was cut down then replaced. Our wall looks nice and sturdy. Thankfully the contractor is fantastic, as well as our luck. I was just rewarded with news that they didn't need to replace any bricks, they were super sturdy and held tightly in place, all they needed was some serious repointing. Hooray for money saved!

So this is where we were when we moved in, and then here we are today. Cha-cha-cha-cha-changes.

I meet with the contractor on Saturday to measure and pick out the kitchen window, as the lintel needs to be replaced and they do have some rebricking to do around the current opening as it wasn't a great installation the first time around. The window itself is in better shape than the others in the building, but it leaks around the top, and the header was beginning to rot because the window was set out beyond the face of the wall. This did not make for good water shed. Originally the door to the outside was where the double wide window is. You can still see the outline of where there was a door on the second floor, as each unit originally had access to a porch. 

I asked that they take the awning over the basement door down. It was hanging on by a thread(ed screw). Yes. I did.  Removing it visually opens the small yard up. We may end up replacing it if we find that it was there for a reason, but for now, I like it gone.

There are still some small details to finish up on the back. Not least of all is updating the back steps to real steps. The workers have taken to using a ladder propped up where the steps used to be. I prefer to LEAP down. Sophie the Dog prefers the human elevator method. Like I said, we still have some details to take care of.

Roofing and Rear Facade

Today is my first real day off in over a month. The contractors are hard at work though as it is the first day of work on our house! I am overly excited about the prospect of a new roof. I knew we had a problem when during the last rain, pieces of the ceiling fell into the stairwell. After climbing onto the roof with the contractor, it was even more apparent, it all had to go. They're going to strip it down, remove all the old roofing, replace the hatch, skylight in the hall, put mushroom vents in the light well which is currently being utilized as a vent and plumbing run from the previous renovations done on the house. It's time to button up all the hatches and make this baby weather tight. Hopefully our new roof will be in place by middle of the week.

New windows are the next big to-do on the house but those will take a while to get ordered and installed as we are waiting for approval from the National Historic Tax Credit department. We live on a block designated a National Historic District which means that due to several other factors (personal income, neighborhood average income) we qualify for a tax credit on all approved work on the full building and on our individual owner occupied unit. This goes a long way in helping us pay for the basics that this Ol' Girl needs to get back into working order. 

I'll get more into specifics on windows once we get the go ahead. The amount of information out there on windows is both daunting and frustratingly sparse - depending on manufacturer. 

But back to work soon to be completed. The cornice on the front will be scraped down and get a new coat of paint in the next few days. I've got three green contenders. I did some historical research into the style of the building and I decided on dark green, which coincidentally seemed to be a very popular color around here. The gentlemen at the paint store are pretty familiar with all the "old" colors have serviced a great number of historically designated properties.  

I was able to paint up some sizable drywall squares (thanks to the random sheets of the stuff lying around the basement).

Unfortunately, I don't have that luxury to help me pick the color for the rear of the building. You see, the rear of our house is also brick, which I love, however some numb-nut decided that it was a good idea to paint the brick. This lead to another paint job that was done on only the bottom of the building, which is pealing horribly. Why they'd paint the brick in the first place is beyond me, why they'd go and paint it a second time but only the lower half, is an even bigger puzzle. That being said, we are now getting the rear washed clean of loose paint and coated with a breathable thorolastic finish meant for brick.









This product which great in application leaves something to be desired in the color selection process. There is a nice brochure of colors to choose from but the damned color samples are smaller than my thumb. I picked Tudor Beige and am hoping for the best!  The taupe color to the left is the color our windows will most likely be (again, pending approval) the color to the right was the color I had picked out for the trim around the windows, I may need to revisit that decision. For now, I'll content myself with watching them climb around on ladders as they prepare the building for it's new dress of color.

Snow Day

Cancelled! All of the appointments for the house I had set up for today got snowed out. So I moved onto a project I can do from inside, mostly.

Our house is part of a National Historic District. That qualifies us for a tax credit on all work done to the building itself and on our unit, as an owner occupied unit. It has been a lot of reading and paperwork to wade through but I completed Part 1 of 3 for the New York State Office of Parks Historic Homeownership Rehabilitation Tax Credit. It did necessitate trudging into the back yard to get a photo of the property from the rear. It isn't the prettiest of angles; most ladies don't particularly enjoy having a photo taken of their back side.

She's got a long way to go but with the help of the tax credit, we can hopefully get her looking like she did when she was a taut teenager. I'll be working on Part 2 this evening, along with a heavy dose of "Star Trek: Voyager". There may not be enough coffee ...