649 6th

bamBOOM

3rd floor is well on its way to habitability. Sheetrock was finished, taped and primed just before Christmas, and the very day we got back from Florida (more on that trip soon) we set an aggressive three-day plan for installing the bamboo floor.

First step: clean up the huge mess! Spare cuts of sheetrock and spackle dust everywhere. Once we could get at the floors we prepped the surface with a double thickness of 15 pound asphalt felt. Even tracked down a couple squeeks and screwed them down to silence.

Next step: install bamboo. We rented a pneumatic floor nailer from Home Depot (the first time they've actually had the item we wanted in stock AND working); an intimidating machine, but surprisingly easy to get the hang of after a couple of test wacks. Left the pre-finished bamboo boards virtually unmarred.

You can't tell in this shot, but we're actually not quite done (with the floor at least). We did get the main field installed so we could return the rental without racking up tons of extra hours. Now we need to install the pieces that the nailer couldn't reach.

Gotta say: looks damn good. Better than I thought it would given the maiden installation. Engineered boards made it a dream. Only needed to use a couple of the flooring installation tricks I read about. Plus a couple monster cups of tea. And two yoga classes. I'll take the motivation wherever I can get it.

on holiday

we've been on holiday for a couple of days. just gearing up for another year of reno as we ring in 2006.

more to come soon. for now the only work you get is from this busy bee doing his thing in florida.

re: re: re:

for a while now we have been working on the house. like any other house reno all the work must come in stages. you can't paint before there are walls so to speak.

from the time the plans were complete to this point in the construction process everything was about doing it right. now, as we begin to round the corner toward finishing the choices and decisions become limitless.

so to address that issue I think we've informally begun refining the materials design manifesto. from the start we've thought about design principles and guidelines from every angle. materials use was a big part of that thinkng. the eco friendly hardie plank that we installed on the exterior and the the bamboo flooring we are about to install on the third floor were not impulse aesthetic purchases that we rationalized in some other way after the fact. as we begin to make visible interior choices the adage of reduce, reuse, recycle combined with reinvent and recontextualize I think may begin to help narrow more material choices.

striping back materials to replace them with more eco friendly materials is really only half the battle. in fact, as you will note from the previous post, the amount of debris we generate is somewhat alarming. there are a couple of things we've decided to do with some left over "old house" that decidedly point to the materials reasoning. we are planning to reuse the old tin ceilings that had been hidden for years as a wall covering. we are refinishing the original pine floors. we are planning to recontextualize certain building materials (in more than likely an excessively time consuming manner) to do some detail finish work.

needless to say the white board has been diagrammed to death over the last few days, we've been working on a design for a sliding door that will go between the second and third floors. hopefully we will get a few of the shcematic drawings up on the blog soon. I guess what I am trying to say here is a lot of new stuff jelled over the weekend making for some slightly heady (if not pointed headed) times.

finally, a question to you all, in keeping with the desire to reuse: to expose the old pine floor on the first floor means ripping up the cheap, short oak plank, home depot floor that is already there. that's a lot of crappy oak, but still, throwing it out seems wasteful too. anybody got any ideas on what we might do with it once we rip it up? come on give it your best shot!

busted

apparently brooklyn has a some issues with construction debris. don't get me wrong I like to see a tidy place as much as the next guy. but, laziness or something had gotten the better of us in front of the house over the past few weeks. it could have had something to do with the snow, it definitely had something to do with the sloppy siding guy.

it had gone from garbage staging area to garbage storage area to an out and out dump. we're always playing an interesting game of chicken with the garbage men. we put out as much as we feel we can "get away" with. they pick it up or leave it behind depending on whether or not the collector feels like it is acceptable. we have about an oh....60% success rate?

so you can never put out too much or you will be slapped down. hence the staging area. tuesday in an attempt to begin digging out I bagged up and swept everything left of the basement steps (didn't want to bite off to big a portion <cough>).  I put out one can of debris and one lightish contractor's bag-- they took it. friday rolled around I put out practically an identical amount and not only did they not take it we got a ticket! basically we put to tall of debris in a recycling can without a lid. wrong for all sorts of reasons. to tell you the truth I had kinda stopped paying attention to the color of the can at all and was more concerned with making sure what went in them was separated. I know if I picked up hundreds of cans a day it would annoy me so it's not unwarranted.

our neighbor a couple of doors down got one too. his was for having debris in his front area not improper use of can-- and in his typical neighborhood-know-it-all way informed me I would get one for that TOO if I didn't clean up the other side of the stairs by tomorrow (makes you wonder if he would call 311 to insure everyone on the block was punished as he was.)

beyond the digging out of garbage the guy we hired to do the mud work on the third floor drywall should be done priming on tuesday. the new bamboo floors came thursday! hopefully we will install them before the new year and subsequently will have a dust free zone!

boxed up

On Sunday we finished the drywall on the 3rd floor. In the end I'd say we did ok. Of all of the odd angles and seams up in the "attic" we only once put a machine tapered edge against a cut edge (a definite no no), luckily it was a small seam of about 8 inches. The excuse: given the large triangle we needed it was the only way it could be cut from a single sheet.

Something I've been meaning to mention, throughout this entire sheet hanging phase we have been using the laser level to mark studs and joist to screw down the drywall. One of us would man the screw gun and the other would hand hold the level and mark the stud line from a mark made previously on the floor or ceiling or adjacent perpendicular face what ever it was. Quick and easily lets you know exactly where to set the screw.

Speaking of the laser level, we got it last year at Christmas in the first wave of family tool giving that followed the purchase of the house last fall. Well, as some have been asking that inevitable December question(and to hopefully avoid having to retell to each of you when you ask), we have temporarily added a feature to the blog. In the left nav you will note there is a link to our amazon house wish list AND links to a couple of supply places where one can purchase gift cards to go toward some yet to be determined material. ...feel Free to spread the word.

zendoze

Red Room!
Red room!!

if weeks were months

Contractor estimated 3 1/2 weeks to complete the job.  Well, they started demo on August 10, and they finished (that's right -- FINISHED!) yesterday, December 7. You do the math.

Hell, it took 3 1/2 weeks just to get the siding guy to come back for one final day of work. And I think we only got that by using the "A" word (that's right -- ATTORNEY!)

We still need to get the new Certificate of Occupancy for the 3rd floor living space, make final payment and whatever else it is needed to close out the contract, but at least the physical work is finally over. And you know what? It looks pretty darn good.

sparks flew

The time had come, the unabomber siding on the back of the second floor rear had to go. The corrogated metal siding that had been lying in the front room for over a week had to be installed. The forecoast is for our first snow of the season. They're saying a couple of inches (I'll believe it when it see it). Regardless the season was closing in, and this was technically our last chance.

Galvanized metal siding seems to be the meme dour jour. I keep seeing it everywhere-- or perhaps I started noticing it more  once we decided to go that direction. There's a place up on 7th avenue accros from Greenwood Cemetary that we bid on about a year before we bought this place. Whomever bought it did quite the architecture number on it. It is covered in corrogated brushed metal installed horizonally. The borders around the windows and edges are all mitered aluminum. Quite the piece of craftsmanship I have to say. But, it does have a bit of "architects students first real project" about it-- down to painstakingly paintng the original dental work on the cornice a San Francisco muliplicity of colors.

Before cutting and putting up the actual siding we had to prep the back of the house. Clearing back some of the numerous coats of roofing product where our house joins our neighbors (row house remember). Then we cut and bent flashing for one side (the other side just got roofing goop out of a tube) and the bottom where the exterior wall joins the kitchen roof. Next we cut, squared and screwed in 1 5/8" galvanized channel to frame the edges and around the windows.

Then it was time for some metal cutting. We used a metal cutting blade on the circular saw, with a bit of shaping coming from a pair of tin snips. We laid the metal over a piece of plywood, snapped a chalk line on it and started cutting. It was loud (we wore earplugs of course), it sparked, and it smelled like hell. Since the front of the first floor is still a construction zone and it was cold outside, we did it inside. It was nice to come in and warm up, a stinky metal dust mess, but still nice to be warm. All of the sparks made it kinda hard to see the chalk line and the chalk line did'nt really stick to the the sheet metal. Other than that it was easy to cut a straight line where you wanted it. We prefabricated all of the necessary pieces to their specifed lengths and headed back out into the cold.

We wanted to avoid cutting out notches for the windows so our arrangement of whole sheets to fill vertical spaces between windows had a lot of overlap. Additionally there were these tiny 4" pieces that had to be installed under each window with a lap in the middle. Running a bead of silicon sealant on the edges of each lap was recommended by the internet so we did that too.

It was not fun work. The pieces needed a lot of adjusting, bending, snipping, and filing. We were using self-piercing tapping screws that are essetially a screw with a drill bit head. Getting them to set, cut and drive pushed both of us to our limits a couple of times. That combined with the cold (vanity note: I have a down vest on under that sweatshirt, I haven't been packing on the pounds) made for quite the frustrating day where nerves wore a bit thin.

I finished (read: I was the last man standing and it still needs more) screwing it up around 8:00pm. Granted we didn't start until 10:00am, but it's still a long day. Under the bright work lights it looked pretty damn fine (if I have to say so myself). I hope I have the same feeling when I see it in daylight.