Tiling Update

The tile guys have been busy this week installing the entryway tile, laundry cupboard floor tile and grouting the two upstairs bathrooms. It's not complete yet but here are some progress shots:

Black and white "circulos" cement tile going
down in the entryway

Boring but functional laundry floor

Pretty pennies, grouted but not yet cleaned up

Master Shower, floor tile not yet grouted
but subway is done and drying

Paint

Who knew that choosing paint was so very difficult?! I thought it would be challenging, I knew there were many many shades of seemingly very similar shades, but, I wasn't prepared for a) how expensive the samples are (Benjamin Moore have recently stopped doing their 2oz sample pots and instead you have to buy a quart for anywhere between $6.99 upwards depending where you buy it) and b) how different the samples look when you put them on the wall surrounded by very white primer and then again once the whole wall is painted. 

Long story short, after painting little squares all over various walls, we have decided to go very neutral pretty much throughout but especially with the living space downstairs to maintain the "modern Scandinavian" feel from the white tinted floor. Now you may look at the colours below and think they are all the same (my husband certainly did!) but I promise you, on the walls, they are very different! Not wanting to be called boring and go all white, we have chosen a very very pale grey for the walls and crown downstairs - BM Winter White, and a slightly darker light grey for the all the trim including windows, shutters, baseboards etc - BM Paper White (anything to avoid the dreaded beigy magnolia feel of the 90's!).

Paper White OC-55

Winter White OC-21

To add a little interest and to tie in the dark from the steel on the garden doors and the staircase we are painting the kitchen island in Ink Black, which is really more of a dark blue/charcoal. The perimeter cabinets will match the trim in Paper White. More of the kitchen inspiration here.

Ink Black

Upstairs will continue the neutral theme with the Paper White in the hallway and the nursery and a slightly warmer shade - Classic Gray OC-23 for the master bedroom. All the upstairs trim will be White Heron OC-57 (I found the go to White Dove far too yellow).

White Heron

Classic Gray

In the guest room I thought Cement Gray 2112-60 was going to be a winner until I painted it on the walls and it read as almost lavender. So just to be difficult, I decided to neutralise the purple with a 50/50 mix of Balboa Mist OC-27 which worked perfectly.

Balboa Mist

Cement Gray

I am still working on the entryway and powder room colours which is driving me a bit mad. Hopefully it will be sorted soon!

Kitchen Cabinet Colours and Hardware

As well as driving myself crazy with paint samples, picking out all the wall colours, I have been trying to select colours for the cabinets in the kitchen… a challenging task when there is nothing at all in the space to look at! 

I love the look of this kitchen with the dark cabinets and brass hardware so we have decided to paint the island dark and keep the perimeter cabinetry on the lighter shade so it's not too overpowering. I love the look of the brass on the dark and have fallen in love with these drawer pulls and knobs from School House Electric but they are so expensive so I'm on the hunt for something similar in a lower price bracket.

SHE "midcentury knob"

SHE "Edgecliff Pulls"

Wood Floor Stains

We have been selecting floor stains. Our inspiration was all based around the Scandinavian, very pale, mat finish, natural wood look. I did a lot of research as to how to achieve this look and came up with many different suggestions all with various reviews and positives and negatives. At the end of the day, we don't want to have to be redoing our floors ever few years and with a baby on the way we aren't kidding ourselves that we are going to be particularly careful with them either. So, an oil based polyurethane finish was suggested. However, I was wary of this as oil based finishes tend to yellow and also have more of a sheen to them, the exact things I was trying to avoid. So our contractor suggested an oil based stain followed by 2 coats of water based poly. This sounded like a better plan.

We chose DriFast's Stain in "white" as it appeared the most natural and didn't bring out the pinkish tones of the oak. Unfortunately we had to do 2 coats as the first didn't absorb evenly so it's a little whiter than planned but still looks great. This photo shows the 2 coasts of stain and first 2 coats of poly. It's now all been covered so the rest of the work can continue and at the very end they will do another 2 coats of poly for extra protection. You can also see the new stairs have been temporarily installed.

Master Bath Tiles cont….Herringbone Floor

We spent many hours this week gettin the tile layout for the master bathroom floor just right. It was very tricky to know exactly how it was going to fall at each corner of the room because of all the angles in the herringbone pattern and because this is not a standard rectangular space so there are a few dreaded "outside" corners to work around. The pattern layout affects the look considerably and after laying it in the way we had drawn on the plans everyone agreed it was actually better turned 90 degrees so the "arrows" of the herringbone ran east west rather than north south.

Here's how it was on the plan:

And here's what we ended up doing (LOVE!!):

Master Bath Tiles

Gregory the tiler has been hard at work this week installing the floor and wall tiles in both the upstairs bathrooms. Here is a first look at the carrara venato marble tiles we chose for the master floor. They were all ordered from www.thebuilderdepot.com where I got a good price and am really happy with the quality.

Shower floor 1x1"mosaic 

Underfloor heating for chilly winter mornings

Layout for the bathroom floor 4x12"tile

Progress

We've been away for a week which is always nerve wracking when you have a renovation going on back home. Being the control freak that I am, I don't like to leave the crew "unsupervised" for too long but this time I was astonished at the progress made whilst we were away. I had a real "WOW" moment when I walked in this morning. The downstairs has been transformed with 99% of the sheetrock installation complete and much of the upstairs is now primed ready for painting. The new wood flooring is also being laid upstairs and many of the ceiling light fixtures have bulbs attached giving a much better sense of the quality of light throughout. It is suddenly getting exciting again and I have a whole new long list of to do's including picking out paint colors.

Looking through to the dining room from the living room

Kitchen

Let There Be Light

The moment we've been waiting for for 18 months since we purchased the apartment finally happened this week - the knocking out of the back wall. I felt equally excited and nervous about it seeing as there are 5 stories of brick above it that needed supporting. Luckily however, our structural engineer did indeed seem to know what he was doing and it all went smoothly.  After all the meticulous planning and months of waiting, the actual method of bashing it down with a sledge hammer did seem rather rudimentary but who am I to judge! Here is the before and after...

Before: With the newly installed steel support beam.

After: Light glorious light!

Windows

We finally finally finally have windows we can actually see though....AND they open and close, imagine that! The builders have been busy installing the new windows on the front of the building as well as in the bathrooms. Due to landmarks restrictions they had to be custom made by the company Marvin at great expense.

Doesn't it look so pretty without the "jail bars" on the lower windows?!

Whilst the main windows are perfect, there has unfortunately been a bit of an issue with the bathroom windows. I had thought we were ordering clear glass for all the windows and would add the necessary "frosting" on site. I had actually decided only to do this on the guest bath window as its actually in the shower area. The master bathroom has a great view of the river and is a large window behind where the toilet will be so I'd planned to do some sort of blind, likewise in the powder room. I personally really despise frosted glass, and so was pretty disappointed when the bathroom windows showed up frosted.  The master bath window is especially awful as there seems to be graining/lines in the way the frosting is applied and the top pane of glass does not match the bottom one with the lines running perpendicularly.  You can sort of see what I mean here.... needless to say, it is going to be changed.

We Have Walls!

…Well kind of, and only upstairs. Still, it definitely feels like progress! The sheetrock has started going up in the bedrooms and the upstairs hallway. You can see here on the right the master bedroom has a new wall on the north side. It's so great to really get a sense of the room sizes and layout.  Unsurprisingly, the hallway upstairs feels much smaller, but the nursery and especially the spare bedroom with it's two windows feel lovely and light.

Also in the last week, I got some great deals with the memorial day sales to save on tile. I have now ordered all the subway tiles for the two upstairs bathrooms so as soon as they finish sheet rocking they can begin tiling the shower stalls and walls. Our brand spanking new windows have also finally arrived and are at the workshop being painted so they are also going to be installed over the next couple of weeks. 

The only thing holding up the finishing of the sheetrock is the HVAC installation that is currently ongoing. Finally, it feels like things are moving in the right direction!

Spare bedroom and closet

Nursery looking more like a room

Recessed Ceiling Lights

A quick follow up on my last lights post. Our contractor was suggesting using this type of 4" recessed ceiling light and we had planned to have 9 in the living room, 4 in the kitchen and 4 in the dining space. However, after seeing a sample of one of these this week I realised  that this wasn't at all what I had in mind.

The type that I'd been picturing are smaller - 3", and more streamline as they don't have a space between the bulb and the casing.  They can also be angled if you want to aim them at something specific like a painting:

However, what I have learnt is the this type does not give off as much light as the bulbs are much smaller and we will therefore need more. A a quick visit to some of the Chinatown lighting shops confirmed that we definitely prefer the smaller design so we have reconfigured our lighting plan to include 12 in the living room, 5 in the kitchen and 6 in the dining area. We have also had to educate ourselves on the pros and cons of LED vs halogen which I really knew nothing about.  Luckily, the lights we have managed to find  (thanks to our GC) are actually cheaper than the original ones spec'd out so it's not going to cost any more, phew!

And the Pot Gets Smaller

We had thought that all of the unknowns were uncovered with the completion of the demolition but unfortunately more rotten or should I say eaten floor joists have been uncovered under the last remaining bit of subfloor to be stripped. The joists have been pretty much decimated by termites at some time or other so the builders have been busy cutting out the damage and replacing them where necessary. Also, and much more concerning is an area of damp which we realised after recent heavy rain is much more extensive than first thought. In the past, the exterior of the buildings brickwork has been sealed and painted over like many other buildings in the area. Over the years with the extreme weather we experience in New York this has weakened in a few places and especially in one spot on our lower floor. You can see from the photos that the brick is crumbling in places and so we are awaiting yet another quote to have this fixed... and the money pot just gets smaller and smaller!

Lights

Temporary light switches

Our handy electrician

This week I have found myself walking through the space trying to imagine walking into a room and switching the lights on as we have been finalising the placement of all the switches. It's amazing how many we have moved or added by doing this compared with the original electrical plans. Lack of ceiling lights is one of my biggest gripes about living in New York. Rarely do you rent an apartment where there are any fixed lights other than in the bathroom and kitchen so I am very excited about the prospect of having good lighting throughout. I also need to get a move on with selecting lights as I had been thinking that this was more of a finishing item that wouldn't be required yet but the GC wants to know things like how heavy they are so he can ensure they will be supported correctly - better get myself to a lighting store! 

Rough Plumbing

Master shower

New tub in the upstairs bathroom

This week most of the rough plumbing has been completed throughout the upstairs. We have been finalising placement of electric sockets, switches, tv, phone and data outlets as well as revising some of the built in light fixtures. There's also been a lot of discussion over the HVAC system. We are installing a ductless mini-split system (hurrah, no more ugly window units) with a single concealed unit downstairs and another in the master bedroom and wall mounted units in each of the smaller bedrooms. I'm not thrilled about having a condenser in the garden but it's too long of a run to the roof and a small price to pay to have fully functioning windows again and a much more efficient AC system. However, working out the route for the small amount of duct work we do have, and locations for the vents on the lower level is proving tricky and is going to involve dropping the ceilings in the entryway and powder room which isn't ideal. This week I've also been thinking about how to outfit the closets in the bedrooms and I've been giving a little thought to the spaces either side of the fireplace in the living room. We originally thought we would wait and install book shelves at a later date but we have asked our contractor to price it up as it would be great to just have it done when we move in if we can find money in the budget. The cabinets below the shelves will contain storage space as well as housing a radiator on the right and I can't decide whether to have all the doors vented so they match or just those on the right where the radiator is. You can see my little sketch of what we are thinking below. Decisions decisions!

Living room cabinets and shelves

Floors Down, Framing Up

So, where are we? 

Well, we now plywood covering the floors pretty much throughout, the downstairs bathroom has finally been ripped out (good riddance!) the old brass pipes running from the cellar have been replaced with shiny new copper, the old cloth covered wiring has been cleared out and updated in the cellar, we have 2x4's studs up framing out the master bath and all the closets upstairs and the office and finally, we made the decision not to move the column of pipes at the bottom of stairs. 

Office

Master Bath

This last one had us "umming and arring" for many many days but ultimately we came to the conclusion that it was an awful lot of money and way too much risk of disruption for our upstairs neighbours = big headaches for us!

Shiny new copper pipes

To Move or Not to Move the Column of Pipes?

This decision has us in a real conundrum. When we opened up the walls we discovered a collection of pipes running through both our floors from the cellar to the apartment above. The pipes consist of a waste line, a steam pipe and several water risers. The problem is that they run through the middle of the downstairs space, like, right in the middle. (Sorry about the terrible quality photo).

They are located near what will be the bottom of the stairs between the living and dining space. We have had a quote from the plumber to relocate them but it is, unsurprisingly, very expensive. We are also very concerned about  the impact moving them will have on our neighbours who already have had their fair share of issues to deal with due to our construction. These pipes feed their space so it would involve shutting off their water again which caused several issues the first time we had to do this, and I have concerns that relocating the steam pipe may lead to the dreaded tick tick ticking (or worse, banging) of the steam heat which we don't currently get.

Whilst it would be lovely to be rid of these and completely open the space, there are also advantages to keeping them. Not just the saving in money but if we enclose them in a column and integrate this with the bottom of the stairs it acts as nice divide between the living and dining space whilst still keeping the area open plan. We have a lot of thinking to do!

What's Under Those Floor Boards?

A awful lot of dirt and dust and some very old crumbly cement type substance, all of which is happily now far far away. Today, it was pretty challenging walking around due to there being nothing but joists separating our top and bottom floor and the cellar below. Next job is laying down temporary plywood floors. Unfortunately, we also found about 4 rotten beams that will need replacing and a few scary places where there just aren't any support beams and so will need filling in.

Parlour level floor

Looking through the floors

Master Bathroom Inspiration

Today we had another site meeting. They have almost finished laying the plywood floors on the upper level and are working on doing the same on the lower level. The brick wall has also been removed downstairs so that it is now fully opened up. We are still waiting on numerous quotes which is somewhat frustrating as we want to get on with decision making. Some of the big questions remain, like are we going to be able to find money in the budget to relocate the pipes that run floor to ceiling in the middle of newly opened up lower level. We had planned to leave them as it will meet the bottom of the stairs and act as a divide between the living and dining space but it would be great to be able to eliminate the column completely and enhance the open feel.

I have spent every spare minute of the last week pouring over plumbing websites finalising which fixtures we are having in the two upstairs bathrooms and I am now waiting for confirmation from the plumber that all the fixtures and parts that I am ordering are correct. To a novice like me, it is so confusing making sure you have all the correct components for each fixture including valves, washers etc it's like learning a new language, much of it self-taught via good old google. We need to get the roughs ordered ASAP so it doesn't start to hold things up but I don't want to order until I'm 100% sure I've got the right things!

There weren't really many interesting shots of the work to be taken today so I thought I'd share some of my inspiration pictures for the master bathroom:

We had originally planned to buy a pre-built self standing vanity (similar but not as nice as the one on the left) online that would stand in the niche between the exterior wall and the wall that makes the side of the shower. However, after they demoed the space we discovered we were short about 3" and so the vanity I had chosen won't fit. As it turns out, I much prefer a floating one anyway but thought we couldn't afford a custom built unit but our wonderful contractor gave us an estimate today and it turned out cheaper than what I had been planning to buy, hurray! We are going to have a cupboard under each sink and a couple of drawers between them but it will still sit a good 8-10" off the floor allowing us to see the floor tiles all the way to the wall.


I love the bathroom on the right with a really bright, airy feel, floating vanity, wall mounted taps and a large mirror. During demolition, we have discovered an alcove inside the brick wall which will be perfect for a couple of recessed shelves on one side of the sinks.  

These floor tiles from Made a Mano were my obsession early on in the research phase. However, after discovering they were made in Italy from a special material called lavastone.... well needless to say they were well out of our budget, but aren't they beautiful?!

After trying and failing for a long time to find a suitable substitute for the above expensive tile I changed tact and came across this bathroom (below) featured here on Remodelista. It inspired my choice of carrara marble for the floor and I also love the large mirror with shelf below and the simplicity of the lights (which after a lot of digging I found can be purchased here). We have decided to go with slightly larger floor tiles - 4x12" and lay them in a herringbone pattern with a grey grout which will hopefully be easier to keep clean than white. I'm still deciding whether to take them all the way to the wall or to have a border and what to do about the baseboards... more decisions to come.