T minus 2 days

Except for installation of toilet & doors, Alberth just told us that the renovation will be complete on Thursday.

Yipee!!!! This coincides nicely with Lily having Friday off and can spend the long weekend cleaning up and trying to shape some normally back into our lives.

Lounging on a couch - here we come!

Coast to coast renovations

Hi, everyone. This little photo update serves two purposes: 1) to fill you all in on the ongoing mundane saga of our plaster, pipes, and progress pics... and 2) to show Lily, who is on "girly-vacation" in San Diego this weekend, the progress that was made to our apartment after she left.

Countertops

Our countertops arrived yesterday! I was very excited about this, but I forgot that it meant we would also have our sink and faucet installed! It's actually starting to look like a real kitchen again. :) The countertop is a quartz stone, and has some light-gray flecks throughout. (Might be hard to see in this picture.) It has a nice sheen and is really elegant looking. Lily was 100% spot on with getting a stainless steel faucet. I was like "shouldn't it be chrome??" and we debated it for eons. of days. But she was right, the stainless matches everything else and it looks great against the countertop.



Cabinets

We wanted to re-use our old built-in cabinets, but one of them was too small for the new wall space. So our contractor is building a new cabinet to match. We also designed ourselves an awkward L-shaped little linen closet, and he came up with a smart idea for how to arrange the shelving, and began putting that together yesterday also.



Floors

Do you know how hard it is to find parquet wood floors? No one makes them anymore. Most of my online research lead me to believe we would have to get all the little wood pieces cut by hand and inlaid by hand. Back when this type of floor was all the rage, they had premade interlocking chunks that you could just lay in place, like tiles, but no one makes them anymore. I searched everywhere online and our contractor searched all over the city... he finally found the exact same kind that we have, at a lumber yard in East Harlem. Whew!



Yes...

And yes, the apartment still looks like this. Tomorrow will be the end of week 4. Our contractor expects to have a few more days of work next week, but believe it or not it's all coming together!

Valve emergency!

Our emergency this week was a plumbing miscommunication from week 1. It turns out that our contractor installed a shower valve that doesn't fit our shower handle, so we had to rush-order a new valve yesterday.

Our poor contractor had to tear the wall back open to take out the wrong valve, so we don't have ANY running water in the WHOLE apartment until the new one is installed.

The new one should be coming via Overnight UPS today... so here's hoping UPS shows up before our contractor has to leave for the night! (I survived last night without a toilet, but I don't think I can do a plumbing-free weekend!!)

Back in the first world

I came home tonight and do my usual tour. I walk into the bathroom and see:



Yes! Not only do we have electricity - we have a mirror and a sink and faucets! We're back to the first world.

*sigh* Now I really don't have an excuse on why I leave the house with Einstein hair or eye boogers... now I have to go back to just admitting that it's really just my inability to leave the house in a presentable state in the mornings.

BTW - the photo above is a re-enactment. We had to capture the moment somehow!

Now, we can finally take a bath! Sean and I decide to try it out. He declared that this is now the 2nd most comfortable seat in the house. (The first is the club chair, which is usually buried under our blue tarp and takes loads of effort to dig out each night)





Our kitchen appliances are plugged in. We have a working fridge and a working microwave. Tonight, Sean figured out how to use the timer on the microwave... and as I'm writing this post, he just exclaimed "We have an oven light! And a surface light! And a night light mode!"

I'm never leaving this room

Oh my, we're going into our fourth week of renovations and it's all coming together. Today, I came home and we have ELECTRICITY!!! We can turn on lights in the bathroom and bedroom. Oh my gosh, too exciting.

I walk through the door and do my normal tip-toeing through the house (kind of like a kid on an Easter egg hunt who can't wait to turn the corner and see what she'll find)... the kitchen looked the same... I walked into the bathroom and the sconces are hung! On a whim, I flip the light switch and ELECTRICITY!!! I blink and then I realize that the walls and ceiling have been painted. It's beautiful. It's gorgeous. It's fabulous. It's the most perfect room and I never want to leave it. I told Sean that if we ever move, I'm going to cry because I wouldn't want to leave the bathroom.



Bear in mind, we still have a huge gaping hole where the medicine cabinet is suppose to go, a bucket for a sink, and our old never-quite-flush right ugly toilet. I can't imagine when it's finished... everyone - you've been warned - if you never see me again for the next 5 years, it's because I'm in the bathroom.

BTW - do you know that I spent 2 hours this morning at work before I realized that I still had eye boogers!?!? *sigh* things that happen when there's no light and no mirror. Well, at least that problem is 1/2 solved, now I just need the mirror.

Oh, second btw - we also have a running refrigerator. Now we can take leftovers home... hmmm... we just don't have any way of re-heating them. Oh well, now we can have all the ice cream we want and it'll stay cold! So nice to have a working frost-free (and very pretty!) refrigerator!



Oh, did I mention that our bedroom was painted on Friday!?! When we moved in, we wanted a zen bedroom with tranquil springy green walls. What we got was hospital green walls - the total opposite of tranquil - instead you think IVs and needles and all the ickyness. Now, now we have tranquil.

Grout - it really makes a difference

We've been slowly seeing our vision for our home coming true. It's quite exciting to realize that our random choices weren't too shabby!

We're especially pleased with our bathroom - our random tile selection and the last minute change to do a half-tile instead of a full tile all worked out brilliantly. Today, we came home and our bathroom has been grouted. *whazam* amazing what a difference grout can make. It's gone from looking good to looking absolutely spectacular!

BTW - do you know how many shades of grout there is - unbelievable! We ended up buying our grout when we got our tiles with the assistance of one of the store owners. She'll say "I recommend A or B" and I would say "A!" and she would say "Good choice!"... I can't imagine not having her assistance and staring at the 10 shades of beige and trying to make a decision.... hmmm... it'll probably be like when we had to pick out our bathroom wall colors. :) Lots of staring.

Speaking of bathrooms... we came home last night from dinner and Gaspar stops us in the lobby and said that Joe, the super, needed to speak to us. Sean and I looked at each other and thought "Uh oh, what happened?!?!"

It turns out that our temporary toilet that was held in place by painter's tape was leaking to our downstairs neighbor's ceiling. Ooops. Joe said that it was a minor problem and we should continue to use the toilet until this morning. You know, I realized that you can really hold a pee for a loooong period of time when you're afraid of what will happen if you flush. Just now, we justed called our contractor - apparently, all's well and we can continue to use our toilet for as long as we need it. Whew...

I think our home is hungry... or needs fiber

This is the THIRD time in 2 weeks where a roll of toilet paper has vanished!

*poof* gone!

Is this our home's way of telling us that it's hungry?!?! Doesn't paper have a lot of fiber? Maybe our home is low on fiber.

Photo update

Paint! Floor! Pretty cabinets!
Goodbye granny wallpaper!
Goodbye glossy ceiling!
Goodbye linoleum!


New, bigger bedroom ready for paint.


Bathroom tiles lookin' nice :)


New A/C unit. Installed during our renovations by sheer coincidence. :)


Lily pulled the desk chair in and debated the bathroom wall color.


Sean says: I am too young to be having the "which shade of beige" conversation.

Tile emergency!

Monday night... we found out that we're 2 tiles short in the bathroom. How can that be?!?! We purposely over-purchased the amount of tiles we need because you always hear horror stories about bad cuts, tiles breaking, etc. Man, this means we must be really bad at math.

Hmmmm... thinking about it... we thought we over purchased the amount of kitchen floor tiles we needed and it turned out to be just enough.

Yep - we suck at math.

Alberth told us that it's best if he can get the tiles by Tuesday... what to do!? what to do!!?

Luckily, my Tuesday morning was very light in terms of meetings... I trekked out to Brooklyn and trekked back with 3 (one for just in case) tiles. The round-trip journey took about 2.5 hours. Purchasing the tiles at the store took about 5 minutes (this includes a bathroom break).

The store is waaaayyyy out there. But I love the store - it's a family-run business where mothers and daughters and sons all work there - the people are just the nicest! And, they have lovely tiles - extra perk!

In fact, when I walked in, they remembered me and automatically gave me a discount. We're kind of going over on the budget, so I'll take any discount I can get!

I miss the pool float

Our toilet's back, so we can sleep back at our apartment. It's sad leaving Sean's studio. I've gotten used to sleeping there and living out my "loft" dream. We packed up our bags, sheets, and inflatable couchbed and headed back to Manhattan.

Night time comes, we get ready for bed and realize that we left the pump at Sean's studio... in Queens.

*sigh* what to do, what to do? Do we
1. Go to Sean's studio to pick up the pump?
2. Blow up the inflatable couchbed manually?
3. Find some other option

It was close to midnight, so option 1 automatically got discarded. Sean decided to give option 2 a try.


I think he went at it for about 10 minutes and the inflatable couchbed remained, well, it pretty much remained deflated.

That left option 3. What to do? What to do? We have taken many a naps on the couch and it's way comfortable! Unfortunately, the couch is in a vertical position, so sleeping on it was a no-no.

We decided to pull out the cushions and make a little bed. We've spent many a nights when we first moved in on an inflatable single person pool float, so this should be a 5 star hotel compared to the float.


Well, it wasn't a 5 star hotel. We spent the night precariously balanced on the cushions. For some reason, it was harder to balance on the cushions than the pool float. I never thought I would say this, but I miss the pool float!

Here's a picture of the pool float from when we first moved into the apartment and didn't have furniture yet.

Starting to look less messy

I realized we hadn't taken many photos of our place last week! Each day we come home and there's something new to look at... a few new tiles, a new kitchen cabinet, etc... And for the last 5 nights we've been sleeping at my studio, so we haven't even been home other than to drop off some paint cans or pick up clean clothes.

But here's a few quick (and not so great) photos that I snapped with my cell phone to give you guys a little progress update.


Tiles in the bathroom
We were going to full-tile the bathroom, but we have too many weird soffits. Our contractor recommended stopping at the border, 4 feet up. That meant we had to scramble and choose a paint color. After staring at 37 shades of white, "Edgecomb Gray" it is. Paint should go on in a few days.





New bedroom wall
The old bedroom "wall" (I use the term loosely) was 2 feet closer to you in this photo. Basically, the stepladder would have been in the next room. So we've made the living room a little smaller, and now our bedroom will be 10x10 feet.




Kitchen cabinets
They're purdy. :) We now have all the cabinets in place and level, and some custom "mini-bits" built into the weird little nooks that our kitchen loves to have. The walls have since been cleaned up and are ready for paint.




Sleeping at work
When we got home Friday to find our toilet in the living room, we turned around and carted the air mattress to my studio.

Today's word.... "saddle"

Our day:

blurry-eyed, waking up

"what time is it"
"noon"

yikes!
scramble out of bed
go down the hall to the studio bathroom
realize no toothpaste *shrug*
put in contacts
splash some water on face

meander a few blocks to Cafe Henri
stop by a tile store
look for threshold, no luck
wonder why the streets are so empty
eat yummy ratatouille crepe
drink yummy cafe au lait

subway ride to manhattan

"bye honey"
"bye sweetie pie"
"meet at the fountain"

sean goes to shower at lily's office
lily goes to library to pick up train books for next week
meet at the fountain

"guess what time it is"
"2:00?"
"11:30"

*mental note: husband can't tell time*
explains why streets so empty at 9 in the morning

subway ride to brooklyn

buy asparagus paint (because guacamole is too gray)
*mental note: look into job as a paint namer*
look for threshold, no luck
look for door lock, cut finger on lock

subway ride back to manhattan

go to apartment
stare at many shades of white to decide on bathroom paint
look for the one paint chip that has disappeared
must have the missing paint chip before making decision

walk down to paint store #1, no missing paint chip
find many other potential substitutes
walk down to paint store #2, pick up missing paint chip
walk back to apartment
rain, rain, rain
walk into drug store to pick up an umbrella
rain, rain, rain
back at apartment
add sail cloth, china white, and edgecomb gray paint chips to collection
*mental note: really must look into job as a paint namer*

decide on edgecomb gray
call mom on appropriate finish for bathroom
walk down to paint store #1
buy paint

walk to home depot
look for threshold
employee #1 directed to aisle 16, no luck
look for threshold
directed to paint section, no luck
employee #2 said "saddle" and directed to tile section
wait for employee #3 to finish servicing another customer
look through many piles of carpet
ask employee #3 for "saddle"
must custom order
all colors ugly, no luck

*shoulders hung in shame, must tell contractor that failed homework*

walk walk walk
feet tired
rest at borders
drink coffee
flip through beach vacation magazines

walk back to apartment
rain, rain, rain

walk to restaurant
eat yummy food

walk to duane reade
look for dessert, no luck

subway to long island

walk to small convenience store
buy brownie & sneakers bar
walk to studio

blog about day

Ummm, the toilet is in the living room

Yesterday was a good day... We went to Home Depot after work and ordered our doors. We had a yummy meal at L'annan and Crumbs cupcakes for dessert. And then we had a leisurely stroll back to our apartment.

We've always looked forward to going home at the end of the day; it meant the work day is over - yea! Ever since this renovation started, now we are like giddy little kids on Christmas day whenever we open the door to the apartment - what changes will greet us today!?!

Last night, Sean opens the door and says "Ummmm... the toilet is in the living room." It was! And our sink bucket was removed. We had no plumbing, but our bathroom floor tiles looked quite lovely. (The toilet and sink had to be removed to let the tiles sit overnight)

We turned around, packed up our inflatable couchbed, sheets, toiletries, and a change of outfit and headed to Sean's studio for the night. It was really nice. I've always wanted to live in a loft - the studio is huge with high, high ceilings. Waking up this morn, I thought "So, this is what it'll be like if we lived in a loft" :)

Today's random thoughts... could IKEA not be my knight in shining armor?

Last October, IKEA was having a Kitchen sale - 10% off all kitchen items. Since we knew that eventually we'll actually get the go-ahead for our renovation, we decided to just go ahead and buy everything. Since October, we've had a pile of cardboard boxes sitting in the middle of our living room.

Our thought was always - well, we'll just return anything we don't open and use. So now that we're at the point where we know what we want to return, I'm finding out that IKEA has the worst return policy and customer service. The stories are just scary. It's making me think twice before buying anything from them in the future.

Kitchen tiles are in!

Straight? Diamond? Straight? Diamond? Straight? Diamond? Straight?

Sean and I spent about an hour one night laying out the kitchen tiles and trying to figure out if we wanted a straight or diamond pattern. First we just laid out the tiles... and couldn't decide. Then we laid out more tiles and put up boxes on the side to simulate what it'll look like with cabinets... and still couldn't decide. Then we stood in the middle and pretended to be cooking and seeing what the tiles look like when we're using the kitchen... and still couldn't decide.

We kept on flipping back and forth, back and forth. We like the clean lines of straight, but hated the red carpet look. We liked how diamond made the room seem larger and broke up the straight lines of the room, but hated how your eyes just bounce around and can't figure out where to land.




After sleeping on it, we decided to go with straight. It looks fab!! I'm really happy with our decision :)

By noon I was done.

A story of Sean carrying a sink 30 miles then recieving kitchen appliances, all by noon.

buzz buzz 6am.

slurp, coffee, sink in the minivan.
sit sit sit, thanks for the ride dad.

train station, sink up the elevator
train's already here!
credit card swipe!
bee boo doors closing!
flying leap!
whew.

stand stand stand. bee boo.
stand stand stand. bee boo.
stand stand stand. bee boo. welcome to new york city.

elevator sink
escalator sink
street sink honk.
curb curb curb.
sink is home.

delivery call appliances coming!
Stand around stand around stand around phone.
hi here's your stuff, urgh lift shove.

upstairs downstairs
super doorman porter
walk lift wait
tip $20, tip $20, bye.

bike bike bike.

office now snooze.

We have appliances! (just need a kitchen to put them in)

Part number guy's crew delivered the kitchen appliances this morning.

So first they carried the new oven down into the basement. They were all sweaty already.

So I said: "Hey, guys, I know you just carried this big thing down the stairs... but .... it's the wrong oven." (It was the same model but the freestanding range, not the slide-in.) We feared the worst, but the paperwork was in order, so they must have just pulled the wrong one out of the truck.

Wrong oven - oops

After some truck searching and paper flipping, they determined that they'd just delivered our stove to someone 3 blocks away. They had ours and we had theirs. So one delivery guy just started walking down the street with the unpacked oven on a hand truck, and a half hour later emerged around the corner with ours. Amazing. :)

Our appliances! They looks so small next to the truck

Guys moving our appliances across the street

Lugging away our old appliances
"bye bye stove that took 30 minutes to boil water"

Bye bye fridge that needed defrosting and didn't really keep food cold

Feeling rested

We're getting old. After spending two weeks on our inflatable couchbed ™, we had to escape to Sean's parent's place for two nights in a real bed. After two nights of real sleep and waking up to birds chirping, we're physically (and mentally) ready for another week of waking up on the floor because the air in the mattress escaped during the night.

Productive weekend! On Friday, we stopped by IKEA after work and picked up a larger kitchen cabinet. I'm amazed at the number of people going to IKEA on a rainy, cold Friday night.

Sunday was running around trying to find a one hole sink since the counter-top people are coming on Tuesday and we need to have a sink ready. Do you know how hard it is to find a one-hole sink?!? Apparently, stores only carry 4 hole sinks in stock and you have to special order the one-hole sinks. We manage to find a reasonably-priced sink that has 4 holes, but it's one of the prettier 4-hole version sinks. The sink can also be under mounted, so we're going to ask the counter-top people how much extra it cost to do an under mount, if it's not too much, then we'll go with an under mount installation.

We also made a decision on the doors. We had to make some compromises, but the compromises meant that we save $1K - it was worth it :) And maybe we can use the money saved towards the sink installation.

We have a medicine cabinet!

For the longest time, we wanted to go for a simple look in our bathroom - this meant a frameless mirror medicine cabinet. We picked out 3 options that looked nice and are reasonably priced and just needed the final word from our contractor on what size we can fit in the room.

About 2 weeks ago, I had an "d'oh!" moment. A frameless medicine cabinet will make our room really cold and go totally against the spa / zen look I was going for. I realized I needed a warm wood-framed medicine cabinet that's not ugly.

I went searching for this warm, not ugly medicine cabinet. You know, it's really really hard. There are oh, so many ugly medicine cabinets out there. The ones that seem not so bad - they're like $800. There's no reason some pieces of wood, glass, and metal should ever cost that much.

I finally found one that's perfect enough at Restoration Hardware. Even better - it was on sale! We bought it, but then it just never showed up. I finally called them this week and they said that it's been discontinued and they're out of stock and maybe when I purchased it, the web site inventory hasn't been updated yet. They tell me that they'll investigate and call me in 24-48 hours.

I eagerly anticipate this phone call, with the dreaded feeling that they're going to tell me it's out of stock and I'm out of luck.

Today! Oh, so glorious today, I got an shipping confirmation email from Restoration Hardware - my cabinet has not only been shipped, it's due to arrive today! Yea!!! I've been happy all day.


Here's Sean unwrapping the cabinet. The thing was in a huge box and very heavy! It was expertly wrapped, so we didn't completely unwrap it. From the back, it looks beautiful :)

I *heart* Part Number Guy

So there's this part number guy - apparently, he gives amazing mind-blowing discounts on electronics & appliances. Typical conversations go like this:

*ring* *ring*
part number guy: part number?
you: hello? Hi, my name is...
part number guy: [interrupts] part number?
you: [flustered] hmmm...
part number guy: [getting impatient] part number?
...

Today, I called part number guy. There are two phone numbers - apparently, one is the nice guy, one is the mean guy. Which one do I call?!?!

I randomly pick a number and my conversation was surprisingly pleasant. Though when I tried to say things like "It's a GE refrigerator", he would interrupt me with "part number?" But not all together too unpleasant - in fact, he finished the stove part number for me.

He called me back in 30 minutes with prices. OMG - they're fantastic! Duder, for those prices, I'll put up with the lack of conversation.

Day 3

Today is Day 3 of renovation.

Demolition is... well, it's done! This is a task that some of the contractors estimated 6 weeks worth of work. Alberth got it done in 2.5 - days, not even weeks! We love our contractor :)

We discovered that there are tiles underneath our kitchen and bathroom tiles. I mean, are people really that lazy?!? They can't even rip out old tiles before laying new ones!?!? Here's Sean standing on a corner of the old-old kitchen tiles.



We also discovered the old wall paper in our kitchen. Looks like the previous owner decided to stick with the blue theme. I'm so ready to NOT have a blue/white kitchen.



A few things I've learned:
1. Set aside a mirror. For a house that was full of mirrors, now we have none. This makes daily tasks like making sure I don't leave the house looking like Einstein a little bit more difficult.

2. Set aside a hand towel. Now I wash my hands and just wipe it on my shirt - classy!

3. Make sure flip flops are easily accessible! Even though Alberth is super clean, the floors are still covered with a layer of dust and slipping in/out of actual shoes is a pain!

4. Flashlight! With lights shut off, sometimes, it's the only way to see.