Teeny Tiny Tiles

The week and weekend has flown by and a lot has been accomplished. The bad news is that the bedroom didn't get painted as fast as I had hoped. There were a lot of areas to patch up and cracks along one of the upper corner seams. EZ Patch saved the day and it all look really good.

My gamble with the red accent wall was well worth it too...although it took a worrisome 4 coats and an additional trip to Sherwin Williams. So, everyone ended up crashing at Jens. Here's a few pics of the 'blood' being applied.



Teeny tiny tiles were the good news theme this weekend...and it's great they come on 1 ft x 2 ft sheets. Dad and I learned a few things about tiling from Uncle Steve and the bathroom made a lot of progress. It's exactly what I thought it would turn out to be...awesome! Here's a shot of Dad in action.


One of the humorous moments of the project this weekend was Dad hauling out a toilet for me from Michigan until I decide what I want to get. Just imagine the look on people walking by when we hauled a toilet out of the car and Uncle Steve was sitting on the throne, guarding all our stuff as the rest of us hauled it up to the apartment.

Humor aside, it was good that he brought it out as I found out it just fits with the tank touching the wall.

It's nice to have a toilet again though instead of running to the neighbors, down the street to Jen's or...well, you know...

Finished Floors - Finale

It's been a jet setting week and a bit going through London, Oslo and Copenhagen and the week before it all was a trip trip to Belize. Yeah....haven't done much with the apartment.

While I was gone though, I did have the rest of the floor refinished (bedroom, closets and foyer). Jen was able to take some pics during the sanding progress. It's crazy to see how much paint was on the wood floor in the closets.


The finished floor looks great! The only odd thing is that they didn't lighten up as much as the living room did, but they are still a lot lighter and in a far superior condition to what they were.


My Dad and Uncle Steve are coming out this weekend to help with tiling mainly and odds and ends. My goal is to get the bedroom painted this week so people can sleep here this coming weekend, assuming we get a toilet installed after tiling too. It's ambitious, but could happen.

Looking forward to this half of the apartment being painted too and using both areas of the apartment.

Pretty Paint

The finishing touches are happening, mainly in the form of paint in the kitchen and living room. It's all looking amazing!

Bryant's advice on color choices was wonderful and after slapping a few samples on the wall, we narrowed down the the colors for the whole apartment. I used my painting contractor connection again and bought paint at Sherwin Williams.

If you're curious, here are the colors for each room.


Jen helped me paint the living room and kitchen and we were able to get all of the walls and ceiling done in just one weekend which is pretty darn cool. Here's an interim progress pic.


Unfortunately, I've been lagging behind on the bathroom and I'm still without a toilet and shower. It's not too bad since I've been able to stay nearby and use my neighbor's facilities when they are around. I've got another few trips coming up so I'm eager to get the rest of the flooring repaired and refinished while I can't physically do anything.

I'll start shuffling stuff out from the bedroom to the living room again slowly.

Stitched Up

I called in sick yesterday to work on the bathroom drywall and tileboard to get this thing moving. It was all going great until I nearly cut my thumb off.

It was pure stupidity on my part. I didn't have a carbon blade to properly cut the tileboard so I was using a Stanley knife which did the trick, but required a lot of force. It was also just after 5 PM (yeah, I broke the construction hour rules again) and I was fairly tired and not wearing gloves.

Idiot!

With one strong stroke and a small slip the Stanley knife went right across the T-square and across my thumb on a diagonal. I immediately jumped up for t-shirt to compress it and ran it under water. I called my neighbor to help me bandage it up and after a bit of inspection figured it might be a good idea to head to the ER, which is luckily a 10 minute walk away. Sitting in a chair for nearly 4 hours in
ER is an experience I don't want to relive, especially since (a) I was in 'Fast Track' and (b) the mental patient ward was right next to my waiting area. So I saw enough weird stuff for one day.


The damage added up to 6 stitches in my thumb and a sliced finger nail. It hasn't been a good few months for my left hand after whamming my other finger with a hammer when installing the wood floor.


Yet, almost all the drywall and tileboard is up. Fair trade...???

Finished Floors

I arrived back home from Aspen late last night and didn't get a chance to go to the apartment and see the floors. I went straight away after work today and was so pretty stoked to see how it turned out.

The area around the radiator that needed to be repaired turned out great. I'm also really pleased how it all lightened up nicely too.



Now the floor is done, I'm going to get onto painting. I've scheduled some time with my interior designer friend, Bryant, to talk about paint colors for the whole apartment. I still don't like making these types of decisions so I think I'll leave them to Bryant.

Refinishing Progress

I just got a message from my neighbor who is overseeing the floor refinishing for me while I'm gone. He took a quick snap of the refinished floors in the living room and kitchen. Not going to post it here as I'm sure it's not representative of the real thing, but it looks awesome and I can't wait to see it in person!

Bathroom Progress....Finally

I've been able to get all the framing in the bathroom up this week and it's looking fairly plumb. Like the ceiling, the lathe has come in handy to level out the shower wall. I was concerned about being able to conceal the cold water plumbing. The main riser is by the toilet and runs all the way around the bathroom to the tub and sink, but I seem to have framed it all out just enough to hide all the copper.

The other small challenge was deciding what to do for a medicine cabinet. The surface mounted one looked hideous before and I didn't want to integrate it with a mirror. I've seen some neat ones online that are concealed by a picture frame, but they were too deep for my shallow NYC walls and far too expensive. For the moment I've framed out my an area beside the sink for a custom medicine cabinet when I get around too it. I just need to cut a bit of laminated wood to fit in there, so it should be fairly easy when the time is right.

So now it's time for drywall and tileboard. I'll tackle this over the next few weeks as I'm traveling quite a bit still and I want to use that time to get the floors refinished. Time to start stacking everything into the bedroom! Yikes!