2 Milestones in 2 Days

With such a big project on my hands, it's hard to see the little changes and bits of work completed as progress. There have been many of those throughout the project thus far, but as of today there are two big milestones that are complete.

1) The bedroom and closet ceilings are drywalled!
2) I've taken all the plaster out to the curb! Complete in just over 2 months! Remember?

Can you believe it? I barely can! We worked hard this weekend to get it done though. I was up til 2:30 AM on Friday night getting things ready to go and ensuring that the AC units were in the windows since the weather report called for a hot 95 degree weekend.

At 2 AM I realized that I didn't have enough insulation to get the job done. After 3.5 hours of sleep, I hopped in a Zipcar over to Brooklyn to get more of the recycled denim insulation. It's 3 times the price of regular insulation, but to me it's worth the extra costs since it's a green product and there is no dealing with fibers all over your skin or worry about breathing them. After unloading, returning the car and bringing it up to the apartment, it was time to get my Dad, Kathryn (his lady) and my Uncle Steve from the airport in NJ. They got in just after 9 and we made a 30 minute Home Depot stop for supplies. $147 later and a 30 minute car ride and we were ready to rock.

After assessing the situation and a sandwich, we started in. Kathryn and I busted out the insulation while my Dad and Uncle started hanging drywall. We had too many people as it was, but it was nice to have a bit of a utility role to hand up tools, etc.

I was a bit intimidated by the drywall hanging, but not anymore. With the drywall jack, things were fairly simple. I'm confident I can probably even finish up the foyer on my own (although I won't...but I could if I needed to). First you level/shim, measure and cut the drywall, put it on the jack and test fit, glue, raise and screw. Easy, right? Here's a sequence of a sheet going up.

We worked through til 10:30 PM, finishing the bedroom, insulating everything and wired and partially pulled the remainder of the cable. We called it a night and sat on the roof with a few cold drinks, gazing at the moon and bridge. For the first time in months, there was an actual bed in the bedroom.

Sunday was a bit more of the same, but we were all moving a bit slower and it was harder to work in the tighter spaces of the closet. There was a bit of reinforcing of the framing too as well as some electrical wiring for the j-box in the foyer.

I can't thank my Uncle enough for braving the trip out to NYC. He's not a big city person and I know he stepped outside his comfort zone a bit. I hope it wasn't too bad for him and that maybe next time I can show him a few of the sights of the city.

4 is the Magic Number...sorry 3

Tonight I went and picked up the ceiling drywall I'll need for this weekend's activities. Rachel and Jim were able to sacrifice some of their evening and Jim's truck was invaluable as we easily laid in 10 sheets of 5/8" fire rated drywall. I had heard rumors that this stuff was heavy and the rumors quickly became the truth.

Getting up to Home Depot in Yonkers and back was no big deal. It soon became apparent that unloading this stuff was not going to be easy. While Jim watched the truck, we attempted to put a piece in the elevator. No luck. We backed out and went to plan B - through the courtyard and up the stairs. To let Jim go, we unloaded the 10 sheets and set them down in the courtyard. My neighbors, Maite and Brian, we're kind enough to agree to help me unload. Poor suckers.

The first sheet was a bit difficult. We could easily take it up the stairs and partially into the hallway, but then getting it around the next corner/over the railing was a bit difficult. By the third sheet, we had a system down. One person on the door, 3 people on the sheet going up the first set of stairs. The middle man scurried ahead and became the receiver as we flipped it over the railing. The then empty handed opened the door and became the new center person.

By the time we had this figured out, it was about 6 minutes per sheet. 4 was the magic number for the job. It took us a while to get it going smoothly though and we all needed a few drink breaks. In about an hour and 10 minutes, it was all done.

I can't thank my friends enough for all their help. This really saved me an invaluable amount of time this weekend when the labor and expertise will be here.

Sorry, on picks for this one...maybe next time as I'll have to do it again soon.

I'm all 'Wired' up

After another week of traveling, I came home from Denver yesterday with goals to start and finish wiring what I could of the apartment. I've bought a 500 ft. roll of RG6 wire for cable television wiring and a 500 ft. roll of loudspeaker wire. Wiring is quite simple, but since I had a bit of a master plan, it made it a bit more time consuming.

I've decided that everything should be concealed so I had to do some drilling through a few beams to run some cables. As well, my philosophy is the more cable outlets, the better. With that said, I'm running two stereo pairs of loudspeaker wiring and three RG6 cables in the bedroom (thus, 3 cable and two loudspeaker jacks). The loudspeakers will be 'home run' to the living room, where they can get a feed off of a receiver with multiple room outputs. The RG6 will be home run to the foyer ceiling where there will be a splitter box distributing the signal.



The smart thing I'm thinking about here is future wiring. I need to assume that my cable TV won't always come in from the facade as it is now (especially with the upcoming roof project our building is going to be going through). Thus, I've bought a combiner so I can run one wire from the dumbwaiter shaft to the foyer and the existing to the foyer as well. Thus if the wiring ever changes, I'm prepared and won't have to open up the ceiling much or completely rewire. These splitters/combiners are great devices and I recommend them to anyone who is wiring their place up (http://www.smarthome.com/7810.html). Once the signal is combined, out it goes via a 6-channel splitter (http://www.smarthome.com/7810C6.html).

The hardest work in all this was to tie together the loudspeaker wiring so I could have a stereo pair. I found the best method was to actually hang the wire out the window 6 stories in length and then twist the wire pairs (its not shielded) and tie it with zip ties. A bit of a process, but it seems to work. I'll have to mark up all my drawings with this wiring now for future reference.