The Joys of the Noise

After returning home from vacation, I received a letter from the building's managing agent that he had received complaints from people in the building I was making construction noise on weeknights and weekends. He kindly reminded me of our stupid construction hours (8 AM - 5 PM Mon-Fri, no work on any public holidays) and stated that further complaints would result in legal action.

I was pretty ticked off at first and rampant that there are so many people who aren't forward thinking about improving our property and their apartments. Here I am, a young 20 something guy trying to make a better place to live and eventually get a nice return on his investment and I've run into so much opposition, it's not even funny.

But then I realized I've gotten away with a lot of stuff the past year. I've sucked all I can out of the NYC Department of Sanitation, done construction on weekends for almost a year now, received my own building permits from the NYC Dept of Buildings and was able to convince the Board of Directors to let me do all the renovations to my apartment on my own (given that I follow regular working hours and raise my insurance....I did the latter). Not bad.

So, if my fellow neighbors can't get it and are whining about noise, then I'll abide by the rules...and ensure that I start any construction which may be noisy at 8 AM. Since my neighbor below me has been the real complainer, I'm sure he'll enjoy power saws, drilling, etc. at that hour.

Ah, the joy of living in NYC.

Bombing the Bathroom

It's been a long week and as you can tell I've been pretty busy. The bathroom has been the focus this week since it's really all that is left in the major construction picture.

So, after cleaning up the mess from the weekend Monday and Tuesday, I dug into the bathroom on Wednesday night. I quickly found that Travis's work over the holidays eased the process since most of what was left was plaster on lath and some tile on tileboard.

The shower wall proved to be the most difficult as the tile was on a greenboard and cementboard in some places.

Friday night I finished up the demo and Saturday was spent bagging what was left up and working on electrical and insulation. Sunday was more electrical which resulted in two trips to Home Depot which took forever compliments of slow work on the A train.

I woke up early today to tidy things up and get ready for Roy to help me hand the ceiling drywall. It took us 2 hours to cut the drywall and hang it with the main challenge being working in such a small space with one person on a ladder in the bath tub, another on a sawhorse and attempting to vault it up around corners and over the steam pipe.

After a bit of struggling, we got it all into place and it feels good to have gone from demo to insulated, re-wired with a ceiling in less then a week.

Still, there is a lot of work to do so I can get a sink back and not have to take baths (I've never taken so many baths in my life as I have this week!). It looks like the plumbing for the bath tub will need to be replaced and the subfloor has holes and oddities around the edges.



I have a few contractors coming this week to look at these elements and give their opinion.

In the meantime, I'll haul the bombed out debris to the curb each night this week and shop for tiles.

This is where I poop

Enough said for now.

If Picasso taped and mudded...

If Picasso taped and mudded his seams would probably look like the ones my dad did in a modern art style. OK, they weren't perfect but the having help with that process certainly kept things on schedule and moving forward these past 2 weeks after Christmas. Last weekend I finished mudding and sanding the kitchen and slapped on 2 coats of primer.

This week was some more mudding of the living room and yesterday was a full 8 hours of sanding and priming.

But now it looks great and I'm super pleased with how it all turned out and turned around so quickly. It took me from March - October to do bedroom from demo to primed drywall. The kitchen and living room only took me from the end of October to January! Maybe I learned something along the way...like rent a dumpster...as well as the process in general I'm sure.

So now the saga of the bathroom starts. I'm sure it will be interesting as I lose functionality in there and will need to figure out where to shower and do my #1 and #2. I may find myself showering at work quite often.

The goal is to get all the demo done in there and also get the work done on capping the dumbwaiter before I get any floors refinished. Ideally floor refinishing will happen while I'm gone in Aspen.

We'll see what the week brings us.