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.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
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.
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.
Friday, January 16, 2009
Sunday, January 11, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, December 29, 2008
Super floored!
Today was a long back breaking knee grinding day laying down the kitchen floor...but it looks awesome.
The flooring took us a bit longer to complete then I expected. We had a bit of a learing curve with the manual nailers Dad got from a friend in Michigan. The short story was that you really have to hit these things a lot harder then you think.
Once we sorted that out, we got a system going where I was tapping in the boards and holding the nailer while Dad swung away to pound them in.
We finished things up around 4PM, 4 hours later then I expected, but that's OK. Both of us were extremely tired and sore from crawling around on our knees all day, so we decided to call it quits despite the large amount of mudding left.
So much was accomplished this weekend and I'm excited to finish up most of the mudding this week and hopefully begin priming half of the apartment this coming weekend.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Merry Christmas
The holiday glitz and glam of twinkling lights and Christmas carols quickly left with my tree on Saturday morning and construction dirt and grime started back up again with my Dad and brother in town.
Saturday was a busy day. I orchestrated the team and put Travis to work in starting the process of demolishing the bathroom.
Dad tackled finishing up framing the kitchen wall, primarily so we could level it out and place in boards to eventually mount cabinets to.
While this was all happening, I worked on mudding until we were ready to drywall the kitchen wall. Once it was done, it looked great and I was happy to say good riddance to the wall that has slowed this whole process down for the past couple of weeks.
The bathroom was a bit of a disaster with all the trash and other items in the tub we we could mud the walls in the living room and kitchen.
After a long day of work, Travis and I went out with Jen to grab some bar food and drinks...and pomegranetes.
Sunday was spent mudding. Dad and I tackled what we could but still didn't finish it up.
Tomorrow I'm taking the day off of work to lay the wood floor in the kitchen. I don't expect it to take too long, but we'll see.
Saturday was a busy day. I orchestrated the team and put Travis to work in starting the process of demolishing the bathroom.
Dad tackled finishing up framing the kitchen wall, primarily so we could level it out and place in boards to eventually mount cabinets to.
While this was all happening, I worked on mudding until we were ready to drywall the kitchen wall. Once it was done, it looked great and I was happy to say good riddance to the wall that has slowed this whole process down for the past couple of weeks.
The bathroom was a bit of a disaster with all the trash and other items in the tub we we could mud the walls in the living room and kitchen.
After a long day of work, Travis and I went out with Jen to grab some bar food and drinks...and pomegranetes.
Sunday was spent mudding. Dad and I tackled what we could but still didn't finish it up.
Tomorrow I'm taking the day off of work to lay the wood floor in the kitchen. I don't expect it to take too long, but we'll see.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
"Trucking" Ahead
I can't believe how fast the past few weeks have gone by. A lot of work has been done with help from many hands, and trucks. I've been in the local ZipCar Toyota Tacoma all too much in the past 4 weeks. I think that I may be the only person renting it as the mirrors and seat position always seem adjusted perfect for me.
Yet, while the price of gas has gone down the cost to rent the ZipCar hasn't, nor has drywall and other construction materials. Yet, just about everything I need to finish the major construction is in the apartment now.
The plumbing was even finished on the 16th. The sink was successfully moved over 2.5' I know, it was probably dumb for me to pay that much to move the sink over but I really feel it is going to make a world of difference.
Although the plumbing is in, my permits haven't cleared yet compliments of someone else in my building who has a violation for construction without a permit...grrrr.
The lesson of the week has been to relate the finishes to the placement of the infrastructure. In my hurry to get the electrical done on the last visit from the Michigan crew I forgot about the mounting height of the outlet boxes in relation to the picture frame molding. Long story short, I ended up moving every electrical box down a few inches...which proved to be difficult for some.
Despite my earlier lack of attention to detail, everything else has been moving forward. The last of the drywall was hauled up on Wednesday night last week and I began to hang it last weekend. More was tackled this weekend and I'm really happy with how the room has been shaping up. I spent a fair amount of time last week running all the power and light switches to the island position.
Today was a bit frustrating as I tackled re-doing the 2x4 framing for the kitchen wall. The pipe re-routing threw a bit of a kink into the original location for 2x4's, but I think I worked out a decent solution. My internal interior designer started thinking about whether or not to extend the wall to the door or stop it at the drain pipe. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to extend it to the door but I'll sleep on it tonight.
Finally, I wired up everything for the kitchen - 2 counter outlets, 1 dishwasher whip (loose wires), 1 stove outlet and one whip for a range hood.
All this took much more time then expected so my ambitions to finish the ceiling were kill joyed.
Yet, I have started a bit of mudding and plan to do more this week in preparation for Dad and Co. arrival on Friday. The ideal plan would be to have everything mudded before they get here so we can sand, prime, install wood floor and demo the bathroom walls/floor.
More to come this week.
Yet, while the price of gas has gone down the cost to rent the ZipCar hasn't, nor has drywall and other construction materials. Yet, just about everything I need to finish the major construction is in the apartment now.
The plumbing was even finished on the 16th. The sink was successfully moved over 2.5' I know, it was probably dumb for me to pay that much to move the sink over but I really feel it is going to make a world of difference.
Although the plumbing is in, my permits haven't cleared yet compliments of someone else in my building who has a violation for construction without a permit...grrrr.
The lesson of the week has been to relate the finishes to the placement of the infrastructure. In my hurry to get the electrical done on the last visit from the Michigan crew I forgot about the mounting height of the outlet boxes in relation to the picture frame molding. Long story short, I ended up moving every electrical box down a few inches...which proved to be difficult for some.
Despite my earlier lack of attention to detail, everything else has been moving forward. The last of the drywall was hauled up on Wednesday night last week and I began to hang it last weekend. More was tackled this weekend and I'm really happy with how the room has been shaping up. I spent a fair amount of time last week running all the power and light switches to the island position.
Today was a bit frustrating as I tackled re-doing the 2x4 framing for the kitchen wall. The pipe re-routing threw a bit of a kink into the original location for 2x4's, but I think I worked out a decent solution. My internal interior designer started thinking about whether or not to extend the wall to the door or stop it at the drain pipe. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to extend it to the door but I'll sleep on it tonight.
Finally, I wired up everything for the kitchen - 2 counter outlets, 1 dishwasher whip (loose wires), 1 stove outlet and one whip for a range hood.
All this took much more time then expected so my ambitions to finish the ceiling were kill joyed.
Yet, I have started a bit of mudding and plan to do more this week in preparation for Dad and Co. arrival on Friday. The ideal plan would be to have everything mudded before they get here so we can sand, prime, install wood floor and demo the bathroom walls/floor.
More to come this week.
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