This week was mostly about the fire escape. Years of neglect have left it barely clinging on to the building, with rickety railings and missing steps… but we’re fixing that! It was the biggest “con” on the list of “pros” and “cons” of buying the place, but luckily all of the “pros” won out. See below for the steps we’re taking to bring this thing back up to “safe.”
Below you can see the lowest landing of the fire escape… and definitely the worst part of it. We are completely tearing it off and building an entirely new deck! You can see here one of the guys cutting it away, piece by rusty piece.
On each of the upper floors, we exposed all of the anchor points from the inside. What we found was half-rusted anchors, which is kind of scary considering that we had been clambering up and down this thing over the past few months!
All of the rusted steel anchors were replaced with bigger stainless steel ones, andwe repaired the brick work all around the anchor points…. here you can see what it looked like when all of that was finished:
Then a metal plate and threaded bolts were added to finish the thing off. The cardboard around it is to protect the brick behind the plate so we can paint it. Paint it, you say? Yep! We’re going to leave it exposed. We think it looks really cool and definitely goes with the industrial loft aesthetic of the place.
We didn’t completely forget about the rest of the building though… Progress was made in many other places- Also finished this week was the framing in of the closet in the second floor bedroom (the metal anchors you were just looking at are in this bedroom in the far right corner under the table…)
The Third Floor is also shaping up… the new kitchen’s wet wall is framed out, and plumbing roughed in. Also roughed in is the lighting on the 2nd and 3rd Floors (the long trough in the floor is access to the ceiling of the loft below)
Before we put the demo hammers away, we decided to enlargen the opening from the main living area into the hallway. Before, it was a small 3 foot opening… now it’s about 4’6. This really opened stuff up and we’re glad we did it!
This week we also made progress on some of the chimney cleaning… see here the before and after of the Studio Apartment’s living room fireplace that Jason and I had discovered back in October…
And there you have it for week #2 of construction… stay tuned for week #3, which will include ordering of kitchen cabinets. I can’t believe it’s time for that already! 2 down, only 15 weeks to go =)
urbanspace llc 
Way to go! You made such great decisions with widening the opening to 4+’ and I love the exposed anchors. I’ve never thought about the way those stairs were installed! Glad you shared!