Author: urbanspacepgh

 This was one of the hottest stretches I can remember, with the temperature in the solid 90’s all week.  But we’re coming down to the wire over here, so the show had to go on.  It was just a very sweaty, hot drippy show.  Ew, right?

Because we were working in all of the units this week, I’ve broken things down by apartment…

The Third Floor is the closest to finished, with all kitchen appliances intalled (minus the missing refrigerators, thanks Home Depot).  This week I finally got the guys to cut the butcher block countertops so I could sand and seal them.  We are using a product called Waterlox instead of oiling them, in hopes that it’s a better tenant-proof seal.

I also finally got the guys to hang the light fixture I wanted to use for the bedrooms.  I really like the industrial look of it, but was worried about using a pendant like this for whole-room lighting, afraid it wouldn’t be enough light.  It looked great during the day, but I wanted to check it out at night before I gave the go-ahead to install them in all bedrooms.  The light level was decent, but unfortunately the bare bulb at night was just too unpleasant.  Every time you glanced upwards, you ended up trying to blink away that yellow spot in your vision.  Kinda like staring down the sun.  Not very cool.  So I’m kinda sad, but I’ve decided to use the fixture we used in the bathroom also in the bedrooms.  It’s a clean modern look, a large bright fixture, and no bare bulb.  Part of me wants to just hack a diffuser into the warehouse pendant, but I’ve got too much on my plate already!

 The Second Floor isn’t far behind the first.  This week the rest of the doors were hung, as well as the microwave.  Like the apartment upstairs, they finally cut the countertops for me so I could sand and finish them.  Oh yeah, and the cool cool cool chalkboard backsplash was painted.  I love how it looks with the translucent white cabinets!

I also couldn’t help myself and dove into another brick project in one of the 2nd floor bedrooms.  I still wasn’t happy with the contractor’s brick cleaning job so I went at it.  You can see the difference between his and my work because I didn’t get to the top 4 courses yet.  Mental note:  on super hot days, start at the top of the wall because by the time you get to the end you might not be able to lift your arms enough to finish it off…

The First Floor (Front Apartment) has had the least amount of work, but it’s catching up fast.  This week the boys finished the wall in the kitchen and installed the upper cabinets.   This was great and all, but they installed them 6″ too low.  Agh.  Of course I didn’t notice this until I had already spent 2 hours cleaning the brick chimney above and my patience was pretty nonexistent.  There may have been a moderate-to-severe freakout moment on my part.  Fortunately there was nobody else there, and fortunately the contractor owned the mistake.  They will be moving the cabinets up…  Not that we really have the time to be doing work twice.  I’ve been pretty cool with letting things slide here and there, but big obvious stuff like that… sorry guys.

 The same apartment, opposing wall, got the rest of its facelift this week too.  After I had the aforementioned freakout, I decided to get some help.  Not of the psychiatric variety but better.  Feeling overwhelmed with the amount of work left to be done, I called every friend who had offered help in the past year and actually took them up on it.  My buddy Jarrod was the first to show up, and after a burger and a beer on Friday night we got the wall mostly buffed out.  I still need to go back and do some detail work, but I was super happy to have some company and to make some major progress!  Jarrod, on the other hand, declared it “the most un-fun thing we have ever done together.”  But still offered to come back and do more next week.  Man, I love my friends.

The First Floor (Rear Apartment) is like the little brother that’s always a step behind the rest, but this is changing quickly… we already have a tenant lined up for this space so little bro needs to get a move on!  This week the guys installed the upper kitchen cabinets, and did some trim work and painting in the living room.  I did the brick exposing in the kitchen a few weeks ago, but have to get myself back in there and finish buffing the brick.  No, it’s not going to stay like that! We also devised a plan of how to infill the gap above the window, but I’m not going to spoil the surprise just yet.

Well I’m on my way back over there to have at that kitchen wall…  this coming week the main focus is going to be this little studio apartment.  There’s someone we need to get it ready for!  Can you believe that you’ve only got a handful of weekly construction updates left to wait for?  Me either!

Here we are at week 21 of construction updates… heading into the home stretch.  So what’s the best possible thing to do in the home stretch?  Definitely not more demo, but I did some anyway.  After I figured out how easy it is to expose brick, I couldn’t help doing another wall.  Then poor Apartment 1F was left as the only one with no exposed brick and I decided we just couldn’t have that.  So I set to do one final wall, all on my own once again.  Below you see the wall pre-demo.  (by the way don’t you love our fancy door locking mechanism?)

The other walls took a few hours each, so I figured I could knock this one out in an afternoon.  What you see below is the progress of an afternoon:

Uh yeah…  definitely going to take longer than I thought.  What I hadn’t realized was all of the other walls were partially water damaged, so once you loosened the plaster it would just fall off in huge chunks.  Not so much over here.  This plaster is on good and tight and takes a whole lot of heft to get it off… way more than I bargained for, for sure.  I also decided to do this work on a week where the temperature here was hovering around 100.  Brilliant.  But I soldiered on and got about 2/3 done so far.  As soon as I hit “publish” on this blog, I’m headed over to finish it up.

Last week I promised the arrival of appliances, and you shall not be disappointed.  Also on perhaps the hottest day of the year, the stoves, microwaves, and dishwashers for the 2nd and 3rd floor were delivered.

Below is the 3rd Floor with appliances ready for installation.  Take a look and see if there’s something missing.

Oh, refrigerator huh?  Well just as Ikea hates me, apparently Home Depot does as well… they took the order for the fridges, accepted my payment, scheduled delivery, and then later unbeknownst to me- cancelled the refrigerators portion of the order.  I only found out when they didn’t arrive and weren’t even on the delivery order.  Okayyy.  So now begins the great fridge hunt.  Sound familiar?  Well I wish it didn’t!

Anyway the kitchen is coming together- notice the freshly painted backsplash.  It’s actually chalkboard paint.  I had the idea a while ago and it turns out this is something people actually do.  It’s water resistant and neat looking.  And a cheap solution for the backsplash.  We’ll see how it holds up to tenants!

2nd floor Kitchen w/ Appliances

 You may have noticed the installation of the kitchen island in the 3rd floor photo.  I actually had to order these islands from some random far away Ikea and have them shipped to me because the one here doesn’t carry them.  So they finally arrived.

The backordered countertops also finally came in (after 2 months of waiting!!) so I set about finishing them.  They give you this oil you’re supposed to rub on there, like constantly, for the life of the counters.  Seeing as how this is an apartment, I really couldn’t imagine a tenant being that diligant so we’re going a different route.  I’ll be sealing the countertops with a professional grade wood sealer used on commercial counters, tables and things.  That way there’s maybe a chance the counters will stay nice…
to begin, I sanded off the factory-applied finish that was really, really rough:

(all sanded)

 Once the countertop was as smooth as possible, I applied the first coat of sealer.  Looks pretty awesome!!  Now I get to repeat this x6 for all the counters in the building.

We made some great (noticeable) progress this week so it was really exciting.  The apartments are taking shape and it’s so cool to imagine people will actually be living here in just a few months.  Stay tuned next week for the installation of the appliances that bothered to show up, the game of tracking down those fridges, and the finishing up of that damn brick wall!

Okay I haven’t done an update in 2 weeks, so I’m feeling like I should post something to keep everyone in the loop.  See, there just hasn’t been much exciting stuff happening.  There I said it.  Anyway here’s a little recap of what has been going on…

Lots of trim and finishing and taking care of the little stuff.  Like recessed light trim.  I have learned from this to never again request 4″ recessed light cans.  Why?  Because trim kit options for 4″ recessed lights really suck.  All you can get from the local stores are ugly beige-y white ribbed ones that scream “nasty”  “cheap.”  OR pay $25 a pop for semi-acceptable stainless steel ones.  Because I’m a little OCD about things like this, I shopped around on the internets and scored these guys for cheap.  They’re alright (I would kill to have some without the ribbed effect going on on the inside)  but I’ll take what I can get.

We also worked out a nifty trim detail for around the beams.  I would have liked to have no trim at all but that would have been pretty difficult to achieve.  This 3/4″ white trim both covers the nail holes and seals up any gaps left between the beams and drywall.  The guys had originally suggested a rounded trim, but in my OCD-ness, I insisted on flat.  It looks pretty good.  Next time I’ll have to think ahead enough to tell them to not bevel the corners.  For absolutely no reason other than aesthetics I just hate bevels.  I would much rather they had been flat cuts.  Another thing to think about for the next project…

The Second Floor kitchen cabinets were also installed.  The uppers are a milky translucent, and the lowers are the same dark brown as as upstairs.  They’re there… just hiding under all those boxes.  The upper cabinets are different from the kitchen upstairs that you’ve already seen because, basically the Ikea gods hate me.  Let’s just leave it at that.

So that’s it for this kind of anti-climatic post.  Don’t worry, there are exciting things coming up next week… like appliances, kitchen islands, and MORE BRICK!  There are even rumors of cleaning ladies coming to polish off the third floor. Yup you heard that right…

Well this week Urbanspace got a Facebook page, and I gave the blog a little update to boot.  Pretty snazzy, huh?  So if you haven’t already, visit us on Facebook.  You can also sign up to have new posts on this blog delivered to your inbox by visiting our homepage and entering your email address in the box there on the right sidebar.  It really means a lot to have so many of our friends along for the ride!

This week over at the lofts, we got a whole bunch of flooring.  All those boxes of laminate that were stacked up in the basement are now in place!  Having some floors in there really makes things feel like they’re coming together.  Check it out.

First Floor 1-Bedroom Apartment:

This building is over 100 years old, and so we’re dealing with a lot of un-straight and un-square things.  It’s not perfect, but luckily it’s pretty solid and things haven’t warped too badly.  We put down 3/4″ OSB underlayment over the existing floorboards to help level things out a bit, and that worked in most places except for a few.  Here you can see where there was a dip in the floor, topping out at a whole 5/8″… which is a lot.  So that puddle you see is some leveling compound… so there’s no more dip and the floor will lay flat.

1st Floor Studio Apartment:

Second Floor 2-Bedroom Apartment:

And here’s a shot of the 2nd floor’s lving/ kitchen.  If it looks familiar, this apartment has a layout almost identical to the one upstairs that’s already got the kitchen cabinets installed.  Here the drywall is all finished, awaiting cabinet installation.  As you can see, the flooring is already covered up… safe and sound!

 The Third Floor moved along with more finish work.  The closet doors in the “Master” bedroom were installed… they look pretty awesome, huh?  We re-used some pocket doors we found buried in the wall we tore out to open up the living/kitchen area.  It’s really great to be able to find a new use for these cool old doors.

Here’s a close-up of those installed doors and the detailing on them.  They sure don’t make ’em like that anymore!  The hardware is also original to those doors.  Although it’s totally not my style, I’m trying to stick to my rule of thumb, being that all original stuff stays if it can be helped at all.

That’s all the news there is to report.  Hang tight for next week’s update!

Even though there was a brief hiatus in blogging the past 2 weeks, there wasn’t any hiatus in working!  The majority of the focus was on the third floor… with the flooring in we could move forward with trim, cabinet, and fixture installation.  Below is the kitchen as of week 16… note that the cabinets are all installed, sans missing door fronts (thanks Ikea!) and the base trim and door trim is being installed.  For all trim, we just used flat one-by (1×4 for anything vertical and 1×6 for anything horizontal)  It was more economical, plus I am generally against recreating historical details… so our rule of thumb here was anything new is flat, but anything that was already there can be whatever it is (around the large window for example).  It’s making for a really nice contrast.

 And here we have the kitchen as of week 17… all of the trim is in and painted, the cabinet doors finally showed up and the door pulls are up.  These aren’t the upper cabinets I had originally wanted, but they look pretty good anyway… don’t you think?  And those beautiful floors were covered up for their own protection.  That’s good but I am a little sad I don’t get to see them again for a while.

Also installed were the doors and trim for the bedrooms…  check out the finished project vs what it looked like before.  Pretty impressive, huh?

And finally, the bathroom fixtures were also installed:
(well the cabinet and light anyway)

I don’t know about you but I’m about ready to move in.  My bags may or may not be already packed  =)  Check back next week for a bunch more flooring, some light fictures and… dun dun dun bathroom accessories!

With things shaping up, I figured it was about time for some “look how far we’ve come” shots of the Third Floor.  Enjoy!

Kitchen/ Living Area |   Before – During – Now

 

Bathroom  |   Then & Now

 

“Master” Bedroom  |   Then & Now

Well 15 weeks in I’ve pretty much run out of analogies for “things moving forward,”  so I’m just going to leave it as this:  WE HAVE FINISHES!!!!

This week the guys ran around with paint brushes after the plasterers, and before the flooring-ers, working on getting things more or less painted before the flooring is installed.

Tile was also installed in all of the bathrooms.  I am really happy with how it came out!  In the 2nd and 3rd Floor bathrooms, the location was a tricky spot for the tub…  I had wanted to use a fiberglass tub surround for ease of cleaning, (ok and budget too).  But here’s the kicker:  they don’t make corner tub surrounds… they are all made with 3 sides.  According to some people, the solution to this was to build a wall in front of the window to frame out the tub.  Uh, yeah… no way.  So we figured out how to hack a 3 sided tub surround into working as a corner unit by just not installing the back wall.  We then tied the tile into the seams where that wall should have been, and there you have it:  a pretty spiffy looking tub surround.  The guys also assembled all of the vanities I bought last week… you can see one of them here waiting to be installed.

The same guys who installed the tile floors are also installing all of the laminate flooring in the building… so they delivered all of the flooring for the entire project.  I was pretty impressed with that pile… filling up an entire storage unit in the basement from floor to ceiling!

And then… because I guess they couldn’t help themselves, they put down the laminate in the whole 3rd floor!

-insert gasp here-

-oooooh-

-aaahhhh-

-clap clap clap-

The flooring is kind of dusty in these pictures- they had just finished installing.   I am really happy with it even though it’s not the color range I was originally thinking (I had envisioned something in the wide plank pine family)  The sub who was installing the floors had this really high quality stuff but the only problem was this is the only color they had I even remotely liked that had the wide plank.  And so this is the result of quality + taste + budget=  You don’t always get exactly what you want, sometimes you get what’s better.   And these floors are pretty dreamy.  Between the quality of the actual planks and the superawesome underlayment they put down under them, you feel like you’re walking on hardwood.  Seriously.

You may have been so excited about the flooring that you didn’t notice in the above pictures that they also got a lot of the baseboard and door trim installed!  And… the kitchen cabinets assembled.  The lower ones that were actually delivered anyway…

And here (finally) are the formerly missing wall cabinets… picked up and delivered by yours truly.  In case you ever wondered how many IKEA flat-pack boxes you can fit in a Honda Civic, it’s this many.  Exactly.

And so that wraps up the saga of the kitchen cabinets.  I’ll close the ordeal out by saying that Ikea’s prices and design are basically unmatched.  Their lead time (at least here in Pittsburgh) is insane as well.  Basically the day you order your cabinets is the day you drive away with them- compared to a 4-6 week wait from somewhere like Home Depot.  Of course I ordered the cabinets 3-4 weeks ago and we still don’t have all of the proper parts and pieces… so it’s looking like in all reality we’ll be on the 4-6 week schedule anyway.  It’s a good thing I was early!

It took them the first 2 weeks after delivery to figure out that my wall cabinets are gone.  All of them, just gone.  Disappeared from the face of the earth gone.  Add to that, they are also discontinued!  So I can’t just to back to Ikea and get more… they don’t even have more, and won’t have more again ever.   I should be super mad, but honestly this was actually another tiny blessing from the good old design gods.  You see, after I ordered the cabinets I totally changed my mind about which upper cabinets to use.  But, I couldn’t return the old ones and still keep my hefty 20% discount so stuck I was.  Until… they all got lost.  Convenient huh? I swear I had no hand in this.  So I was refunded for the lost cabinets, and bought the ones I had actually already changed my mind to wanting.  Funny how things work out sometimes, isn’t it?

That’s it for this week… pretty exciting seeing finishes go down, huh?  Stay tuned next week for more painting, more trim, and some completely finished out bathrooms: sinks, fixtures, lights and all!  There will also be an intermittent “then and now” post between now and then.  Hang tight, I can’t wait for that one either.

Remember that post with gratuitous shots of drywall?  Prep yourself now for gratuitous shots of PLASTER!  Painted plaster, actually.  This week the finishers got busy doing final coats of plaster- seamlessly pulling together old plaster, new drywall, weird cementy block… and making it all look so crisp I almost couldn’t believe it.  See for yourself:

And finally,  (with a heavy heart) I got busy on the plaster wall in the Studio Apartment kitchen.  We debated last week about whether or not to keep it, and rationality won out.  Now it’s going to be an exposed brick wall… and so this is how my Sunday afternoon was spent.  Check out the progress shots below:

This wall still needs to be buffed out, but my arms were too tired to do any more!  Another day I suppose.  You can see an area to the left of the window where I did buff the brick just to check it out and see what it’s going to look like.  Not too shabby!

Coming up next week we’ve got tile installation in the bathrooms, the tracking down (kind of) of my lost kitchen cabinets, kitchen cabinet assembly… and more plaster/ paint.  I also feel like it’s about time for some “then and now” comparison pictures… because although these apartments are looking great, they look amazing when you consider how far they’ve come.

We’re trucking along over here…  the apartments are taking shape fast!

This week the HVAC guys wrapped up 95% of their work… The AC Units are ready and waiting for the final hookup.  Because the property line is basically the building’s walls, unfortunately the only place they could go was the roof.   So here they are!  This location isn’t ideal, so we put down some reflective coating on the roof to try and keep the units from cooking up there.  We’ll see how that goes…

Oh, and while we’re up here… did I mention we’ve got quite the view?  Just another thing that makes this building swoon-worthy for me.  Of course use of the roof will definitely not be a part of the apartments (hello liability!)  It’s still fun to dream about that rooftop-deck-with-a-view-of-downtown-and-those-luscious-green-pgh-hills…

The finishers also hit the ground running and got started on all the drywall seams.  It’s pretty tricky because we’re using a combination of original plaster and drywall laminated over old plaster and entirely new drywall (not ideal, but hello-budgets!)

With the finishing coming right along,  I did another IKEA run, this time for the bathrooms (and to have a little talk with them about my missing kitchen cabinets…hmph)  Can you believe that you’re looking at 4 entire bathroom setups in the back of that truck?  Stuff sure slims down when it’s broken into bits and pieces.  Lots and lots of bits and pieces that the guys get to put together next week…

This week we also had a debate about keeping the plaster on the wall in the studio apartment.  The final decision was… dun dun dun… it’s got to go.  While it’s beautiful, it’s not practical a) for a kitchen (especially right over the worksurface) and b) for a rental unit (hello lead paint poisoning lawsuit).  If this were my house, and maybe any room but the kitchen, I’d totally have kept it.  We decided that with my newly acquired brick exposing skills,  the wall would look great with exposed brick, and safely give the room the character it’s missing now.  Actually this wall is exposed the entire way up in the other apartments, so it makes sense to do it here too.  I promise I will be crying on the inside the whole time I’m jackhammering away on this thing though.  As some of you suggested, I’m going to try and preserve it (although I admit it’s highly unlikely I’ll have any success) to show off somewhere in the future.  Like maybe framed in my living room, where it may be relatively more appropriate.

 

So thanks for all of your opinions and support and discussions and help keeping this thing on track.  Stay tuned next week for completely plastered walls, and … paint!! Yeah, paint!! Really!   Some forewarning:   these plaster guys… are geniuses.   Prepare to be shocked and delighted, because I totally am.

 

As the guys were putting up the last of the drywall,  we were lamenting covering up the existing plaster wall in the studio apartment kitchen.  It’s this faded, mottled sea of blues and grays that is actually quite beautiful.  In any other context it would be considered a work of art.  Well, to some of us anyway.

We then had this crazy idea… what if we just keep it?  Now that everything else in the apartment is drywalled up, it feels like it needs some sort of character and this could be perfect.  We could seal up the plaster and leave the wall more or less as it is.  While this is definitely an idea to which your parents would say “you’re doing what!?,” it seems that most people who have been interested in this apartment would be the type who would appreciate a move like this.

To refresh your memory, above is the layout we went with (Option B)  The microwave and cabinet are not on that wall anymore- I moved them to go above the stove.  The brick chimney is also not exposed.  The wall we’re talking about here is the one on the far right, between the window and door (where the microwave is shown)  I think the contrast between the brand new everything else and the old plaster would be quite striking…

Possible problems:  the plaster doesn’t seal well,  difficulty attaching shelving to that wall, a little too much “character” for your typical palette?  The current plan is to plaster over it.  As a happy medium we could just have the whole wall be exposed brick.

So, what do you guys think?  Cool idea or have I just been working for Hollywood too long?