current renovation

We’re moving right along over here… with both exterior and interior work this week.  You know, a little of this, a little of that.

Starting off with replacing the soffit at the back of the building, and replacing a few outdated or broken windows, these small changes somehow make the building look so much more legit.  Maybe because rotted wood and rusty metal hanging down from the roof line really don’t seem to say “someone cares about me”  like brand new metalwork does.  I’m really happy with how this looks, especially because I made the color selection standing out on the sidewalk while squinting up at the sky in the dark one evening after work.  It sure is hard keeping up with this while working a 9-5, or an 8-7 if you’re me  =)

Here’s a closeup view of that soffit… and a good look at that brick work.  I love how crisp and smooth the lines are of all this brick.  It’s one of those things that continually makes me swoon over this building- headaches and all.

Because most of the windows in the building were semi-updated, most of them are going to stay.  We did replace all of the original windows on the 1st floor and a few others that were broken, not operable, etc.  The only one that was a big change, though, was the one-bedroom.  They started cutting it out last week and this week the window’s in!  I didn’t take a shot from the inside yet, (mostly out of laziness- not wanting to move the IKEA countertop that’s propped up against it)

Wait did someone just say… IKEA?  You bet I did.  We finally got the kitchens ordered and delivered!  I was kind of underwhelmed by the pile of boxes- I really was imagining something more … I dunno… large?  Well it’s small for good reason, they kind of forgot to bring all of the upper cabinets.  Leave it to IKEA to screw that one up.  It’s a good thing we actually weren’t planning on installing them this week… sheesh.  The good news is I made it in time to get in on their 20% off sale.  Apparently they have it every spring.  If you’re planning a kitchen remodel and want to use their cabinets, definitely wait for this sale.  I ended up getting an entire kitchen’s worth of cabinets for free!  Pretty sweet deal.  Well, if you’re willing to deal with them messing up your delivery anyway…

IKEA better get their act together fast, though, and figure out where the heck our upper cabinets are.  As you can see below, the 3rd floor kitchen is getting closer and closer to being ready!  This apartment is just so awesome.  Someone’s going to be super happy living here, I can just tell.

Also keeping busy with the drywall, the guys got the bedrooms on the 2nd and 3rd floors all ready to go.  Now just for the finishers to come take over next week, then we’ll be well on our way to paint and trim… woohoo!

The contractor also got the basement cleaned out and floor painted… the floor color is definitely not what I was expecting (when I saw it I was secretly hoping it was just a primer) but it’s growing on me.  The guys scored some really high-end concrete sealer at an amazing price… bummer is the color selections were uh… let’s call it bright and cheery?  It definitely looks better than it did before, back when the creature from the black lagoon popped up.  I think I’m going to live with it… what do you say?

That wraps up Week #11…  next week we have the plaster finishers doing their thing, the installation of the air conditioning units (which my current apartment does not have and as I write this blog I am definitely thinking of those empty apartments over there that are soooo close to cool (in more ways than one)

Also, get your designer gears turning because we’ve got a new question to pose this coming week… something about removing crazy old plaster vs leaving it there and calling it cool-  because it kind of is.  ‘Til then-

Warning:  Prepare yourself for copious gratuitous shots of drywall

This week was more duct work and furnace installation.  The guys went around putting up all the drywall they could before the HVAC inspection takes place.  Once that happens we can close more walls up  (yay!)  The exciting part of walking into the building on Friday night after a week of work was seeing the 1 bedroom apartment almost completely drywalled!  Because all of the HVAC runs for this apartment are actually in the floor below, we could do this without  obscuring anything the inspector needs to see.  It turned out exactly as I expected…  I actually felt like I was standing in the SketchUp model I made back in November.  Here’s to putting those expensive architect skills to good use…

And last but not least let’s not forget the amassing of streetside utilities…  One of the furnaces was not vented at all, so we had to add these vents to the new one for code compliance.   I am kind of bummed about all the utilities on the exterior of the building, but I’m telling myself it actually all won’t look so bad once it’s cleaned up and painted.  Cleaning the exterior brick isn’t part of this project ($$$$), but if any of you out there know who I talk to to get the ridiculous number of cable and telephone wires snaking all over my building taken down, I’d be happy to know!

So that’s it for this week.  It’s so crazy to think that not long from now, this is going to be somebody’s pad!  Or some people’s pad(s) rather.  Coming up next week we have finishers starting!  And I know I’ve been saying this for a while now, but the kitchen cabinets are being purchased on Thursday!!  so at the very least, next week’s post will have pictures of piles and piles of boxes full of cabinet parts =)

After the brief hibernation, week #10 was one of action!  I can’t begin to describe how excited I was when the contractor sent me this photo of all the trucks parked outside.  Trucks outside means people working inside… and being that much closer to rental ready!  Check out this week’s photo log of events.

In the top floor loft, we’re going to leave the beams exposed… but between steel mill soot, raccoon poop, and the various other lovely things you find in ceiling cavities, they were pretty gross.  We thought hard about how to clean them… pressure washing wasn’t an option because all the water would ruin the existing plaster we want to keep.  Sanding them was an option but would have been a nasty mess.  So in the end we decided to have them corn-cob blasted.   Yep you heard that right… corn cobs!  And they look amazing.  Before this, these beams were a dusty shade of black.  Now they look pretty much new!  You can also see in the photo below the new HVAC ducts we had to install.  The old ones ran through the stairwell, which is a big code no-no, so we had to re-route everything to go around.  Looking at it now I’m wondering if we should have gone for an exposed spiral duct… Hmm.  Something to keep in mind for next time.

While they were at it, the contractor had the corn cob guys go through and clean the exposed brick too.  It did a pretty good job of removing the initial layer of plaster.  I went back for more over the weekend and buffed out the chimney my brother started a few weeks ago.  I still have to go back in and hand scrub it, but it’s looking pretty snappy.

The start of HVAC work meant the installation of all new furnaces.  Although 2 of the 4 were in fine working order, the inspector insisted that all be replaced.  That was annoying, but not that big of a deal.  Our contractor had planned on it, and hopefully that means we won’t have any problems with them anytime soon!

We are also adding central air to each unit… which meant we needed to upgrade the electrical service as well.  Even though we had a very nice neat setup in the basement we still had to move the meters outside.  This brings me back to the whole thing last fall about the &*^*#% gas meters, remember that?  Ugh all I can do is shake my head at this point.  Alas, we’ve got more meters outside.  Special thanks goes out to the City of Pittsburgh and Duquesne Light for the beautification of your local streetscape.

Other work that happened outside was………. blowing more walls out!  My favorite.  Really.  Every time I think the exciting stuff is done, another big one comes along.  You see, all of the windows on the first floor got filled in at some point with smaller ones.  I would have loved to have blown every last one of them back out to the original size, but with budgets and all you’ve got to choose your battles.  So, for now we’re just doing the one in the front apartment because it really, really needed some light in there.

And finally, on the outside we got the concrete deck poured.  I had originally wanted to do the deck out of steel grate, but it was cost prohibitive… so the  concrete will have to do.  Looks good though!

There you have it for week #10… all action, no slackin.’  Or something like that.  Stay tuned for more updates next week.

I kept putting off a recap update, thinking there wasn’t much to report on.  I just went through my pictures and it seems we actually have quite a few little things that shaped up while we were waiting for that building permit.

The plumber finished off all of the plumbing rough-in, and we passed that inspection with flying colors.  The guys then cleaned out the whole basement, scrubbed and painted it.  I suppose this picture could come with the caption “you shoulda seen it before” because although the picture doesn’t convey much, the 15 gallons of white paint that went into the place really reduced the creep factor down there.

I also got myself into a grand adventure when I decided to expose 2 more chimneys.  I actually had a lot of fun and am really happy with the result.  In the following 2 pictures you can see a little more progress that wasn’t captured in the original post about these chimneys.  The first photo is when I decided to ditch the tile surround.  Don’t worry though, I knocked off all the tiles I could and kept them.  We’re going to keep the surround in the bedroom, but the tiles here were an ugly mix of green, brown, and purple that I wasn’t crazy about.  Once the surround came down I definitely didn’t miss it.  I now have a total of 10 hours into one chimney and have about 2 more to go.  Right now I am working on brushing the bricks by hand with water and a brass wire brush.  You can see the line about half way up where I stopped.  My dog, Ossie, also stopped by in the evening to give laying by the fireplace a trial run.  She gives it a 10/10.  Obviously.

The guys also got busy continuing with the repair of the fire escape landing.  They had the whole steel landing and steps rebuilt.   We used some pieces of the existing landing, and some new pieces to get together a decent looking deck!

And we FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY got the building permit!  We then promptly passed the electrical inspection, and general building inspection… so now the ball is officially rolling again!  There’s a whole lot of action coming up next week… I think finally there will be marked visual improvements for you to feast your eyes on… stay tuned.

When a girl and her boyfriend call it quits, what is she to do?  Some may go for a massage, perhaps a manicure, or  movie and a pint of ice cream.   This one buys a new power tool and tears a wall down.

After having exposed some of the brick chimneys in the building, I was really itching to do a few more.  They were begging for it really I swear.  It wasn’t part of the contractor’s scope, but he agreed that if I did the work, he’d shovel all the debris out the window and haul it away for me.  If you’ve ever demolished an old plaster wall, you know how huge that is.  That stuff is heavy!  My goal was to get one finished this weekend, and the other next weekend.  With a little help, I got both mostly knocked out!  Check out the progress:

I did the first one myself… it went something like this:
– pack up all necessary tools, schlep them to the 3rd floor of the building
– realize I forgot the demo hammer – steal one of the contractor’s (hi Chad!)
– tear drywall off the stud wall built around the chimney
– realize I have nothing to cut the studs with
– go to Home Depot, purchase Sawzall
– arrive back at the building to realize the cashier didn’t take the anti-theft tag off the tool case
– bound and determined not to go back to Home Depot, take the lock to the basement and bash it with a chisel until it breaks
– open the case and realize that unlike the saw I almost bought, the one I actually bought didn’t come with any blades
– go back to Home Depot, purchase blades – finally saw the 2×4 studs and break them out
– get to business with the rotary hammer and chisel about 2/3 of the way up the chimney
– leave when arm can no longer hold hammer.

That whole process took 2.5 hours on Saturday, about an hour of which I actually spent working.  Heh.  But it was really exciting to see the results come easily (you know, after the Home Depot shenanigans and all) At the first bout of chimney exposing, I figured I was worthless at chiseling, but left to my own devices I totally figured it out.  While I don’t have the arm strength to push hard enough into the wall for the chisel to work, I can leverage my weight into the thing and melt that stuff away.  Note:  This leverage thing gets very interesting when working on a ladder.

 
On Sunday it was my plan to finish this chimney out, clean up, and be done until next week.  Well, I suppose that badassery is genetic because my brother came out to play for a while and knocked out the entire other chimney in an afternoon.  This is after we figured out (the hard way) that two people working on one chimney at the same time:  one chiseling, one wire brushing, is really, really painful.  As in flying bits of plaster shrapnel in the face painful.  So, he retreated to chimney #2.  See below:

I stayed upstairs and worked on chiseling the remaining brick then cleaning it with a cupped wire brush attachment on an angle grinder.  The top part of the chimney took way longer, seeing as how I had to position the ladder just right in order to get the right leverage on the chisel.    Overall, it was a relatively easy job.  Having help definitely made things go faster, as well as our cool-as-hell-contractor who (I hope) didn’t mind cleaning up after us.  I don’t think my arms could have handled hauling all that plaster downstairs.  Now all that’s left to do is finish the wire brushing and fine finish work!

Finally at long last, 4 weeks later than we thought we’d get it, WE HAVE A BUILDING PERMIT!!
(pertinent info hidden to protect the innocent, heh)

This is a huge relief, mainly because the architect in Kate knows all of the stuff that can possibly go down when you have the BBI involved in a project.  The main worries were that they would a) make us put in a sprinkler system, or b) make us have one of the units be handicap accessible.  We were pretty sure we had a good case as to why we didn’t have to do these things  (it turns out we were right).  We were still definitely holding our breath there for a while.  Phew.

For any of you in Pittsburgh planning a renovation project, know that they are apparently slammed at the BBI offices this spring. Our permit application was down there for 7 weeks (!!) This is about double the normal time, so… yeah.  Build that into your schedules, people!  In light of this, we’re already working on the drawings for the “What-Have-I-Done?-Project-No-2.”  Bet you can’t wait to see what that is….  =)

Now that we’re back and running over here at the lofts, we’ll also be getting back to the weekly progress updates… The first of which will include a very, very sparkly basement!

For weeks 4 and 5 we’ve had to ease up Old Nelly and slow down a bit…  we’re still waiting on our Building Permit from the good old City of Pittsburgh BBI.  Unfortunately we’ve done everything we can without it so until we get that permit, things are on pause over here.

In the meantime, we made the final selection on finishes…  below are samples of the flooring and cabinets.  Tile in the bathrooms will be a slate color.  Sorry, no samples of that one.  You’ll have to wait and be surprised!

Hang with us (and that damn city engineer), we plan to be back at it next week.  The first unit should be ready in a month or so, which is very exciting!

This week we have little to report in the visually stunning category…  as the focus was mostly plumbing and HVAC stuff.  The plumber spent a good part of the week roughing in all the plumbing for the bathrooms, as the kitchens were pretty much wrapped up last week.  Then came the lovely task of tying all that in to the main lines.

We knew that although the building’s structure and heating systems were in pretty decent shape, the plumbing was a mess.  The old owner had let the lines freeze, so many of them were ruptured.  There are actually accounts from the neighbors of ice waterfalls going down the outside of the building at one point!  Wow.  So we already knew that most of the water lines were going to have to be replaced.  What we didn’t know was that the plumbing work that had been done on the building was pretty shoddy.

Luckily it seems even though we hadn’t planned for all of this, our plumber did (whew).  Of the four drains in the basement, only two of them even take water.  And one of those was about 75% blocked, because the guy who installed it used pipe that was about half the size it should be.  You can see the floor dug up below, as they are replacing that pipe with one of the correct size.  At some point there was a sighting of The Creature From the Black Lagoon when our plumber tried running water through one of these drains.  We didn’t have the pleasure of witnessing this, but the lingering smell is enough.  Yuck.

The part of the plumbing system that’s in great shape is the original stuff.  The toilets have gigantic cast iron pipes that have definitely withstood the test of time.  We were able to keep that system, apart from having to put on new fittings for the toilets.  You can see here the plumber soldering them on.  Apparently this is a big deal because nobody does this anymore, now that all the new stuff is built with PVC.  It’s a good thing our plumber’s got those oldskool skills.

Here you can see the studio apartment’s bathroom all ready with toilet and tub:

Don’t worry though, it wasn’t ALL boring utilitarian stuff this week.  Remember the debate we had about the studio apartment kitchen, the options A,B,C… whether or not to keep the pantry?  Well we kept it and made good progress this week sanding and repairing it so that it will actually work!

And do you remember the results of the Social Media Design Review about whether or not to loft the bedroom in the First Floor Apartment?  We decided not to, and instead to have a “normal” bedroom with a large set of pocket doors opening onto the living/kitchen area.  This week the walls for that were framed in.  This apartment is going to be so cool with its super-high ceilings!

And that’s it for week #3…  stay tuned to see whether or not that plumber can keep The Creature at bay.  And also for some finish work that’s soon to come (can’t believe how fast it’s all going!)

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  =)

We hit week 1 (of 17) full speed ahead.  This week the contractor had planned to clean up the debris we had left from doing the first pass of demo, and finish off the rest of the demo work that had to be done.  Here’s the photo recap:

Second Floor Bedroom cleaned out, brick exposed on the chimney, and back wall.  We had originally intended to just repair the existing plaster on this wall but have since decided otherwise.  The fire escape is attached to the exterior of this wall.  To repair the escape, we had to expose the anchor points from the interior- when we did this, the plaster pretty much flaked off so we went with it.  Looks great!

 

The big reveal (thought we were done with the fun reveals didn’t you?)  was the 3rd Floor small bedroom.  In exposing the metal anchors for that same fire escape, we took out the back wall of the closet, making it about a foot deeper.  While we were at it, we decided to expose the chimney in this room as well.  It went from being a “meh” room to one of my favorites.  To compare, see the picture below of the 2nd Floor Bedroom that is almost identical.  We haven’t done any brick exposing in there… yet.

 

The final thing we did was put OSB underlayment down on top of the existing floor.  It would have been nice to use the existing floors, but they were in pretty bad shape- really thin, holes in many places, and tons of half-assed patches.  Now we’ll have a solid floor to put the new wood laminate down on, and not to mention better sound dampening between units.

That pretty much wraps up Week 1:17.  We’re really excited to have found a great contractor and to have the project fully underway.  It’s looking like we’ve got some really great spaces on our hands- that are getting even cooler.  Stay tuned for Week 2!