Wood Floors Are Getting Laid

Posted on December 12, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

The other day the contractor leveled some of the floors in preparation for laying wood floors. Because the subfloors went in before the roof went on they were exposed to a lot and had delaminated a bit here and there, etc. They replaced the worst parts, but where the subfloor was in generally decent shape they just scraped off the top delaminated bits and then put a floor leveling mixture in areas that weren’t quite level (picture below).

Today, the wood floor subcontractor started laying floors…

In the picture above the dark line is tar paper that’s put under the wood to keep it from rubbing against the subfloor and squeaking. To the left of the dark line is wood that’s been nailed down. To the right is wood they’ve organized for nailing down next.

Initially we were going to lay the floors in the other direction – width-wise across the building like this…

We figured that would make the rooms look wider and hence more square. But what we realized was that there’s an inherent flex to the subfloors and the floors would be a lot more solid if the wood flooring ran perpendicular to the joists rather than parallel, so we went with the more traditional length-wise floors – even though the end result will be a bit more bowling alley-ish than we had wanted.

The flooring sub-contractor is starting in the rental unit, then he’ll do the top floor in our unit. Those two areas are using the same type of wood – 3″ select grade flat cut white oak. In the rest of our unit we’ll use a nicer wood – 3″ select grade rift and quarter sawn white oak. But honestly, even the flat cut wood looks pretty good…

Our Electrician Got Fired

Posted on December 12, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Last week we fired our electrician. More precisely our contractor fired his electrical sub-contractor with our permission. The old electrician was a huge mess…

For starters after 6 months he still wasn’t done enough with his work to close up the walls. He dragged his feet at every turn. There was one excuse after another – but at the end of the day things just weren’t getting done.

Second, he put incompetent people on the job who couldn’t read plans. Boxes for hanging lights were put where recessed lights were supposed to go. Recessed lights would show up where there clearly was supposed to be a track lights. One day we were standing in the back yard with our architect when one of his guys drilled a hole through the back wall in the wrong location. He had drilled a hole in the right place the day before but had “forgotten” about that hole. The day we were there he looked at an exterior elevation plan, saw there was a motion sensor to the right of a light, so he drilled a hole to the right of the light – but from the interior. Of course, exterior right, should be interior left – but that fact escaped him. Not only were they incompetent but they were slow. The same guy who drilled a hole in the wrong place, generally spent more time out on the sidewalk talking on his phone than he did inside the building doing work (which may have been a good thing given the quality of his work).

Third, the electrician came back to us with a change order that was 27% of his original bid – and he gave it to us at the worst possible time (right when ConEd was about to get the electrical meters in). It wasn’t like much of anything had changed. His excuse was that he hadn’t bothered to actually price the fixtures for our job which were specified in the plans he was given. He just assumed we were doing a “Home Depot renovation”. That one really galled me – it meant that a good electrician, who bothered to do a proper bid, lost the job. And then, as if 27% wasn’t enough, apparently right before he got fired he told our contractor he needed yet another change order – that after working on the job for over 6 months there was something else he “just discovered” that warranted more money – something that was probably clearly spelled out in the plans he was given when he bid the job.

Fourth, other jobs he had with our contractor were going badly. One on Long Island took forever to get inspected and then he got the job passed by chatting up the inspector outside the house for a half hour. By the time they were done with their chat the inspector rushed through the inspection and only checked one thing. In other words, who knows how well the work was done – I wouldn’t put much faith in the inspection. On a restaurant job in the City he again took forever to get the inspection and then didn’t bother to show up. He was supposed to check things over a few days before to make sure he was ready for the inspection, but instead he showed up at 8:30pm the night before, found problems, but because supply houses were closed he couldn’t get what he needed to fix the problems – so he just blew off the inspection. Now the landlord is saying he’s going to sue because things aren’t signed off – it’s been that long…

Fifth, he was impossibly slow getting materials on the job site and then in some cases ordered the wrong things. The transformers for our track lights were a much cheaper brand. Most importantly, we’d been asking him for exterior lights for a month and he kept saying “next week”. For god’s sake – exterior lights are a security issue – how could he drag his feet on something like that?

[UPDATE] Sixth, his work was done so poorly it was actually dangerous. The new electrician discovered that he didn’t ground the electrical system. That’s something the guys from ConEd should have caught – it’s a major safety problem – one of those things you don’t forget unless you’re just really really incompetent.

And lastly, he was costing us money in other ways. For example, the plumber is charging us $700 for moving sprinkler heads that are too close to recessed lights. Had the electrician gotten his work done in a timely manner, the recessed rough-ins would have been there and the plumber would have located the sprinkler heads further away. (If you put a recessed light next to a sprinkler head the heat from the light will set off the sprinkler). But beyond that – we need to close up the walls and electrical is the #1 reason why we can’t right now. Slowing down the job = costing us money.

The good news is that our contractor found an alternate electrician who’s great. He and his guys ask the right questions. It’ll cost us more, but given how how the other electrician would have come back with more and more change orders and cost us money indirectly, it’s probably not that much more in the end. And given that we don’t get the final payment from the bank (and can’t rent the garden apartment) until we have our C of O – the old electrician’s delays could have cost us a lot of money…

The new electrician should be done by the end of the week, which means we can start insulation and closing up walls early next week. Finally!

The Walls Are Closing In!

Posted on December 5, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Keeping up with the renovation has been a full time job lately so my blogging has suffered a bit as a result. There are just so many decisions to make as the contractor is back working full steam ahead now that the house is secure. We’re down to making decisions about finished materials, etc.

Drywall

One welcome development is that drywall started going up a week or so ago. Insulation will be going in soon and the sound insulation in the interior walls will be unfaced and so it needed drywall on one side of the wall to hold it in place. Here’s a few shots of our walls “closing in”…

The character of the stairwell changed a lot once it got four defined walls. I wouldn’t say it’s worse – it’s now it’s own defined space… I should mention that when it’s all done it will be all white – except the exposed brick wall, the old joists we’re reusing between the hallway and the stairs, and the wood floors / stair treads. The steel will be painted white, the walls will be an off-white, and the plexiglass panels on the sides of the stairs will also be white. So it’s got a ways go go – but it’s starting to take shape.

The picture above is the den. It will have a clerestory window at the top of that wall to let a little light in. The room above it will get flooded with light but with the den there will be much less light since the light has to bounce around the stairwell to reach the den.

Doors

The other reason why the house is feeling more complete and defined is because many of the interior doors have been installed…

What you see above is a pocket door (to the left) and a bathroom door (to the right). There’s a delay on the doors in the stairwell ’cause they need to have a 45 min fire rating which requires special fire-treated wood for the frames. (Metal frames wouldn’t work with the aesthetic we’re shooting for).

In case you’re wondering, we debated it and decided to go with painted doors instead of wood doors. They should be less expensive – though priming and painting is nearly as expensive the upgrade for the wood laminate. One thing we are doing is using solid core doors throughout the house – usually 1 3/4″ thick. Only on closets do we go down to 1 3/8″. So the doors will feel nice and solid.

The Reveals

We’re not going to have window and door mouldings in the house. Instead we’ll have thin reveals around windows and doors, and above the baseboard (which will be flush with the drywall). It’s less material, but more work… And the Z-Beads you need for the reveals are apparently rather expensive.

In the picture above you can see two reveals – one just below the window, and one just above the baseboard. The baseboard looks like more drywall, but it’s not – it’s primed wood. Since we’ll paint the baseboard the same color as the walls (though a bit glossier) the effect will be that we don’t have a baseboard even though we do have one. The reveals will also be painted – they won’t remain the metallic color.

You can also see that they’ve been working on the plumbing for the rads. The copper pipe sticking up through the floor is radiator piping. The boiler got delivered today, so hopefully we’ll have heat soon.

European Fixtures

The radiators remind me… What’s a little funny is the amount of European fixtures we’re installing… The rads are from Switzerland (Runtal), the sinks in our bathrooms are from Italy (Lacava), our plumbing fixtures are from Germany (Grohe + Bosh dishwasher), our windows are Austrian (Gaulhofer), the stairwell lights are Italian (Luce Plan)… And it’s not just the high-end stuff. Our Ikea cabinets are Swedish. And when I bought Electrolux appliances I thought I was going with an American company, but then a friend pointed out that Electrolux is also Swedish. However, if we had a bigger budget we would have gotten Wolf & Sub-Zero – which are American. Even the firewood we’ve been getting (from multiple sources) comes from Europe – that one makes no sense to me at all…

There are some American things going in – plumbing fixtures for the rental are American Standard, our tub and kitchen sinks are Kohler, the boiler (Slant/Fin) and water heaters (AO Smith) will be American, much of the lighting will be American (Juno, Lutron), etc. But the overwhelming trend is European. The question is why don’t more American companies have products that appeal to people like us? It’s not like we’re trying to buy European – it’s just seems to work out that way.

UPDATE

A day or so after I wrote the blog post another wall closed in – the one around the fireplace. It looks very different now – more like a real fireplace…

The objective it to cover that with limestone.

Continuing Progress

Posted on November 22, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

It’s been a busy couple of weeks and lots of progress has been made, but there’s not a whole lot of pictures to show for it…

The plumber’s been busy replacing/repairing the damage done by the thieves. The electrician has been finalizing the wiring, putting in the rough-ins for recessed lights, etc. The contractors’ guys have been finishing off the front façade and working on the carpentry around the windows. They also installed the front doors – though work still needs to be done on them (see pic to the side). The security guys started putting in the alarm system.

There’s also been a lot of activity finalizing quotes from subs. We found a closed cell foam specialist from Connecticut who came in much lower than the NYC-based insulation sub. We’ve nailed down most of the details with the iron work sub – and really like their solution for the security gates – it’ll look much more authentic than what we had planned – they’re going to hand fabricate gates out of wavy thin bars rather than use pre-cast panels.

Hopefully we’ll have pictures of a completed façade soon (though the stoop is still on the to-do list). If things stay on track, insulation will go in the first week of December. After that it’s all downhill – the walls will get closed in right after the insulation then it’s “just” painting, floors, tiling, trim work, and final fixtures. It feels like it really could get done sometime in January – though we’ll have to wait until about March when it gets warm again to finish off the stoop – but that sorta has to be done last so the workers traipsing in and out of the house don’t destroy the finish on the stair treads.

We also went to Ikea this past weekend and purchased the kitchens before their 20% sale ended (saved over $2,000), and went to Brooklyn and saw our favorite appliance guy (Irv @ Drimmers) and got all the appliances figured out.

It’s all finally falling into place… It feels good to see everything coming together. 🙂 I just can’t wait for it to be done – the whole process is rather exhausting…

The Security System Goes In

Posted on November 22, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

This past Friday we finally got an alarm system in, but it’s not complete, so we’re still staying there. The security sub contractor will be back on Wednesday – at that point we’ll have break/shock/open sensors on all accessible windows and doors. There are also motion detectors in strategic locations. And we’re putting sirens inside and out. I want to wake up the neighbors if we’re getting robbed 😉 On top of all that we’re putting redundant smoke detectors in that are tied into the security monitoring company – so they know if a fire is happening in the house, and there will be a flood sensor in the cellar in case the sewer backs up.

The shock sensors are sorta cool. If someone even bangs into the window the alarm will go off – they don’t have to break the window. Given that we have “smash proof” glass on many of our accessible windows – that works well. And one shock sensor can cover a bunch of windows. Apparently it even senses shocks elsewhere in the house – say if you drop a glass and break it.

There’s also security cameras all over the house. Four are in already and when we’re done there will be a total of seven cameras – three on the front, two on the back and two on the roof. They’re infrared / see-in-the-dark cameras. Here’s a shot of the monitor screen taken after dark…

You can see a lot more detail when you stand next to the monitor – the picture doesn’t do it justice. But what you see there is that the cameras go into infrared mode at dark – the grayscale images. The back yard has so much light from the lights on the building next door that it stays in daytime/color mode. It’s sorta amazing how much detail you can see even at night – the infrared really works well.

It’s a DVR system, so the other night the outside motion sensor went off and I was able to go to the monitoring system and look at what was going on just before the alarm went off. Turns out a rat got into the garbage and the movement of the rat set off the alarm. It was sorta funny – the infrared camera picked up his beady little eyes…

The other cool thing is that we can see the cameras using an app on our iPhones and iPads. So when Dan is there at night he brings up the app on his iPad and when a motion sensor goes off, the first thing he does is start up his iPad and see what’s going on – but we can do that when we’re away from the house as well. We can also share access to the cameras with neighbors and even NYPD (if they want to see what’s going on).

The one sorta stupid thing about the security system is how it communicates to the monitoring company – it requires a phone call. We have Internet access in the house now, but Honeywell hasn’t come up with an Internet-based protocol for security systems, which is completely lame – it’s 2011 already – everything else is Internet-based. So I figured I’d get another Vonage box – but no – that’s not sufficient – the Vonage signal isn’t strong enough. You either need to go with Verizon or Time Warner – that adds at least $30/mo to the cost. HOWEVER, there’s a cellular option you can choose – costs about $300 – and it has no (additional) monthly fee. So that’s what we’re going with. Unfortunately – two units = two cellular antennas – the units can’t share an antenna.

They say your house is your castle. I never really thought about it until now – but castles need defenses – and that’s where the security system comes into play. Since moving to NYC I’ve always lived in apartment buildings and never really gave too much thought to security. The robberies a few weeks ago changed that but the security system levels the playing field.