We stopped by the house yesterday and noticed the cellar storage area now has walls. We have this unusual arrangement where there are two entrances under the stoop – one to the cellar and one to the basement/garden apartment. That means we can have a storage area and a utility room in the cellar and not have to go through the tenant’s apartment to get to them.

The boiler/utility room feels huge – probably far bigger than it needs to be. The storage area feels a bit small – I probably should have pushed the architect to take space from the boiler room and given it to the storage room, but that is what it is… Unfortunately the utility/boiler room is too far from the lot line to have things like sprinkler control valves – they’re (unfortunately) going in the “vault” area (the area with a vaulted brick ceiling under the “front yard”).

Here’s a picture looking back. That’s the new cinder block wall between our storage area and the boiler/utility room.

We’re leaving the rock walls (foundation) pretty much as they are – not framing them out or anything. That will make it a bit chilly down there in the winter. The wall to the right is actually has air on the other side since the apartment building next door has a below-grade alley way.

There’s graffiti on the rock foundations. In the boiler room there’s a stick figure of a person. To the left in the picture above and to the right in the picture below there’s the words “NO DOPE” – from back when it was a drug house. I think we’ll leave those – just clean the dirt off gently. It’ll be a pretty grungy looking space – but all those layers just give it character. We have to Sheetrock the ceiling (with fireproof Sheetrock). We’re thinking of painting it medium to dark gray – the space is just too grungy for a white ceiling.

And here’s a picture looking forward – you can see how the stairs come down into the cellar from outside. (There will be a wall in there soon.)

The door was one thing the architect didn’t quite get right, but the contractor caught the problem. The architect had the door in line with the wall, which would have put it in the middle of the stairs. The contractor caught the problem and said we need 36″ of clear space at the bottom in front of the door. The last two steps are a mess and will be rebuilt. It’s a bit of a spooky space to walk down into, but we’ll have a light at the bottom that’s on a motion sensor.

Here’s an somewhat older picture of the other corner of the room and looking into the vault area. There’s a lot that’s going to be going on there. We’ll have gas and electric meters on those boards (we refused to have them outside the building for aesthetic reasons). Then in the vault room along the wall you see will be this huge contraption for sprinkler control. Hopefully all of that will get installed in the next few weeks.

UPDATE:

Yesterday I realized the wall wasn’t constructed quite right. There’s supposed to be a 4″ concrete dam at the bottom to prevent something like a hot water tank failure from flooding the rest of the cellar. But it’s too late (unless we ask them to tear down the wall and redo it). On the plus side we were able to get a floor drain into that area (which was unexpected), so maybe my fears of flooding aren’t really an issue. We’ll let the architect make the final determination – but I’m guessing no 4″ dam…

UPDATE #2:

The walls are now complete. Here are some pictures… First the new wall and door at the bottom of the stairs to the outside of the building (under the stoop)…

And here you can see the actual staircase…

They reconstructed the bottom three stairs – there were only two originally and we lowered the cellar floor a few inches.

Here’s the completed wall between the storage area and the mechanical/boiler room…

Notice there’s no lip below the door – that entire wall should rest on a 4″ high concrete dam that prevents flooding of the entire basement. We’re now not too concerned – there’s a floor drain in the mechanical room which will prevent any real flooding. If we need to we can put a dam inside the room to keep any leakage from the hot water heaters and boilers from flooding into the rest of the cellar.

We were away for 10 days – up in Toronto visiting friends and family. While we were gone (and in the days since we got back), a number of things have been accomplished.

The Roof

The biggest thing that got accomplished was the roof – it’s now water tight (and looks great)…

You can see there’s a strip there along the side that’s not quite finished and there will be additional pipes coming up through the roof, plus the bulkhead roof needs to be done. At some point they’ll come back and finish off all the little details, but by-and-large it’s done.

The architect was pleasantly surprised – he had spec’d a more traditional, less expensive roof, but the contractor decided to upgrade us to a Kemper system. The Kemper system is a spray-on resin-based roofing system. It’s quite durable and if you put enough layers of it on they’ll give you an no-questions-asked 30 year warranty. Given how expensive it is, we’re just going with the regular number of layers.

The color is light and fairly reflective, but not white or one of the approved EnergyStar colors. NYC’s white roof rule goes into effect next year. I’m not sure whether we’ll be required to have a different color or not. The contractor has said that if DOB cites us for an unapproved color he’ll paint the roof. The gray does mute the yellow-ness of the stucco somewhat. All in all I think it looks pretty good.

What you can’t see is that under the visible roof are two layers of 2″ rigid foam topped with rigid, waterproof board. That means the roof it currently at about R16 – on it’s way to R39+.

After we get the C of O we’ll flesh out the roof into a proper roof deck. We’re still trying to figure out what’s allowed in that respect and how we want it to look. We really want an ipe deck, but while it was legal for a while there, apparently it’s not technically legal (though apparently it’s very resistant to fire).

The Stairs

Stairs have been a bit of a problem. The guy who’s making them does good work, but he’s not big on formal plans – which is a bit of a problem. The architect wanted him to do shop drawings and long story short he started fabricating before the shop drawings were done and then had to rip out his first attempt. Now he’s on his second attempt and it needs some major revisions because there are details he encountered that should have been worked out in the shop drawings. We’re hoping third time’s a charm. Here’s how they look currently…

The reason they’re rusty is because Dan wants the stairs to have a gun metal blue finish. Once they’re installed they’ll need to be sanded down and finished with the gun metal blue (and possibly waxed). It’ll be a pretty big job, but it will look great when it’s done.

Repointing The Rear Façade

As we looked at townhouses before buying ours I frequently saw renovated townhouses that had beautifully restored brick façades on the back. We’re starting to get to that point ourselves. The contractor has put up scaffolding and is chipping off the old stucco and cleaning the brick. Next week he’ll start repointing. We want to have the the same color mortar that was there was there originally – which was slightly yellowish and pinkish. The brickwork in the house is actually really beautiful when it’s clean, so I have high hopes for the back wall.

Other Progress

Electrical and plumbing work continued while we were gone. And we finally got the window order in on Wednesday. I have a feeling windows will be an issue since they could come in pretty late – probably mid-September. The finishing work (floors, Sheetrock, etc.) can’t be done until the house is sealed up.

The thing that’s holding things back right now is sprinkler approval. We were pleasantly surprised when we were on vacation because the DEP approved our new water main connection much earlier than expected (“only” took a month – rather than the expected two months). But the water main contractor won’t proceed until the sprinkler plans are approved. The earliest that can happen is this week. We’re crossing our fingers about that since all the utilities depend on it since ConEd won’t put in gas and electric until after the water main is done.