Dan and I were in the Bronx today over at Gateway Plaza and we saw the most bizarre thing – Applebee’s had FAKE customers sitting at the tables by the window…
That’s right, they took their prime real estate – the window seats – and put a bunch of mannequins in chairs sitting at tables “having a good time”. It was just bizarre. Here is a close up of three of the Applebee’s “customers”…
That’s just sorta sad, and kinda disturbing/freaky…
Three things in the past week drove home what Dan and I have known for a while… A good architect makes a huge difference.
A real estate client of mine is bidding on a gut-renovated house that’s been on the market for nearly 2 years. It hasn’t sold because, as my client describes it, the renovation is “competent” (solidly built), but it’s just a “step above rental grade”. When it went on the market it was priced up with the high end properties that are nearby. But those high end properties are in a desirable landmark district and often have over-the-top renovations. The bottom line with the house my client is biding on is that people aren’t making an emotional connection with the house in part because it’s “just OK”. Without that emotional connection people aren’t willing to bid anywhere near the asking price.
Similar to that experience I went through a place in South Harlem with another client. The neighborhood and block could support a $2.5M+ sale, but the person that renovated it did a Home Depot renovation – it was also competent and solidly built, but like the first house, there were a lot of odd architectural choices (actually it was worse than the first house). The use of space was pretty bad with lots of wasted square footage. The bottom like was that the place didn’t feel special – but they the asking price was nearly $2 million.
It hasn’t been all bad this week though. We sat down with some neighbors for brunch and they showed us the plans for the townhouse they bought almost a year ago. I think they were a bit scared to show us the plans because the first time the showed us plans months ago we didn’t have much of anything good to say about what we saw. The architect had small, oddly shaped rooms, an absurd amount of closet/storage space, and the architect wasted a lot of their square footage on hallways. They fired that architect (thank god), and have been working with another architect – Victor Ruiz. Victor is leaps and bounds above their first architect. His plans for their place are really pretty fascinating and wonderful.
The moral of the story is that there’s something to be said for houses that people make emotional connections with. We saw it in action when we sold our coop. When we renovated we had put in a rather expensive Poliform kitchen – complete with an integrated Sub Zero and a Wolf range. People loved that apartment and it sold fairly quickly and for a good price – despite the fact that the market had crashed just a year before. In fact our sale is still the high water mark in that coop for post-recession 2 bedroom sales.
But emotional connections like that don’t happen by accident – they take a lot of planning that starts with a great architect. I’d almost go as far as asking prospective architects for sales histories – post recession $$/sq. ft., and time on the market. You might spend a little more hiring a good architect, but the money you spend will come back to you several times over when you sell. Plus, you’ll have a great place to live in the meantime.
Friends are about to start renovations on their South Harlem brownstone. Their place is a total wreck and there aren’t enough original details to warrant a renovation with a traditional aesthetic. Still, there are some original details left and instead of just throwing them out they let Demolition Depot come in and rescue what could be rescued – mostly door and window moldings…
Demolition Depot is giving our friends a small store credit with which they hope to buy an “original” front door. Mind you, to actually use whats being rescued you’d need to strip 100 years of lead-based paint – so there’s a reason why the store credit isn’t all that large.
Below is one of the window frames Demolition Depot took out. It’s not all that special (I wonder why they wanted it), but some of the woodwork on the parlor floor was pretty cool and more interesting.
One item Demolition Depot discovered were pocket doors on the parlor floor that our friends didn’t realize were there. I was there when they were taking them out…
Our friends are now thinking they may use those doors as their front doors…
So if you’re doing demolition, don’t just throw everything in a dumpster – if you let a salvage yard rescue what details you have left, it may come in really handy to one of your neighbors. For example we got our front doors from Demolition Depot, and we’ll probably get a bunch of stoop ironwork from them as well.
The Electrician’s guys were in today installing a few fixtures here and there. One place where they put in lights was in the bathroom and the effect was pretty dramatic. On the left is an incandescent bulb, on the right is recessed lights with MR-16s (I think).
(You can click on the images above to see larger versions.)
Here’s an image looking out of the bathroom into the hallway – the lighting makes the brick look pretty great as well…
Looks like a great place to hang art 🙂
The floor guy stained the top floor today. We’re using “5% white” Monocoat which looks a lot like an unfinished floor, but with hints of white in the grain.
We’re bucking the whole dark floor thing which has been popular the past 5+ years. We’re noticing more and more design magazines and new condos featuring light colored floors and we like the look. It’s a very different look than dark floors – should help keep the house light and bright.
However, we’re noticing the white in the stain isn’t having much effect on the parts of the floor that are quartersawn. (Most of our floors are quarter and rift sawn white oak, but the rental and the rooms on the top floor are flat cut). Here is what the flat cut parts look like you can see how the grain has picked up the white…
But on the quartersawn parts there’s less grain, so less white – but there’s still some…
The lighter the color of the piece of wood, the less white seems to get picked up – or perhaps there’s just less of a color difference.
The floor guy had never used Monocoat before and seemed a bit apprehensive about using it. He just couldn’t believe that he was only supposed to use 1 1/2 pints on an entire floor – with other products he uses that much on half a room, but he seems to have done a good job on his first floor.
Monocoat is an oil and it needs to dry out for 36+ hours and then they’ll seal it with 2 coats of Bona Traffic HD. At the end of the project they’ll put two more coats of Bona. Bona Traffic HD is water-based but it has hardeners in it that make it harder and more durable than oil-based sealers. The first two coats will be glossy since the floor guy says glossy is more durable than matte, but the last two coats will be “extra matte” which, combined with the subtle color of the Monocoat, should give the appearance of unfinished wood floors that are actually really well sealed. And unlike oil-based varnish it won’t yellow over time.
Great progress has been made on the bathroom tile in the last week or so – but that’s another blog post…