Our Cellar Is Getting Pretty Colorful

Posted on January 12, 2012 by BeatingUpwind

The house has been so drab for so long it’s sorta interesting to see color come in…

They’re using “green board” in the cellar. Even though the cellar is pretty dry that should help avoid mold. The color of the green board is pretty dramatic especially when it’s put against pink fiberglass insulation…

The tenant’s laundry room has become really small and dark since the green board went in – but honestly how many people in Manhattan have a proper laundry room? And it will get painted an off-white and it will get lit better, which should make it seem a little bigger.

I took the picture above after dark – so there’s no light coming in the windows – the dim light just makes the color seem all that more dramatic. In reality that’s not what we’re shooting for at all. We want the cellar area to be fairly light bright and warm. Well have an off-white on the walls and the floor will be a fake wood tile.

Tile that looks like wood is sorta the new thing in tile. It used to be pretty expensive – $12-15/sq. ft., but the price has dropped a lot as the competition kicks in. After all, it’s just another pattern on a ceramic tile – there really isn’t all that different or special. We were able to get ours for $5.75/sq. ft. (including special shipping) from Italian Tile NYC in Brooklyn. They were by far the least expensive option. The others were coming in around the $7/sq. ft. mark, maybe a little lower. Mind you, we got 12″x24″ tile and wood tile really should be done in planks (e.g. 2″x18″, 3″x36″, 4″x36″, 6″x48″, etc) – so it’s not going to be a perfect wood effect. But that would have cost more and at 350 square feet on a rental unit we didn’t want to spend more than we had to.

Planking is another of the new trends in tile. It’s sorta cool actually and only a few companies are offering plank-like sizes (Nemo seems to be the best source in NYC for planked tile). But I think in a year or two the price of planked tile will come down as well – though more sizes adds more distribution and stocking costs.

The whole fake wood floor idea was something I strongly favored from the get go. Dan was pretty reluctant initially but finally we got to the point where he thought it might be OK, the price was right, and we couldn’t find anything better – so we went for it. The reason why I wanted a fake wood floor was because it’s a cellar area so I wanted to go overboard on not making it feel like a cellar. You can’t put a real wood floor in a cellar – it will buckle with the moisture. Laminate floors sorta look like wood, but they sorta look like plastic as well. To me, tiles feel cold. I was pretty picky about the tone and warmth of the tile. We found one that seemed pretty much what we wanted, but it seemed a little dull. The “wood” we went with was the same tone and warmth but would be more visually interesting. Dan’s still a little apprehensive about the choice – so fingers crossed 🙂

Another interesting view color-wise was the green-board for the rental bathroom leaned up against the exposed brick wall in the bedroom. It’s a bit Christmas-like… But in general it’s just good to see color in the house.

There’s one other type of drywall going in the front part of the cellar – the boiler room and the meter/storage room. It’s an outdoor drywall that’s made for exterior ceilings (porches, etc.) It’s dark gray…

I really like the color of that – goes well with the stone walls. We may actually paint the ceiling the same color after it gets taped and mudded.

Drywall Coming Along

Posted on January 8, 2012 by BeatingUpwind

In the past week the contractor (and his sub-contractor) made good progress on drywall. 95% of the drywall is up now. As you can see in the pictures below, much of it is taped and mudded (though more coats may be necessary).

Above you see the Den on the master bedroom floor, below is Dan’s dirty studio on the top floor…

And here’s green board up in the wet studio…

We’ve also picked out the last bit of tile this week (though there’s still a little ordering to be done). I’m excited about the tile choices… We wound up going all over to find tile we liked at a price that was in our budget – but more about that later.

Tuesday the wood floor guy will resume work, and the plumber got back to work a little bit this week and should get more done next week – though there is a delay with the sprinkler PAA – and that has to be complete before we can get the sign off and get heat and water meters (delays, delays – but luckily the weather is warm and it’s not all that critical).

I’m still not exactly sure when they’ll be done. I’d like it to be in the next 4 to 6 weeks, but our architect told us 3 months today. I really just want things to be done and wish I could quickly fast forward to the end.

The Soundproofing Challenge

Posted on January 1, 2012 by BeatingUpwind

The other day someone asked me what I would do differently if I had it to do over again. I gave a few examples (the biggest being to get water and electricity up and running before you start construction), but I’d add a better soundproofing strategy to that list. In our case it’s mostly an issue between the two units, though we are a bit disappointed in how you can hear footsteps on the floor above you in our unit. We’re scrambling to try to come up with a better solution for between the two units. In hindsight it’s something we should have taken more time to consider during the planning phase.

The main issue is that our living room is on top of our tenant’s bedroom. If we don’t take soundproofing seriously we’re going to have a very unhappy tenant every time we have people over for dinner or a party.

The first thing we did was an $800 change order to upgrade from fiberglass batt soundproofing to open cell foam soundproofing between the two units. I know there’s some debate about which is better. The fiberglass folks say fiberglass is better, the foam folks say foam is better. Fiberglass apparently has a better (or similar) STC rating (Sound Transmission Control), but open cell foam is supposed to be good at blocking mid-range frequencies like voices. But, that said, we’ve noticed you can still hear voices through the open cell foam – which worries us. Mind you, the ceiling/floor isn’t finished – it’s just a plywood floor subfloor plus the 5+ inches of foam at this point, but we figure we need to do more.

The next big thing we’re doing is metal channels that hang perpendicular to the floor joists. Between the joists and the metal channel is sound proof caulking/foam. Here’s a picture of the channels…

You can also see all the open cell foam in the picture above.

The channels screw into the joists on one side and then the sheetrock screws into the channels. Because the channels are just screwed on one side they bounce a little – that bounce is a good thing when it comes to sound.

I’m pretty sure we need to put two layers of 5/8″ drywall on the ceiling since the ceiling has a 1 hour fire rating. So there will be more sound proofing foam between the layers of sheetrock and all the mass of the drywall will really help cut the sound as well.

With any luck our tenant will sleep soundly – even when we’ve got guests over…

Update:

Two layers of 5/8″ drywall have gone in on the ceiling and things are MUCH quieter now. They still need to tape and do the wood floor, but so far voices and footsteps are significantly muffled – though still sorta audible. And the resilient channel does indeed help things. When I walk across the floor with heavy boots Dan could tell when I was over the section with channel.

Lots Of Progress On The Walls

Posted on December 30, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

Despite it being a short week this week, quite a bit has been accomplished and the house once again feels radically different. Our contractor hired a subcontractor for drywall who brought in a big crew – roughly 8 guys. With those 8 on top of the 4 guys who work regularly for our contractor, plus an electrician or two on some days – the house is buzzing.

Pretty much all the drywall is now up in our unit and they’re working on drywall in the rental. There’s plenty of taping and mudding to do, but in just a few short days the house now has proper walls and the rooms are really taking shape. Here’s a few pictures…

Starting at the top – the architect suggested a curved corner in the bulkhead. Our architect’s day job is working for a “starchitect” who’s known for curves – so it just seemed right 😉 If you’re wondering, the big cut out is the sprinkler test station and the little box high on the wall will be the shock sensor in case a thief bangs on a window trying to break in.

bulkhead with curved drywall

In the front of the top floor is Dan’s “gallery” (aka his clean art studio). This room is probably the most interesting in the house. It gets flooded with light from the bulkhead, but also gets northern light from the front windows. Plus the ceiling slopes up to over 12 feet in height at the front. The only downside is climbing to the 4th floor to get there.

gallery with drywall

Going down the stairs – the stairwell between the 3rd and 4th floors is looking more complete… In the next week or so they’ll be painting the steel white and most walls are getting painted white as well. The (white) plexi panels will come at the end of the project. That means when it’s all done the stairwell will be all about white – the only color will be the white oak floors.

stairwell drywall

Below the gallery is the den on our master bedroom floor (picture below). This is where we’ll watch TV (we’re not going to put a TV in the living room). We’ve wired the room for surround sound – something I’ve wanted for a long time, but haven’t (yet) spent the money to have. What you’re looking at in the picture below will be a closet with a clerestory window above. Not a lot of light comes through there, but some does. You can see the other side of the clerestory window in the stairwell picture above.

den with drywall

The back side of the 3rd floor is master bedroom. The alcove you see in the picture below is a closet. The room feels really big, but it is a pretty big room – since we went with smaller bathrooms and bigger bedrooms.

master bedroom drywall

Skipping the 2nd floor (which is looking like the other floors), the parlor floor is coming along too… Below is what the living room looks like at this point. The lines on the ceiling are faux-recessed track lighting. We’re using these really thin track lights throughout the house and on the parlor floor we sorta recessed them so they’re a bit more minimal. The metal on either side of them are J-beads – so that will get covered with mud – it won’t stay metallic.

living room drywall

The same crew that’s sheetrocking will be painting – so that should hurry things along quite a bit since there are so many of them. At this rate they might be pretty much finished by the end of January.

No Heat Needed

Posted on December 27, 2011 by BeatingUpwind

I went to the house rather early yesterday morning – at about 7:45, just after the sun came up. I walked into the house and it was pretty warm inside despite the fact that it was 42 degrees and windy outside and we don’t have heat in our building yet. Given that the sun had just come up the warmth wasn’t due to solar heat gain either…

Besides a few light bulbs on, and a small heater down in the uninsulated part of the cellar (to keep the pipes from freezing) there wasn’t much the the way of heat sources, yet the house was still warm. It was a little on the chilly side, but we like that – that’s pretty much how we want to keep the house during the winter months. Cold enough to warrant wearing a light sweater or hoodie, but not so cold that our hands get cold.

It appears the heat was coming from the building next to ours – 166 West 123. Despite the fact that 166 is sandwiched between two cold, unheated shells it remarkably has no insulation in the party walls. I can’t imagine what their heating bills must look like – they’re radiating so much heat that it’s enough to keep multiple buildings warm. All the buildings next to them have to do is insulate well and trap 166’s heat.

I would feel guilty about having our neighbor heating our building for us but it’s costing them less than when our building was open to the elements and the party wall was freezing cold. The core principles of conservation are Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. To that end we’ve Reduced our neighbor’s energy usage, and Reused their radiated heat. It’s pretty much a win-win.

Even without a sweater I found the temperature yesterday to be pretty comfortable. What that means is that we probably won’t need to turn the heat on in our building until it gets down into the 30s and even then it doesn’t look like we’ll need much heat.

The moral of the story is closed cell foam is pretty incredible – and while it’s a bit more expensive upfront, it’ll save us far more money than it cost.

UPDATE:

It’s gotten colder since I wrote the post and I’ve figured out the house is comfortable down to roughly freezing. I was comfortable at 35 degrees outside with a 10 mph wind, but it was maybe 5 degrees too cold when it was 27 outside with a 14 mph wind. Even at 27 out the temperature wasn’t that bad. A hoodie or sweater would have made it comfortable enough except hands would have been a bit cold. And as a temperature for sleeping – it could even get colder inside with a proper down or wool blanket.

UPDATE #2

Today we finally got thermometers. The temperature outside was 32 degrees but inside it was 51 degrees on the parlor floor (the coldest part of our unit) and 52 degrees near the window in the cellar of the rental unit (the coldest part of the rental unit). That’s pretty sweet – we get 20 degrees of heat off light bulbs and from the warm wall with the neighbor. We also noticed at lower temperatures the heat gained is even more.

I think I’m going to be pretty comfortable with the house set to the high 50s during the day and the high 40s at night. That means we won’t need to turn on the heat until we’re in the high 30s (day) or below freezing (night). We’ll see what temperature we can get away with when we actually move in…