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.

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…