Let There Be... Air

T-minus two weeks... from completion. Appliances come Tomorrow.

Odd Stonehenge in Boerum Hill... or Shutters!

Our shutters have been awoken from their slumber, sanded and painted. We'll need to be sure the louvers work and are not painted shut, but we're extremely excited. Any improvement with these is a bonus.

Kitchen Progress...

We love our new ceiling lights. They are beautiful little things. We can't wait to see them light up. The counter still has work to go though... appliances will fill in the gap at the end of the week.

One of the more difficult parts is coming soon, however, as the little little details become important to us and we will have to be vigilant to stay on top of them. We are confident our contractor will be on top of them for us.

Its Marble

We now know its marble. With the half inch of many layers of paint we had no idea. But we are thrilled with how the living room mantel turned out after four or five days of stripping and scraping, and other elbow grease. We're still debating whether we should paint the firebox black. Just not sure whether we like the yellow fire brick or not.

Kitchen Takes (Almost) Form!!

The Ikea cabinets starting to take shape in the kitchen. Appliances due in a week or so.

Various

We'll upgrade and enclose the cellar half bath at some point, but at the moment, discretion is not what one can enjoy. The concrete out front covers the water main holes. The shutters are being sanded and primed, and we believe they'll be back in functional order soon. The windows are getting some treatment, such as new glass.

Bath Update

The Different Phases of Mantel

The kitchen mantel started painted a rough and unattractive white, clearly many coats. We have been determined to try to get to the original material underneath, and here you see the progress. We thought, at the "black" stage, that we would not be successful, as the marble siims to be quite porous and took to the black paint. Lucky for us, we might be successful getting to the mostly-original matieral.

Priming and Stripping

So the priming of the bedroom floor has begun... in fact, it might be almost finished as the contractor now wants the colors we'll be using. We need to do some deciding.

So at the same time as the priming upstairs, downstairs on the parlor floor the fireplace mantels and facades are being stripped of their heinous lead paint. Well, the verdict is not in yet, but it looks likely that one mantel will be successfully stripped. And it looks just as likely that the other one will not be so successful. It seems that our intrepid previous owner(s) did a tremendous job of painting a porous marble with a seemingly black paint that was effectively absorbed by the marble. Thereby destroying it. So, we will likely have to paint it. Which means, by extention, that in a year or so we may be hunting for a salvage mantel to replace the one that did not get successfully stripped. C'est la vie.

Tub, Radiators and a Bonus

We got a bonus in the cellar when after we decided to hold off on the cellar half bath, the contractor apparently needed to build a wall anyway! Evidently the plumber couldn't run his pipes properly without it. Lucky us.

So we have finally gotten the bedroom floor tub in. This is after the first tub was not worthy. Apparently the 'flange' was not in evidence. The flange that was needed by the contractor to prevent leakage. Which we all know will happen if you don't have the flange. So now we have a flange.

Possible Tile, Replacement Tub and...

our Ikea cabinets for the kitchen, as well as a new water main. (refer to the previous photos where the street had been ripped up then patched.) We're disappointed we didn't get to see the replacement in action.

Water Main Replacement, Shutters, and Moldings

We apologize for not being as prolific with the prose lately, but we hope the pictures make up for some lack of writing ability...

Replacement Tin Ceiling, Doors, Etc

Doors, Spigot, Hearth

Its a Great Parlor

Sorry for the delay... we were having some trouble logging into our Blogger account, which delayed these postings by a day or two...

So when we returned, we now have pocket doors which hang and which glide beautifully...