done in six months...

Demolition has begun

Demolition on the 2nd floor bathroom has finally begun! The guys have been so wonderful about saving as much of the wall tile as possible.* Most of the tiles are off, the plaster underneath is getting chipped away, and next comes removing the steel cage underportion that lines the entire bathroom. Below are some in-progress pictures, and "before" pictures can be seen to the left, in the link titled "Bathroom - 2nd Floor":

*I recently found a box of this tile from the 1930s in the cellar - it's in perfect condition, made by the Robertson Tile Company in Trenton, NJ. The manufacturer is stamped on the back, along with the following: Incised Planatile Series, Airport, Patent Applied For. Looking this tile manufacturer up on antique tile sites showed that the tile might be worth quite a bit. We're saving as much as possible, and will probably reincorporate it into part of the house and sell the rest.

Bathroom is on the calendar

Demolition on the second floor bathroom begins on Monday, October 25th!

Tile for this bathroom has been ordered from Ann Sacks - it's so beautiful! Here's a picture of the samples they gave us:

The flooring will be in the woven dogbone-style white and charcoal gray with a gray grout. One wall will have white subway tile up to chair rail height. The opposite wall (with the sink and toilet) and the wall with the hall door will have dark brown stained wood wainscoting up to chair rail height. Inside the shower stall, the flooring will be the ming green marble bricks. This will also cover the custom bench that will sit under the window in the shower stall. The green glass tile will line the entire shower stall, and also be used to create built-in cubbies in the shower walls (to hold shampoo, etc.). I think that the combination of dark wood, white tile, chrome and white porcelein fixtures, and a light green glass will meld together perfectly to create a vintage look with modern ammenities.

We still need to make a decision on the fixtures this week. Here are pictures of what we are leaning toward. Both are from Vintage Tub & Bath.

St. Thomas Creations Nouveau Console Sink with Chrome Legs:

St. Thomas Creations Richmond Round Front Toilet:

I'm having a heck of a time figuring out how to use the frame (rechrome? replace?) 2nd floor shower door so we can reincorporate it into the new bathroom. Here's a detail of the top chromed part of the shower door (click photo for larger pic and more details):

Dave is leaning toward only salvaging the glass out of the shower door and going to an all-new frame that will match up with the glass over the half wall portion of the shower stall. I think the current frame is beautiful, but agree with him that our planned configuration for the shower stallmakes reusing the frame a little difficult. We'll see. I'm on my way now to visit a glass artist to see what she thinks.

Blog update: new "before" photos have been added - click links on the sidebar to see pictures of the Front Exterior, 2nd Floor Bathroom, 3rd Floor Bathroom, and the 2nd Floor Bedrooms.

Central A/C ordered

Just in time for Fall....we have central air conditioning being installed. :-) The current arrangement of these intra-wall units look like this, one on each floor of the house:

click image for more details

The air conditioning system that we chose is a combination of a ductless split system from Mitsubishi for the kitchen/parlor level and a duct system with a compressor located on the roof for the second and third floors. The ducts will run from the roof through the center closet areas, with registers and returns located in the interior wall, one facing the room in the back of the house and the other facing the room in the front of the house. In addition, flexible ductwork can be run along the crawl space above the top floor and dropped into the top floor bathroom. The second floor bathroom will be demolished in the next month, so that once the ceiling is opened up the ductwork can be run from the main shaft then split off between the ceiling and floor, popping out once again in the ceiling of the second floor bathroom. In choosing a duct a/c system for the top two floors we compromise a small amount of closet space in the top floor - about 1 square foot of the corner of one closet will be lost in accommodating the duct running between these floors.

The advantage of not using a completely ductless split system throughout the house (aside from greater reliability and less rumored repairs) is that it is much cheaper - less than half the cost of installing ductless splits on all three floors. With our savings we have decided to upgrade to a higher energy efficiency ratings on both compressors (the ductless and the duct one), from a rating of 10 seer to 12 seer.

Before we can actually have the sytem installed, though, we have a little prep work that needs attention. First, the electical system for the entire house must be juiced up from the current 125 amp to at least a 200 amp. Second, the new central panel has to be enlarged to accommodate some safety switches. Third, we need to run electricity up to the roof and to the backyard so that the compressors have power. Fourth, we need to have a masonry company remove the current intra-wall units and repair both the exterior and interior walls.

The electrical work will hopefully be completed in the next 10-14 days, and the masonry will be completed in this same timeframe. The man who recently repaired the front stoop will repair the back exterior walls. When I asked him for a price quote he mentioned to me that he was the one who installed the wall a/c units over 10 years ago for the previous owner. I joked that will all the work he's done on the house, he has as much claim to it as we do. It's nice to find people in the neighborhood who have a history of working on this house. We have been very impressed with not only the quality of work of the local craftsmen, but also with the pride in which they take in their finished products. We look forward to seeing the final result within the next month.