progress of the bedrooms

Bedroom #1: first coat of paint is on. We're still trying to figure out what to do with the flooring. If bedroom #2 was any indication, unlevel floors are not to be taken lightly:

Bedroom two: victory! We're keeping our fingers crossed that the laminate settles the way it's supposed to.  There's a quarter-inch height difference between the two halves of the floor, mostly because the original floor throughout the entire space is a patchwork of different building materials, all in different stages of decay. There's one spot in bedroom two that balloons oddly and walking over it creates an Alice in Wonderland/funhouse mirror sort of effect of feeling like the ground is hurtling toward you. Unpleasant for now, but it looks like the flooring we put in a few days earlier has settled nicely.

Progress, regress, progress: 3 steps forward, 1 step back

We first looked at the space around Valentine's Day.  Less than a month and a half later, progress is finally starting to show (pics to come).

Both bedrooms were primed fully, one bedroom has been painted with bedroom #1 getting its first coat of paint last night.  Bedroom #2 has had some IKEA TUNDRA laminate flooring installed (about 90% complete).  With paint and a floor, it actually looks liveable and serene.

The bathroom plumbers brought a shower pan in (48" unit), and started to move the pedestal sink over.  We're hoping for a working sink and shower by week's end, which leaves us the gritty work of laying down tile to complete it.  We were hoping for a slightly larger shower unit, but every plumber we talked to said avoid the 60" models for fear of cracking them.  Weird how decent plumbers will actually say no to more money if they know things won't work well.

The basement looks great -- all the walls and studs were removed, most of the sewage concerns have been handled by the same plumbers, and powerwashing of the walls continues slowly to remove decades of grime, mold, mildew, and who knows what else.  We found a few minor basement floor water spots where water is coming up from underground.  We're planning on patches these moisture areas ASAP so we can start working out of the space come May 1st.

The plumbers have run the kitchen faucet lines awaiting my purchase of a sink and faucet.  That'll be the last "first step" stage completion for a almost-liveable work-live space: bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen.  We're still unsure what we're doing with the kitchen space (cabinets and appliances aren't cheap), but once we have the bedrooms and bathrooms done, we'll knock the kitchen out in a matter of a week or so.

Now that we're working during the day, the south-facing bedroom sunlight is amazing.  With bedrooms big enough to handle a bed, a couch and work desks for all, we're excited to utilize the space for all our needs: business, lounging and entertainment.  Our hope is to have a grand opening party for friends and family around the second week of June.

Today I'm battling with Comcast to get Internet service installed, but we keep running into problems.  They're saying it's a commercial space (about 3 times as expensive to run Internet to), we're saying it's a live space.  More details to come in a week after their business department reliquishes the space to their residential department.

The printshop business acquired its first two customers last week, and we're hoping to get our first orders this week.  Much excitement there.

everybody likes a picture post.

Just a few pictures Michelle took over the past couple of weeks, since I've fallen majorly behind on documenting everything.

Bathroom wall has been knocked out to make way for the shower. Step two was smashing all the tile out.

Hotel Renard hot springs. Just kidding, it's one of two surprise open-sewage pits in the basement.

I wasn't joking about the mold.

Power-washing seems to do the trick, though.

This will be Brad's room.. some day... eventually..

25,000 hours of priming

also known as "The dark days of which we do not speak."

still working away

Today looks like the last day of priming. We've given up on regular sweeping and have called in the help of sweeping compound for what seems like endless drywall dust and chipped bricks. I'm going to get cracking on the year + of dried-up, caked-on dust and dirt on all of the heating ducts because it's been driving me nuts since day one.

We hope to have the place habitable in two weeks or so. After priming is painting. After painting, we pour the cement and lay down some laminate flooring. Then the shower goes in, then we wrangle with the kitchen that still won't put itself together. New problem: where do we put the range hood? One of those things we just haven't thought of until now.

No one said it, but we were all thinking it: the seven-foot sheet of plywood that covers up what was once the giant hole in the hallway floor is not stable. I thought I was the only one holding my breath every time I walked over it and swearing I'd never walk over it again. But it's been in place for a couple of weeks, and the creaks and sways are not mere settling. We have to get someone on that this week too before (gulp) moving day.

Good news about the basement: we think we'll be able to put in a second bathroom for Brad to save him walking the length of the entire place (and a flight of stairs) to come upstairs.

Bad news about the basement: because it's early and I'm running on six gallons of coffee and some especially greasy hash browns, I don't have the stomach to detail what it is exactly that Jeremiah found in the basement plumbing-wise. Hint: certain things are not meant to be flushed. Especially repeatedly, for years on end. Hint two: I'm no plumber, but sewage pipes are supposed to lead to sewers, right? 

And I guess our dream rooftop garden will be delayed while we seal the roof and find a way to convince one of the tenants that the roof above our bedrooms, while conveniently located, is not an appropriate place for her to let her dogs relieve themselves.  

Our spirits aren't dampened, though. It'll just make for incredible stories months from now when the joint is so amazing that no one will even believe the state in which we found it.

programming note

Updates have been slow because taping/sanding has taken two days longer than we expected. We gathered at the Hotel last night to do some priming and found that we still have a couple of days to go before we can start working. In the mean time, we started "working" on a bottle of Johnny Walker, a cigar, and some dub beats.  It was a productive endeavor.

Also, I guess there was a bit of a mold problem in the basement. And by "bit of a problem," I mean a lifelike scale rendering of the entire galaxy in the form of spores and black junk. The walls have been torn out and we're going to build some new ones after we get some dehumidifiers going.

the Christmas tree...

... wasn't plastic.

photo by meesh.

The process is the product

Rehabbing an old space can be a frustrating experience: walls are never where you want them to be, you always end up one outlet short, and you always wish you had another 200 square feet to get to the perfect layout.  With Hotel Renard, none of these things are true.

We've a great landlord, one who is fast to respond, and shows up instantly when we have questions or needs.  Our neighbors are all great folks, willing to put up with hammers and saws at all hours of the night as we push for full occupancy so we can use the space.

For most ventures, getting things done can take months, even years.  I know personally of retail and food establishments that waited almost a year to get walls built and painted, floors rolled out, and final approval for the landlord.  For Hotel Renard, we could probably do it in 3 weeks, start to finish.

Our co-tenants have been at the space almost every day, pull carpet off the walls, sweeping up dust and garbage, and tearing nails and skin out constantly.  I'm ecstatic that the only people we picked to talked to were the ones who will be working through the process.  As I've always said, you know within 8 minutes if someone should be in your life, and these kind and hard-working folks made the shortlist well shy of the full 8 minutes needed.

Today the last of the drywall went up, with 80# of dust hitting the floor to be swept and vacuumed.  Tomorrow, tape and rock will go up to make the walls ready for priming.  If things keep moving forward, we'll be primed and painted before the week is up.  We visited the space for the first time just 2 weeks ago (exactly), and now we're just weeks from being able to move in to a completely custom built rehab.  That's nothing short of a miracle.

In 2 weeks, we laid out a floor plan, got approval from the landlord, and finished the build out.  In 2 more weeks we'll have paint on the walls, and new flooring down in the living spaces (i.e., bedrooms).  Our co-tenants are lofting their bed up 6 feet (with 11 foot ceilings!) and putting their walk-in closet underneath.  Smart!  After the bedrooms are completely, we'll be moving into the kitchen/living room space to put in flooring, cabinets, and appliances.  The kitchen is a bit of a frustration, because we just don't know how to maximize space while not giving up room we need for 3-5 people who will be regularly eating and living in the spot.

In order to provide a good idea of how to layout the kitchen and living room, I did something unique with our large format printer: I printed actual sized vinyl mock-ups of cabinets, appliances and furniture.  With these, we can move things around and walk the layout to see what works and doesn't work.  Once we have the layout approved by everyone involved, we can go and buy the necessary goods and get them up.  Architects, interior designers, and do-it-your-selfers should learn form this technique as it works much better than a CAD plan that gives you no reference point in reality.  This system works.

We still don't have a set-goal of what we want to do with our gallery space, but that comes last.  Once we can live there, we can work there.  Once we can work there, we can try many different options out until we come up with one that actually works efficiently and profitably for all parties involved.  We're not looking to end the process of building out the space, though.  The process truly is the product we're looking for.

A few things discovered today:

• The roof above the living area is flat and has a wide-and-safe staircase access.  Awesome for plants and flowers.
• The basement has a ton of mildew, requiring a complete teardown of the walls and studs.  This is something we'll do immediately, as well as performing a mildew abatement to try to keep it from reoccurring.
• We found TONS of outlets in the living area hidden behind the carpeting attached to said wall.
• The space is much quieter than I had envisioned, and the furnace works great.

construction begins!

We all got together yesterday to see the space. The walls were going up, so the rest of us busied ourselves with cleaning.

Bedroom 2 is coming together.

Don't get me wrong, wall carpeting has that lovely 1970s church basement charm and everything, but it's not really right for bedroom 1.

Impromptu workspace and an eight-foot privacy wall between the living area and the gallery space.

Privacy wall. This will be the kitchen if we can figure out a fixture layout that works. Why is it tough to find room for a fridge in a 5000-square foot space? I don't know, but we found a way to make it a problem. Go team.

Walls going up in bedroom 2. If you look in the bottom right corner between the beams - that's a hole in the ground that goes straight through to the mirrored half of the basement. The landlord's original plan was to put a staircase in there, but we're building a hall to bedoom 1 instead. So there was a huge gaping hole in the floor all day:

Mulling around and plotting.

marking where the walls will go, 2.27.09