Pocket Door Power

We've got high celings... which is one of the features of our apartment that we love the most. The only catch is that high celings require tall doorways, extra-long window coverings, long lightfixture cords, etcetera, etcetera. And all of those things are hard to come by and often need to be CUSTOM. A scary word when you're on a budget.

Our doors needed to be custom and for a while we tossed and turned, stressing out over how we were going to build pocket doors that are 8'6" ie. 102 INCHES (that's a large door) that wouldn't warp or weigh so much that we couldn't open them. The whole process kind of reminded me of what it's like when I'm trying to find pants that are long enough for to fit my tall frame.

In the end, Garrick came up with a solution with Halit executed on BRILLIANTLY. It required routing (i.e. hollowing out) two pieces of MDF and then gluing them together. Clearly, I'm simplifying. Here are our first two doors. We love them and the glide like butter.

Entrance to the back hallway


And...OH YEAH...look at that door just slide on in


Entry from living room to master bedroom open


And closed

Gettin' Some Nookies

The driving architectural concept behind our apartment design was to start by envisioning the space almost as a solid mass and then carve out middle and create these sort of "punches" into the mass. Do you follow? No worries if you don't. The bottom line is...we've created some customized nooks and they are really coming together.
Check them out:

This is the entry nook--for putting keys, mail, etc.


This will be our built in bar. More details to come...


Build-in desk will live here. How cool is that?


Another view of the entry nook with what I call the MegaNook above. Again, taking suggestions as to what to put up there.

Rub A Dub Dub: Our First Fixture

After much consternation, the tub is installed..

We Got Drywall (Week 8)

Technically it's sheetrock that has started to flesh out the scrawny skeleton of our home. After so many months of using our imaginations, the smooth surfaces enable us to see our place as it will be. We dig it.

BEFORE--The Skeleton


AFTER--Cool Nook
If you have any ideas of what we can put in here--let us know.

 

BEFORE: Entrance to Family Room



AFTER: Stunning

Houseguests!

This weekend we entertained at Chez Hainz! Our first guests were our lovely and ever patient neighbors who were curious to know what was behind all the banging and buzzing. We toured them through the maze of framing and clouds of dust. I think they were most relieved to see that we were putting double sheet rock and lots of insulation in the wall between our house and theirs. :)

Our second set of special guests were Nick's sister and her husband in from Chicago with our utterly adorable nephew. They wasthey scampered like mountain goats up onto the dropped ceiling and checked out the views from above. We hope that they next time they visit, we might actually have walls and even some furniture.

The Words of the Prophet...

...are written on the subway walls.

After spending a large part of our Saturday counting electrical outlets, looking at tiles, worrying about our toilet, we walked into the 14th street station and saw this...

 

Should we just sell now?

Tub O' Troubles (Week 7)

This week, there was some bad news on the bathroom front. Here's a quick run down of things that were stressing us out...

1) Guest bath shower measurements were off. Implication: A tiny little shower (even for New York). I had nightmare visions of my 6'4" father coming to stay and getting stuck in our shower when he bent over to grab the soap.

2) Toilet in master bath placed too close to the wall. Implication: Bruised knees when doing one's business. Not cool.

3) Tub too darn big. Implication: PANIC. Tub is the one thing we ordered that cannot be sent back.

What to do? Serious creative problem solving was required. "The Team" gathered at 8 am on Thursday morning and we put our heads together. Here's what we came up with...

1) So that my Dad won't get stuck in the shower...we've reoriented the studs and expanded the shower a few inches into the "hall" which somewhat disrupts the clean line of the wall, but in this case function triumphed over form. We want our guest to enjoy bathing when they come to stay.

2) We're rotating the toilet 90 degrees so that we can sit on the throne without banging into the wall. This is going to require some plumbing wizardry (and some extra cashola-ugh), but our contractor thinks it's doable. We think it's well worth it.

The Original Plan--Too Cramped For Us Giants


The New Plan--Toilet Faces Out (Please note large pipe that has to be reworked in order for this to happen)


3) And as for the big tub. It's staying. But a door is going. We used to have two entrances to the master bath, now we have one in order to make room for our mighty tub. Every time you make an unanticipated change when renovating, you go through the mental exercise of convincing yourself that this is what you should have done anyway. So we've persuaded ourselves that eliminating the door will give us more privacy. The privacy that we wanted all along. I'm buying it.

The Tub Arrives--Can You Say Ginormus!?!


Unveiled--It's A Beauty, But Too Darn Big


Problem Solved--The tub will live here. Bring on the bubble bath!