We are lucky enough to have a basement under the ground floor which is a luxury of space not afforded to most in NYC. A number of people have commented it’s large enough to be its own rental but since we are project hobbyists and frequent DIYers we opted for more space over more money.
Butler’s Pantry
Between the guest room and the dining room was a large walk in closet with a wall in the middle. Since the guest room already had two other closets this space seemed better suited as a walk through pantry. First we gutted the space and removed the dividing wall. There were already doors at either…
Kitchen Overhaul
The kitchen was going to be one of the largest projects in the renovation with wall changes, plumbing reroutes, new floors and cabinets the works. This meant replenishing our cash reserves after the last one and mostly what you’re looking at is my annual bonus turned into physical things. ;o) Firstly it was important…
Main Kitchen – Before shots
Our Brownstone is old enough to have been designed for servant’s quarters which made for awesomely easy partitioning of the rental floor but means that actually they have the main kitchen for the house. Victorian bedrooms were often created with a matched sitting room attached to the main bed chamber and all the bedrooms in…
Rental floor – After professional shots
Lifegoal achieved: Landlords. Here you can see the delightful professional shots made by Corcoran to advertise the apartment. Bathroom we’ve already seen, but here’s more of the main open plan kitchen / dining / living space Under the deck there’s an open terrace space for the rental leading into the backyard. The kitchen looks so…
Rental Bathroom
One good bathroom deserves another! We completely rehauled the bathroom including new pipes and walls so we were able to start fresh! We started with moving the shower frame to the end of the room, this gave us a lot more room to play with for the toilet and sink area and made a lot…
Upstairs Bathroom Renovation
Last post we showed the process of demolishing the bathroom back to the studs. Once we had the floor and walls away we were able to replace a lot of the underlying infrastructure – new pipes, new wiring and the ability to move the main structures in the room. Here you can see where we’ve…
Demolishing the upstairs bathroom
The top floor bathroom was a real DIY mess; bright blue 70s paint was dabbed with less than what you might call care. New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos On top of that the previous owner’s obsession with partitions was most obvious in this room. Pieces of furniture had been laid with…
Building the Deck
When we bought the house there was a covered patio jutting out of the ground floor. It was built cheaply and while it offered some protection from the cold during Winter it wasn’t a pleasant place to sit. New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos Since we knew that we wanted to make…
Installing the windows
One day I asked Scott to close the windows and he said he already had. At that point we realised the windows were not going to cut it through the cold New York winter. New photo by Amaya Booker (Illdrinn) / Google Photos We were going to need double glazed windows with better seals if…