Getting Up To Date

We're getting chronologically close to the present. On December 7, 2005 I closed on my Long Island house and moved in to the NYC apartment - hence the blow-up bed and little cooler instead of a 'frig, as we were supposed to be done with the renovation before I moved, but having one less home to pay for was more important than doing things in the right order.

The house closing had a nasty surprise. When I walked into the closing (after having packed up or tossed out everything I own), I was told that an old letter from the Town - that said that the garage was legal - was deemed by the same Town to somehow no longer be the case. Rather than adjourn the closing and/or cancel the sale after all those months in contract, I had to put much money into escrow with a 6-month time limit, while attempting to legalize the previously legal and untouched-since-then garage. Turns out this is quite difficult when you're no longer the owner of the property, and the new owner is being as unhelpful as possible. If I fail, he gets a lot of money even though he already got a lot of money off the purchase price specifically to rebuild the garage. Such is what happens when a Town overturns its own paperwork.

Back to chronology: as of today, we have a disk of pretty-much-useless drawings in an obscure program called Microstation and conversions to AutoCAD, scans of printouts that I can modify as needed thanks to Photoshop, and a reduced bank account since we paid for the useless drawings and the cost to produce the CD - ordered before we went to the drop-back-and-punt scan technique.

I'm still trying to get the garage of my old house legalized, despite several setbacks, much money to an expeditor and the Town, and the time limit nearing. Litigation looms.

We still have the wonderful 17.5-year-old cat, and are trying to keep his nails from piercing the inflatable bed by using a mattress cover.

We're still looking for well-qualified yet not incredibly expensive (HA!) licensed contractors to make the Mythical Renovation a reality.

Jay still works too many hours, but is the "go-to" man on many projects so he can't slow down.

When the architectural drawings are submitted to the co-op, and then to the Building Department, and we start getting quotes on actually DOING this renovation, it should get pretty darn interesting.

A Pause to Consider

Very, very, still-ongoing story made very, very short: we hired a friend to do the architectural drawings. She gave us a reasonable quote and we felt things would go swiftly. Do NOT - repeat - do NOT hire friends to do your drawings. They're STILL not completed many months later, and the costs have more than tripled from the original estimate. And even when we get the disk (printouts cost extra, of course), we probably won't use it as there are lingering errors. There, I've said it. You don't have to go through the blow-by-blow with me.

And we're still on a blow-up bed (third one - we have a cat ). And the 'frig and range still don't work (cooler from Sharper Image for 10" of food storage, and I use a match to light the auto-pilot range and still have hair so we're doing OK).

The Pause? Here is comes:

Now that the sketches are done, and we've planned what to do and are starting to estimate costs, a large amount of cortisol is causing heart palpitations (mostly in me - Jay has a more confident view).

• Will the renovations cost too much? (answer: of course!)
• Will they get done right? (answer: depends on the contractor)
• Will we be happier here post-renovation than pre-renovation?
• Are the choices we're making now going to please us in 2 years? 5? 10?
• Can I keep high-end finishes clean without ruining them???
• And more....

Perusing the blogosphere, I came across this article http://propertygrunt.blogspot.com/2006/04/returns-on-renovation.html
which also references a previous article on returns on renovations. Well, Jay is an architect and I trust his vision. Not going to design for the possibility of maybe adhering to some future purchaser's taste. We're designing for what meets Jay's esthetic sense and my comfort level of practicality.

Then again, neither of us is so "out there" design-wise that anything we do would offend ;-) We do expect that the renovations, once done, will make the apartment look and be more interesting....

There are drawings, and there are DRAWINGS....

It seems that putting pencil to paper (with extensive use of rulers, tape measures, protractors , and other tools) doesn't result in a drawing usable for little things like getting a renovation underway. You can't submit detailed sketches of what the space will look like. You have to submit (to whom? who knows?) fully annotated, detailed, official looking drawings done by a draftsperson and signed off by a licensed architect.

Jay was working diligently in the 18 seconds a day he has between being too tired to keep working at his job and falling into bed. He came up with gorgeous ideas about a kitchen that two people can stand in simultaneously and even pass each other (wow!), ways to configure the open space so there's a little room for both of us to use our computers, shelving that doesn't narrow the space but still gives us places for books/objects/stuff, and take our tiny bathrooms and turn them into tiny works of art.

All of this conceptual work doesn't a started renovation make, however, as we still need to hire an architect who has the time (the only thing Jay doesn't have) to turn these sketches into finished drawings suitable for the co-op board and architect, and the Building Department in NYC, and the contractor-to-be-named-later who will have to do the work using these drawings. And do it perfectly, I might add.

We're now in a big rush to get The Renovation underway, because the apartment won't be liveable during the construction - which will take about six months - and we want this whole thing completed before I sell my house and need the apartment to live in.

The hunt for an architect got a bit more interesting than we'd hoped....

Moving In? HA!

So now we own a less-messy (we spent two days there cleaning up, though the cabinet doors still hang precariously) New York City co-op. I still own and live in my house. Jay still owns and lives in his co-op. Land barony is a wonderful concept, but rather expensive.

The sooner we get the renovation underway, the sooner our now-three homes can be pared down to one. But we both have full-time jobs (Jay's is fuller-time than most), and so the planning goes slowly. Weeks, months, and no plans for the changes we've both agreed need to be made. We know we want to get rid of the built-ins that make the space 2' narrower than it really is. But we still need storage - places for electronics in the living room, places for clothing in the bedroom, and places for all the books we can't part with, well, everywhere.

So we start measuring, and Jay goes into architect mode. He can, since he is still entitled to put RA after his name, and his AIA dues are paid up.

First stop: the kitchen. It's currently about 6" wide with no counter space. OK - I exaggerate - it's a little wider, but not enough for two people to pass each other, and you'll get burned by the oven if you try. Well, you would get burned if the oven was working. So Jay gets to work planning to open up the kitchen floorplan juuuust a little, and also create a pass-through. The kitchen was the only truly separate room in the apartment (you're right - the bathrooms are separate, but not considered living space by most), but now it will be part of the completely open loft.

The drawings were taking shape. Actually, they were starting to look quite interesting....