Author: Pink Bronwstone

Garden Kitchen

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For the past 20 years, our house has been configured as a lower duplex with a top floor rental. Having lived under people for 95% of our married life, it was time to change that. We decided to reconfigure the Pink Lady into a Garden rental and an owner’s duplex on the parlor and top floors. Since we’re just regular people with regular jobs, we have to carefully prioritize the reno and re-arranging the house is going to have to be done in steps. This decision is not without consequences: a top floor kitchen and dining room next to the bedrooms and a guest bedroom off the living room. The focus right now is to get the apartment finished and rented out.

Basing our Garden apartment reno decisions in our “extensive experience” as tenants, we chose to make the existing kitchen smaller and the living area bigger. We removed the kitchen island, which served the single purpose of housing the cooktop. The previous owners, for some reason, didn’t tile under the counters, so we were left with the impossible task of matching this awful tile (impossible), since replacing the whole floor is cost prohibitive right now.

Kitchen with the island in place

Exhibit A: Why you should always tile under the counters.

It may come as a shock to you that the old kitchen tile cannot be found anymore. The best (!) match we were able to find is this off-white marble-ish tile. It’s not pretty, but it is what it is. For now.

With the island gone, the next task is to purchase a stove. Since the oven and cooktop used to be separate units (such a waste of space), removing one requires the removal of the other. The new range is going in the space currently occupied by the built in oven (which is the absolute smallest oven I have ever seen – I don’t think you can fit a standard size cookie sheet in it).

The built in oven takes up a ton of space, yet this beast is absolutely tiny on the inside.

The fridge is ugly but in good shape, so it will stay. Since it’s a giant white thing, might as well buy a white stove to match – woo hoo!

Entryway

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The entryway in our parlor floor has a lot going for it, yet is suffers from a constant malaise of gloominess. Brownstones are notoriously dark given the lack of side windows, and even though our front door is about 50% glass, this is still a dark and moody part of the house. The skylight above the staircase helps a lot, but whatever it contributes, the current wall color sucks away.

Yes the paint colors matches the cat.

Right now, I’m thinking this will help fix it:

Granny Smith White and Pure White

Before painting the wall needs a skim coat, since the plaster is cracking in some places and you can see paint drips from previous paint drips throughout. Paint drips are my nemesis!  I figured once I have the colors picked, there will be no more excuses to get this project underway (ha!). After two trips to the BedStuy Home Depot (first time I forgot the paint chips and couldn’t remember the name of the color), I’m painting a section of the wall with  Granny Smith White as the main color (in a satin finish), with the picture rail Pure White (in semi gloss) and the area above the picture rail and the ceiling Pure White (in satin finish). Off to apply the second coat (and yell at the paint drips some more). I’ll post pictures in a few days.

Making an entrance

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The entry way to the garden level apartment used to be a narrow hallway flanked by a mishmash of closets. The space was barely wide enough for a person to get through – a fairly thin person that is.

This is the best “before” shot I could find. The closets are to the right. Pay no attention to the debris on the floor (that is what happens when you pull up ugly tile)

What is probably the world’s skinniest door. It turns out it’s hiding a really cool forgotten feature.

There was also evidence of some major water damage and a lot of rotted wood. Yum!

It gets worse before it gets better… demo in progress

The closets were not particularly well built and seemed cobbled together from whatever materials were available, just short of cardboard. We removed them and in the process found the old dumb waiter shaft.

Looking up the dumb waiter shaft from the garden level. The “ceiling” above is the bottom of the pantry on the top floor.

Looking up into the attic from the top floor kitchen, we found the dumb waiter mechanism still more or less intact.

We replaced a water damaged wall and created a nook for coats and shoes where the closets used to be – after all, we didn’t want to give up all the storage in that area.

Cell phone snapshot of the new coat nook in progress

There is now space to comfortable access the apartment and as a bonus, the awful tile is gone (and replaced with durable and earth friendly bamboo flooring).

Not quite finished yet, but much better already

Fireplace #1

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Of the 5 fireplaces in our house, two have ugly brass covers. Luckily, all the original cast iron covers were still stashed away in the basement. Yesterday we tackled the fireplace in the garden apartment. It has the least ornate mantel.

This is the best photo I have of it in it’s “as purchased condition” (The flower arrangement came with the house).

The ill fitting cover obscures most of the original tile. You can also see the open archway on the left that was replaced with the awesome set of free French doors, courtesy of the Internets.

Just removing the modern cover and replacing it with one of the original cast iron ones made a huge difference in my opinion.

Up next: a fresh coat of paint and some serious tile cleaning.

Digging for gold

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With this amazing weather, it’s been hard to focus on inside work. The backyard has been screaming for attention, and attention it got this weekend. As is the case with everything at our house, nothing is ever easy or simple. So, true to form,  what started as planing a few tomato plants ended up being a full day of digging. Turns out there are all sorts of things mixed into our soil – and I’m not just talking about a ton of rocks.

We dug up this thing – not sure what it is, but looks like a bath tub of some kind. It has the cast iron feet and a drain hole.

Once all the metal was pulled up, we saw this thing:

A blue stone slab with a couple of holes in it.

After much digging, we were able to pull it out and found this:

Best we can tell it is an old cistern (once again covered back up with the blue stone and soil) which continues to exist under what is now our vegetable garden.

A sad day for Bricks and Brownstone

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Bricks and Brownstone was the first book I bought when it looked like this house thing was actually going to happen. I was (and continue to be) fascinated by period detail and the different styles of row houses in Brooklyn, and the book provided information overload. I keep going back for reference and I suspect my copy will be heavily dog-eared before we finish work here at the Pink Lady. Sadly, Charles Lockwood, the author of the seminal row house bible passed away today.

While the book was out of print for a while, you can easy get it online (or have the nice people at The Strand order you a copy).

Throwing caution to the wind

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It’s impossible not to be excited about spring when this is the first thing we see when we wake up:

Disclaimer: we haven't painted our bedroom yet. The color (and terrible paint job) pre-date us.

Sure conventional wisdom cautions against planting too early. Freak snowstorms or icy frost can kill even the hardiest of plants. But last week common sense was not at an all time high around here. As a result….

Pretty perennials

And something I’ve been meaning to do since, well… forever:

English Boxwood bushes flanking the door

Seeing such a close shot of the door reminds me we need to give it a little love at some point. In the mean time, or at least until the next frost, this too is hanging out on the stoop:

I'm all about pink flowers this season

Home renovation and The Princess Bride

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I came across a blog post on “Lines from The Princess Bride that could double as comments on freshman composition papers.” I think  many things said in the movie aptly represent things uttered during the home (or castle) renovation process. For example:

“I do not suppose you could speed things up?” Because everything takes much longer than it’s supposed to

“That is the sound of ultimate suffering.” You mean the sound of raw sewage hissing through the sewer  pipe and erupting into a geyser in the basement?

“Inconceivable!” A multi-purpose adjective that pretty much describes everything
“You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles.” Cutting corners pretty much a bad idea. Always.
“That does put a damper on our relationship.” DIY is stressful. People (mostly me) get snippy.
“You be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.” The ultimate truth
“Why won’t my arms move?” The residual effects of paint scraping.
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude but this is not as easy as it looks, so I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t distract me.”

The Micro-Bathroom

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Bathrooms in brownstones are notoriously tiny, and our micro-bathroom is no exception. Coming in at a spacious 52 inches by 64 inches, it features a full size tub, a pedestal sink, a toilet and no standing room to speak of. The space is so small there is no room for a toilet paper holder, and any  miscalculation while approaching the toilet will land you in the tub or out in the hallway. Yes, it’s that tiny.

(can someone explain to me why people insist in having bathtubs? This bathroom would feel much bigger if it had a stand up shower instead, but I digress)

There are some features I really like: the tin ceiling and the air shaft window.

Currently everything is caked up in gobs of beige paint. We’re working on freeing up the window, which will add much needed ventilation, and perhaps stop the tin ceiling from rusting. Eventually we plan on turning this space into our master closet – sometime in the distant future. In the mean time, this is where we shower.

There is a room exactly the same size directly below our micro bathroom. The previous owners had turned it into a closet, keeping the tile and soapdish intact. We tore it out and will be turning it into a powder room in the not so distant future.

Spring has sprung

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I’m ridiculously excited that winter is officially over. In about 2 days, the tree in front of the house went from this…

… to this:

and delicious squirrel food apparently…

And because no post is gratuitous fun, this is also a reminder that I need to prune a few branches of the tree that are up against the wall (and ripping the window screens). Because? Really? The to-do list never ends!