dining room

The dining room is almost finished. On the other hand will anything ever be finished? At least everything is painted and all the random pieces that were floating around are stowed away. Just in time to host our first Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday.

We still have to hang some artwork and I would like to change the glass in the cabinet doors to clear glass so you can see my china collection.

small progress

Phew...I feel like we didn't finish any of the projects we started so far. There is progress but everything gets finished in baby steps even though we work on the house each weekend. It's probably just my impatient self and working on a hundred things at once.

One of the projects we started is working on our living room fireplace which was bricked up and also had a raised stone hearth. We already thought it would look nice to open it up when we looked at the house for the second time. The first time it was covered under bags, furniture and all kinds of other stuff so we didn't really see what it looked like and assumed it is open like the one in the dining room. The brick and the stone was removed and surprise! we found some kind of vent (?) for our heating system in it. That was probably the reason why it was bricked up in the first place. Bummer! We also discovered the original marble plate underneath the raised stone but unfortunately it was not in the best condition and it is too small as well. It even showed the floorplan of the old mantel. Immediately we thought about what we could do to make it look nice and somewhat original to the house...I found a cast iron fireplace door/summer cover on ebay for 30$. And the best part of it was that the seller was local and we were able to pick it up. We also picked out this black and white marble mosaic to go on top of the old marble piece. The fireplace will hopefully finished over Thanksgiving weekend.

On the pictures you can also see that we got rid of the door opening on the left side of the fireplace. The opening didn't make sense to us and led to a small hallway from which you enter the guest bathroom and bedroom. You can still access the small hallway from the main hallway which is sufficient for us.

flood

It's fall again, it started two weeks ago with heavy rains which let to a little flood in our basement because our sump pump was broken. It was actually worse in the morning. I took the pictures after work when I brought home the new pump and a lot of water already disappeared. We have propped up the washer and dryer on bricks to keep them dry. Of course this is not a permanent solution, more on that later...Look how clean and shiny the new pump looks compared to the old one, which looks kind of yucky.

Put the pump in by myself so I deserve a pat on my shoulder ;)

openhousenewyork 2010

Last weekend was the annual openhousenewyork weekend, the event was held for the 8th time. It was my 4th year attending and 2nd year volunteering. For more information on openhousenewyork go to www.ohny.org. This year my site assignment was not actually a site but a walking tour of Lower Manhattan. Starting at the Customs House we slowly made our way up to the Woolworth Building. The special treat of the tour was supposed to be a tour of the Woolworth Building lobby which unfortunately didn't happen even though the organizers of the tour had confirmed it the day before but I was able to sneak a quick picture of the beautiful mosaic ceiling...

I also saw great private residences and an architectural office but don't want to publish the photos I took for privacy reasons...As every year the weekend was great fun!

no more laundromat?

Well we are not quite there yet...

We bought a new washing machine and a dryer a couple of weeks ago. Since we had only limited space to get anything down the cellar stairs we needed 24" wide models. The stair is only 25" wide, which left us just an inch of wiggle room. Funny thing I found out on the hunt for the perfect washer/dryer is that the smaller the appliance the more it seems to cost...

The Bosch models need a 240 Volt Outlet to be plugged into and we still haven't even called an electrician to install one for us. Both of us don't really like to schlepp our stuff to the laundromat. That's what I call procrastination at its worst...

There were two washing machines and one dryer (or was it two dryer and a washing machine?) in the basement but none was working. One machine was small enough to be carried up the stairs and was taken away by the people who delivered the new ones, two were not. They are still sitting in the basement waiting to be taken apart.

The big mystery here is how did the appliances get down into the basement in the first place? Guess we'll never find out...

bye bye old apartment

We miss the old place but are also exited to create something new in our house. These are some pictures I took in our old place during the time we lived in it. Some artwork is missing in a couple of pictures. Can you find it?

biking

There has been nothing really going on in the renovation department besides small projects here and there for the last couple of weeks. We thought we should enjoy the summer before it's over. Yesterday P finally got a bike and we took our first little bike tour along the Hudson. We plan to further explore our new "hood" either on our bikes or just by walking around. Will keep you updated...

Also I have started to ride my bike to the train station every morning to go to work and I love it. It's so much faster than walking or taking a bus. Plus it's good exercise. On the way back there's a pretty steep hill which I finally mastered today without getting off the bike halfway up. Yay! :)