The last two weeks were supposed to be a vacation but at some point we decided we would be doing some of our long-ignored home improvement projects. Originally we intended to replace the kitchen and hallway floors with new hardwood flooring. But in making the preparations for this, we realized that underneath the plywood floor (which we had painted 2 years before) there existed a totally viable hardwood floor! Once we determined this floor was in good enough shape to use, we abandoned the new-floor idea and set up to refinish.

To get there, however, we first had to knock a bunch of plaster off the fireplace and remove the brick hearth form the front. Once we did this, we realized he had to remove the walls on either side of the fireplace since it stopped a few inches before the brick started. Meanwhile, the hallway needed to have its ugly tile removed.

The hallway isn't much space but all of it was covered in linoleum tile. Jeannie took most of it off without much trouble before realizing there was ANOTHER layer of tile below it. This layer had been applied with so much adhesive it was literally pouring off the edges of the tile; the paste never really dried and was reminiscent of a quarter inch of the gunk they put on flypaper. Jeannie's sister came over to help and spent basically 24 hours chipping away at it. After much effort and injury on the part of the Purvis sisters, the tile was finally banished. The plywood lifted up relatively easily, leaving us with the pine subfloor (which was actually in pretty good condition). If that second layer of tile hadn't been there, we could have had the project wrapped up with a few days to relax afterwards. Instead we spent Friday to Sunday in refinishing hell. Friday we sanded, Saturday we stained, then Sunday we put 4 coats of polyurethane down. I guess it's good we did it so rapidly, if only because the cats were getting antsy being locked up in the bedroom for three days.

There's still a lot of work to do, but at least the floors are done. Of course, most people will tell you to do the floors last, since crap will invariably fall on it during other projects. But considering how much time the floor took, we didn't have much choice, we'll just have to be thorough with the dropcloths and whatever other prophylactic devices we must employ to protect our nice new floors!

Other upcoming projects include: painting the walls revealed around the fireplace, fixing the brickwork I broke on the fireplace, painting the kitchen walls because they're nasty, placing/replacing quarter-round molding and doorway thresholds to cover up shoddy edge work on the floor, and (finally!) painting the banister because there's too much damn paint on it and it's too banged-up to bother getting it professionally done so we're just painting it dark brown and hoping in dim light it might look like finished wood. Fun Times Accomplished!

Labels: House, Renovation, Vacation

So much stuff is going on, and all I want to do i lie around on the couch. No such luck, however, as the Holidays are upon us.

I gotta remember to take a picture of our Xmas lights, it's so lame. Rite Aid has a sale on lights so I bought a couple strings and put them around the perimeter of the windows on the ground floor. They're white lights too so they don't even look all that festive; it looks like a dressing room mirror. Oh well, I'm a Jew, your traditions are 'strange' and 'frightening' to me.

Great upheaval includes the departure of our tenants. Yep, they moved up to Greenpoint yesterday, piano and all! Incredibly, we were able to sleep through most of the actual move, except when one of the movers loudly bet another that he'd pay him a hundred bucks to ride Buzz's bike down the stairs. Without going into it too much, they decided to move due to some safety issues, for which I totally don't fault them. We knew going into it that Bushwick is not exactly the safest place on earth, and I always felt a little bad that we sort of dragged them here in the first place. Still, they got a darned cheap rent for a duplex apartment! But money isn't everything and now they're in a neighborhood that's not only one of the safest in town, but is full of those amenities that everybody normally aspires to: grocery stores, restaurants, book/record stores, and an Irish pub right across the street. Damn, I could use one of those!

That's what sucks about home ownership; we're stuck here. Eventually this might turn into an advantage, say, if the neighborhood gets all fancy around us and we make a killing in real estate. Of course, the way things are going, this doesn't look too likely in the foreseeable future (for instance, all eyes were on the local corner property that was about to open, as a litmus test of the area; it opened as a wig store.) But I still like the house and, barring any personal violence I might endure, I'm okay with the neighborhood. But what are we gonna do with this house?

For the time being we are going to see if we can afford the whole joint without rental income. This comes mostly because the house, as it is set up, is unworkable for a rental to any but those we can wholeheartedly trust (and of course, my motto is: Trust No One). It's a legal 2-family, but there's no actual division between the units. To divide the house properly would take quite an undertaking at this point, and honestly wasn't something I was planning to do for a while. But if push comes to shove we'll have to jumpstart the renovations. Assuming we win the lottery, no problem!

Having the house to ourselves at this point has another big advantage: we have people coming for Christmas. Jeannie's mom and nephew are coming up for the Holidays, so they will be camping out on separate floors, on their respective futons (futons currently make up 50% of our furniture now, classy!) We certainly won't feel crowded. Now the problem is, what do we do with a 13 year old kid?

The nephew looks like he's in his 20's, he's 6 feet tall and otherwise precocious, so he's pretty flexible. But the law is not. So we can't just blithely take him to shows and bars as we would do with, say, Jeannie's mom. We're trying to figure out what a kid from St. Thomas would want to do in the city, but we're coming up short. Worse still, Todd P, purveyor of all ages shows, just announced he's cutting back on his bookings, meaning shows we could get a kid into will be in short supply. Argh.

I dunno, if I was a kid raised in the Caribbean, NYC in the winter sounds like Siberia. Hell, now that I've visited the Caribbean, NYC feels like a gulag to me too. Don't get me wrong, I love it here, but I just don't wanna have to leave the house. Aside from the requisite tours, museums, restaurants, what do kids do here? Should we give him some spray paint or what?

Labels: Holidays, House, Real Estate, Relatives, Renovation, Renting, The City, Vacation, Weather

Here's something to waste some time during your workday: Google Maps has added a 'Street View' feature that allows you to see a 360-degree panorama of your location. Granted, they haven't mapped out the most important areas of the city yet (namely, in front of my house), but I'm sure they're working on it. Oddly, they have actually mapped all of Bushwick Ave, which comes within a block of my house. This is odd because I would have thought they would have mapped out Broadway first, which runs parallel to Bushwick Ave. Then again, in my few driving experiences here, I noted with disdain how screwed up Broadway is. For such a seemingly vital thoroughfare, it's pothole-ridden and stoplight-laden. Anyhow, the photo above is a bodega I often frequent at the end of my block. My house is actually the other way down the street, but that view is particularly boring-looking under the eye of this map service. When they get down every street, though, you'll really have something. This should have some interesting ramifications. Now people can virtually walk down Atlantic Ave in Brownsville and East New York with impunity.

Meanwhile, it was a lovely weekend all around. One semi-disappointment was that the tree service guys never came back for all the remaining detritus. They had told me to keep a good portion of their fee as a deposit, which would be collected when they showed up to take all the vines and leafy parts. The logic involved was that this material needed to dry out to be easily handled (all the wood goes to a chipper and gets turned into mulch). Saturday came and went without a word, even after I tried to contact them. The forecast for Sunday was rain, so I got antsy, thinking if the whole reason they left this stuff was because it needed to dry out, getting rained on wasn't gonna help. So i got out the contractor bags and went to town on it. It wasn't actually that difficult, and soon I had almost all of it bagged. Now I just have to dole it out to the trash, and I've just saved a tidy sum on my tree/ladder issue. Still, it's not exactly good business practice to leave your customers hanging, especially since this guy was trying to sell me on many of his fence and deck-building expertise.

[via Curbed.com]

Labels: Brooklyn, Bushwick, House, Maps, Renovation, The Yard, Weather

I was feeling gross yesterday but I was planning on going to work anyway until Jeannie talked me out of it. As lazy as I can be, I still have trouble making that decision to call in sick, mostly because I'm still not used to the notion of having sick days (of which I actually have a lot left to use).

Anyway, this worked out well since yesterday was The Day They Came to Remove the Tree. There was an old tree that had been devoured by termites and had fallen in the back yard, probably several years before we came to own the place. This would be a very easy thing for anybody with a chain saw to remove. However, there was a catch: a 40-foot clothesline tower.

For those of you who don't know, or who haven't been over to Abby's backyard, in the olden days, people dried their laundry on clotheslines. To facilitate this for upper-floor tenants, a ladder-like device was erected at the far end of the yard with pulleys attached for each floor. I'm not sure how people originally attached the lines (I guess some poor kid had to shimmy up the ladder with a rope in his teeth) and voila, you had a place to hang out your wet socks.

Since the advent of the commercial and/or residential laundry facilities, clothesline tower fell into disuse. Ours in particular suffered from obsolescence, the previous owners let it rust so bad its base supports rusted through. So at some point somebody moved it to the side, threading it through the phone lines and letting the top rest again the branches of the tree in the adjacent yard.

So not only was there a tree to remove, but it was partially leaning on this giant, rusty, steel tower thing which was precariously balanced between a couple of thin branches and the phone lines for half the neighborhood (all the more reason to go to cellular phones). I had no idea who to call to take care of this, but when the tree guy came over he said, "Eh, we do this all the time." It took them about 2 hours to do the bulk of the work.

The tree was gone before I even noticed. They also pruned back several other trees that were threatening other cables, as well as a bunch of vines. Work was momentarily stopped when they asked me to look up pictures of poison ivy and oak to make sure the vines weren't poisonous. I inwardly chuckled, I mean really, poison ivy here? Please. So I printed out some pictures of it to compare and they continued clearing it away.

The clothesline tower also came down without much trouble, they just slid it out from between the cables (I think they did break a couple of small branched in the tree). once they had it down they cut it into a couple of pieces and threw it on the truck, like it was nothing. It was especially helpful that our home abuts a church yard, so they were able to back their truck right up to the back fence of our yard.

They took most of the big stuff, leaving the green wood to dry out for a couple of days. They come back tomorrow to take the rest of it, plus all the leftover wood from my studio project. I'm trying to pick out some of the 2x4s or whatever I might want to keep. But it's a joy to ditch most of that stuff, as it has been taking up so much space in the cellar.

Before the tree guys showed up, I let the cats run around the yard. Despite the fact that there is no fence between our yard and the neighbors, there are tall fences around the perimeter of the two, so I haven't worried much about the cats escaping. Well, at some point I realized that Freddy was nowhere to be found. Indeed, long after the tree people had decamped, I peered over a fence and spied her sitting under an old Schwinn in the church's yard. I plied her with cat food to no avail. I feared she would return to her stray-cat, bird-killin' ways.

It was at this time I realized there in fact was a thatch of poison ivy growing out of the corner fence. Jesus Christ! I don't know how to get rid of it, should I just spray it with weed killer? I kind of want to get rid of it before the guys come back for the rest of the debris, cuz they said they don't wanna get near it, lest treeman Tony ruin his momentous birthday plans for the weekend.

At about 9:15, Freddy strolled back inside. She's still not any nicer to us, but she knows where she lives at least. Here's an album documenting some of the day's activities.

Addendum: Here's a pretty cool page about an archaeological dig in a Brooklyn back yard that has pretty much the only reference I could find about clothesline towers (their was half the size of ours and apparently not sitting between phone cables).

Labels: House, Neighbors, Pets, Renovation, The Yard

One of the more consistent requests I get through this site is information about the fence post spikes I used to erect a fence in my back yard. Well, it was the back yard at the last place I lived, in Clinton Hill. People write me every so often to ask where I procured the metal base posts to secure the wood posts that support the fence itself. Despite the momentousness of the project, I totally can't remember where I got them. I bought them online from a hardware store from the west coast, I think (I wanna say Washington). They were literally the only place I could find them online so I went ahead and got them. But that company seems to no longer have an online presence, if they have a presence at all anymore. So I always feel bad when I have to respond that I have no further info about it when people email.

But that has all changed, for the time being anyhow. A web researcher emailed me, not to ask where to get the spikes, but rather what my long-term opinion is of them. You see, this guy has located them, both online and at his local hardware store, and just wanted to know if they were worth it. He sent me the link, so I can now proudly post it here for anybody wanting to put up their own fence but not wanting to futz with pouring concrete. Near as I can figure these fence post spikes work pretty well. i don't know that I would trust them if you constantly have people scaling your walls, but to hold up your usual cedar plank fence it seems to work fine. Now all I have to do is put a link to this post on the original fence post post.

You may have noticed, since I moved to blogger for this blog, there is a serious disparity between old and new blog. The Archives page is hopelessly out of date (for recent archives, only the link on the right side of the home page will get you anywhere), and of course, the comments on the old posts still don't work. I just never have time to fix that stuff, and since it's been like this for many months now and the earth seems to continue to spin, I'm in no rush to fix it. I've got curtains to hang!

Labels: House, Renovation, The Yard

Thursday I did a Froogle search for moving blankets. I found a site that sold a variety of types of them, from basic to super-fancy (for moving blankets, anyway) "Producer's Blankets," which are meant for film use. Some blankets were even marketed towards musicians needing acoustic treatment, going so far as to offer the addition of grommets to aid in hanging them. Who knew there was such a rich culture around the existence of moving blankets? I wouldn't have even thought of using them but for the fact our movers left one behind.

So I picked the "deluxe" model and ordered enough to cover the whole room. At 9:30 AM the next day, I got a call from FedEx, saying they were at my door and was anyone home. Now, I expected delivery to be problematic since nobody's home during the day, but I surely didn't expect it to ship so fast. The FedEx guy and I made tentative plans to meet between 5 and 6 that afternoon. I slipped out of work a little early and was on the J train, a couple stops from home when the phone rang again.

The FedEx guy had beaten me home, but he said he'd wait til I got there. And indeed, as I rounded the corner several minutes later, he was still there. I don't often get deliveries form FedEx, is this normal behavior? Usually the regular package delivery guy barely rings the bell before running down the block, forcing us to venture to the scary East New York post office to pick it up later (for some reason the ENY zip code 11207 snakes up above the cemetery and engulfs several blocks on this end of the neighborhood).

So I began the weekend with very favorable notions about both FedEx and MoversSupplies.com, the latter of which is based in Brooklyn (which partially explains the incredibly fast shipping) over on Bond Street in Gowanus. I put in my own grommets (at $1 per grommet, that seemed a bit steep) and hung four of the blankets. It really makes a big difference, Buzz and I both noted the overall audio improvement from the old basement. The old basement had a higher ceiling, though. However, it also had several large ducts which stuck way out, so my head-hitting average is still down from then.

I'm gonna try my very best to find other things to write about from now on, I know this stuff must be of limited interest to anybody else. With the completion of the studio I can turn my attention to other things, like removing the big dead tree in the backyard. Tree removal: that sounds fascinating!

Labels: Bands, Renovation, Soundproofing

Despite still having some loose ends (more wall work to do, no latch on the door), we hooked up the rig and went to town, musically, last night. The verdict: not bad! Sound isolation is better than I anticipated. Well, actually, when we began this project I envisioned a completely soundproof space, wherein a man could cut sheet metal with a rusty circular saw at 2 in the morning and have no fear of annoying a soul. But as the work progressed I realized that the reality of things would be a bit less dramatic. But I started thinking all this work wasn't gonna amount to anything except a rather cramped and stuffy practice space, with bass frequencies reverberating through the house and into angry neighbors' domiciles.

Here's my sonic breakdown of the varying levels:

• In the living room you can hear things, but all but the loudest bass notes are fairly well-muffled. In fact, most sound leakage seems to be coming from the stairwell, which is exactly the same issue we experienced at the old place. If we put a door at the bottom of the stairs, that should really help contain things.
  
• On the second floor you can't hear much at all, just a couple of taps here and there. I assume the top floors are blissfully ignorant of that band room altogether.
• I went outside and couldn't hear anything at all. It's weird to realize how much 'ambient noise' there is here, but you notice it when you concentrate on it. There's like a constant, low-level woosh all around, the confluence of passing cars, people talking, trains running, a million roach wings flapping in unison.
  

Later that same night I wondered aloud why I was so concerned about our noise. From the time practice ended, we heard countless elevated trains rumbling by, several vocal arguments on the streets, and a bunch of gunshots. However, I feel if my neighbors complain about the music and bring up the potential of gun violence, this may be misconstrued.

I gotta get more of those moving blankets! They're heavy and have several layers to them, this might really solve my cheapskate acoustic issues! I still need bass traps to suck of the boominess, but we're off to a good start? Who can remember our setlist? Because we sure can't.

Oh, and confidential to Al: You will notice the light fixtures and bx cable are now safely (more or less) tucked away amongst the radiator pipes. Thank you for your angry concern.

Labels: Motico, Music, Neighbors, Renovation, Soundproofing

So the band room has gone through several permutations since we moved in: Paneling with drywall ceiling, which was torn out to fill up with insulation and be covered with decoupled dywall layers separated by QuietGlue on the ceiling, and plywood and drywall walls. As with each step of this project, it didn't occur to me until last week that we would need paint the finished product. After a minute of discussing the color possibilities, I caved and just used the leftover white paint we had lying around (plus some supercheap white paint from the nearby hardware store). We're probably covering up most of the visible wall space with rugs or other flame-encouraging material, so room color won't really matter.

Now I gotta clean up this grody floor and yes, re-mount the lighting fixtures! After several attempts at dealing with this element of the renovation process, I finally figured out how to correctly wire the lights so they work off the switch (most of this was fixing stuff I had screwed up previously). I was hoping to move the cables a bit so they would mount in the least-obtrusive way, but this has proved to be impossible. Maybe down the road I'll really do something about it, but for the time being we'll have to be careful we don't bash our heads into the light bulbs (which I've already done several times, thank you).

Within the week I expect to be rocking out in my windowless, ventless box, if I can still remember how to play the guitar.

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

The walls are skim coated, and although they may not be perfect, I am getting sick of this stuff, so I'm throwing in the towel on trying to make the walls smooth and even. Screw it! I'm getting back to what I know best: covering up my mistakes in layers and layers of primer and paint.

But should I just paint this room white, as I am wont to do? Jeannie says I'm gonna scuff up the walls with the instruments, since space will be so tight. But I can't decide if it's even worth the thought involved to choose a non-white color. We do have some brown paint leftover from the 3rd floor project, but somehow a dark brown room in a cellar just sounds creepy.

Part of me doesn't even wanna bother painting, since by all accounts I will need to cover the walls with sound-absorbing materials. This is no longer about soundproofing, but sound "treatment," trying to sweeten up the sound inside the room so we don't blow our ears out when we practice. So I gotta get some rugs. You got any rugs?

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

It's looking a little less like a disaster and more and more like a sheetrocked box of doom! I'm starting to worry that there won't be enough air when the door is closed. Ugh, I guess we'll have to paint as well.

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

Getting sick of photos of plywood (with or without caulk and expanding foam)? This is the last time you'll see it here! Exciting pictures of drywall next!

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

The last wall has been (more or less) erected. Tonight I will break out the expanding foam, and tomorrow ... drywall.

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

More boring plywood news: 3 of the walls have been covered in plywood, looks like we'll have just enough to finish the last wall. I would have done this last night but I ran out of screws. Actually, I have tons of screws left but they're all 'fine thread' screws. Somehow I never knew this before beginning this process, you got your fine thread screws to attach things to metal, and coarse thread when drilling into wood. I'm not really sure how much of a difference this makes, but fine thread screws are just plan harder to screw down than coarse threads. So it's off to Home Depot for me in a bit. I'll also get more expanding foam!

The last can of foam I bought turned out to be something of a dud. It didn't expand to the impressive degree of the previous can, so I'm a little bitter about the whole foam issue for now. I guess I still love it, but I'm feeling a little cynical about my future with expanding foam, even though it constantly assures me it is GREAT STUFF.

Buzz and I moved all the drywall to the cellar last night, what a relief it's finally down there! It wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be, but moving drywall down a narrow flight of stairs is not something anybody looks forward to. at least it stopped raining. I'd had this sheetrock in my hallway since the end of February. I wish I could say the hallway looks better without it, but actually it's pretty dingy. Well, when I get done with this project, I suppose I should my attention back to the above-ground portions of this house. This will be a difficult transition, since the work I've been doing for the past couple of months needs only to be aesthetically pleasing to me and Buzz. All the other work the house needs has to look good to Real People, and all I've learned so far is that Sherbet-Orange is not a good paint choice.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing, Weather

At long last, we have begun the walling-in of our band room. We started with the most complex part: the wall with the door in it. Not only did we have to figure out how to put the wall up around the door, but the wall featured several annoyingly-placed columns that are braced under the main support beam of the house. We ended up just paneling over the columns, effectively losing some 40 cubic feet of space between the columns. It sucks to lose the space, but I take some comfort in thinking that the extra air space inside will aid the soundproofing.

Part of this process involves sealing up any gaps, no matter how small, in the room. For the smaller gaps I'm using acoustic caulk, and for the larger gaps ... expanding foam! This stuff is so cool! I'm still getting the hang of spraying it, but when you do it right, this foam could basically filly up the grand canyon. Once it dries it turns into super-resilient styrofoam kind of substance. If I had it to do all over again, I'd just build the whole room out of expanding foam.

Labels: Renovation, Soundproofing

Somehow, despite my healthy lifestyle choices and PMA, my cold continues unabated. I thought recovery was imminent when my voice gave out on Sunday, but I'm still decidedly unwell two days later, albeit in new and disgusting ways. My only solace is that by not using my federally-mandated sick days, I may very well infect my entire office. Then I'll have some peace and quiet around this place!

Work on the basement has slowed due to my ineffectual white blood cells, but we are definitely primed for completion. We brought the plywood downstairs yesterday. You may remember this plywood as the old subfloor Buzz painfully removed from the 4th floor during that project. How's that for recycling? Or, more correctly, how's that for being a skinflint? I'm also using as much of the old paneling and furring strips I ripped out of the basement, both to cut down on costs and so I don't have as much crap to throw out later.

Speaking of which, as a new homeowner I am now acquainted with the joys of being fully responsible not only for my trash, but for any little piece of garbage that happens to drop on my property (or the sidewalk in front). I've already been fined for improperly secured refuse (apparently the Dept of Sanitation prefers their garbage gift-wrapped), so when it comes to the big stuff like scrap wood and metal, I get spooked. I don't even want to risk a fine for some law I didn't even know about. For instance, do you know when your 'bulk' trash day is?

Trick question! Officially, there is no single bulk trash day, every regular trash day allows for the inclusion of large items. That's the theory, but of course a lotta people think Friday is always bulk day. Still, I have seen little consistency not just in bulk pick-up, but even the regular trash. I think they only pick up trash when they 'feel' like it. When I put out nonstandard items in the trash, I cross my fingers in the hopes it will be picked up. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't. I never know if it's because there secretly is a bulk day they're not telling people about, or if the DOS guys are just jerking me around.

Labels: Health, House, Renovation, Soundproofing, The City

Check out that fire! If you look just to the right of the fire you will see my first Brooklyn apartment, the 3 windows on the 2nd floor. I don't think I ever ate at the Chinese restaurant, but there was a vent in the back that produced a greasy stench of old sesame noodles all the time, so I'm sure I absorbed some of that. Plus the Mr Softee truck would double park outside every day during the summer and play that damn song for 20 minutes while the driver waited for his order. I wonder what it looks like in that apartment now, it was pretty lousy when we lived there, and I wasn't proud of the state in which we left it. The mind reels at what kind of rent it commands now, it was $1300 in 2000. We shoved 3 people (and at times, 4) into this place; it is of note that none of these former roommates are in close contact anymore. But it helped me get my footing here (come to think of it, we rented it sight unseen, guess it coulda been worse).


I'm rather under the weather, but I still expect to finish much more of the basement this weekend. Aside from taping the seams in the ceiling, our biggest challenge will be moving the remaining 12 panels of sheetrock into the cellar. What fun that will be. Sheetrock has to be one of the most frustrating building materials ever devised by man. Most supplies are straightforward; plywood, 2x4's, nails. They are what they are. But drywall has some very odd properties.

It is de rigeur for the interiors of most houses, yet it's pretty delicate and can be damaged easily. It's heavy and unwieldy, but a screw can ravage it if it breaks through the outer paper layer. It's very dense but it can be cut and split using a boxcutter. I got some patching pieces to fit by literally filing down the sides, producing a horrendous amount of dust. When the drywall was delivered, many of the panels sustained damage (before Buzz and I even got our hands on it). There were strap indentations, some corners were crushed, some had paper torn off. Any little thing that happens to it can greatly reduce its structural integrity (Just try smashing a small part of a panel and see how easily the rest of it crumbles). But in theory it can all be made right again with a few dabs of joint compound, which, near as I can figure, is just a pail of liquefied drywall. What an amazing product.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing

Just what you've all been waiting for! More updates on the soundproofing of the basement band room! This was much harder than I thought it would be, but then pretty much every single thing I've done on this house has been harder than I thought it would be, with the exception of getting free furniture from collegiate chum SeanM.

Beyond the sheer weight of the panels, we had lots of pipes of varying importance to contend with. There are two big pipes for the radiator running through the room, as well as some gas lines and electrical conduits. But the real drag for me was just getting the screws to go into the metal hat channel.

Drywall is super easy to drill through, too easy in many cases, but the hat channel we were attaching it to was difficult to get started. Of course, once the screw has pierced the metal, it zipped into it, often too quickly to keep from ramming the screw all the way through the drywall, negating its effectiveness completely. I started predrilling holes to aid in this regard, and I ended up breaking two of them in the ceiling. I've gotta remember to get some higher-quality
drill bits.

Eventually, the screws went in and seem to be holding. There was a major foul-up on my part, as my painstaking calculations were rent asunder because for some reason I kept thinking the drywall panels were 4.5' instead of only 4'. Ugh, I kick myself every time I think of this. I don't know where I went astray but I screwed it up. We had to move one of the tracks in closer, leaving a significant gap on one side of the room. But I think we'll be able to work around this when we put up the walls. In soundproofing, you can't have the ceiling and wall touch, you're supposed to leave 1/4" and fill the gap with acoustical caulk. I am counting on my ability to make that work when we get to the point. But first we have to put another layer of sheetrock on the ceiling.

Yesterday I put joint compound and tape on all the seams. I didn't try to be neat since this layer will be completely covered by another layer of 5/8" drywall. I need to decide how to cut the sheetrock for this layer, I am thinking I should cut it into smaller pieces to make it easier to work with. I wish office drones got spring break like the college kids do, I could use some serious time off to work on this project. And of course, there aren't even any holidays between now and Memorial Day. That sucks!

Labels: Holidays, Renovation, Soundproofing

Finally, some progress! We finished ripping down the paneling and have installed the insulation in the walls and ceilings. This was complicated by the fact that the joists and studs have no particular rhyme or reason, so the fiberglass didn't really stay in place. I whipped out my trusty staple gun, only to find the huge box of staples I bought were the wrong kind. I went to the nearby hardware store but they didn't have the right kind, either. So what did I do? I plunked down $50 for a new staple gun. I felt wasteful and kinda stupid, but it is very nice, as staple guns go.

We tacked up all the fiberglass and started on placement of the metal furring hat channel. This is the narrow u-shaped track (whose profile resembles a hat sort of) that we attach to the joists (via Super Soundproofing Clips), from which drywall will hang. The trick was that we only had 30 sound clips for 5 rows of hat channel, which has to support two layers of 5/8" drywall. Oh, and there are 10 joists that span the room, which is 17' long. You do the math.

I ended using like quantum physics trying to figure out the best placement for each clip. This took hours. Then Buzz suggested that perhaps I was overthinking it a bit, so we took another look and started drilling in the clips. This took like a half hour. Now all that's left is the sheetrock. The 823 pounds of sheetrock ...

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing

The contractor supply company delivered all the insulation and drywall needed for the soundproofing project on Saturday. They ran late, I'm lucky they got there before Buzz had to leave, as he was going out of town for the weekend. For some reason I thought I would be able to carry the drywall myself. But even if I could lift the panel, I'd never be able to maneuver it into the house, those things are unwieldy!

We moved 22 panels of 5/8" 4'X8' Sheetrock, at around 90 pounds apiece. This means we moved nearly 2,000 pounds of gypsum. No wonder I was exhausted afterwards (not to mention I was hungover and on less than4 hours of sleep). Why are these projects always so much harder (and expensive) than you initially think? Even when you try to compensate in your mind, the reality is always much worse.

I have no idea how we're gonna get the drywall into the basement, I'll probably have to cut it first (oh boy, more dust!). Actually I should cut an 8-foot long slot in the floor and just slide the panels through to the cellar. Hey, it's my house dammit.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing

It's all coming together. Tomorrow morning we'll receive the bulk of the supplies, but the smaller stuff I'm having shipped to my office. I just received my order from soundproofing.org, which is probably one of the worst-designed websites still in existence. It has no set template from one page to the next, has no understanding of image sizing, relies on Java-based menu elements that only serve to confuse users, and I think they're still using the BLINK tag! I think that's actually punishable by chemical castration now. But at least I have my soundclips!

These metal/rubber things will hold the furring channels away from the ceiling joists so the new ceiling won't physically touch the frame of the house. This should keep things nicely separated, assuming I don't screw something up. The green stuff is padding tape, which I'm gonna put on everything I can until it runs out. This will further separate the new wall/ceiling layers from the existing framing. The stuff in the big tube is acoustical caulk sound sealant (made in my hometown of Mentor, Ohio!), which is just caulk that always stays flexible to absorb vibration. A few more pictures on Flickr. Maybe this will be of some use to somebody else out there, it seems hard to find actual photos of a lot of this stuff (as I said, the soundproof site is incredibly bad, much of the time if they have a picture at all, it's just an artist's rendition of what they think an item looks like).

I'm kind of worried about how we're going to get all the drywall sheets into the basement, some may need to be cut first. But that's pretty easy to do. I just hope the forecast is right (for once) as I don't' relish having to lug 22 4x8' 90-pound sheetrock panels through the rain. I feel very motivated to complete this project, not only so I can start playing the guitar again, but also so I can get back to dealing with the remaining orange parts of the house.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing

Here's a breakdown of car ownership (or actually non-car ownership) in the 4 boros:

Most NYC residents don't own cars. New York City total: 54% (vs. 57% in 1990), The Bronx: 60%, Brooklyn: 54%, Manhattan: 78% (vs. 77% in 1990. Unclear if this is actual decline in car ownership or from rounding the numbers.), Queens: 34%, Staten Island: 20%. [bicycle universe]

I should be heartened by these figures, but I wonder how accurate they are. On the one hand the stats are from 2000, so things are probably different now. Also, lots of people who live here keep their cars registered in other states to save on insurance costs. Then there's this article in the Times that notes how New York is falling behind other more enlightened cities who are shutting parts of town down to car traffic. Not surprisingly, Mayor Bloomberg hasn't been very inspirational for bicyclists. Commenting on one of the many bike/car fatalities of the past year, he advised cyclists to "pay attention."

The article suggests the reason for the increase in problems over the past few years has something to do with the city attracting an increasing number of people who, for the past 50 or so years, normally would opt for the suburbs to roost. As usual, these folks know the melody of the song but get the words wrong. They flock to the Big City, but want to take their suburban accoutrements of convenience with them.

If something is convenient, it seems to nullify all debate. Case in point is the ongoing moral struggle seen in patrons of Fresh Direct. They love getting fancy food and fresh produce delivered to their door, but have serious misgivings about the pollution, congestion and waste produced by the company's trucks and packaging. While I do think FD could probably find better packaging methods, I'm not sure I see a way the company could feasibly maintain their delivery schedules without using those big trucks. It kind of seems like the people who are complaining about them are trying to assuage their own guilt over using the service in the first place.

The Brooklyn Record had a recent post which led to a lot of discussion about ways in which food delivery companies could reduce pollution. I commented that it was important to remember what a luxury it is to have such a service, and how it comes with a price. At that point I was told that FD is a 'necessity' for certain people, mainly because there is no decent grocery store in their neighborhood. This got me to thinking, we live in a city with one of the most extensive mass transportation systems in the world which, despite its problems, provides its citizens with flat-fare access to most of the city. Yet despite this we have a whole bunch of people who apparently live so far off the grid that they must compromise their ecological morals and, regretfully, have to have their avocados brought to their door. Yes, they have to do this because there is no other option; it's not like they could hop on the bus and get the stuff they want.

The unspoken, irreducible element here is convenience. Nobody wants to really use that as a defense but that's what's going on here. It's not like I'm above this, I'm a slob for convenience as much as anyone. I'd probably use Fresh Direct sometimes, if only it came to my neighborhood (it's amazing I haven't starved to death yet). But I wouldn't kid myself as to what I was doing, I'd at least be honest enough with myself to admit I could get pretty much anything I wanted if I just hoofed around the city more.

People will claim they don't have enough time and so simply must use services like FD just to keep it together. I sure hope these aren't the same people who whine about emissions from the trucks. Maybe you need to reorder your priorities more than you need to worry about some fumes and some cardboard boxes.

But like I said, I'm not immune. Lately I would kill for the convenience of a car or big pick-up truck. I have all this stuff I need to get into my house, but have to jump through all these hoops to get it there because I have no vehicle. For the basement soundproofing project, I'm having a bunch of drywall delivered from a local contractor's supply house. The delivery charge alone was $75. Now, I could have rented a $20 a day van from U-Haul for less, (usually it's more like $50 a day when all is said and done). But getting the van is a pain, and driving it is particularly stressful for me. So not only am I paying for not owning a vehicle, I'm paying for the convenience of having it delivered to my door. I admit it.

But if I want some exotic vegetable, I also know I'm gonna walk over to 49th street and go to the fancy grocery store before I go home tonight. It sure is nice we have all these subways to get around.

Labels: Cars, Mass Transit, Renovation, The City

Saturday was a busy day in SoBu (South Bushwick, think this name will catch on?). We hit a snag with the plans for soundproofing in that my research I discovered that the air cavity we'd end up with would be maybe too little. Essentially, more air space means more sound isolation. It appears to go again logic, but we need fewer layers of drywall up there to get the best results. Please consult this handy diagram for relative STC (Sound Transmission Class) ratings (higher is better):
By keeping the original ceiling intact, we'd have a "triple leaf" which is less effective than a correctly-built double leaf. Of course, we're not really building a full double leaf (which would involve two sets of separate joists and is something that doesn't really fly for a ceiling that's only 6.5').

Ripping a ceiling down is fun. It took like a half hour to rip out some 150 square feet of double-layer drywall. It was a little tricky getting it out from around the pipes and conduit, but everything came out fine. Before we knew it, we had exposed all the joists (that probably hadn't seen light in 30-some years), happy to find nothing rotten or any human skulls or anything. The downside of course was the clean-up.


I had like 5 contractor trash bags left and those filled up within minutes with at least half the floor covered with rubble. Lucky for me, there's a contractor supply place two blocks away (Henry Distributors, 1674 Broadway) that sold me a box of 100 for $30. We bagged up the rest of the debris and Buzz started hauling the bags outside. Our cellar has those horizontal metal cellar doors with cement stairs leading down. While this is way better than the hole-and-ladder configuration most houses have, the stairs are really steep and the clearance of the doorway is minimal. And these bags were really really heavy. I don't know how we got all 10 (!) out onto the areaway so quickly. We basically were done in two hours (though it would take four hours to begin to recuperate for me).

As of Friday all the supplies have been ordered, most of which will be delivered Saturday morning. I'm annoyed with the new snowfall, as it almost definitely means nobody will be showing up today to pick up the trash, and it means it the plywood I've been storing out back will be all snow-covered, and I need that stuff indoors so it can dry out. There are still a few things I'm not sure how we'll handle but at least we're getting there.

The rest of the evening was spent going to the early show at the Knitting Factory to see Trans Am, Oneida and Big Bear. I wanted to go to this show because I really like Big Bear. But I was disappointed by the set; one of their guitarists left the group and appears to have been replaced by some keyboardist (red flag!), and worse, the lead singer is no longer barking in that shredding 'hardcore' screamo voice and sounds now like a little girl shrieking into the mic. She mentioned something about being sick, but it occurs to me that she says this at nearly every show. And wouldn't a cold actually make a voice more guttural and scratchy? I guess singing that way has finally taken its toll.

Oneida was good, as usual, but I don't think I like seeing them at clubs like this. They played some old stuff like "All Arounder," which was always one of my favorites. They didn't play "Up with People," which was fine with me, I'm getting a little tired of that one. We went to Nancy Whiskey Pub at the early hour of 10:30 and somehow stayed until the bar closed. There was a bacherlorette party going on there with a lot of sorority-types present. At first irritated by their presence, we concluded that it was admirable for people like that to have a bacherlorette party at a bar known mostly for its grizzly old men who hang out there.

Labels: Bands, Bars, Renovation, Soundproofing

Since I'm no good for regular blogging anymore, let's get back to house renovations. Actually, 'renovation' may be too strong a word for what we've been doing to this house. I always think of renovations in terms of totally ripping stuff out and putting in something totally new, like a bathroom or kitchen. In this case, I'm trying to soundproof a room in the cellar so the band can practice without making the neighbors throw bottles at our house (well, they already do that, so let's just say we'd like to limit the number of things flung houseward).

At some point in the past the basement was paneled and subdivided into a few small rooms. I took the two in the middle of the floor and removed the dividing wall (which, like all the paneled walls here were single-stud frames with paneling nailed to it). These walls will provide a base for the soundproofing to come, but it's the ceiling that has been taking up all my time lately.

Once upon a time, this ceiling was completely finished in acoustical tile. By the time we moved in, though, many of the tiles had fallen out, and those that had stayed put were water stained and hanging by a thread. There had been framing around the pipes running through the room, not to mention occasional framings that didn't seem to be concealing anything at all. This led to my theory that the whole cellar had been designed to thwart anybody over 5' 7", since as soon as you think you can stand up straight you inevitably smash your head on some box or something sticking meaninglessly out of the ceiling. In retrospect, the Fuck Tall People Party was kind to the long n' lanky set.

So I had to rip all this stuff out so I can put in a partially decoupled ceiling composed of a dual drywall layer separated by a visoelastic adhesive and sealed with acoustical caulk.* The walls will be simpler, just a dual layer comprised of plywood and drywall (plywood leftover from the floor refinishing). I had planned to rip the ceiling down to the joists to fill with insulation, but I just realized that above the tile level the topmost layer is already two layers of drywall nailed into the ceiling joists. In theory, this is a great start for sound isolation, but there's one big problem. Or, several big problems, it's full of holes.

Sound isolation (the more correct term for what I'm after) is all about sealing things off. No matter what materials are used, if things aren't securely separated, the soundproofing won't work. Two layers of drywall is great, but the gaping holes (from old light fixtures and BX cable) negate any good the drywall could do. At first I thought I'd just tear this stuff down, but upon reflection (too lazy) I've decided just to patch these holes really well and build onto them.

I patched all the small holes last night, and a few of the larger ones. Tonight I tackle the really big ones, for which I have to construct plugs to mount into the boards. The good thing about this work is that I don't have to be neat at all. As long as the seal is solid, it doesn't matter what it looks like since it'll be obscured by the next ceiling layers. When it's all done then, we'll have two discrete segments of doubled-up drywall and two distinct levels of trapped air as well (as long as it's contained, that air will actually help stop heavy bass tones from ruining someone else's enjoyment of Deal or No Deal upstairs).

*I'll explain this when I get the supplies in.

Labels: House, Renovation, Soundproofing