Other posts in this series: Day 2, Day 3, Days 4-5, Days 6-7, Days 8-9, Days 10-11, Days 12-13, Week 3, Before&After
On Wednesday we got permission from our Coop board to begin renovations. It only took a couple days, and from what I hear, it was pretty painless compared to what many people go through with other coop boards. So yesterday was our first day of renovations and it was really exciting to see how much our contractor has already done in just one day.
When we walked into our apartment, the first think we noticed was the mess on the floor and the giant gaping hole in the wall between our bedroom and the living room. That hole will eventually be our expanded master closet. It was great to really visualize how much larger the closet will become.
This is what our master closet looked like before. It was tiny. There is a large support beam that runs down the left side of it preventing us from hanging any clothes there. Also, there was a really wide pair of sliding wooden doors which only allowed you to open and view less than half of the closet at a time. Very poor design… I’m so happy we are expanding it and replacing the doors.
Here’s the giant hole in our wall. We are expanding the closet by four feet and installing bi-fold doors.
Here’s the view of the hole from the livingroom. You’ll notice the box that contains our toilet on the lower right, and the new sink in two boxes on the left.
Debris!
They also started work on replacing the base molding and skim coating the walls. They stripped off all of the old molding which was in really terrible condition. And the skim coating will smooth out the old lumpy walls.
This is how the base molding looked when we first bought the place. They were overly layered with paint; covered with generations worth of telephone wire, cable wire, satellite TV wire… not to mention they were just plain dirty
No more yucky molding!
The old stripped moldings: Its kind of fun to see all the old layers of paint exposed here. Too bad, all this history is bound for the garbage.
Skim coated walls. Basically, its a thin coat of plaster applied to the surface of the walls to make it smooth and even before painting
They still have not done much with the bathroom, which is our biggest renovation project. But they did remove that ugly sliding glass door. Its amazing how much that one little thing makes the bathroom looks so much roomier.
No more door! Gross, look at all that mildew. This is why I’ve always thought sliding glass shower doors are unsanitary. I can’t wait till its all gone.
More updates to come!
i’m disappointed that you didn’t install toto toilets… your butt would’ve thanked you!
also, feel free to find great travel deals here…
Stop your shilling David! Actually, I feel left out you don’t shill on my blog 😛
This is all very exciting Cheryl! Glad it’s all coming together 🙂
i love these “before & after”s! keep them coming and congratulations 🙂
Geez, you guys aren’t messing around!
Love the new closet, old closet pic, it definitely helps to visualize how HUGE it is with Joe in the frame.