An opening for the balcony door

My boyfriend's nephew, who is a mason in Wisconsin, came out for the weekend to do some brickwork and turn a couple of windows into doors for us. This is the new opening he made in the front of the building for the balcony door:





He's coming out again in two weeks to cut the last door (the door onto the fire escape from the third floor master bedroom).

Notice anything different about these photos? Yup, they have new windows in them. We got rid of the horrible white vinyl one-over-ones and replaced them with two-over-two wood interior, black aluminum-clad exterior Marvins. We debated making this change for quite a while because the old ones were brand new and, since there are about 50 windows in the building, it was a very expensive proposition but I am so glad we went for it: the RBB looks a million times better.

Tub for the master bathroom

It finally arrived yesterday, nearly a month after I pulled the trigger on buying it. I'm thinking of painting the exterior white but leaving the interior in all its zinc-y patina-ed goodness.

We won the appeal! Plus, new art

On Tuesday we won our appeal to the Zoning Board to enlarge the RBB's roof structure and to use the basement as part of the tenants' living space! This is what we've been working for since we bought the building ten months ago. A huge victory! We still have to wait 2 weeks for the Board's decision to be written up and then 3 more for any objections to be filed in court, but for all intents and purposes, we can move forward with construction.

Since there are no pretty pictures from that happy event, I'll share two scores from an art auction I attended yesterday. The photos don't do them justice - the background on the portrait is actually a vibrant turquoise and the landscape is more luminous - plus, it's quite large (23" by 30") plus frame, so it packs a real punch.





The portrait is going to be hung gallery-style with the two portraits I bought in the fall. I'm not sure, but I think I'll hang the landscape in our unit's entry hall.

New front doors

On Saturday, we picked up our five front doors from the salvage warehouse. This is going to be the exterior front door to the whole building:



It's nearly 4" thick, tall and wider than typical (39" if I remember right). We're planning to cut out the top two panels and replace them with glass to allow light into the RBB's common foyer.

This is one of the two identical doors to the tenants' units:



And this is one of a pair of narrow French doors that will be the entryway to our unit:



It's exciting to have them in our possession, even though they're just stacked in the garage for the time being. And not a moment too soon, since I went by the RBB today to sell someone an unused shower stall out of it and noticed that the wood at the top of the old front door has split and it's off its top hinge.

A sink for the master bathroom

I took the plunge and bought what I'm planning to use as the sink in our master bathroom. It arrived yesterday and is even bigger and more dramatic than I'd expected (hopefully not *too* big or *too* dramatic). Here it is - obviously it's going to need a drain cut into the bottom.

Salvaged wrought iron

When we were in Savannah last weekend, we visited an architectural salvage store that had some pretty wrought iron. These two styles were our favorites:




We're thinking about alternating them to create our new balcony's ironwork. But first I need to investigate prices a bit more, since I don't know what it costs to make these things new (or what it costs to ship two dozen of them here from Georgia). I'm meeting with an iron-worker at the RBB a week from today to get a sense of pricing.

Demolition progress

I finally remembered *both* the bring my photo to the site *and* to actually use it! Here are some pictures from the top floor of the mostly-demo'ed interior (the only staircase left is the one from the third floor up to the roof). The first and second floors are in similar condition.

You can see the cement blocked-in rear windows in the fourth photo and, in the second photo, the loose, indented brickwork between the windows shows where one of recently-removed chimneys used to be.