master bedroom Archives - Brooklyn Row House

The Plan

September 1, 2006

From the future: I originally intended to make this Master Bedroom reno like the other project pages but as I got into the planning I saw that this was going to be several huge projects going on simultaneously and that it would involve three rooms and the common hall. It was going to be too large for a single page so I decided to present this is as a series of posts. We now commence with those posts: I psyched myself up and put down the plastic for the next and final major renovation project here: the master bedroom and

Phase 7: The Wrath of Details

September 8, 2006

Today officially begins the scheduled start of the next major phase of the renovation at Brooklyn Row House: the rebuilding of the master bedroom and upstairs hallway. It started like most of my scheduled projects. In other words, it didn’t. Dykes Lumber, which was given instructions to call me before delivery, arrived yesterday when I must have been out walking the grovelers. Granted, it’s a contractor size order but, sheesh, even GC crews take lunch breaks, guys. They didn’t call to confirm that they were even delivering yesterday so I could at least hang a note. For that matter, I

Phase 7: Plan A, Step One

September 8, 2006

Here’s what I have planned for next week’s start of the master bedroom renovation. Tomorrow evening, I have to move myself into the guest room. I also need to take an updated picture of that room. It just occurred to me that a lot of things in that room were gifts: the sofa bed (Karen), the macrame curtains (Betsy), the side table and the large, mirrored O’Connell-Flynn whiskey sign too. I even have a couple of wall hangings given to me by magician, Doug Henning, back when we worked together on The Magic Show. Anyway, I really hope that sofabed

Into the closet

September 19, 2006

I’ve been fighting a sore throat and sniffles all day, but I’m tired of my belly aching. That’s why I’m so behind bloody schedule here. Yesterday, I got the rough framing done for the new closet in the master bedroom. Well, almost done. I thought I had the 4″ lags and shields I needed for the upper cabinet’s deck support. Because these houses don’t have attics, I need to build one for dead storage. There will be two levels in this closet, with cabinet doors on top. I want a profiled corner on the closet, not a square edge. This

Plague Walls

September 25, 2006

With great reluctance, I pulled myself out of my sick bed to get back to the master bedroom renovation, which means more demolition. Lovely. A couple of hours later Karen called to see how her patient was doing. Karen’s an anesthesiologist who had to leave medicine because of a severe latex allergy. So she takes things like breathing both personally and professionally. When I told her I was ripping down old woodwork and plaster I thought her hands were going to zoom through the phone and strangle me, Bugs Bunny style. “Are you <bleeping> nuts, you stupid <bleep>?! Do you

You don’t know until you try

October 1, 2006

The guys at Kamco were right. Quarter-inch drywall can curve to a minimum five-foot radius, dry. Wetting/scoring it can reduce that to as little as three feet “if you’re really good!” The problem is, the radius of this corner is about ten inches. That’s even too shallow for High Flex, which I could only get by special order and only in palette quantities anyway. The story of this closet starts here. I could have saved myself a lot of problems if I’d just built a square corner on that closet. But I really wanted a radius here to match two

A hundred pounds of plaster later…

October 6, 2006

It worked! It took four days, three fifty pound bags of plaster, a makeshift profiling knife and a couple of finish coats but the radiused closet corner is done. There was only one mishap. Jack the Dog, my Newfoundland, was standing at the base of the ladder looking up at me when about 8 ounces of wet plaster fell off my palette and landed squarely on his head and muzzle. Against his black fur it looked like he’d been smacked in the face with a custard pie. So there was a quick diversion to the back yard for a bath

Where’s the progress?

October 12, 2006

You DIYers know what I’m talking about. A friend comes by to check out your latest completed project and goes “ooh! ahh!” over the paint color and asks where you got your terrific door knobs. You modestly thank him for the compliment. But, deep inside, you feel like Michelangelo after hearing, “Hey, nice paint colors. Where’d you get the cool frame?” You shed blood on this room for… what?… three months and that’s all he can see? Paint color and door knobs?! Is he blind or just clueless? He doesn’t see the five hundred feet of mesh tape you skillfully

Forging ahead…

October 18, 2006

At last, some visible progress on the master bedroom renovation. For most of last week and the weekend I repaired plaster, which isn’t very exciting photography. If you can see something it means you didn’t do a very good job of it. Four years ago, I replaced a termite-ridden center support beam in the basement with a steel I-beam. As careful as we were, there was enough settling that the upstairs plaster took a minor beating. Because these were stress fractures that went all the way through the brown coat, I had to dig out each crack with an old

Happy Halloween

November 1, 2006

The neighborhood was a mob scene of power rangers and fairy princesses tonight. Our state senator had the brilliant idea of turning the park down the block into “Haunted Halloween” with a disco, a haunted walk, hay rides, a food court and kiddy amusements as a safer alternative to trick-or-treating. As a result, half the kids in Brooklyn were there. Then they assaulted my neighborhood for their sugar rush. Next year I want a government subsidy on my candy supply. Halloween is a kids’ thing and since I don’t have kids it’s not exactly my thing. But I endure it

Category: master bedroom