Cabinet installation complete!

All in one day. They’re up! Now here’s the catch. What you are seeing is not what you will be seeing once I’m done. The white cabinet boxes are from Ikea. Once assembled, hung and screwed together they are an incredibly sturdy cabinet. And reasonably priced! However, in the coming days they will be disguised with all sorts of custom trickery and look completely different.

Again, you may wonder how a skinny guy gets a big ‘ole cabinet way up in space over where the fridge will be. Nope. Not gonna tell you how.



A few more pictures for you.

Sundays

Emerson and Hank typically finish the paper around one o’clock and are, understandably, in need of a short nap. Leigh and I have made our pilgrimage to Dunkin’ Donuts and, fortified with sugars of all varieties, are deep into quiet building tasks. The work really never stops.



Someone I know (wielding a screw gun above) is doing her first day on a daytime soap tomorrow! Some extra work, but that’s how they get to know you. And as soon as they figure out how well she can wield a screw gun…well, the sky’s the limit.

A Slurry Of Updates.

Dear reader,

As the tasks become mundane I grow less inclined to bore you with the details. Fear not! There is excitement on the horizon. Last week was spent taping and sanding and priming the kitchen area. This followed the hated week of installing someone else’s kitchen, but hey, I don’t have to worry about rent till December.

I also laid quarter inch masonite over the 3/4 inch ply in the kitchen. I glued it with a gallon plus of liquid nails, smeared on with a toothed trowel and weighted it down overnight. For safety’s sake, I screwed down the area’s that will be exposed to foot traffic and covered over the crew heads with Ready Patch, the king of redi-mix patching compounds. Emerson has been tasked with guarding the finish floor material which arrived in the mail!



When was the last time you ordered a kitchen floor over the internet and it arrived in the mail?



Here is a close up!



It’s cork. An environment friendly, renewable, natural product. We got it from this place.

The backsplash will be a homemade extravaganza made from saved, donated and found wine corks. More on that later. But you see the theme emerging? The sink is a kind of rusty-wine red. That color will be pulled throughout the kitchen in various ways. So entering the kitchen should, in a certain measure, have the feeling of diving into a bottle of Cabernet.

And here are the walls primed and ready.

Wall By Wall (installation three & four)

Ok, the west wall is kind of interesting. It is the wall shared with the living room. It used to have all the cabinets and the sink and no openings.





Now, as you can see, it is open to the living room and the only way into the kitchen. It still has the sink, as well as an 18” dishwasher and a 12” set of four drawers. It also has that little portal. I wanted to open up as much of the wall as I could, and given all the pipes running through, this was all I could do. I’m getting used to it. It looks a little like the heat lamp area of a short-order kitchen. So I’m going with that and installing a little chunk of countertop at the base of the opening, a little down-light, and from the living room side there will be a stain-glass ‘light box’ hovering above it. If it stinks, I’ll sheetrock over the whole thing and you’ll never know its there. The one plus is that you will be able to wash the dishes and watch TV!

The South wall is kind of my fav as it’s completely made up.





It used to be the wall that had the entrance from the hallway and the dumb waiter. Now it has a nook for the Fridge, a built in cubby for the micro-wave and a shallow ‘pantry’. The door to the pantry is going to be one of the original cabinet doors which are glass paneled doors (although you can’t tell because they’ve been painted over)

So there you have it, the four walls of the kitchen.

Wall by Wall (installation two)

The North Wall

This is the least interesting wall. It houses the window. The only change I have made is to laminate sheetrock onto the existing plaster and lath and to narrow the window opening thereby eliminating the window casing and allowing enough wall space to end the countertops without bumping into anything.



Do you like our new sink? Just kidding. I invested in a $40 slop sink that I could use during the work so when the nice new sink is installed I don’t ruin it by washing out paint brushes and joint compound buckets.

Mud

I got back to work on our place today after the week elsewhere. I resumed one of my least favorite tasks, taping. Inside corners get paper tape, butt joints get nylon mesh tape and outside corners get corner bead, a metal product that you screw on. All of these nifty items get covered with layers of mud, joint compound to be exact. As the guys on This Old House once said, “everything on a job site that comes in a tub or a wheelbarrow and is smeared on is called mud”.

Although I’m a bit of a jack of all trades, if someone put a gun to my head I would tell them I’m a carpenter, and then go change my trousers. So for a self-proclaimed carpenter to have to spend his days spreading layers of joint compound on walls and ceilings is a bit like a self-proclaimed chef spending his days at the toaster, buttering all the “whiskey-downs”, or an editor collating at the Zerox machine, or an accountant sharpening pencils. or a priest tending to sheep—the woolly kind. Arguably necessary but boring!!

My wife and I went to a seminar this evening held at the Equity building presumably for the benefit of members of Actors Equity. It featured franchised agents answering questions about the business and the relationship between actors and agents. The panel consisted of one actor and his long time, established agent, a middle aged agent from a middle rung agency and a young agent from, you guessed it, and up and coming new agency. They all talked about how impossible the industry is and how many roadblocks are thrown in everyone’s way and how baffled they are that anyone would want to try to be an actor given all that. After a while, I began drawing in my head. I know why the molding should stop here, just shy of the picture rail…so I’ll concentrate on that, at least for the time being.

Here’s a picture of me “acting”, just so we all don’t forget that the title of this blog is An Actor Repairs. Not a Repairer Repairs or Some Dope Repairs.



Yes, that's my wife Leigh in the background. She's acting too.

Don’t let me fool you. It’s a mugs game, but I love it. A half hour before the seminar I got a call with a job offer for January of 2008! Like, eight weeks of work! I’m a glass half full kind of guy. These days though, it’s half full of mud.

Blame This!

Here’s the delay.




There were some planning and execution problems. It’s got some interesting things going on, however. Custom made cabinets that are not to everyone’s tastes but interesting. The fridge is unique (and I would suspect, expensive). It’s only 24” deep, tall, quiet and good looking. The stove in nice, the hood, stacked on top of the shelf/backsplash is a little messy.

There will eventually be an island and a tile backsplash.

The contractor that was working for them did them no favors. Plugs and electric lines were in the wrong places…a little crazy.

You may be wondering how a guy who likes to work alone gets a big ole’ cabinet like that on top of a couple of thin panels above a fridge. Wonder away. If I told you, then you wouldn’t have to pay me to do it. You could do it yourself. Just like I’m not going to tell you how I memorize all those lines.

Wall by Wall

Ok. Folks are giving me a real hard time about not giving them more pictures. More, more, more! I understand. I’ve been installing someone else’s kitchen this week. Today I had two commercial auditions as well. So I showed up at West 10th Street in the West Village in a black suit with a bag of work clothes, changed, worked for two hours, changed, took a cab to Park Ave South and 27th Street, tried to lip-sync to “We Wish You A Merry Christmas”, hustled back to the job, threw up a few cabinets and a hood, then zipped across to East 46th street for a voice over go-see. Then over to Reproductions to order more headshots and home, where I changed into work clothes and did an hour and a half of taping before settling into the Lehrer hour on PBS. Ah, the life of an actor/carpenter.

So as the work has slowed down and become less dramatic, lets take this opportunity to review the project wall by wall, beginning with the kitchen.

Floor plan reminder.



The East Wall.



This is one of the two main walls. It gets the stove and lots of cabinets and counterspace. As you can see by the picture…



It has been skinned in plywood because the entire surface of the wall will be covered by cabinets, tile and backsplash, so it doesn’t need to be a paint friendly surface. Also, because so many things will be screwed to it, why hunt for studs? Why not just willy nilly sink screws into a friendly piece of plywood?

I’m taping the seems and the corners to add insurance to our pest policy. By the way, news to everyone, there has never been one roach or other creepy crawly in our apartment since taking occupancy in 2001. How’s that for New York City! I did however take the opportunity remodeling afforded me to fill gaps and holes etc. with Great Stuff, that wonderful spray foam that expands and becomes this solid barrier, forbidding the migration of anything with a thought toward infiltration.

Details:

Ikea cabinets (more on that later) will be edge-taped with iron on Cherry veneer. The doors I made this past summer in Iowa City in my super hosts shop will then be hung. The drawer fronts that I also constructed with the doors will be attached to drawers I ordered from here, with drawer slides from here. There will be a tile backing as wide as the stove and rising to the ceiling. Two custom panels made from a collection of wine corks (more on those later) will serve as the back splash, covering the space from the countertop to the bottom of the cabinets. The floor will be cork from here, glued onto masonite which will be glued onto the 3/4 inch plywood now in place.

There’s an AC outlet and the gas service at the bottom of the wall behind where the stove goes. There are two wires sticking out on either end of the wall that are for the under cabinet plug strips. There is a wire sticking out for the hood and a switched plug that will be for an up light above the shelf above the hood. Capice?

So that’s the first installation of WALL BY WALL. Cheers.

I Like To Work Alone

My favorite co-worker is WNYC. Other than that, I prefer to work alone. Sometimes, when Leigh dons her overalls and takes up a task, I momentarily re-think my preference. In general though, I prefer to work alone.



It’s odd then that I did my first one person show just this past spring. The show, I Am My Own Wife, was received fairly well by audiences but, more to the point, it was the first time I was on stage alone. Sure, I had the guidance of a very talented director and the good work of designers and stage managers and operators and generous producers but it was the first time I would show up at half-hour, enter the dressing room and be alone. I would dress, prepare, walk to the stage and wait--alone. I would change costume at intermission, go back to the stage and wait—alone. I would take the curtain call, thanking the audience, then descend to the dressing room, change into my street clothes, and walk to a restaurant where I would have a celebratory drink—alone.

I wouldn’t want to do that forever because, truth be told, I enjoy the experience of collaboration, at least in the theatre. But there has never been a theatrical experience that has brought me up against my own limitations more keenly than that solo journey. Just as standing at a workbench, trying to cut a perfect dove-tail joint leaves you face to face with the measure of your ability.

The meaning of life resides somewhere in this region. Improvement. Self-improvement. Betterment. Challenge. Growth. Understanding. Wisdom. Knowledge. Enlightenment.

Somewhere in there is the answer. So let's continue to look for challenges.

Interruptions.

Next week will be an unwelcome interruption. I got a call a week and a half ago from a friend of a friend saying they just had a blow up with their contractor and could I come in and install their kitchen. I went over and took a look at the job. The contractor had come into their apartment over the weekend when they were away and disconnected all the appliances and de-installed some of the cabinets that he had previously installed. It’s a bit of a mess but I priced it in such a way that if they accepted, I would not feet too bad leaving my place dormant. My apologies to those dear readers who want to see progress.

These poor guys have been wrapped up and waiting since the summer. Think what they are going through.

A Few Statistics

For you sports fans.

Eleven 4’ by 8’ sheets of 1/2 inch ply, twenty 4’ by 8’ sheets of 1/2 inch drywall and 5 gallons of joint compound are the materials that will be covering up the mess you saw in the last photo gallery. I’ll need eleven more sheets of 1/2 inch drywall, maybe six sheets of 3/8 inch drywall, and 5 more gallons of compound to finish the job.

What’s that? Oh, well they deliver the stuff. Hmmm? No, they just bring it to the front of the building and then the driver, his sidekick, myself and (sometimes) Leigh take the stuff off the truck and lean it against our building. I then tip the driver and his friend a little for the extra effort and, while Leigh guards the door, (a building requirement) I move the stuff in through the lobby and stash it at the bottom of the staircase that leads to our apartment. The elevator is too small to accommodate a four by eight sheet of anything. The last delivery took me 50 minutes from the trucks arrival to the point at which all the materials were in the building and tucked out of the way under the stairwell.

I move the sheets up into the apartment as the work progresses. By the end of the week only 3 sheets of plywood remain at the bottom of the stairs.

The plywood is for added structure in a few key places. The half inch sheetrock is for walls, both new and also to laminate onto plaster walls and the hallway ceiling. The 3/8 inch drywall is to be laminated onto the living room ceiling to make it nice and smooth.

Just in case you want a tutorial. Truthfully this article made even my head hurt.




This is an old picture from when we were "taping" the bedroom

A Cover Up

The framing is complete. Everything that has to be run through the walls has been run. Here are a few shots of the place at this stage. By the end of next week all the walls will be covered and things will look quite a bit different. Cheers.

By the by. Spent the weekend way out on Long Island in Amagansett. I was there putting in a door for someone I did work for a year ago. Leigh came with and took long walks on spits of land. It was gorgeous weather and we both were the recipients of a fabulous meal, good company and the privilege of sitting in a chair given to our guest by Zero Mostel. Need I say more.

Lighting

Anyone who has been in Theatre for any decent amount of time will support this statement. You can build a great set, but if its not well lit, it stinks.

So too with your apartment. Lighting is a BIG deal. I tend to go a little nuts in this department. But hey, it makes a difference.

Bedroom

Ceiling Fan (no overhead lighting)
Switched bedside lamps (3 way switches at bed side and bedroom door)
Overhead light in front of closet
Pull chain lights in closet

Bathroom

Overhead light
Vanity lights above sink
Shower light (recessed in shower enclosure)

Living Room

Ceiling fan (no overhead lighting)
Recessed lights above each window (dimmer switched)
Picture lights (dimmer switched)
Floor lamp in middle of room (dimmer switched)
Other lamps and indirect sources
Entry hall chandelier
Entry hall sconces
Entry hall closet interior lights (switched and pull chain)
Stain glass “light box”

Kitchen

Overhead cove fluorescents
Recessed counter lights
Hood light
Up light above hood (coupled with under cabinet decorative lights)

About 275 feet of two-wire BX cable and 100 feet of three wire BX cable went into the kitchen and half the living room alone. I’ve been blog lite because I’ve been cable heavy.

The Regulars

Well, let’s see. There’s Nelson the Super and his assistant Antonio. Antonio I see every day as he is busy cleaning and moving things to and fro. Nelson was on one of his many eight week vacations during the beginning of the renovation, but the day he came back he rapped loudly on our door. He wanted to see the pipe repair, or so he said, but mostly, he wanted to find out what I was up to. I don’t mind. Occasionally he will try to teach me, in broken English, something basic about how to go about doing this or that. Mostly, he leaves me alone. This is a huge blessing. There is no way that I could do what I’m doing in some uptight Upper East/West side Co-op. I’d have to have permits and licenses and fees and drawings and blah de blah. They’d have me by the short and curlies if you get my meaning. So Nelson and Antonio…I love these guys.

Then there’s the guy at Ernesto’s Hardware. He’s the son of the owner. He works there full time since returning from Iraq. There was a picture of him in uniform next to the cash register while he was deployed. When his mother worked the counter, she often looked its way. Since he’s been back I think the picture has been stowed along with his gear. He speaks Spanish and English with equal ease and little accent, making me feel like the monolingual slug that I am. Often I feel that if I could just begin a conversation, you know, sports, chit-chat, whatever, that we could be friends. But then I pay for my things and leave. Someday I’ll know what to say.

The other hardware store is much different. Oscar is the owner. Apparently he has another store in Brooklyn. Last time I was in there he was complaining that the fire department had given him a slew of citations for storing all manner of ‘unstorables’ in the basement. His place is a mess. Things stacked here and there, stuff hanging from the ceiling…you can barely find a path from the door to the counter and back. The last visit he claimed that the fire department was much more strict since white people started living up here.

Then there’s the delivery guys from Blue Bell Lumber who asked me if I was a contractor. “Well I am, yes. But this is my place that I’m fixing up”. That seemed to clear it up for them because they told me that they couldn’t figure out why a white guy was working so hard, unloading trucks and everything, with no workers. I was about to ask, “you mean undocumented labor, possibly illegal immigrants?” But I thought better of it and just kept moving my twenty sheets of sheetrock and my eleven sheets of half inch ply from the truck to the curb.

Then there are the surprises. The Fresh Direct delivery guy (groceries for the non-New Yorkers) who looked at the place and said, “whoa, you got your work cut out!” When I apologized for having such a little amount of cash for a tip he seemed to size me up along with the project at hand and gave me a smile and a pass. He could tell I was up against it. Better me than him I’m sure he thought.

And there was the Chinese delivery guy, who handed me the bag of food and then, in that vocalization particular to Asian languages, let out a prolonged, Aaahhhhh. “Berry nice.” “You do?” he asked, I nodded. “Ohhhhaaahhh” he exclaimed and, reaching his hand into the apartment, grabbing a stud, and giving it a good shake he added emphasis, “AAHHHHoHH”, apparently liking what he felt. I gave him a nice tip and he gave me many universal signs of encouragement. As I closed the door and went back to our tented enclosure I felt much better about the chaos that surrounds us.

Here’s to my pals.



Speaking of pals. This is back when Hank was little and thinking, "I better bulk up". That's the old bathroom window for those of you taking notes.

Electrics

Electrics is the name of the game these days. The dramatic days of big changes in little time has given way to visually insignificant changes that occupy days. What’s happening though, is major.

Since the beginning of the renovations I have taken the opportunity to replace all the wiring (and plumbing) as we went. Mostly because the existing wiring is old and rotten and, in some instances, within days of causing a huge fire! The old wire is encased in a flexible metal sheathing just like the new stuff, called BX. But in the old stuff, the individual wires within the sheathing are covered with a cloth material, which disintegrates over time when exposed to air. The new stuff is sheathed in a plastic type coating, which has a half life ten thousand times longer than half my life.

So, I’m busy stringing wire, which isn’t terribly blog worthy. The next photo gallery link will give you glimpses of how the walls and ceiling have been framed up along with all of the various wires and gunk that travels through them.

Leigh and I celebrated our faux anniversary yesterday. (We have several anniversary’s, Yesterdays being the City Hall nuptial). And we realized that Emerson has been with us for five years marked by the very same day. He was three or four when we rescued him from a tiny cage at the pound, so he’s eight or nine at this moment. Hank came to us as a kitten in August of 2002, so he’s younger.

I bring this up only because when I was doing the electric for the bedroom, Emerson did his best to help.



This is a shot of what we called the “brain”. The wall between the bedroom and the officette where all the plugs and wiring etc were going for the office equipment.

This time around, Hank has been quite interested in the various tasks while Emerson seems a bit removed, shall we say jaded. It's always that way, isn't it. The younger take an interest, wanting to currior favor, while the older, teenager type, distance themselves. Trying to carve thier own way.

Whenever I feel this sort of feline/caretaker dynamic happening, I almost always resort to--I'll admit-- a very childish response. I hold up both my hands, wiggle my thumbs and, with a taunting delivery exclaim, "opposable thumbs guys! Gotta have 'em!"

Who's your daddy?

Say What? II

Other things you would only hear while encamped in a dust free environment within your own apartment.

“The cornbread is on the doorknob” (within a plastic bag)

“Oh, no. The cheese tray is on the hamper!” (exclaimed by a nearly naked person burdened with dirty clothes in both hands, with no ability to lift a cheese tray while simultaneously depositing the soiled linens).