Wades Beach: Out of the Ashes

This is the first video clip I have made about the house construction. And I don't know how many will follow. For our apartment renovation I made six, and that job was about 1/20th the size of this project.

In this clip, we visit Demolition Depot, where Chrissie and I want to get as much salvaged items as we can. This will be both to save money and be "green" by using recycled materials. Most of the stuff you will see in the video came out of East Coast homes and apartment buildings. Maybe you will see some of it in our new beach cottage.

Labels: Construction, Salvage, Video

We had a big Saturday out East this weekend, with lots to report on building the new house. We shot out early to Greenport for a meeting with Rob Brown, our architect. He had the latest set of plans to show us, and we were knocked out. We are getting very close to bidding this out to contractors, so this set was important. It was a relief just to see highly detailed plans of each room.

We reviewed the electrical plans for each part of the house. Some of the decisions we made are going to impact the overall design and look of the interior. For example, the basement isn’t going to have any fluorescent lights, which are kind of traditional (or typical) in every American basement. We are going to use some type of directional lighting, and compact fluorescent light bulbs. These use 75-percent less energy than standard incandescent bulbs and last up to 10 times longer.

But the big decisions are going to be on the main floor.

The plan now is for exposed-beam ceilings throughout the first floor (except for the two bathrooms). This will mean we will be looking up at the floorboards above the rooms, but we’ll get special nice-looking planks so it will look good. We’ll have directional lighting with exposed conduits, and ceiling fans throughout.

One thing I learned was that glow-in-the-dark light switches are actually required for all enclosed spaces. When we did our apartment renovation last summer, the contractor installed light-up light switches in several locations. I always assumed he was being nice to us; now I learn it is a law! They look great and now we’ll have them in the new house. Other electrical decisions were made about wall sconces, ceiling fans, and where the cable TV will be located.

We also talked about salvaged items we’d like to buy from Demo Depot: windows, doors, cabinets, and lighting fixtures. Some of these I’ve already written about. We want to see about the stainless steel sink that is 106 inches wide; it would sit on a custom-built wood cabinet and be the place where I plan to wash 100,000 dishes for the next 50 years. The round windows are in the plans. So are some doors and the cabinets (for the kitchen island). We are allowing for a couple of special surprises; stay tuned to see if those come in.

On the way home we thought of a couple more things to ask Rob about, so we called him this afternoon (a conference call, double-team style). The most important is the fireplace. Since this is where the fire started and caused us so much grief, we were initially only going to have a gas fireplace. Just turn on the switch, and instant fire. However, we loved having a wood-burning fireplace so much, and making a fire, cutting firewood (really, I did that). Just the whole process of stoking a roaring fire is something I’d really miss. In the old house, Chrissie’s parents installed a manufactured steel assembly, which was bolted together and placed over a “fireproof” firebox. We learned this was not really the best method, as this is where the embers escaped from and caught the walls on fire last year. So… Rob says the only truly safe choice is what everyone going back to the Pilgrims used: bricks and masonry. His ballpark estimate is this could be around $15,000 to build a brick fireplace. Is that too much to pay for the enjoyment of a roaring fire on a cold winter’s night out on Shelter Island? And what if the fireplace mantel was once in a suite in the Plaza Hotel? Even better!

Labels: Electric, Fireplace, Plans, Salvage

Last weekend was the one-year anniversary of the fire. We didn't really talk about it or dwell on Jan. 18, 2008. It is just such a drag that there isn't anything left to say about it except one thing: let's get going and build the new house.

Next weekend we are going to meet our architect, so we took some time to shoot up to Harlem and visit one of our favorite places, Demolition Depot. When we recently visited the sister store in Connecticut, Irreplaceable Artifacts, the owner, Evan, told us about a giant stainless steel sink that might work for the kitchen. And it came out of one of Donald Trump's houses. Let's go! So the mission of the day was sinks, doors, and windows.


(Above) This the 106-inch long sink, but not stamped TRUMP. We like it. It would go in the kitchen.


(Above) There is a whole room of old tubs, many from hotels. We will probably get one from this collection; we are doing three bathrooms. The 7-foot ones are much more expensive than the others, but it would be cool to get one.


(Above) An antique crapper? There is a lot to choose from. Chrissie remarked that a new American Standard might make more sense. But to sit on something 90 years old would be cool too.


(Above) We need three bathroom sinks, and a pedestal sink would be really nice. The black one would have been great in our apartment, but we needed a vanity underneath it.


(Above) This is a real good candidate for a sink that would go onto a vanity.


(Above) These round windows are also candidates to go into the eaves. We have to check with the plans to see if this will work out. It would give us more light in the bedroom.


(Above) Welcome to the door vault. There must be more than 1,000 in here. All kinds to look at. We need multiple kinds of doors.


(Above) We fell in love with this set of doors. We need a matched set for the downstairs bedrooms and closets; these would be so nice. But what's up with the heavy bolt on that door?


(Above) Hopefully this is not the last you will be seeing of these double doors, which would work in the sun room. We have to price these babies out.

So it was a productive couple of hours in Harlem. We saw a lot of great things that would make nice finishes. It kind of takes your mind off the fact that nothing is built yet. Going out to see the architect and reviewing the "last" set of plans before they go to the contractors for bids will be a huge step.

We are also continuing our education about how "green" we can go. I've been reading up on solar panels and alternative energy, and we're looking at any ways to build the house, cut energy costs, and save money.

Seeing a tub that may go into your bathroom is nice, but actually sitting in it in the house would be 100 times better.

Labels: Bath, Kitchen, Plans, Salvage

This is one of the windows we liked at Irreplaceable Artifacts.

It is time to pick up the blog again because we have been making progress on the house. Let me catch you up on the past few months and weeks of what has been happening since May. It is hard to believe that January 18 will be the first anniversary of the fire.

We had to fight with the insurance agency for most of the summer about our settlement. We definitely did not get as much out of the claim as we wanted. I feel like we got a pretty fair settlement for the personal property (the contents) but not for the house itself. At some point we just had to move on, or else we’ll be stalled forever. Could we have maybe gotten more if we’d used an independent adjuster to fight for us? Maybe. And maybe not. We’ll never know. But we moved on.

About four weeks ago we went out to Greenport to meet with our architect, Rob Brown. He is so awesome and we left there really happy with the latest set of plans. We are now refining the set we got earlier in the year from him.

We also learned on this trip the sad news that we are going to have to more than likely demolish the remaining parts of the house. Since the fire, it has stood empty, just a frame, the shell of the old house. If you drove by the house at 15 mph you would think there is a real house there, except for the giant tarp on the roof. The windows are not boarded up; the glass is still in them. But if you look closer, you’ll see it is just a ghost of what Chrissie’s parents built in 1977. Rob said that since a lot of the wood is fire-damaged, it wouldn’t be feasible to build onto a damaged house. We also must jack the house up to pour a foundation (incredibly, it only has a dirt foundation, and we are going to pour concrete to have a full basement) and a contractor may balk at raising up a damaged house. So it makes sense to just wipe the lot clean and start from scratch with a whole new house.

However, the basic footprint of the house is remaining the same, it will not get any wider or longer. We are going to go up a level, from a ranch to a two-story. The second story will have one new master bedroom, bath, and a study/den. And a walk-in closet for my T-shirt museum. I would like this lined with cedar to protect my valuable 1980s rock ‘n roll concert tees! A benefit of having a second story is that we will get water views of the bay, something that was lost when the homes across the street were constructed twenty years ago.

We did spend quite a bit of time talking about being “green” and the possible use of solar energy. Even back in February we considered it. Rob told us about the cost, possibly $50,000, to install solar panels on the roof to collect energy and generate electricity. However, there are state and federal tax credits that can knock a lot of that down. How much remains to be seen, but we are still investigating that. We probably will not collect rainwater from the roof, for two reasons: this is a weekend house, and we get our water from a well. But in the coming months you will hear more about us trying to save money and help the environment at the same time.

Probably the best time we’ve had lately was going to Connecticut for an entire Saturday and paying a visit to Irreplaceable Artifacts, the sister shop to Demolition Depot in Harlem. We had purchased several things for our apartment at Demolition Depot, such as bathroom fixtures, a glass-paneled door, and a beautiful mirror. But the location in Middletown was supposed to be much larger and have more stuff. We also got lucky and got a whole afternoon with the owner, Evan Blum. He is a legend in the business, and has been doing architectural salvage in the area for more than 30 years.

We brought our plans into the shop and met with Evan. He looked them over with a trained eye; he knows his stuff. We then went room by room in the plans and looked at possibilities in the collection. It was so amazing—and a lot of fun—to imagine these pieces that at one time were in homes in places like Greenwich that could be used on Shelter Island. Chrissie fell in love with a light fixture that has an owl motif. I was thrilled to hear about an entire oak-paneled room—saved from a house in Queens—for our planned reading room/sun room. We looked over doors, windows, cabinets and more. It was a good exploration trip to see what they had. I posted the finds here.

Our next step will be to go to Greenport and see what the new plans look like. We need to price out the cost of the items that Evan has located, and then start the process of bidding the job out to contractors to build the house.

We hope to have good news soon about when this can happen.

Stay tuned…

Labels: Construction, Plans, Salvage, Solar Heating