Media Closet II

The final chapter of our closet-fest involves the media closet. We described a lot of the plans in this post; here's what it looks like now. Pardon the hooptie composite, as we don't have a wide-angle lens to fit the whole thing in one shot.

All of the shelving is now in place. For the upper shelves, which will hold extra cables, games, and accessories, we cut down some of our leftover solid shelves to fit exactly. The Elfa pieces come in fixed widths and aren't meant to be cut, but with access to a big saw and a drill it's really quite easy to trim them and then re-drill the necessary holes so they fit on the brackets. The cut side remains unfinished, but if it's up against a wall inside a closet .. meh.

The counter-height solid shelf is serving its purpose well as a charging station, and the lower ventilated shelves are now housing virtually all of our A/V components, with plenty of room to spare. At present the cabling is a bit of a mess, but we're refraining from tightening that up too much until the component arrangement is more finalized. In particular, we need to put in a receiver to hook various pieces together and output to our soon-to-be-installed recessed speakers.

For cooling, we have installed a CoolComponents VS-HFB variable-speed fan with a temperature sensor near where the hottest components are likely to be, somewhat above the baseboard level. We don't yet need to run it, thankfully (and if we never do, all the better) but it's good to have just in case.

The "door" to the closet is just a white curtain for now. We were dissatisfied with the way the proposed framing for sliding doors was going to work, and are considering other options. Top on our list is a barn door of some kind.

Office Closet

For the Office Closet, we wanted storage for all of our office supplies, a home for our network printer and paper shredder, and a little room for guests to hang a dress or suit and maybe a robe or towel. Luckily we planned ahead and had the closet wired for lighting (again, an overhead light inside the door frame), electrical and ethernet for the printer.

To figure out what type of spaces we would need for office supplies and files, we laid out most of what we were hoping to stash. I spent about two days unpacking 15 boxes of office stuff and sorting through/getting rid of items. Here’s the pile of stuff we need to find other homes for or get rid of:

And the stuff that’s actually office or guest bedroom related (some of these boxes are even empty!):

Again, most of the shelves and hanging standards we needed were left over from New York so it took just a few additional elements and some major tweaking. We knew we wanted to repurpose a drawer unit that had been acting as a dresser and because of its depth and drawer extension, it could only go one place. The diagram:

Here’s the closet mid-installation (and Greg admiring our work):

And the final product (with a guest hoodie and robe hanging from door hooks):

More detail of the drawer unit:

The top four drawers hold office and design supplies and printer paper and toner. The larger drawers on the bottom have boxes for office-related discs and cables, wedding stuff including photos, and other supplies for house projects. Every drawer and shelf will have labels soon.

Close-ups of the closet rod for guests (now holding the tux Greg borrowed from a friend), and all of our files and photo boxes:

Bedroom Closet

We have decided on final resting places for most of our furniture and belongings in the house. After going back and forth, we decided on the small interior room as our Master Bedroom (until we tackle the downstairs renovation) and the larger/brighter front room as the Office/Guest Bedroom. Photos to come of our rooms as they are now.

With those decisions made and a windfall of Container Store sales and gift cards, we were ready to take on organizing our closets. We chose to outfit all four closets on the top floor (Bedroom, Office, Linen and Media) with Elfa systems. They are pretty easy to install, adjustable, and are super strong, plus we had a number of Elfa components left over from our closets and office in New York. Overall, all four closets ended up around $200 and they would have been about $1500 without the existing elements, sales and gift cards!

Our closets all have our 9' ceilings and we tried to utilize the height as much as we could. At 22"-30" deep, we decided shelves right above the door frames made the most since as we probably wouldn't be able to access anything higher.

We wanted the Bedroom Closet to hold all of our hanging clothes as well as our nice shoes. Because we’re trying to keep our floors as clean as possible, the more casual shoes are kept downstairs in the entryway under a bench. It took a bit of work to get all of the clothes to fit with room to grow but luckily we’re constantly paring down our wardrobes and Greg only has one pair of dress shoes. Here’s our illustration/diagram so we knew what to reuse and purchase:

And the finished closet:

Everything fits in so nicely. It’s kind of a pleasure to get dressed or even put away clothes now. Some of the highlights:
•a light inside and over the door frame to illuminate everything at night.
•room to grow… an extra foot of closet rod each
•those shoe shelves actually glide out!
•the shelf above Greg’s clothes will hold boots and shoes/bags that we don’t use that often

Pantry

On our Anniversary post, we mentioned how much we love our walk-in pantry. Now that the guys are out of here, we’ve been able to do a final cleaning and unpack. Eventually the pantry will have lower cabinetry to store small appliances and bakeware, and upper ventilated shelves for food storage. For now, we’re using Greg’s shelves that had no other home to hold food and cleaning supplies, and our old wine tower from New York to hold liquor.

We’ve also been able to move in a few permanent pieces like our wine fridge, toaster and blender, and a hamper for towels and rags next to our tiny trash can (yay composting!)

It’s so great to finally have a clean spacious area to store our food. This set up will hopefully hold us over until we get the money and time to add cabinetry/shelving and a cool barn door to the space.

Curtain Track

They’re gone! Our contractor and his team of workers are out of the living space of our home. They are still messing up stuff on the outside and in the garage but as of this weekend, we have our home to ourselves!

Now that we can actually live in our space, we have a lot of projects to tackle. Within twelve hours of the guys leaving, we were ready to start hanging curtains. We actually had a neighbor comment on our glass house and ask us where we moved from, implying that we’re not used to city living. He’s a little wrong and is probably projecting but maybe our years in Manhattan and lack of privacy have softened us.

We are loving the downtown/Bay Bridge view from our large glass doors but agree that a little privacy every now and then would be nice. Our vision is one, large, simple white curtain that spans the entire 13' opening when drawn but tucks nicely in front of the pocket when not in use. There is no wall space above the doors (only a small amount of trim) and any wall-mounted hardware would necessitate at least one middle bracket, forcing us to have a curtain panel stored on the left side of our door, blocking the view.

We decided the best solution for a large, single panel would be a ceiling-mounted system à la hospital curtains. Our awesome friend Stella knows the business and hooked us up with two 9' tracks and all of the necessary hardware.

So, after a few hours of planning, measuring and drilling (and the help of another awesome friend, Fabian) we have a beautiful, 18' low-profile aluminum ceiling track. The curtain will most likely be a large canvas drop cloth with small grommets along the top... one of next weekend’s projects.

Anniversary

We've had a really long string of bad luck lately, including both of our laptop hard drives dying (with significant data loss), complaints from neighbors, and our contractor threatening to walk off the job. But last night was the first night we actually felt really comfortable in our own home. We had only our third or fourth home-cooked dinner since moving in, but for the first time it actually felt easy and nice.

And that's only fitting, because today marks the one-year anniversary since taking ownership of our property. We certainly never thought we'd be where we are today, with the first phase of construction still yet to be completed and a number of major components postponed. But now seems like a good time to reflect back on the project and think of our favorite things about the home we've created.

1. Bathroom sunlight. Every morning our bathroom is bathed in so much natural light we don't even need to turn on any lamps. It's a great start to our morning.

2. New appliances. They are fantastic and we love them all. Our SubZero refrigerator is spacious and just more sensible and well-designed than every other fridge we've ever used. The range and oven are a joy; so far the first few things we've made with them have all come out great. And the large deep sink is great for washing .. everything.

3. Having two dishwashers. People are usually a bit surprised when we tell them about this, but they have already been super-useful. We highly recommend this setup for anyone who cooks a lot. We will never again be forced to keep dirty dishes in or around the sink, waiting to be put in a dishwasher that's full.

4. High ceilings. The whole upper floor has 9' ceilings, and they're even higher in the dining room. As expected, this gives every room a more airy and spacious feel. And it's one of those things that's not easy to get, so we're happy we picked a place that had them.

5. Media closet. Although it isn't finished yet, it's exciting to be wired for all of our audio/video/data needs. It promises to eventually make high-bandwidth, reliable connections all over the home and banish most of the necessary wires and devices from sight.

6. Picture window. We're so glad we put this in to take advantage of our view of downtown. Living on a hill has its benefits, and we're exploiting them to the fullest. We would add the sliding doors to this list too, because they're awesome, but we're really not able to avail ourselves of them until we have a deck of some kind.

7. Separate guest bedroom and studio. Having these spare rooms is amazing, and we've already been able to make one up to accommodate guests quite comfortably. The promise of more space to be able to use for special purpose is a welcome one; it will be easier to devote time to our hobbies when we already have the space.

8. Shower. We couldn't be happier with the fixtures - the shower head works great, the thermostatic valve is intuitive, and the tiling turned out just as nice as we expected.

9. Large walk-in pantry. This has been especially useful to have as storage during the interim while we're without most of our cabinetry. It holds a ton of supplies and will keep some of our smaller, more rarely used appliances out of sight.

10. Overhead lights on dimmers. Being able to finely control lighting levels everywhere is a simple luxury with a high impact. We've picked up a bunch of these half-silvered bulbs and porcelain fixtures to make for totally reasonable - if utilitarian - stand-ins for what will eventually be chandeliers.

Things are starting to shape up as the rooms are "finished" one by one, so I suspect we'll have some good news to report soon.

Milestone

This weekend we moved into the rear of the house! Here's what it looked like before we moved all of our stuff back there:

The final walkthrough of the back went okay, yielding a number of small issues. Those have been mostly addressed, and we were told that it would all be done and we could move in by end-of-day Friday. And of course, they managed to leave some little things to Monday, meaning they have since been working in the back of the house - sanding, no less! - when we made it really clear they had to be out of there before we moved in. Grrr! By end-of-day Wednesday the space still had details left unfinished - for example, we went to run the dishwashers to clean dishes before we put them away and, although they ran beautifully, they didn't do such a great job because they didn't get any water. Oops.

There are still a lot of things, large and small, that we are very dissatisfied with, but we're just going to have to deal with them and work them out ourselves over time. The project has to move forward. Overall the space and layout are what we wanted, it just looks like it's going to take more time, effort, money, and possibly a visit from another contractor to fully realize our vision here.

So we have moved all of our things out of the front two rooms and the workers have been in there fixing up all the stuff they missed. So we're still in a somewhat cramped situation, but the scenery has changed.

On the plus side, we have fire! And we used it for our first home-cooked dinner in 3 months.

Progress?

We are now nearly three months into our move-in, and the back of the house is still a warzone. It seems like every week, only half of what is supposed to get done is actually finished come Friday afternoon.

A walkthrough revealed lots of little items that our contractor is now diligently addressing, some of which require patchwork, re-mudding, sanding, caulking, and painting. So we are even now still looking at perhaps another two weeks until we can claim the rear of the house as finished territory.

We also needed to make some serious adjustments to the treatment of the windows and doors in the back. The drawings called for the door to be nearly flush with the left corner, and the adjacent window to be offset about six inches. For structural reasons, our contractor decided to push the door in about six inches and move the window closer to flush. This had a tangible and unsettling visual impact on what was a carefully arranged set of apertures, so we needed a remedy.

Our architect came up with a solution to make the spaces and openings relate properly again, which involved some creative casing and furring out portions of the wall near and under the window. The additional delay and expense was not exactly music to our ears and those of our contractor, but the end result I think might actually be better than the original plan. Above: before and after.

In addition, we discovered our pantry door was located in the wrong place by a few inches. This was enough that the adjacent refrigerator would actually extend past the opening by a little bit, so they had to correct that as well.

On the plus side, the sink and all appliances are in place and our temporary plywood countertops are finished, so it's getting easier to imagine it as a working kitchen.

Finished Floors

After three weeks of labor, the floors in the rear of the house are finally finished. Progress was much slower because the floor guy was also sanding and white-washing the beams, which he could not do at the same time as the floors. Also, the first try at getting the right color on the floors didn't work out, and he ended up having to sand it all out and start from scratch. Thankfully, the results look pretty nice, and are a fairly close match to the original wood in the front half of the house.

This week there should be plenty of activity; in the front of the house, the floor guy will be patching up and sanding our stairs and banister. Meanwhile, the rear of the house will get a new treatment for the window and door, along with the appliances and some carpentry.

Wood, wood, wood

The new hardwood floors are being laid down in the rear of the house, and when finished will match the cut and color of all the existing hardwood. Since we want them to conform to the more modern aesthetic in that area, we are purposefully omitting the traditional 5-plank border found in our other rooms in favor of just a clean, straight lie the whole way through. We are running them across the room (N-S) and not parallel to the hall both to make less obvious the places where the floor is not perfectly level (it is an old house, after all), and to further mark the transition from the hallway into a new space.

At the same time, we have plenty more wood to finish. There will be two decorative posts framing the large exposed beam, providing a complete definition of the structure. We're planning on whitewashing all of the exposed beams and posts to keep some of their natural grain while preventing their presence from being heavy and overbearing.

The wall between the kitchen and the rear wall will be covered with horizontal planks of the lath that we pulled from inside our walls during the demolition, a celebration of the original construction.

And yes, our temporary island countertop will be wood as well - plywood! I guess you could call that "builder grade." We thought of using other surfaces like butcher block or stainless steel, but it's surprising how expensive those get when you need 30 square feet of them. The 3/4" thick plywood will be sanded nicely and treated with a food-safe sealer (BioShield Herbal Oil #2), and as a bonus will serve as the mounting surface for the stone we will eventually install.

Walls of Glass

Our 800 lb. window returned yesterday, and this time it survived long enough to be put in place. It's about 50 square feet of 3/4" thick tempered glass, and the installers usually insist on using a crane for this kind of job. But it's not easy to get a crane to the site, with the lack of open level ground near the backyard, so manual labor carried the day.

It was a heroic effort. Several guys hoisted the pane, in a coordinated fashion, through the narrow gap between the house and the scaffolding that had been set up to support them as they put it into place. By comparison, the 500 lb. doors were "easy" because they could just be lifted through the large opening.

Happily, both installations were a success and the house is now considerably less drafty as a result.

The door is a Fleetwood Norwood 3070-EX, a system of two 6' wide floor-to-ceiling (9' high) sliding pocket doors. This was one of our splurges. We want to showcase the view and light in the back of the house as much as possible, and the best way to do that is with doors that are almost all glass and that can get completely out of the way. The result will be a seamless blend between indoor and outdoor living, all the better to enjoy the many sunny Potrero Hill days ahead.

A Thousand Little Windows

Our new 8'x6' picture window arrived yesterday. Unfortunately it came in a few more pieces than we would like.

Looks like we're going to have a big hole in the back of our house for a little while longer.

Move-In Misery

On Wednesday, the movers arrived and in a short 2.5 hours moved all of our furniture and "big stuff" into our new home. Unfortunately, the house wasn't quite ready for that.

We know our contractor worked really hard to get the basics ready for our move-in, but we were still pretty disappointed with how our first couple of days went down. Obviously, we expected some cosmetic issues; not everything was going to be perfect. Lack of hot water, electricity, and a condition that wasn't exactly "broom clean" contributed to the feeling of something like camping, and yet somehow worse.

By the time the movers left, our meager living space was crowded and dirty. It was so packed, we had to ask the movers to leave the sofa sections upright, to take up less floor space (pictured, above right).

In the days since, we've been methodically fixing this. Starting with the Guest Bedroom, we cleaned the floor section by section, unpacking and cleaning items and slowly carving out some space for ourselves. It reminded me of the kind of house-by-house sweep they run in Iraq, us freeing up and wiping down literally 3'x3' squares of floor at a time. Jamie made huge progress on the office and studio, including getting TV and Internets up and running. Over the weekend we've managed to clean almost all of the bedroom floors. We now basically have a usable living room and office, though still surrounded by boxes and miscellaneous items.

The strategy now is to keep the workers out of this half of the house (except to finish the bathroom) and let them back in to do room-by-room fixes once we have the full upper floor at our disposal, weeks from now.

Coming up this week, we'll clean out the hallway and tidy up the storage area (future half-bath) so we can move most of our boxes out of the living space. On the construction side, the new exterior walls on the lower floor should be framed, and our new doors and windows may go into the dining room! Should be some exciting pics to come.

Pre-Move-In

Thanks to the help of our good friends Fabian, Malcolm, and Rik, yesterday we hauled 6 SUV-loads of boxes from our apartment up to the new house. Movers will be coming later today to bring the furniture.

We have a walkthrough at noon today with the architect to make a punchlist of things to fix up.

Also supposedly happening today: finishing the baseboards, installing doors, sealing the bathroom floor and wall grout, the bathroom ceiling trim, and some other general clean-up.