How to Bake a New Ceiling from Scratch...

Start with 1 part gross drop ceiling, 1 part neon lights

Rip those out to expose ratty tin ceiling.

Works best if tin ceiling is already starting to fall apart at the seams.

With luck, you will find original timbers underneath. At this point, you should begin to question "Why the hell did they cover these?"

Clean up, sand.

Add soundboard, insulation, and drywall between wood beams

Prime to taste

Paint and Let sit overnight

Et Voila!

When Blogging ceases to be top priority....

So, sorry about the gap in entries. We're back, and in fact very near to moving in! It didn't happen by magic, so let's recap some of the action...

Over the course of a weekend, our house went from sort of neglected/moldy retro 70's with marinara splattered wallpaper to this:

Some might actually call it an improvement...

The dust was so bad it drove our friends Darren and Jessica out of the upstairs apartment for weeks...Sorry!!

The picture is so fuzzy because the place became so dark and dusty, you couldn't get a much better shot!

My memory of that time is about as equally dark, dusty and cluttered!

This is how we do it

When we first caught a glimpse of our backyard from the second floor window, it was a true Eden. A bountiful, lush, verdant... well, it was basically a crappy chunk of dirt with some patches of concrete thrown in for ornamentation. This is what we saw.

Jean got right to work on it

After one well placed hammer blow, this is what sprang up:

Green Thumb

Our front yard garden is glorious:

Jean pretty much grew this zucchini(?) in one day.

Not bad.

Destruction and Dust

So... We did it. On a broiling hot Monday morning, our contractor Jorge showed up with a crew of 5 guys, and spent 2 days creating a living hell out of our home. Dust flew out our windows like Mount St. Helen erupting, forcing our upstairs tenants into hiding, and drawing worried stares from our neighbors. When the dust had settled, the inside had gone from this:

To This:

DEMOLITION!!

Well, we had to start somewhere... At first we had the quaint idea that we could improve the place on our own. Why not start with the little bedroom? 

How bad could it be? We ripped up some walls and ceiling, until it looked like this: 

At the same time, we exposed a brick fireplace in what originally was the kitchen:
Everything was cool, except for the fact that everything we took down was attached to something else that had to come down too. After three days of sweat and dust we had little to show for our efforts,  and we realized we were out of our league. We resigned ourselves to calling in professional reinforcements. 

We soon learned our first lesson of demolition-- there is no such thing as "kind of" demolishing a house, there is no dipping your toe into the pool to test the waters. We found ourselves diving headlong into the deep end, with no turning back. 

Our little home was soon to turn from this: 

To this:

Stay tuned...

A little History (2)

Our house is a two story wood frame house, with an apartment upstairs, a main floor, and a basement below. The records are a little vague, but it looks like it was built around 1915, and almost every house on our block was built before 1924. 

To take a look at what the house was like when we first saw it, check out the complete photo album: click here

Our neighborhood is a section of Brooklyn that real estate agents are calling Greenwood Heights, which really means that it is a part of Sunset Park that is close enough to Park Slope to merit its own cool name in an attempt to attract development.