very simple

You can barely see it in the photo, but the moon was peeking out from the pre-sunset sky while I was waiting for the bus tonight. Days like this are why I like taking the bus over the subway.

This weekend Grand Central Terminal had a special event where they brought in vintage trains from around the country – some still run on special tourist trips, and some are just collectors items, but there were quite a few different classic pullman cars, from lounges, to dining cars, to sleepers. One of the women who was hosting the Wisconsin train couldn’t get over how many people remarked that the bathroom was bigger than in some NYC apartments.

Anyway, these were shot in relatively low light at a high ISO, and then I ran them through a preset vintage film filter to give what I hope is a period-appropriate skew to the images. Descriptions are in the popups when you click on the thumbnails.

Missed another couple of days – at this rate I’ll be really glad if I can get to at least 300 days of photos for the year.

Catching up through today…

The O’Neill building. They spend years renovating/refurbishing this thing, and a few months ago a giant piece of masonry fell off the front of the building into the street. Doesn’t make me want to live in one of the turrets any less though.

I’ve posted all of these individually, but I thought it would be good to round up the entire chronology of the bathroom renovation in one place. here it is from beginning to end…

I missed a few days over the last couple of weeks, with the renovation and the massive work project that finally came to fruition after months of work (months on my part, years on the part of others who have been there longer), so I’m finally taking a breath and catching up. Here’s what I managed to capture over the period, including the finished bathroom.

One more day of work on the bathroom, to touch up paint and grout, install the shutters and seal the tile. That will be Monday, and the contractor will also remove all of his equipment that day as well. Then cleaning on Tuesday and I can live there again. Then the only item will be to install my new bedroom radiator cover/cabinet piece which they will do off-site and just bring in to install.

So here are pics of the whole thing, from multiple angles. Again, these are stitched together from multiple photos, so there’s some fisheye warping going on, but you’ll get the idea.

The photo stitching is getting weirder as I attempt to get odd angles. But look! The door has been reinstalled, and it’s painted!

I have officially arranged for a cleaning service on Tuesday, so there will be sleeping in the apartment by Tuesday night. A full month after this started.

Lovely things we discovered during the course of this project included the fact that the original tile was adhered directly to the building masonry, and the interior walls are not anything simple like wood, or drywall, but rather…poured concrete. At least I know the building isn’t going anywhere.

If you can’t tell from the lack of useful titles, I’ve run out of descriptors. Yesterday saw completion of the cabinetry in the bathroom, and today they will be painting. They will be largely done by tomorrow, and will get their equipment out on Monday (and then I can bring in cleaners on Tuesday, thank god).

The one remaining item they will need to do is the cabinet/radiator cover I wanted in the bedroom, but they are going to build that off-site and just bring it in for installation. I don’t want to jinx anything, but I’m really hopeful that I will get to sleep in a real bed again early next week!

Shower bar is up, and apparently all of the plumbing is functional again. I don’t want to jinx things, but I may be able to start moving back in at some point this weekend. Not entirely, but somewhat.