Here’s a view of our bathtub before and after it was enameled.

Yesterday, the kitchen was being painted …

… the first of the cabinets hung …

… and the floor being tiled.

Meanwhile, in the bathroom, the sink was sitting on its vanity and the toilet was hooked up and working nicely.

Ahh, she really likes the color she picked for the master bedroom too!

A couple days ago, the bathroom …

… had just received tile on the left wall!

Yesterday, they were using the tub to clean the paint rollers …

… the tub which today has a faucet and showerhead.

And the back wall now has the first coat of paint and a brand new toilet.

The kitchen plumbing was being installed the last few days …

… today the plumbing and the wall were finished.

Elizabeth admiring the kitchen and the dining room wall …

Meanwhile, in the master bedroom, the trim was being painted while Yves assembled the Ikea cabinets…

… and put in the baby room until he can install them in the kitchen …

It’s exciting to see the progress. But it’s also one of the most difficult and stressful times I’ve ever had. I’ve got a major project at work that’s due on 11/1. Elizabeth’s got a major project brewing that’s due 11/2. We want to move into our apartment a week from tomorrow. Three days between now and then, I will be in Florida in my annual training. Until then, I have to study and go into the office. Then, when I get back from training, I have 1 day until our projected move date. I’d like to slip the move date a few days, but I want to give E as much time as possible to nest before the baby comes. So … all I can say is, “Lord have mercy!” I don’t see how it’s all going to get done.

But that doesn’t take away from the pleasure of watching our vision for our apartment come true!

Today they have most of the kitchen drywall up.

Our new circuit breaker panel is roughed-in.

As are the many places where the walls were opened up to run conduit.

A few days ago, Yves asked me to come into the bathroom. He showed me where they had pulled up some of the old floor to do plumbing work. The joists were non-existent and/or rotten. He told me to stand by the tub. Then he went and stood by the door and the whole floor rocked. It was an old slab of cement poured in with tile on top. Here are the parts Yves broke up to remove.

He then put down new floor joists and a new floor of plywood and wet-board.

(No, we’re not going to keep the toilet in the bath tub.)

Today, I went back and Yves was finishing the tiling.

No grout yet…

Finally, a coat of primer has been added to the baby’s room.

Anybody want a vintage air conditioner?

Meanwhile, in the bathroom, the walls are gone. The sink and shower were plumbed to the building water supplies through shutoff valves, so they could be removed from the pipes. The toilet, however, was plumbed directly to the building’s cold water supply. To disconnect it, Yves had to knock on all the apartments in the building and let the occupants know he’d be turning off the water for 15 minutes. This he did and his plumber quickly cut the pipe to the toilet.

Meanwhile, the electrician was improving our circa 1921 electrical system.

Yves was also installing structure for new ceilings.

After that conversation I got in a jet and flew back from Burbank, CA to New York. While on that flight, my digestive system started to send me signals that all was not well. As soon I landed the plane (a super-smooth landing, by the way) and the door was opened, I ran. I spent the entire night in … let’s just say in extreme distress. It was almost as bad as the serious bug I had in Budapest last year.

So, after taking care of her sick husband all weekend, my rather pregnant wife had to wake up early to open the apartment for our contractors so they could continue making a nest for us. Waking up early is a major sacrafice for someone who (a) needs a lot of sleep and (b) usually has a husband that can take care of all early duties in our familial life.

So, after waking up about 3 hours earlier than she usually does, Elizabeth drove down to the apartment and discovered that none of the keys we possess for the apartment could open the aforementioned lock. She called me. I called a locksmith who told me it would be $65 to come out and fix our lock.

About 45 minutes later, I got a call from Elizabeth who told me the locksmith couldn’t pick the lock and he was going to remove it for $280 or so. I could tell that E was starting to get a little fragile and I could also see the $$ in the locksmith’s eyes, so I asked to talk to him. I asked him what he was going to do and he said he was going to drill out the cylinder of the lock. I then asked him how much it would cost and he told me it would be $280. I said that they told me it would be $65 when I called his company. He said that the $280 for drilling out the lock was in addition to the $65 call-out fee. I then calmly expressed my extreme displeasure at the situation. I tried to negotiate when mid-sentance he handed the phone to Elizabeth and I heard the sound of his drill. I think we both had the same thought at the same time … my contractor is there and I could just ask him to drill out the lock. Needless to say, he was closer to the lock than I was and proceeded to drill it out.

The next time my phone rang, Elizabeth was almost in tears. She said, “He wants to replace the lock for $160.” I said, “Tell him no. We have a deadbolt that works fine and I’m happy to leave a small hole in the door till I can go to Home Depot and get a new lock.” She hung up.

Can I just tell you that my wife is truely amazing? When she told the locksmith “No,” he said, “Well, if you won’t tell my boss, I’ll replace your lock for just $65.” My awesome wife said, “No, it’s too much, my husband will do it,” so the locksmith (who I hope still feels ashamed that he ripped off pregnant wife so badly) put it in for free. If he’d done that and given Elizabeth a couple $100 bills, it would have been closer to fair for the amount of work he did.

I didn’t feel like it would be wise to venture too far from my home that day, so I didn’t make it down to the apartment to take any pictures.

They also installed “the box” (ie the circuit breaker panel).

In the living room we now had appliances…

… and a smiling guy carrying drywall up 4 stories from the street. He must have carried at least 20 sheets of it.

In the bedroom we were closer to having a ceiling…

…and electricity. It’s a lot of work to run electrical conduit through a plaster-and-wood wall.

In the baby room, we had a new skim-coat of plaster…

… with another coat to go. We also were getting ceilings …

There was real electrical power in the box …

… and a lot of places in the house that looked like this …

In the dining room, the cracks in the walls were still there. Yves will fix the cracks, but he says that in a plaster wall in an old building, the cracks will reappear. We can’t afford to put drywall in everywhere, so we’ll just live with the cracks.

The holes from running electrical conduit are beginning to be patched…

We originally considered leaving the brick exposed in the bathroom, but some of it was in pretty bad shape.

The most exciting thing to see was non-demolition. Yves had tiled the shower!

Elizabeth was really excited to see the photos until she saw this one. Then she said that the decorative strip is upside down! The dark part should be down!

It’s fun to see 1921 and 2006 meet. I can’t wait until we can start waking up to it!