Labor Day Weekend

Labor Day Weekend signals the end of summer and the beginning of school. It also means that I will soon be retiring from my job as construction worker, giving up hammering nails and switching over to instructing students on how to use a hammer. I get to stay fairly clean all day long. I get to go into an air conditioned classroom, and better yet, work in an air conditioned shop. With the last push before my retirement, Chaim and I worked through the weekend, getting up as many 2x4's onto the ceiling so that the insulation can be attached to them next. That was the hardest job thus far. The demolition was bad, because it was so dusty and itchy. But putting up wood on the ceiling was strenuous, working above my head on a ladder, screwing in deck screws onto 80 year old very hard roof joists. I didn't realize I could get any more sore, but somehow, I did. My muscle memory brought back aches very similar to when I used to go rock climbing. Instead of a harness with carabiners hanging off if it, I had a tool belt strung around my waist, and realized that compressing rock face with my arms is very similar to holding up a heavy 8 foot 2x4 with one hand, as I balanced the drill with the screw in the other.

Joe Taco also hired our friend "Slappy", to help frame out the parapet wall and front windows. It was great to have a crew upstairs banging out a job in three days what it would probably take me 2 weeks. And their job would be done much more level and square than what I could have done.
The topic of permits is still a cloudy area. Some say that you don't need a permit if the work doesn't involve structural stuff, ie... tearing down a load bearing wall, or building a new floor. Other say that you need a permit for anything you do, and one person said that if you don't hire anyone, you don't need a permit. So far we haven't gotten any permits for much of the work, and are trying to work covertly. We have realized that things are less strict outside of Manhattan, and people are less eager to call the authorities and rat you out, if you live in an enclave of immigrants. We have also been giving out peaches off of our tree to passerby to keep a friendly rapport with the neighbors.
The plan is to take out the window, frame out the wall that the new windows will attach to, then put back the old windows so that we wouldn't have a gaping hole, or an opening covered with plywood until we could put in the new windows.

The new windows have been sitting in the garage for 2 weeks, but they are 3 inches too big to bring them up the staircase. So the plan is to have a boom truck lift the windows up through the window opening the same day that we get the sheet rock delivery. But we can't get the sheet rock delivery until the insulation goes up on the ceilings. But the ceilings can't be covered until Joe Taco runs more cable and wires up there. Its a never-ending domino effect of stuff.Here is Chaim in the open hole where the new windows will someday go.

"Slappy", is the cousin of Paul, and I had met him before, when Chaim and I went to a wine store in the East Village, where he had designed the interior woodwork. He also used to teach at Parsons, in the furniture department with my friend Kimberly, so I had a fairly good idea of what type of worker he would be: talented, efficient, artistic, and listened to NPR while working. All these things happily turned out to be true, and he had some humorous building trade knowledge as well like:
-the horizontal short pieces of wood that go between the studs are called "cats", because they keep the mice from climbing up your walls.
-we should get dog shit and strategically place it outside our house. Since we don't have permits, and can't block the sidewalk with caution tape, this is supposed to keep the pedestrians from walking right under our front window where debris and dust could be a problem for passerby.
He had funny problem solving tricks, like reusing the chain from the window weights by screwing it to a scrap piece of wood to prop up the window so it wouldn't fall out. Very decorative indeed.

At the end of the day, the old windows were put back in, so that if a building inspector drove by, it wouldn't look like we were doing any construction. Our neighbors probably think we are crazy, spending all day making all kinds of noise and dust, and in the end nothing had changed. Actually it got a little bit more white trashy looking, with the scrap pieces of wood holding the broken windows open.
So far we are still within our budget. Supposedly, we have saved about $10,000 by doing a lot of the work ourselves. Our General Contractor is working for beers, (this weeks special: Dinkel-Acker), and knows a lot of connections enabling us to get lumber and sheet rock for a lot less than cost.
I just can't wait for the sheet rock delivery. That is when I know the job will start to go down hill and the end is near.

Chaim and Paul looking out the old window and new frame job.