This blog chronicles the renovation of our ~3,000 sq/ft residential loft located just over the Providence line in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The former textile mill, built in 1920, is a post & beam constructed brick building with approximately 6,000 sq/ft on the first floor, and ~3,000 sq/ft on the second floor, which is the residential portion. The first floor is the home for our small arts business. We purchased the building in summer 2002. The previous occupant used the entire two-storey space for their jewelry company - plating, finishing and warehousing - and although the building was dirty from age and use, they cleaned it out pretty well. We passed the environmentals even with all the chemical plating previously done on the first floor. When we took over there was a funky odor (and a film of dust which weavoided inhaling) but the jewelry equipment and machinery was gone and the floors swept.




THE FIRST FLOOR RENOVATION (11/15/02 - 01/15/03)

It took about 90 days to renovate the first floor as the new home for our company. I was the General Contractor, which sounds nice but just means I hired contractors, wrote checks and am the one to blame for the few crooked walls. The contract work fell into six categories:

Demolition (I did most of this with the help of company employees)

Sand Blasting

Carpentry

Flooring

Electrical

Finishing

DEMOLITION

The demo was simple, and honesty, I really enjoyed it: tearing down walls, removing garbage, panelling, some drywall, flooring and a few buildouts like a small loft for lumber storage and built-in work tables. The majority of the time however was spent removing the electrical system: outlets, lights, conduit, everything. We removed the first floor electrical system prior to renovation, there were two generations of wiring, one which was live when we began construction, another left over from a previous renovation. The waste from the demo filled two 30 yard rollaway dumpsters. We got the rollaways cheap by promising the company the garbage pickup for our company once we moved in.

SAND BLASTING

This is probably the messiest job in the world. The guys wore white suits, taped their wrists and ankles with duct tape and covered their heads with space age helmets connected by flexible hosing to a breathing apperatus parked outside. The job took three days and they told us not to come in during those three days, but we couldn't resist. The first night we came in with a flashlight, but couldn't see a thing. There was a brick colored haze so thick we almost walked into walls. The next day the guys gave us a hard time about coming in to look, when we asked them how they knew we were there, they showed us our footprints in the brick dust. Afterwards, the ceilings were sprayed with a polyurethane coating to seal in any stray sand particles.

CARPENTRY

There wasn't much carpentry to do: in the main area three walls were framed out and a room built around the basement enterance. Several offices were framed out in the "front office" area. All the walls were sheet rocked and plastered. The guy we hired was a real knucklehead. He was cheap and we got what we paid for. We couldn't afford more as the electrical work went way over budget.

FLOORING

Flooring was done in two phases: First, the cement floors in the areas which previously had been for storage and plating were removed with a jackhammer and the concrete repoured. This took half a day to demo and half a day to pour the new floors. We bought the sealer ourselves and sealed the floors when the guys left. We put more than a dozen coats on the cement floor which remained unpainted and it still feels slick - easy to sweep up. Then only a few coats on the floor we painted.

The second phase was sanding the hardwood floors. The wood is maple, and unfortunately, soft pine in a small repaired area which we did not find until the floor was completed. Our other mistake was to sand the floors *before* the carpentry. What happened here was the dust from the drywall messed up the floors a bit and had to be mopped several times. Next time, we will sand the floors last. Also, although the contractors put down three coats of poly, we are getting some wear by the desks due to chair legs scraping away. I think next time we will take a look at the areas to get a lot of traffic and add several more layers of poly ourselves.

ELECTRICAL

Here's where all the money went. As we removed the entire electrical system it had to be replaced. Additionally we had to install lighting. The location of outlets and number of amps in specific areas did not suit our needs. Neither did the very unattractive flourescent lighting fixtures.

The company we used was helpful, just slow and expensive. We didn't pin down the price as we did with the rest of the contractors. When they started running lines throughout the studio, they were running conduit along the bottom of the beams in the same manner as the conduit which was removed, very conspicuous. They had to tear down what they started and instead run the conduit along the edges of the beams or along the beams instead up by the ceiling. This of course took a lot longer and so was more expensive.

The lighting was another problem. We chose track lighting with black tracks and fixtures. The bulbs were incandescent, 100 w bulbs which even with more than 100 fixtures did not provide enough light, especially during the winter months. They looked nice, but we were spending a fortune changing lightbulbs which soon became part of the job description for our company shipper.

We solved the problem two years later by taking advantage of a federal program which provides assitance to companies looking to replace exsisting lighting with energy efficient lighting. The program was run by our local electric company and they sent someone down to take a look at the lights, It was suggested that we replace our lights with flourescent fixtures and bulbs. At first we said, thanks, but no thanks, until they offered us daylight balanced bulbs. They may look like flourescent bulbs, which they are, but the lighting looks like daylight. In the end, we paid practically nothing for the entire job of replacing all the fixtures (and we were able to keep our old track lighting to use somewhere else - like in the residential loft...) as well as financing the small amount by spreading it out on the electric bill over two years. Better yet, our electric bill is lower, we don't generate as much heat with the new bulbs (cooler in the summer) and after two years, have not changed a single bulb. It was a win, win, win, win situation.

FINISHING

When the electrical guys left - and we were left with their big fat bill - we painted, built a few tables and storage shelves, and simply moved in. All in all, the entire renovation took less than 90 days, and would have been done on time (60 days) if not for the electricians who took forever.

Check out the Flickr set of the first floor renovation