If you were anywhere around New York City in the past 2 weeks you know the enormous amounts of water that fell from the sky. Torrential downpours almost daily. We have had the place for 6 months now and this really gave us the opportunity to understand how the place is handling water. I guess we could be annoyed that both skylights (one new one) dripped water. We could have even been annoyed that all of the work in the backyard caused water to back up into the garden apartment back door. We were, but we’re also thankful that we had the opportunity to understand these issues that need to be fixed before we close up walls and finish the rest of the floors.
Our roof, as most old buildings in the area, has many layers over the past years. We think that water may be getting in somewhere and traveling between the layers to the skylight cutouts. We have a specialist addressing the issue and patching what needs to be patched…and ultimately may need to add yet another layer. And another cost. Redoing the roof completely is just not in the budget right now.
As you know, we demolished a mudroom off the back of the building and have been breaking up concrete to dig the holes for the deck footings. Then it rained. A lot. We know need to regrade the entire area. But we now know that we need to remove more of some of the odd concrete features to allow for better drainage.
While we’re talking about waterproofing, a lot of work has been done in the bathrooms to prepare for tile installation. We’re keeping the original woodwork around the windows but need to make sure the wood is ready to be in a wet room. We removed a pieces of the wood base in the window woodwork to water proof before we reinstall. We’re also either going to paint the wood or just put a sealer on it to deal with the the moisture that will be in the room.
Looking on the bright side for the weather we’ve had to deal with the past few weeks was hard, but we found a few! At least, we didn’t have to water the outdoor plants. Fortunately, it has cleared up and we have our first taste of summer. We headed to the Hamptons for the weekend and we’re looking forward to finally having the deck footings completed now they aren’t 8 foot holes filled with water! We expect the deck to go fast over the next week!
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