It rained the entire Memorial Day weekend here in NY. We had grand plans to take a bike ride through the city and enjoy the first couple days of the official kickoff of summer. Our plans quickly changed given all the rain that we were predicting. And boy, are we glad it did! This forced us to be home the entire week and more specifically get to work on our basement speakeasy! Because of this we have some very exciting updates. The clock is ticking but we have some HUGE items checked off our list:
The Million Dollar Wall aka Our Slat Curved Wall
We had to build a room for the basement mechanicals to separate them from the rest of the space. We incorporated this curved wall into the design to create a more spacious feeling. Taking the hard angle off that wall and using a soft curve gives us more square footage to work with, but also eases the eye down the short hallway. It also gives a better view to the vintage windows we are installing to give the impression of natural light into the space. Finally, to create a feature we lined the curved wall with 1×1 pine* slats. With the cost of lumber these days, the magic plywood is our saving grace! These slats will be stained a rich walnut color to match the rest of the wood in the design. A special thank you to Monica Mangin for naming our wall- genius!
Arch it Up
On the other side of the room another key feature is taking shape. There is a row of structural columns down one side of the space. The columns need to be there so we wanted to make sure they were inviting in the space, and to make sure and create the feeling we want in the room. We are creating arches in between each one. We are losing a little bit of precious ceiling height, but we think it’s worth it! The loss in height is easily outdone by the cozy character the arches bring to the space. We know the ceilings are low and we can’t change that but we can go with it and make the room a more intimate space.
What’s next:
- Windows – Our basement doesn’t have windows. It’s dark an a fact we cannot change. So we are giving our speakeasy workroom a feeling that we hope will help us not notice. We are introducing a lot of glass, and even windows into the space. There will be 2 vintage windows that lead into our super top secret speakeasy within a speakeasy (following along for the reveal!). We are using vintage doors with obscure glass leading in and out of the room. And finally we will have cabinetry with glass paneled uppers.
- Cabinets – Speaking of cabinets…another key feature of the space is beautiful custom millwork by our friend Ethan Abramsom (@thebuildwithethan)! We are so excited for this! We are going apothecary style. We’ll have paneled lower cabinets topped with a slab of carrara marble. The uppers will sit setback on the carrara slab and will have clear chicken wire glass panels to show off all of our beautiful samples we are going to store there.
- Doors – If you have followed us for 5 minutes you will know that we love using vintage doors. We have 4 beautiful reclaimed vintage doors that we hope will give this newly built out space an authentically old world feel.
- Floors – The highest priority we have for our floors is for them to not remove any of the ceiling height we have. So we are going to work with the concrete slab that is already there. The best thing for us to do is sand, stain, and seal them. We are hoping the finished concrete floor will complete the look of the space while maintaining every inch of ceiling height we have. Jordan is fighting me on painting the floors checkered but I think I might win this battle. What do you think? The goal is to rent the sander this week and prioritize this.
If the next week brings as many updates as this weekend we might even finish early. 🤣🤣🤣 Just kidding, we are going to need every second of time we have before the big reveal on June 28th! Until then, tune in next week for an update! Subscribe below and we’ll let you know when it’s up!
If you’re wanting to take a look back to see how we got here, check out our past ORC posts
