My Condo- Pictures and projects-may take some time to load!!!!

[wizer]

I moved into my new condo in mid September, and have done a bit of work to it..it seems like every day is another project...but it's what I do, and it good therapy. Enclosed are several pictures, before and after, with more to follow.

This first post shows the exterior...

Here's the condo from the back..it's got a parking lot in the front as well, but I prefer to go through the garage, so that's my official "front"..



Here's a picture from further back, showing the whole row of condos. If you are familiar with my "shed-Halloween decorations" story, you can see the shed on the left of my unit...and you may understand why I thought it belonged to me.



Here's the view from the front.



And of course..the new car!

[wizer]

Here's the patio..if there was one thing I could change, it would be to have a larger patio. Some units have them, but my particular model, that has a garage, is short on outside space. Well, I put my favorite plants out there, which are "Acuba" (white and green speckled leaves) and a Japanese Maple..as well as a fountain, and a table that I got in Ebay. The red door goes to the garage, but I built my shop in front of it. I figured I don't need two ways to get to the patio from the house. The patio is in the front of the house.

[wizer]

Here's a few before and after pictures of the master bedroom. I purchased a custom made acrylic set, designed to my sizes and specifications, and I built an electric panel of switches into the headboard to control the ceiling light/fan, headboard light, and control yet another fountain against one wall of the room. You can see the switch panel on the left side of the headboard. The fireplace was refinished by masons.

[wizer]

The biggest project of all was removing the wall between the living room and den, something I knew I would do from the moment I placed a bid on the house.

Here's some before and after pictures of the work. Removing a load bearing wall is a multi-step process, requiring building one or two temporary support walls on one or both sides of where the replacement header will go. I sort of lucked out, due to the layout of the ceiling joists, and only had to erect one wall. I did this all myself..with the help of a car jack and my dog...who does a good job of always knowing where I am going to step next and getting right in my way.

The wall from the den side



The wall from the living room side





closeup of fountain- I saw this in a furniture store, and thought "those boobs would be a great way to fill up the empty space in the large living room"



Here's the start of the project, with most of the sheetrock peeled away, and the temporary wall erected in front of the wall that will be removed



At this point, the old wall is gone, one of the two microlam headers is in place, and the other is ready to be raised. The second one was trickier because it had to be squeezed in next to the first one. I used a car jack to save my back and to get a really snug fit against the ceiling..that's the tricky part of the job..you want it snug, so the ceiling doesn't sag, but not so tight that you actually raise the ceiling. Too much of either will cause the sheetrock joint between the wall and ceiling to crack, if not immediately, then over time.





The completed job from both sides. I think you can see why that wall just had to go!

[GoodWitch]

Very nice! I hope you have many happy years there. The car looks cool, too!  

P.S. If I knew absolutely NOTHING about you and saw those pics, I'd say "either Staten Island or Long Island" LOL

[theWiz]

Nice job!  Losing that wall was a VERY good move.

[wizer]

The garage is a "work in progress". The first picture is of the garage when I first moved in, with my trainset hanging from the ceiling, I use a motorized winch to lower it to set it up for the holidays (if I am so inclined..lol..its work). The rest of the pictures here were taken within the past few days..you can see where I opened the ceiling, and that's about as far as I got, except I changed the plan, and replaced the square hole with a rectangular one, and dropped in an attic stairway to access a good amount of storage space in the rear of the garage. This weekend I will drop a floor up there, and it will give me about 80 square feet of good usable storage. I added a light too. You can see where I moved the trainset to the side wall, to make room on the ceiling, for yet another project..

The larger opening in the front..is going to be a "bicycle bay". I purchased two of those pulley systems to hang bicycles from the ceiling (stock photo below) ..but by opening the ceiling up I can raise them all the way up, so the tires aren't hanging in my face. I also got an electric boat winch with remote switch, which I will mount next to my garage opener or maybe on the other side of the door, and with one press of the button, the bicycles will lower right out of the ceiling.

[GoodWitch]

My garage also has a very high ceiling. Some of the neighbors have put in storage lofts, etc. I don't need any more storage room so I never bothered. (Well, of course, if I tried any of this myself it would be an experiment in terror. I'm not "handy" in the slightest. It's a project for me to hang a picture.)

Excellent idea with the bikes! I like that a lot.

[wizer]

My garage also has a very high ceiling. Some of the neighbors have put in storage lofts, etc. I don't need any more storage room so I never bothered. (Well, of course, if I tried any of this myself it would be an experiment in terror. I'm not "handy" in the slightest. It's a project for me to hang a picture.)

Excellent idea with the bikes! I like that a lot.

It's easy if you know how, and impossible for the average homeowner to do it if they aren't familiar with framing, wiring, sheetrocking, and structural design of buildings..to pay a contractor to do this would probably not be cost effective.

However, if your garage already has a high enough ceiling you could just attach the bicycle pulley system to the ceiling directly..that's probably not a difficult job, from the description it's a fairly simple thing, however you need to be able to reach the ceiling and drive a few screws into the studs.

[GoodWitch]

It's easy if you know how, and impossible for the average homeowner to do it if they aren't familiar with framing, wiring, sheetrocking, and structural design of buildings..to pay a contractor to do this would probably not be cost effective.

However, if your garage already has a high enough ceiling you could just attach the bicycle pulley system to the ceiling directly..that's probably not a difficult job, from the description it's a fairly simple thing, however you need to be able to reach the ceiling and drive a few screws into the studs.

Screwing studs, now you're speaking my language!    Seriously, I don't even have a bike, so there isn't anything I need to do with my garage. But if I tried, it would quickly become difficult.....

[wizer]

Here's a few more pictures...


The Den, with the fireplace redone in natural stone



The "bicycle bay" project..here the winch is installed as well as the pulley system and the bicycles are hoisted to the ceiling. All that's left to do now that the support beams for the system are in place is to finish "boxing out" the bicycle bay, then insulating it (as I did with the rest of the garage ceiling), and sheetrock and paint it.

The bicycle hoist system is a great idea that needs an improvement..the clips that hook in under the seat do not make a secure attachment and both bicycles fell a few times...all of the times except one, the handlebar clips held so the bike simply hung by the bars, but once, and this was like 5 minutes after I hoisted them and wasnt even in the garage..the bicycle fell all the way to the floor. Except for a snapped off reflector, the bicycle appears to be unharmed. I am going to add a safety chain or something to the seat attachment and/or bend the clips to get them to hook the seat better.

[GoodWitch]

Looks good!  You better hope those bikes don't fall on the new car!
My entire garage ceiling is a least as high as yours is in the cut-out part where the bikes are, judging from the placement of the door. I'm not too good at guessing distance but I'd say 16 feet or so.

[wizer]

Looks good!  You better hope those bikes don't fall on the new car!
My entire garage ceiling is a least as high as yours is in the cut-out part where the bikes are, judging from the placement of the door. I'm not too good at guessing distance but I'd say 16 feet or so.

One of the bicycles fell completely off of both hooks to the floor, if my car was there it would have defintely damaged it. I am stopping at the Home Depot on the way home, and picking up "something"..maybe some short bungie cords, or some sort of lanyard with a clip, so if the bike seat comes off the hook, it will still be tied in..and yet still easy enough to remove. The front clips are going into the bench vise to bend them up, which will make it impossible for the handlebars to come free..."famous last words"..

[GoodWitch]

One of the bicycles fell completely off of both hooks to the floor, if my car was there it would have defintely damaged it. I am stopping at the Home Depot on the way home, and picking up "something"..maybe some short bungie cords, or some sort of lanyard with a clip, so if the bike seat comes off the hook, it will still be tied in..and yet still easy enough to remove. The front clips are going into the bench vise to bend them up, which will make it impossible for the handlebars to come free..."famous last words"..

LOL You are, after all, YOU. One night, you'll be awakened by a crash......  well, hopefully not! 

[wizer]

LOL You are, after all, YOU. One night, you'll be awakened by a crash......  well, hopefully not! 

I got a package of those "mini bungees". Put one end through a hole where the two clips come together, bent it down so it can't come out, and ran the cord through the bars in the seat and hooked it back into the same hole on the hook, but not bending that end so that it can be removed easily. It held so well that I did it on both bikes front and back. They aren't going anywhere. Something like that should be included with the system. I'm sure I am not the only one who has had that problem.