Nirmada: Interior Design in New York City

Today we were supposed to be laying the porcelain tile (from Stone Source) for the Kitchen floor in our client’s Upper West Side apartment. As I had mentioned on Friday, we discovered a hard wood floor, underneath the old sub floor which also had to be removed. Underneath that was a layer of gooey adhesive that ALSO had to be removed before the tile guy would come in and do his thing…

gooey floor

While the guys scrape up the goo, hopefully we won’t be set back too far in our schedule.

The good news is that the wall is now opened up and our clients can get a sense of the openness of the space to the new Kitchen:

no more wall! this is where our island and bar will go

Stay tuned… after the floor the cabinets go in!

For over 17 years, Kati Curtis has been providing healthcare interior design and planning services for clients worldwide.

Our favorite English country wallcovering and fabric house, Designer’s Guild has introduced the ‘Manhattan’ Prints collection, which offers a dynamic and contemporary new look designed to appeal to the young at heart of all ages. Since it’s obvious I’m not afraid of color, I have a particular fondness for this modern, sophisticated collection.

Colours this season are soft and muted yet with vibrant, clean highlights.

Cool and warm neutrals and earth tones counterpointed with burnished golds and cool silver metallics, sit alongside shades of soft willow, deep moss and lime greens as well as soft pinks, pale aquas and duckegg blues.

‘Manhattan’ offers a vibrant palette of fuchsia pink, scarlets and persimmon as well as turquoise and lime with black highlights.

Friday was day three of our renovation on Central Park West. So far I didn’t see any major surprises at the site. We did find a plumbing supply line that was serving the sub-zero refrigerator we’re relocating. The hardwood floor, underneath our subfloor presented some demo difficulties for the guys. The subfloor under the linoleum was adhered to the hardwood floor below so the floor removal was challenging….

Late Friday afternoon I received a call from the contractor, Howard Klein, letting me know that he was putting together a “change order” (meaning charging the client MORE MONEY) to deal with plumbing line and the extra work to take up the floor…. Saturday I received that change order from the contractor for $5K and about fell over. After reviewing his original contract, I confirmed that these conditions were expected and part of his original contract. I sent him an email asking him to explain the reasoning behind adding $5K to the job….When I arrived at the jobsite this morning the change order had miraculously disappeared! Thank goodness we had set things up meticulously at the beginning of the job!

So – all is on track and moving ahead smoothly. Floor goes down this week, and cabinets installed next week!

So far the renovation of our client’s kitchen on the Upper West Side is progressing without any major glitches. Demo started yesterday, and the strangest thing we found was the original hardwood floor underneath the existing linoleum tile. No big deal, but a transition consideration. The contractor, Howard Klein and I worked out what type and thickness of subfloor to put down,  how to deal with the transition and to lay out the tile.

Even though I had verified that the wall we were removing was not structural, I was having nightmares that we might find something unexpected, like a plumbing chase, behind the wall. Howard was nice enough to take the sledge hammer to the wall so that we could be sure there was nothing major hindering our progress. Sure enough, nothing, and the guys proceeded like pros!: