Apartment rehab: An inside view

The other day, walking east on Grand Street, I ran into a couple who live in Seward Park. Their children go to school with mine, and we’ve struck up a friendship over the past few years.

I mentioned that I’d just stopped at Partybus Bakeshop to pick up some gift certificates for our new neighbors — a small gesture of appreciation for their tolerance while we put them through the inevitable disruption of a renovation project.

“Wow, that’s a great idea,” they said. “We wish we’d thought of that when we renovated our unit a decade ago.”

Then the husband turned to his wife. “Tell him the story.”

I braced myself for a doozie.

As happens in New York City, the couple’s next-door neighbor is a New York Times bestselling author. Sometime after their renovation was complete, the author released a new book. The wife — an avid reader of her neighbor’s work — happened to be on an airplane when she cracked open the latest bestseller.

There, in the pages, she encountered an anecdote about the author’s neighbor’s renovation project — her renovation, as it happens — which had taken place during the author’s pregnancy and after the birth of her first child.

The details were unmistakable. And the author’s recollection was harsh.

So there she was, 30,000 feet in the air, embarrassed, feeling exposed, and longing to turn back time and do this one thing over. Can you imagine finding out by way of a New York Times bestseller that your construction project had wreaked havoc on your neighbor’s household — and that now the world knew?

They’ve all since made amends, and we had a good laugh about it.

But the story gets at something about renovating in New York City that goes well beyond floor plans, budgets, contractors and permits. A renovation has all sorts of offshoots and complications — and sometimes collateral damage — that have almost nothing to do with the actual construction. Yet it all stems from the construction project itself.

Which brings me to something new we’re doing at More For LES. (How’s that for a wind-up?)

What’s it actually like to renovate an apartment in New York City?

If you’ve done it before, you probably have stories — hopefully not as wild as learning about your project in someone else’s book. But you probably don’t have neutral feelings about it.

I certainly don’t, as I sit here listening to a chipping hammer reverberate from the floor above.

Either way, we’re going to find out together, and the team behind More For LES is our live bait.

The More For LES Renovation Series

Last spring, my family closed on an apartment in Seward Park Co-op.

At the time of purchase, the apartment — while in excellent condition — didn’t support our vision for how we wanted to live in it. (That sounds a little weird, as we don’t perch from the ceiling like bats or require aquarium-like conditions.)

We simply wanted to reconfigure the walls to maximize light exposure, while shrinking the bedrooms to increase the amount of livable shared space.

To achieve that, we opted to gut the unit and renovate it completely — just as we did almost ten years ago when we moved into East River Co-op.

More than a quarter of a year has now passed since we closed. We’re well into the renovation project, and we’re ready to share — at the risk of ending up in someone else’s New York Times bestseller.

Many of you already follow the More For LES video shorts series. Now, we’re expanding it to include the More For LES Renovation Series, an episode-by-episode documentary of the renovation itself.

The series will follow the various steps involved in renovating an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan: hiring an architect, securing permits, notifying neighbors, working with a general contractor, demolition, purchasing materials and fixtures, construction, and all the other pieces that come along with it.

You’ll have an inside view, and you’ll get to do it for free — on our dime.

We’ll (hopefully) avoid some of the pitfalls that first-timers encounter, but we’ll inevitably run into issues, headaches, bureaucracy, inefficiency, and all the other things that can happen when undertaking a renovation in New York City.

The intention is for you, like us, to learn as we go — and for us to share what we learn so you can avoid some mistakes of your own, determine whether you have the budget for a project like this using the More For LES Budgetizer, and explore NYC Service Pro for professionals and other resources if you’re considering doing it yourself.

Follow along with the More For LES Renovation Series, starting with the preview below. (Click here to view the More For LES Renovation Series promo video!)

And look for upcoming episodes and installments in the days, weeks, and months to come right here… but maybe also in the New York Times.