Construction Update- The Gracie

We've been working hard at the two condo projects that we currently have under construction. I don't have any good pictures today of 2431 Ontario Road, but I was able to take some pictures at The Gracie (1470 Chapin St NW). Tomorrow, the electrician is going to start running his wires and the HVAC guy is coming to measure for his ducts. We're hoping to have the roof on the top of the building by the end of next week. Also, we've been looking hard for another project and we're going to ramp up our marketing efforts in order to get our name out there.

The basement is totally framed out and the plumbing waste lines are finished.  The plumbers are coming back Weds to run the supply lines.

In the back of the building, the first floor of the new rear wall is complete.  The guys got slowed down because they had to set up the scaffolding, but now they're moving quickly.

Upstairs, the right wall is complete up to the mezzanine level, and the left wall is getting closer each day.

Construction Update- The Gracie

Lots of progress this week at the Gracie Condos. We got the basement concrete finished so now we can frame up unit #1. Also, we can now focus on building the new top level so we can finally top out on the building.

We're also changing the formatting of the blog so it will a look a little different for the next few entries.

The basement concrete is totally done.  We're really happy with all the headroom- close to 9 Ft!

We gave the concrete a night to harden and then got to work yesterday on framing up the new walls.

The masons began work on the near rear wall.  The back yard is a mess!  We got jammed up because the dumpster was full and it was blocked in with hundreds of cinderblocks.  We were able to get it out and the back yard cleaned up this morning.

The Gracie Condominium- Moving Along

Our project in Columbia Heights is moving along really well. We finished framing out the middle two units, and now we're working on building the other two condos. The basement had to be dug down and we'll be pouring the new concrete slab on Thursday morning. The top unit is a whole new floor, and the masons have been working hard to build up the walls with cinder blocks.

We'll be meeting tomorrow with a cabinet designer and we should be ordering the kitchen cabinets by the end of the week. We're leaning towards a darker espresso color but we're looking at several options.

In the rear of the building, we decided to remove the old brick and just build a new block wall. The new block will be significantly stronger. Also, the new window and door openings were all in new places, so it would have been a very difficult process to cut and rebuild all of the openings with the old brick. The new wall will make it much easier to do so.

After the wall was taken down, the concrete guys worked today to install the rebar in the new footer.

This picture was taken over the weekend before the rain, but you can see that they are starting to make progress with the new walls. They had to take down a lot of the old brick because it was loose. Once they got to a point that was stable, they reinforced it with concrete and rebar and then started with the new blocks.

This is another house around the corner that uses a very similar paint palette to what we will use on our building. Our color is a slightly less dark shade of tan.

This is at our other condo project (The Charles Condo) but it's a great picture of our new signs. They were printed and installed last week. Definitely an upgrade over the previous banners.

1470 Chapin St- Full Speed Ahead

We've been taking advantage of the nice weather to get a lot of the exterior work done. One of the biggest tasks was removing the roof because we are adding another full floor. In order to do this, we had to remove the existing peak, which was quite a production.

First, we had to tear off all of the shingles. The structure was framed like a tee pee with a common point. After all of the shingles were removed, the carpenters removed the back side of the peak and tied ropes around the remaining part.



Then, very slowly, they pulled the ropes back and pulled the peak back into the building. I was anticipating more of a "bang" but it was surprisingly smooth and quiet.



In the rear and basement, several workers have been digging trenches in the basement for the new plumbing and waterproofing system. After all of the dirt was removed, the trenches were filled with gravel from huge sacks in the backyard.



Inside, the framers finished the third unit and installed the steps. We used to make the steps ourselves but we found a great supplier near Baltimore that can build them faster and stronger in a factory. Now we can install them in less than a day, wheras it used to take almost a week. Not bad!