Two Bathrooms, a Laundry Closet and an Electrical Upgrade at 10 East End Avenue

The starting point

Two guest bathrooms, both with alcove tubs, and neither of them the same as the other. One was tiled floor to ceiling in a green glass mosaic with a trough sink and a tank toilet. The other had a marble-look floor, a dark shower curtain and a vessel sink sitting up on a white counter, and it had something the first one did not: a window.

The rest of the apartment had its own list. A closet beside the first bathroom held shelves and nothing else. The living room carried built-in shelving, a fireplace surround and a sheetrock wall in front of the hardwood. The foyer was floored in black marble. And the apartment could not run a washer and a dryer, because the panel sat in a cabinet above the refrigerator and had nothing spare in it.

What the crew did, in order

1. Notify the neighbours and pull the permits

   All electrical work was performed by a licensed electrician under a major electric permit, and all plumbing and wiring to NYC building code. On a job that runs a new feeder through a public hallway, the filing and the neighbour notification are the schedule, not a formality.

2. Run a new feeder from the floor above

   A new number 4 AWG feeder was run in approved conduits from the existing electrical closet on the fifteenth floor, neatly and exposed along the fourteenth floor hallway, then penetrated into the apartment and continued in number 4 by 3 BX to the new panel. This is the step that makes the rest of the job possible.

3. Replace the panel

   The old panel, sitting in a cabinet above the refrigerator, was replaced with a 16 by 32 inch 100 amp main-lug panel in its existing location just outside the kitchen, with dedicated lines run for a 110 volt washer and a 220 volt dryer through the existing dropped ceilings, channelling and spot-plastering where required.

4. Build the laundry closet

   Plumbing was run for a washer junction box in the closet next to the first guest bathroom, with a custom drip pan, anti-vibration pads and an automatic shut-off sensor. Walls were channelled, spot-plastered, re-framed and sheathed as required, and a stacked washer and dryer went in.

5. Strip both bathrooms

   Each lost its floor tile and saddle, wall tile, alcove tub, drain and curtain rod, vanity, counter, sink and faucet, tank toilet and seat, medicine cabinet, shut-off valves, shower fixture and accessories, and every hot, cold, waste and vent branch line.

6. Convert both to showers

   New pressure balancing valves and trim, fixed showerheads and handshowers went in, with new shut-off valves, check valves and water hammer arrestors on branch lines run back to the risers. A lead pan and shower curb went into each tub’s footprint, and a shampoo niche was constructed in each room. Acoustical underlayment and Laticrete waterproof membrane went down on both floors, turned six inches up the walls, with membrane on the enclosure walls and cement board inside.

7. Redo the lighting across the whole apartment

   Every ceiling light, bathroom exhaust vent, bathroom and closet sconce, switch, dimmer and plate in the apartment was replaced on its existing points, with fifty-three Lithonia 6 inch recessed fittings. Rectangular recessed openings were plastered over and re-cut circular to match. A light box soffit was framed and plastered along both long walls of each guest bedroom, carrying six recessed lights in one and eight in the other, each on a single dimmer by the door. A chandelier was added in the living room for a new dining area.

8. Open up the living room, re-floor the foyer, and paint

   The living room shelving, fireplace and built-in sheetrock wall were demolished, and the opening left when the bedroom television box-out came out was framed, sheathed and plastered with matching baseboard run in to fill the gap. The foyer floor tile came up and Roca Piansentina went down. The long textured wall in the primary bedroom was skim-coated, and the entire apartment interior was spot-plastered, primed and painted in two coats.

The first guest bathroom

This is the room with the window, and it went dark on purpose. The vanity is a 24 inch Executive in walnut with a touch-to-open front and no knobs, floating on a cleat, under a Caesarstone Jet Black top. Every fitting in the room is Delta in matte black, down to the GFCI and its plate by the medicine cabinet, and the shower panel is a single black-framed 34 by 74 Vigo. The window sill was cut from the same Jet Black quartz as the vanity top, which is the detail that stops the window looking like it was left over from the old room.

The second guest bathroom

Same conversion, opposite decision. This room has no window, so it went pale: Bianco Carrara wall tile in a 12 by 24, an Icellion Caesarstone top on an alder vanity, and polished chrome throughout. The shower floor is a Glazzio arch mosaic, and the shower door is a single 30 inch Fleurco panel rather than a sliding pair, because the room is narrow enough that a door would swing into the vanity. A niche of open shelves is built into the wall beside the toilet.

The foyer, and the rest of the apartment

The foyer lost a black marble floor and gained a Roca Piansentina porcelain in silver, laid the full length of the hall. It is the only room that changed nothing but its floor, its lights and its paint, and it is the room you walk into. Beyond it, the same recessed fitting was used fifty-three times across the apartment, which is what makes a lighting replacement read as a renovation rather than a repair.

What the apartment looked like before

MyHome’s own survey frames, including the estimator’s measuring sketches still sitting where they were put down. Nothing in these rooms survived the job.

Materials and finishes

First guest bathroom, the one with the window

Second guest bathroom, the one with no window

Apartment wide

The stacked washer and dryer, the shower panel glass hardware and the three replacement entrance closet doors are called for in the scope of work but their models are not recorded in the binder supplied for this job. The paint colours were left as to be determined on the materials list and are not recorded either.

The result

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Questions people ask about adding laundry and power to a co-op apartment