So first off the sunroom is an outdoor room, new poured foundation and CMU block wall setup with a big glass sunroom kit assembled on top of it. I'm not sure how much of the fault lies with the sunroom manufacturer and how much with the installer. I'm guessing mostly with the installer who blamed it on the manufacturer. Our contractor was of course supposed to come and fix this before he de-friended me on facebook and stop returning my calls—how rude! The loss of a friend, the loss of a contractor without a finished house—both stung, but I'm over it. The sunroom has been harder to get over. For years it leaked like a sieve and we just put up with it, making the assumption that it was an outdoor room and was meant to take in some water. However the use of sheetrock on the walls didn't match this re-purposing so the water damage came, followed by mold. At one point there were mushrooms growing on our walls—that is how bad it got.

The last contractor mess-up we handled was the façade which resulted in all those lovely pieces of slate cement board coming down and being thrown away. In a flash of assumed-genius I decided to save some of these pieces and repurpose them in the sunroom instead of the sheetrock. It seemed like a great idea—both eco-friendly and aesthetically pleasing. Several weeks ago we ripped out all the sheetrock in the sunroom and started work on rebuilding the walls. We framed in wood and spent several hours making agonizing cuts to the cement board to create perfect slate panels. We devised an aluminum channel frame to separate the panels, hide the screws and contribute to the aesthetic. All seemed to be moving along.

This is how far we got before our plans came crashing to a halt:

This summer has had record low rainfall for NYC (a fact that has left our garden less than happy) but two weeks ago we got one torrential rain storm that changed everything. We finally saw where the water was coming from. Not just at the frame where the sunroom meets the CMU (despite several layers of caulk, water still seeped underneath)

But water also was seeping in underneath and behind the panels, all throughout the CMU wall and a ton at the base. It was coming out from under the wall and running onto the floor. I'm not sure what needed to be done at the get-go to avoid this, if the outside of the CMU wall needed to be sealed in some way, but whatever the case it was unfixable now. And if we proceeded with our plan we would have water seeping in behind these panels. It would be fine for a while and it would certainly look fine, we could change the wood framing to aluminum, but it would be a huge mess years later with water collecting behind the walls. We just couldn't do it and had to stop dead in our tracks.

The other issue was more aesthetic—when we realized that one of the walls was not enough remotely level. Like several inches off from being level. I can't for the life of me imagine how a BRAND NEW room could be so far off. It explains a lot about the issues we've had with this room. But the lack of square lines left us with a chance that our very square, grid-like design would looks complete wrong on such an uneven wall. So two blows, both collectively bringing us back to square one after all that planning and work.

Finally the solution came, albeit after a lot of lots time, frustration and sweat—to bring in the same stucco crew that fixed the façade and give this wall the stucco treatment—waterproof 2 inch insulation, screening and a couple of layers of stucco. This would trap the water on the inside from flowing in from the outside as well as keep the walls water proof from any water that leaked in from the panes. It was so simple we kicked ourselves for not doing it sooner.

So about 3.5 years after we moved into our unit we finally have a usable sunroom—well almost, a couple of pieces of glasses seem to have broken seals and we will be replacing them in the next couple of weeks. Actually it's much harder than I'm making it out to be as the sunroom rails have caps on them that must be completely removed and clips that must be broken and replaced in order to change out the glass pieces. And while two are accessible one is all the way on top and will require some acrobatics. But for now, I'm just going to be happy with our new leak proof walls.

Still if I could go back in time I would do things differently. The roof of the sunroom in glass was a bad idea—the roof should have been solid with a skylight maybe. And this kit systems wasn't well thought out—we probably would have been much better off designing something out of the same material we used for our glass wall—a store-front type setup. But it's fruitless to think that way…now we know for "next time".

The picture doesn't even do it justice—it's very VERY blue. Notice we also redid the stucco on the bottom floor and around the steps as well—they didn't miss anything. It's nice to have this all uniform as the stucco that was there before was quiet uneven and not put on with much skill. What else is new?

Here's a close up on the bottom section where you can see they also did the side walls and encapsulation the previously exposed stone bottom window ledges. The plan was to leave those black granite ledges exposed and to polish they up but our first contractor's guys left they covered in paint and stucco and we weren't able to find anything to sufficient remove everything and polish the stone the way we wanted it. Covering it up with stucco was simpler and in the end looks much cleaner. Plus a lot of cold air comes in during winter around those window sills since there was no insulation. This should be marginally better.

Only issue is now that the door doesn't match the blue stucco—we might need to repaint it a slightly deeper blue to resolve that. But that's nit-picky and we're in no rush.

The photo above shows the new stucco edging they needed to do around the 2^nd and 3^rd floor bedroom windows. Originally this was stainless steel flashing which they tried to preserve but in the end they said it was so poorly attached that there was water damage and rust around the attachment points. They scrapped the stainless, fixed the water damaged and finished it in stucco. It throws off the lines a bit I think. In the perfect world I would have had them do these sections in gray stucco. But it's growing on me and I can't deny that I like things clean and simple—and with no water damage!

A view from the top of the steps looking down to our entrance – I do like the blue with the blue slate floor even if the colors are not 100% right. We will seal the floor again soon which will make those blues richer and probably match better, but again no rush. We've got bigger fish to fry. The one thing I really can't understand is why they did a line of blue stucco between the top ledge on the far wall and our neighbor's stairs. It looks like someone left a strip of painter's tape there. It was uneven and we were avoiding it completely so as not to upset our neighbor. Don't get me wrong, it's probably better that they filled it in, for water seepage reasons on the neighbor's end, but they could have left it uncolored and it would have looked less out of place. Perhaps at some point we will just paint it grey. Again, no rush—it's pretty damn good as is and overall we are very happy with the results. It's always nice to find someone who does what they say they are going to do, for the price they quoted you and within their estimated amount of time.

Oddly enough, the locals seem to like this look better than the slate. I'm surprised as I thought the main objection was to the stainless, but perhaps a deeper color and a richer texture distract from the steel. Or perhaps people just like brightly colored houses. I know I do. We are now no longer just the shiny house with the blue door, but the BLUE HOUSE. I could get used to that.

Here it is from another angle along with the weeping Alaskan cedar and the back-and-better-than-ever Red Dragon Japanese Maple.

I also see some signs of life on the azaleas we planted a couple of weeks ago on either side of the weeping white pine. Pretty soon those will have dark pink flowers too

The weeping Norway spruce (which someone once described to me as the Charlie Brown of plants—probably because he looks light a loser but he's ultimately loveable) is sporting some new growth…way to go Chuck!

But taking the cake (like it always does) is our awesome weeping Birch. It's always stealing the show and putting the other plants to shame…a couple of weeks ago all these branches were close to or either touching the ground so I did so serious trimming and the thing now seems twice as wide…check it out in all of its glory…

Still on deck is some more trimming and certainly re-mulching. We've been holding off on the mulch because we have a master lighting plan that is now finally coming to fruition. The solar lights we had were just not cutting it. At 2 watts per light they were barely bright enough to illuminate much and we don't seem to get enough direct light in the yard for the charges to last very long. After spending a lot of time researching low voltage landscape light we finally settled on some raw cooper path lights and spots lights and got all the associated hardware, cabling, transformer, etc. It took a little bit of figuring out but with the help of the internet and Eric's fundamental electrical knowledge we were able to do this totally DIY without having to overpay an incompetent electrician—hooray!

Unfortunately we lost most of the weekend to rain so we didn't get to finish this completely. We still need to push them another inch or two into the ground, bury all the electrical wire and re-mulch over them as well as permanently fix the transformer but the core result is there and it's lovely. These are 12 watt lights and they give off a nice amount of ambience. We might buy one more for the table, but things are looking much…well…brighter…

If you look closely you can see the two spots in the corners, one on the cedar and the other on the fountain. We are probably going to get another one to light the Birch.

Oh and yes, these are raw cooper, so they will oxidize and eventually get that green patina to them…swanky!

I took a trip out to Long Island about 10 days ago to go to the nursery to get some supplies (and just for perspective I was wearing a big bulky winter coat and gloves that day as it was just above freezing outside…go figure) but they were woefully lacking in a huge selection that day. I did manage to get a couple of things so the next weekend when it was 60 degrees out we got to planting. First off, we wanted this damn meadow sages out…they were huge and unruly and didn't fit the vibe of the rest of the garden…here there were in more contained times last year, but we wanted something low and creeping in its place…like the plants to the right of it…

Also not working out were these Penstemon "Husker's Red" which were less unruly but really way too tall. The weeping birch should be the focus here not the plants around it. Again we wanted something lower…maybe a foot or two high but no more…

So to replace the Husker's Red I picked up two Munstead Strain Lavenders for the section near the front of the tree. That area gets a lot of light and these plants will only grow 12 inches tall and 24 inches wide…plus they will be a silvery-purple and they will smell good!

There are two more HR's behind the tree but since that area gets less light I need something that does okay in part shade. Still on the lookout for those…

To replace the two Meadow sages in the back on the garden on either side of the Red Dragon Japanese Maple I got a couple of Bugleweeds (Burgundy Glow) The should do well with little to no light back there and will only grow about 6 inches tall and 12-24 inches wide. They also have these cool tri-color flowers that are pink, purple and silver at the same time…they red dragon approves…

I did some major pruning on our poor transplanted Golden Hinoki Cyprus so it's looking slightly less dead now. Also next to it is our Camellia Japonica or "Kramer's Supreme" just about ready to burst with giant red flowers…can't wait to see that!

In the front of the house we didn't seem to have much luck with our dwarf hinoki cypresses up on the ledge. They were suffering from transplant shock when we got them and I don't think they ever really recovered. They spent the winter there looking sad and as soon as it was warm enough we decided to move them to the back of the house to a prime sunlight drenched location to see if we could bring them back to life. Unfortunately those things weighed like 200 pounds each so moving them from off the ledge through the house, up the stairs and out back was no easy feat. My back has been killing me since; I think I pulled my low right lat moving these..hopefully I'll heal up soon and the change will do these guys good. Either that or we'll have to face that we just plain suck at growing any type of cypress.

We moved the silver king Euonymus up in their place on the ledge and transplanted out Japanese Holly into larger planters and moved them from the front to the back and put them on floor. We removed the Hostas from the planter and replaced them with some cool forever Hydrangeas. I also got some super-fancy pansies for our planters on top of the steps. Pictures of that coming shortly but I guarantee it looks better than this:

Also suffering a bit were our planter in the back that used to house our fresh herbs. Now they just house Mr. S's extended family

All 3 outdoor planter boxes were cleaned out and are now growing beets, peppers and brussel sprouts respectively. We also decided to grow a bunch of herbs in the sunroom instead (cause really, it's a hot, sunny, moist mess of a room that we can't use so we might as well put it to some use)

Left to right – oregano, broccoli rabe, Italian parsley, cilantro, rosemary and basil.

Best of all with the windows open Mr. S is connecting with his family some more…

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He's wondering when we replaced this window with a mirror. And whenever we are outside working he's super interested. He wants to keep up tabs on us to make sure we don't sully up his birthplace

Today a building down the block from us collapsed during construction. Tons of people contacted me to make sure it wasn't mine or right next to mine.  Luckily we are far enough away to not be affected, but emergency vehicles have been blocking out street all day and night.  You read about the NYC building disaster all the time but very rarely are they this up close and personal.  Many news organizations had to figure out how to pronounce the name of our street today. 

Coverage here:

ABC News

Gothamist

Curbed

NY Post

NY Times

NY Daily News

A quick trip to the DoB site shows that complaints were made against the building almost 2 months ago - in their useful shorthand:

CLLR STS THE ABV LOC IS DOING CONSTRUCTION AND THEY ARE UNDERMINING THE FOUNDATION TO THE BLDG, THE BLDG IS A 4 STORY BLDG BUT ITMAY BE IN DANGER OF FALLING DUE TO THE UNDERMINING, PLS INVST ASAP

and the DoB's notes:

02/05/2010 C1 INSPECTOR UNABLE TO GAIN ACCESS - 1ST ATTEMPT - 1871 02/04/2010
NO ACCESS SITE LOCKED
02/07/2010 C2 INSPECTOR UNABLE TO GAIN ACCESS - 2ND ATTEMPT - 1842 02/06/2010
SITE LOCKED UNABLE TO ACCESS

So they went on a Friday and a Sunday and the plywood in front of the site had a padlock on it--crack security indeed.  Way to do your jobs DoB!

I remember this from back when we were building our house and the DoB registered complaints about us from our neighbor.  In fact, one of them was that we were undermining his foundation and when he called to say that they sent an inspector over the same day!  I was told if we locked the door and didn't let him in he would try one more time and then close the case.  But since we had nothing to hide and wanted to prove our innocence we did indeed let them in.  They cited us for not having 30 foot trash containers in our yard.  Nevermind it's a townhouse with 3 foot wide doorways and no access to the yard from the street.  That's what you get for playing by the rules.  Ultimately we went to court and got the charges dismissed, but it was a valuable lesson:  don't break rules = hours of court fun, break rules = no consequences.  Let's hope that the people behind the building collapse today get into some serious trouble and that the worker in critical condition is able to pull through.