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Nine months later...

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Tomorrow will be exactly nine months since the fire, things are still a long way from normal in the building.
The hall in on our floor. The ceilings are finally done and they have begun to paint. The walls were primed today.


This is the hall on the third floor. It's in about the same state as our hal. The fourth floor is still locked off, but...

I got onto the roof! This is the burnt corner of the building. You can still see the scorching on the brick above the window of the room where the fire started. The black raised square to the right is the new cap on the old light-well. It's done quite differently than the older caps


These are the older light-well caps.

This is a more comprehensive view of the burnt end of the roof. The darker tar-paper is, of course, the recent repair. About a third of the roof had to be rebuilt.

A touch of the building's former glory. This is the banister for the stairs between the fourth floor and the roof. Having seen old pictures of the building where there is clearly a railing around the roof and looking at the quality of this banister it's pretty clear that at some point, decades ago, there must have been a roof-top deck. Back when the building was a hotel it was the highest thing around for some distance and would have had a spectacular view.


This is the roof-access room from the outside. The taller portion is the elevator machine room and upon seeing it close up it is very evident that it was added much later (not that it isn't obvious that the building originally had no elevator - the building wasn't even wired for electricity when it was built - but meaning that the machine-room wasn't built into and existing room). What is now the door to the elevator machine room looks like it was a second door to the roof from the original roof access building. The blue tarp is covering the hole for the dome that used to let light in for the grand spiral staircase that is now long gone. It's not clear if they are going to rebuild the dome or simply roof it over.

This is taken standing in the current door to the roof looking toward the door to the elevator machine room. It looks like the doorway was always there.

This is a close-up of the two stairs to the elevator machine room still bearing smoke damage from the fire.

And here is a brand-spanking-new elevator hoist.

This creepy space is the crawlspace between the fourth floor ceiling and the roof, showing the bundle of new T.V. cables entering from the form the roof. Note how grey the wood is. The smell of the soot from the fire is still very strong here. For a moment I felt sorry for the cable guys - then I remembered what an incredibly shoddy job they did...


This is the living room of the apartment directly above where opulence_9 was living at the time of the fire. It's looking pretty nice (not as nice as ours though!). You should see what they have done to my old apartment, too. It's fabulous. If I were still living alone I would be very, very pleased with my old apartment.

And this is the dining room.

And this last one is to give an idea of how much more there is to go. This is the stairwell. It has only just been drywalled. Come the 1st Anniversary of the fire they might be done.

And just wait until tomorrow when I get a chance to post the pictures I just took from the roof just after sunset!

Oringinal post: http://mbarrick.livejournal.com/396652.html