Bird Blog: Week 7

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Every week, Jennifer Mankins, owner of the Bird boutiques, tells us about the new 2,500-square-foot store on Grand Street in Williamsburg that she’s getting ready to open. Last time ’round, the DOB granted the Bird crew work permits. This week, interior demo begins.

We finally had all the right information from all the right people landlord signatures, proof of addresses, demo plans, the okay from the asbestos inspector, etc., – so our expeditor, Code LLC, was able to get the permit in just a few days. It was time to get excited, and we agreed with Bill that demo would begin the next Tuesday. But Monday night, I got a call from Stephanie. She explained that one of Bill’s trucks had been tampered with (apparently there is real gold on the catalytic converters of Ford trucks?!?) and we’d have to put off the demo until Thursday. It felt a little anti-climatic after the long build up, but I guess I could wait two more days…

Thursday morning, a little after 9 am, we all arrived on the scene Bill and his crew, Ole and his crew, and me and Stephanie. While the workers began bringing in tools and setting up, Mark introduced me to a man named Forrest. As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Mark is an architect in Ole’s office who specializes in green building/LEED certification. Forrest works for a company called Build It Green, a non-profit that resells salvaged building materials. We made our way inside and Forrest scoped out what he thought he could use.

Bill explained that the first day would be a ‘soft demo’, a gentle breaking in of the space they would assess the situation, organize what goes where and what would come down first. Scaffolding was assembled and the wood floors were covered with protective paper. Then they would start from the North 1st side of the building and work their way back towards Grand Street. It was probably going to take a couple of weeks. Mark briefly explained his process of building a LEED team, the role of a ‘commissioning agent’, and how important it would be for Bill to get receipts from everyone that took anything from the site so we could track the percentage of our (de)construction waste that would end up in a landfill. We made plans to meet a week later.

I was too curious to wait a whole week, so I stopped by Sunday evening to see what they had done. The Styrofoam ceiling tiles were removed and wrapped in brown paper for protection so they could be donated and reused, and the aluminum framework for the dropped ceiling was pulled down and bundled for recycling. Two of the four sinks, both toilets and the washing machine had been grouped together and set aside. All interior glass walls, doors, baseboards, and light fixtures had been removed and they had started removing some drywall. This was getting interesting!

I was amazed when we met onsite again the following Thursday. At this point the whole back half was opened up and for the first time I could really grasp the scope of the space. There was so much natural light! Half the walls had been demolished, creating a pile of reusable 2x4s, stripped of screws and nails. A mountain of pink insulation had formed in the back left corner, its bigness rivaled only by the heap of black garbage bags full of drywall in the opposing corner. The tile flooring had also been removed and was sitting in sacks, to be crushed and used as concrete filler. We decided to remove all of the air conditioning ductwork, but to leave the sweep that comes from the unit on the roof into the building.

Thankfully there was only one unpleasant discovery, but it was a big one. With the ceiling and walls removed, we were finally able to see what was going on under the clerestory windows, above the supporting brick walls in the middle of the space. There was a very messy patchwork of support structures in and around the clerestory windows that spawned various and sundry opinions as to said structures’ functions and possible reliability. Related to this, and perhaps even more surprising, was the height of the ceiling behind the windows. It turns out that a significant portion of the roof was dropped down to accommodate the windows, and within this structure were the main drains (and corresponding pipes) for the entire roof! To even begin to think about re-structuring this area made everyone nervous. However, it was precisely for reasons like this that we had decided to do the demo before finalizing and filing our construction plans in the first place. Time to call the structural engineer.

What was left? A lot! Again, we agreed to meet in a week’s time. I was keeping my fingers crossed that there would be no more big surprises.

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