urbanSTL

Bankers407 wrote:Hi everyone, we will be living in 407, whenever it is done, sometime in September most likely, hopefully. My husband, Gary, is a high school coach and athletic director and I (Billie) work at WUSM. We are suburbanites making the move from Affton to downtown at the urging of our older kids. Our son is purchasing a loft at Lucas and will be moving in sometime in July/August. Quite the change for us, but one we are looking forward to. Love this forum, it has helped me become familiar and comfortable with our decision. We are doing a pre-drywall walk through this friday and I will try and take some pictures and post. Looking forward to meeting everyone soon.

Welcome, Billie and Gary! I'm Rob and I'll be directly below you in 307. DTteresa and her SO are the other couple we've met so far from fourth floor, although they actually will occupy both 401 and 501.



Are you one of the lucky ones that has an entire north wall of brick? Mine was at one time but was plastered over, so only portions of it are showing. My entrance hall is all brick, though.



Again, welcome, and keep us posted on your progress!

for the "new windows in the bedroom" picture just posted, is that the finished product with half plastered and half brick, or will they make it one or the other?

My question, too. I'm hoping they remove the plaster or I will have to. That is a question I have for Melanie or Laurie when I do my pre-drywall walk through this Friday. I'm sure some people would like the look/effect, but I prefer all brick look. I'm also hoping not to find any metal framing hiding any exposed brick when I do my walk through. I will be very disappointed if they are hiding any brick walls. Guess this is one of the down falls of not being able to view a display unit before you sign on the dotted line.

from what i understand (again), pyramid attempted to remove all the plaster from the walls to expose the brick. in some cases it an undesirable (in their estimation) patter or texture on the brick. in these cases they plastered over these spaces again and painted. their intention was to make as much exposed brick as possible. of course, feel free to confirm with stirling, tim, melanie, whoever.

Here are some pictures from their website.



Finished unit. What is that silver thing hanging above the island? Is that for cookware? I like the wood at the bottom of the columns. Looks good.





Here is a pic of the plaster:

St.Louis UAB alumni wrote:Here are some pictures from their website.

Is that a second floor unit? Those windows are huge. Very nice.

I really hate the half plaster, half brick look... I understand they did it because there were problems with the brick, but I think I'd rather see all plaster than the plaster/brick mixture. (I'd really hate to do that though... The exposed brick is so much better!)



Other than that, the place looks great! The floating fireplace is really cool.

aimster wrote:I really hate the half plaster, half brick look... I understand they did it because there were problems with the brick, but I think I'd rather see all plaster than the plaster/brick mixture. (I'd really hate to do that though... The exposed brick is so much better!)



Other than that, the place looks great! The floating fireplace is really cool.

I had some "bad brick" in my place (a whole section of wall was discolored) but fixed the problem with some paint. I broke a chip off of one of the bricks and had the paint store match its color. I then got a small pint of black paint and had a batch where I mixed the black and the brick color. So now I've got two colors working and with various brushes and applied pressures I painted a part of my brick wall about 12 feet tall by 6 feet wide. I painted brick by brick, some darker and some lighter, which took about 8 hours for the whole job. BUT that wall now looks awesome. I swear you cannot tell there is any paint on those bricks at all, even up close and they blend in perfectly with the rest of the wall.



So maybe you can chisel that plaster off the wall, then paint the bricks.

That's really crafty! I'm impressed!

aimster wrote:That's really crafty! I'm impressed!

Thanks. My girlfriend thought I was crazy and was going to make the wall look worse. But she was very happily proven wrong.

Here's what Melanie told us...





Hi Christy,

No worries--your brick walls will remain brick. The units that have plaster over the brick had plaster over the brick when we purchased the building. We just repaired it. We didn't remove a lot of the existing plaster because when they originally plastered over the brick, they first "scored" the brick. So, we discovered big gashes in the brick in a lot of the locations where we began removing plaster. Not the best look. I hope that helps alleviate your concerns. We will not cover up any existing exposed brick. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks!

Ok, so I just found out that if you don't buy the optional sliding door, you don't get the drywall header. I wanted this header so I could install my own door system from 3form( www.3-form.com ). The problem is that since they've already drywalled my unit, I might not be able to have this installed. And if I do it will be a change order and I will have to pay for it.



My question is, given that I do want this and that I was never informed of the lack of a header or given the option to have it installed, what should I do?

Well, if you already explained your problem to pyramid, and they said, "sorry, you have to pay materials and the $150 order change"- then you're probably going to have to install the header yourself after you move in.



It's going to take a little work to do this- adding a header and then drywalling it, and taping and mudding it to get a clean look- then installing the door and framing- you gotta ask yourself, "is this worth $XX to have it done before I move in? is my time worth more than $XX?"



Find out how much it is. The change order fee is $150. How much on top of that?

St.Louis UAB alumni wrote:Here are some pictures from their website.



Finished unit. What is that silver thing hanging above the island? Is that for cookware?

Yes, that's a stainless steel pot rack. I saw the same thing in one of Pyramid's prior projects. I liked the look but it didn't seem very stable, but they may not have had it totally installed, either.

We did our pre-drywall walk through on friday (407). Was pleasantly surprised at the amount of exposed brick walls in this unit. The entire entry way and almost all 4 perimeter walls. Feel very lucky to have this much brick exposed. Could not figure out how to download some of the pics we took.



Not sure if anyone else has considered options for the concrete floors. We are looking into staining the concrete. Laurie in the design center was able to give us some information on someone who has done this for another Pyramid project. The pics we saw were awesome on what can be done to the concrete floors to look like ceramic or just about any finish you can imagine. I also liked the darkening shades that are hanging in the design center. You can see out of these shades but no one can look in. Has anyone else looked into any other type of shades/window treatments?

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Glad to hear you lucked out on the brick in 407. I'm right below you and didn't fare as well, but i'm satisfied with what i have.



The lighting is all up now in my unit (I can see if from the street) and it's pretty much done except for the final paint job and floor finishing.



I asked if any closing letters were being sent yet and was told no, but they're starting to set some dates. I'm still on for sometime between June 1 and June 15. I can't wait!



I'm looking at some Hunter-Douglas shades that have vanes and a silk-like covering on each side. it lets you see out but no one can see in and at night you close the vanes and some light comes in, but no one can see in. i really don't want room darkening shades as i want as much light as possible. these seem to do the trick best. Check them out at http://www.hunterdouglas.com/hdg_photo_ ... =33&r=5&s=.

some random thoughts this morning:



1. my wife and i moved out of our house this week and have moved into vangard lofts while we wait for a move-in date.



2. it's great to be downtown even if we aren't in our loft.



3. i walked our dogs down to the banker's building this morning and was able to see into the corner unit on 2 facing lucas and 9th (i think it's 208) and was able to see that they got a really cool light fixture. but because of the light, that was all i was able to see. also, they haven't painted the frames on the windows on 2 on the back of the building.



4. i hope the rumors about TGIF are NOT true!



5. we have concrete floors and since we're settled in here at vangard we are considering staining the concrete floors and some other stuff before we move in. all depends on timing of course!



6. i think my wife has the contact information for the company that makes the window treatments that are in the design center, so i think we will be getting those.



end random thought.

What's the TGIF rumor?



The comments about what to do with concrete floors reminded me of something. When I have renovations projects at my house, I have run in to some problems with finding the specific materials and then a contractor that can do the process/work. The typical or routine usually easy but even some of the ideas you see in magazines can be very difficult for the local market to do.



For instance, I wanted soapstone countertops but couldn't find the product in St. Louis or any contractor that had experience working with soapstone. I've since heard from someone in the countertop business that this was true 3 years ago but that it probably isn't now.



Nearly 100 percent of the product I've purchased has come over the internet because they aren't available locally.



I did have a contractor friend who specializes in unique spaces and materials to do tile work but his waiting list was nearly 8 months!

There's an excellent discussion on staining concrete floors in the Meridian thread . . .

New pics up again!!!



http://www.bankerslofts.com/progress-20060414.html

Matt wrote:
For instance, I wanted soapstone countertops but couldn't find the product in St. Louis or any contractor that had experience working with soapstone. I've since heard from someone in the countertop business that this was true 3 years ago but that it probably isn't now.

definitely isn't true anymore. check your pm.

Wow! The new pics are great! Things are moving along! I like the wood floors.



I'm locking in on my rate tomorrow as my 60 day window is finally here.



Pyramid was starting to work on the seventh floor arched windows today. They've removed the old ones on the front facade so I suspect they must have the new ones ready to install.



The TGIF reference was about what might be going in on first floor. I've heard actually three different businesses will use the first floor, but nothing is finalized.

Those of you that moved into interim places...how did you get a short term lease? We're going to put our house up in May and will need to live somewhere for a bit. Would prefer to go ahead and move downtown.

Does anyone know if there is going to be a workout facility in this building?