When we first screen tested for the show back in mid 2006 some of the things that made us interesting to the production company were that we had two very young children and we lived in a house that we intended to renovate. At that stage we had begun drawing up plans to dig our cellar from a 6' ceiling height to 8' and have a concrete floor rather than dirt. In this area we intended to put a laundry room plus additional half bath, a large media/playroom for the boys as well as an office/gym for us and overall give us another 880 sq ft of livable (though not deemed 'habitable' by NYC building code) space.

The production company was eager to get footage of these works but when we were ready to start construction the show still hadn't been greenlit by Bravo. We weren't prepared to wait (and who knew at that stage that the show would even be picked up) and so in January 2007 we commenced work.

We had a new staircase to the basement made to match the original staircase throughout the building. For the stairs between the parlor and garden levels we also had a new Mahogany railing and spindles made, as all that had been there when we bought the house was a sheetrock partition.

The contract for the basement work included these new stairs and so on but didn't include the removal of 100 years of layers different flooring; vinyl, linoleum and various other archeological specimens on the garden level and staircase to the parlor level. By the time the basement was finished in Early May 2007 and the new staircases were in we were ready for a break from having a houseful of construction crew all the time. A few months later and just before we started filming season 1, one of Alex's cousins was staying with us and he (a general contractor himself) and I spent a weekend with our hammers and chisels attempting to pry up said vinyl and discovered that the black tar that they'd used to glue it on with had set harder than superglue on fingers. We eventually gave up. That was the state it was in when Bethenny came over for Francois' birthday party and in her inimitable fashion proceeded to be aghast at it just as she was when the bar on the boat at Alex's birthday had only (shock horror) gold Tequila and not white!

Anyway we filmed season 1 between August & November 2007 and then as winter descended in we weren't about to start phase 2 of our work so we decided to wait until Spring/Summer of 2008. Once the 2nd season had been confirmed and given how much snark our house had come in for, the producers were eager for us to do as much work as possible during the filming cycle so they could get it on camera and so we agreed to delay the next phase to coincide with filming.

Last week (Episode #3 Air Date March 10th) you saw us meet with Aaron McDonald our Architect and then pack up the house and leave for vacation. What you didn't see was all the meetings with the various contractors including a big meeting in Aaron's office that also was filmed just prior to us leaving on our summer vacation.

Over the 10 years I've been in NYC I have, through the hotel trade, met many different contractors and I was able to assemble a great team to work with us on the house, many of whom I've worked with before.

Lead General Construction	Warren Anthony & Martin Polom	The Pinnacle Group	516-661-3488
Electrician	Bryan Yurkins & Matt Peters	Hampton Electric	646-485-5086
Plumbing, Heating & A/C	Spyros Kouzios	The Right Connection	http://trcph.com/
Structural Steel/Roofing	John Venetis	Vema Contracting	718-706-7686
Kitchen Cabinets/Sinks etc.	Paul Di Pippa	Di Pippa Design	http://dipippadesign.com/
Bathroom Fixtures & Tiles	Nissim Holland	Bath & Brass	http://bathandbrass.com/
And of course nothing would ever happen in New York without a great Architect and an awesome expeditor and we used the best!
Architect	Aaron McDonald	ADG McDonald	http://buildme.net/
Expeditor	Stuart Berger	George E Berger & Assoc	914-337-6800

In later weeks I'll add the companies we used for lighting, furnishings, fabrics (Zarin's of course) and kitchen appliances but that's enough of a list to start and you can see that the work is very much a collaborative effort.

While we spent the last two weeks of summer '08 in St Barths (and thankfully without cameras following us) we had hoped that when we arrived back at our house on Labor Day, 2008 a cocoon (i.e. the new wall and doors) would be built around the boys bedrooms and their bathroom would have been retiled and the new fixtures plumbed in but we decided to have a real vacation instead and checked out a little too much. So when we arrived back that fateful Monday we loaded the car back up and drove straight into Manhattan and stayed at the hotel until the wall and bathroom were complete.

Each week (and it sort of depends what is shown in each episode) we'll roll out some pictures of how the work is progressing to help you get a better feel from a still image than you can sometimes get from a TV screen.

Check back next week for me and in the meantime if you want to comment you can do so at my Facebook Page page.