Renovating an Historic Icehouse for a Residence

Last winter I started an enormous project; my wife and I purchased an old industrial property, the Irvington Ice and Coal Company building, to renovate and convert into our residence. It was built in 1916, and was operational as an ice and coal distributor until ca. 1965. From that point until 2006 it was a sheetmetal fabrication shop. We are the third owners. We did an interview with the Irvington Development Organization about it, it's a good overview if you are interested.

I fell in love with this property for many reasons. There is the old water tower in the front, which adds a great focal point for the property. Another is the huge shop floor inside, it is definitely a unique space with the old steel trusses and concrete ceiling. It also has some great garages that were converted from the old horse stable and wagon shed. But the main reason I love this place is because we're right in the neighborhood of Irvington, and it's rare that you can get such an urban industrial space located inside an old neighborhood like this.

I've posted some more pics of the property on picasa. We plan to renovate the old industrial space into a modern loft-style residence incorporating all of the old industrial features as architectural detail. I'll share all the important details in a later post.

While we currently live in a 500 sq. ft. apartment space, our plan is to convert the entire building to useful residential space. This is a difficult endeavor, because it is a dramatically filthy, dirty industrial space. Pile on years of neglect and deferred maintenance, in addition to the fact it was never meant to be housing, and you've got yourself a large project no matter how you stack it.

Large projects can be a lot of fun or they can be quite stressful. You have to always remember that you are doing it for a reason and learning a lot in the process, or you might not enjoy it. Maybe you have to be a bit crazy too. For those who have passed the "must be this insane to ride" test, it just kind of makes sense. Fulfilling your dreams always takes hard work and risk. We bought the place in January 2007, but waited to officially begin work on it while we took care of bureaucratic necessities. Small scale renovation work started in August 2007, it wasn't exactly "move-in ready".


We were basically camping out for the first 5 months while we prepared our apartment. We eventually figured out how to use the office with an A/C while using the bathroom on the other side of the building for showers and everything else. Of course that meant a long cold walk across a dirty shop floor every time you wanted to get clean, but that's another story. Our kitchen included a refrigerator and a toaster oven. I eventually broke down and bought a hot plate, and that made the best spaghetti I've ever had.

Our "apartment" turned out pretty well, and I love living here now. I'll do a write-up on our apartment remodel soon, but for right now you'll have to settle for the photos below and some of the before/after pics. Now that we've got a place to live and bathe, we're looking to expand our functional space by moving the kitchen somewhere else and enlarging our bathroom and closet. That would give us a freaking awesome master suite. But like everything in life, it's a question of resource allocation. Should we spend $X on a new bathroom, or spend it on a new lamborghini murcielago (yeah right). Let's go ahead and make the assumption that I don't have enough money to do everything I want to do right now, so the question really is what is a need and what is a want?

The old apartment space (originally the break room) had drop ceilings, bad lighting, ugly panelling and wallpaper, small closed in rooms, linoleum and shag carpeting, and was just a total disaster

The renovated apartment has high open ceilings, exposed brickwork, a simple color scheme, no interior walls for open flow, and plenty of room to put all our stuff

As you can see from the apartment renovation pics, we've got a pretty good start on this project and I think we know where we are headed. But there is only one way to get from here to there, and that is through a lot of hard work and organization. The end product will be well worth the effort, as it is with just about any project like this. Keep your eyes on the prize and remain firm in your resolve. If you ever get discouraged about your progress just remember that Rome wasn't built in a day.

I have lived through one summer and one winter in this space now, so I feel like I have a good idea of what the heating and cooling requirements will be. Basically, we need to figure out some way of insulating the space along all the exterior walls and the ceiling. Using zoned heating/cooling areas will help too, as all the spaces vary in size and load requirements.

I strongly believe in environmental responsibility, and I'm happy to say the final product will be very efficient with power and material requirements. We are recycling our building - which provides a wealth of information about early icehouse operations as well as being an important historic resource in our local community of Irvington. We are enrolled 100% in the IPL renewable energy program, so every kWh used here comes from renewable energy sources. We are just beginning our steps to manage our stormwater runoff, with the eventual goal of collecting, filtering, and returning all water safely to the local watershed. We are insulating exterior walls and using an efficient HVAC system.

If anyone has suggestions about this kind of thing, please drop me a line. I'm learning as much as I can as fast as I can, so all help is very much appreciated. Expect more great things to come!