What makes a renovation "High End"

if you spend $10K for a sink in your bathroom, that's high end.
if you pay $150K for your kitchen, that's high end.
if you pay $30-50 psf for tile, that's high end.
if you pay your contractor $200 per hour for illegals who are doing your work, that's high end.

just because all of the above could've cost 10-30% of what you got ripped off for, is completely irrelevant.

Marijuana

ab...

word.

If it'll look totally dated in three years, it's high-end.

Therefore, if it looks totally dated now, it was high-end three years ago.

Great question - I hear high end a lot; but what does it mean? Will the cost of tile really make a difference in your resale? If you go to College Point, NY and get good quality vs a fancy NYC store will the buyer know the difference? One contractor wanted to reno our place and the cost per sq foot was 60% of the average square selling price. ie the resale is 100 per sq foot, his price was 60. It might be high end but also be stupid if we did it.

Soon you'll have someone come on to this thread and talk about how her 1990s Martha Stewart for Kmart white kitchen with multi-light glass upper cupboard doors and dark real granite countertops and a few other choice details like that is "timeless" and "classic". And worth paying top retail dollar for. Good luck with that. 1990s forever!

"High-end" is mostly marketing crap. I might look for custom millwork, nice skim-coating and central a/c as hallmarks, but they don't guarantee that the plumbing and wiring won't fail.

I know it when I see it, and I can almost always tell if someone has tried to put together a "designer" look for less.

In New York anything above a basic sponser spruce up is deemed 'High End'. It is meaningless drivel intended to paint a picture of a thoughtful expensive detailed renovation. I know people who exclusivly use the the imaginative design stylings of IKEA and call their kitchen 'HIGH END'. As a rule, for myself, once press board is involved the words high end must be excluded.

>What makes a renovation "High End"

The bathroom is not hidden in the kitchen:
http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/33131-how-to-hide-a-bathroom-in-a-kitchen

In my opinion, min requirements for a high end Reno in manhattan are:
Central ac
Marble/mosaic bath with high end fixtures Koehler, dornbracht
sub zero, Viking/wolf, high end dish washer, poggenpohl/ similar or nice custom cabinets, nice countertops at least $25 per sq ft.
Nice door and closets/ custom mill work
Good hard wood floors
High end lighting, smooth walls
Special architechtural finishes not necessary but the layout has to covey luxury.

Heheheheneheejejjeeeeeehehehebeeeeee.

Don't forget the bidet. Now it's fking high end. And a crystal champagne in the fridge. A Ho on a pole. Some rugs. Some shaven. Where my beytches at?

Don't spread your legs so wide... Now that's classy.

Custom Formica millwork. Nice

Rounded marble dildos. Nice

Fk that. Built in rounded Tuscan marble dildos. Scratch that double headed dildos! Now you talking classy. Not that ikea recycled crap.

Also, various elements have to work well together from a proportion, color, and interior design point of view.

there's our reliable one trick pony. He does his trick so well. Except nothing for the past few months, but maybe pony is shy. FLMAOz

Don't forget speaker wires stuffed into the wallz! Matching toiletry. A mistress to match your accomplishments not some 80 yo looking gnome of a housewife. Now classy. Not some maid. A classy West Point grad. Vazazzled!

Yeh where my homies at? Crystalllllzzzzz. Dom. Cryztallllzzzzz. Dom. Shot of Yaeger. Plop it into a bud. Bam! Classy Ho bumping drunkazz bitches.

But nutin says classy... Like spending too much on a bubble. Think fking tulips with an expensive $3mm vase to match. Preferably in the shape of boobies.

Gold sunglasses... 80's 328 Ferarri and a hag of a Ho. To certain ppl. The epitome of high class. Don Johnson white linen pants. Yeah. Stay classy. Stay over spending. Consume. Reflect on your class with classy hos.

U know what doesn't go out of style..... Making coin beytches. And a gin and tonic.

Funny w67. Welcome back to your old self rather than personal attacks.

No, none of the 300. Certainly not even today.

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Tony Montana on w67thstreet.
Say hello to my little friends...

Brokered,

I see a lot of people are helping you on this post.

As a contractor I would base hi end on both the finishes and the quality of work. It is all attention to detail.

300 Mercer made sense, we know what hi end appliances are (Wolf, viking, etc) the same goes for everything else. Moldings, can you see where they were cut or does it look like one piece? How is the paint job? Are the walls all the same texture?

Yes, high-end appliances are those that need the concierge-like services of a repair-butler every 18 months or so. Wolf, Viking, etc.

High end finishes (moldings; paint) look like they're created in gigantic high-tech factories and have no seams (like wall-to-wall carpet) or texture (like fine vinyl). You would never want guests to know that your walls have paint on them.

But don't worry about bathroom tiles being installed flat and square -- not a single upscale apartment or house (much less commercial space) I've ever been to seems to get that one right. Probably because the installers are all "artists" and can't be creatively inhibited by spacers. Or maybe it's not quite high end enough for the tradesmen to be slowed down by them.

Hi, if you take the time and stand in a space, you can see and feel if it is high end.

I believe true high end is a combination of: Time, craftsmanship, quality, money.
To break it down specifically for one example, out of 1000's of choices that are made in a renovation.

Crown work.
1. Time; thought went into selecting the most suitable crown. Ordering the right lengths so there is minimum joins. Time to allow it to be custom made, or ordered rather than just ordering off the shelf. Time to walk the pieces up the stairs to avoid so many cuts if you have a small elevator.
2. Craftsmanship; true craftsman will make it look like 1 piece of crown even if there has to be joins. details and serious prep of walls to make it a perfect fit, rather than just "fudging it".
3. Quality; highest quality for the job, e.g. real plaster crown, that will last for 100 years rather than painted MDF.
4. Money: Real plaster is obviously more than MDF. Choosing to have wastage and buying a whole new length, rather than piecing together a few existing pieces.

When all 4 are able to come together it is truly high end for me.

A picture is worth a 1000 words, so the last picture I saw that created that feeling in me was 212 West 18th st, Walker tower. I was hoping to think of one that was sold out as last time I recommended people look at the pictures of 157 west 57th st, I was accused of trying to sell the apt, where I am someone who appreciates beautiful quality and likes to share that. I have no interest in selling property.
That vanity/bathroom even thou I have not seen it in real life, looks spectacularly high end to me from the pictures.

Once you get the walls, soffits, and ceilings straight with a good paint job, the rest is furnishings & art.

Nothing brings down the look like cheap tacky furniture and what you put on the walls. I've seen too many "high end" apts that look just awful becaue someone spent $300/sf on renovations and nothing on design. Sometimes all it takes is to bring in someone with a good "eye".

If I sit in a 30 yr old MB 300td.... It is a finely crafted machine. But outside the single wiper windshield sits a $200k Bentley that id rather own.

Ppl that hump 'old world craftsmanship' is cool, are the same poor bastards that can't afford the upgrade cycle.

Newer is always better. Cheaper newer better. That's human evolution. To pick a 1970 pair of pants and live in a 1970 apt is kool for Halloween. But I ain't a 8yo with a sweet tooth anymore.

Grow the fk up. Renting is the new buying. Old - buy. New - rent the Viking appliances.

Plaster. With water level rising?

Plaster. Hahahahhaaaaaa. Quality. If you mix in asbestos it'll last longer.

Right. I like the slab marble that's chunky but not out of proportion.

Interesting that the http://walker-tower.com site has an Engineering section. I don't remember any other that did, with an emphasis on the stuff that really costs money.

As kylewest pointed out in another reno thread, all the blah-blah about appliances is ass-backward, as they're the easiest thing to do.

My litmus test for "high end" finishes is door knobs for interior doors. If these are flimsy and lightweight, everything else is suspect.

Interesting points about the crowning. We liked the idea of the crown molding in our first NYC rental, but did not like its weird shiny appearance or the fact that the seams were visible; I know nothing about crown molding, but it struck me as odd; it was not like crown molding I had ever seen before. Having now lived in two "high end" finish NYC apartments, I feel like care during installation of the finishes is what is lacking in both apartments, but that could be because the "high end" finishes were installed during initial construction rather than as part of renovation. Tragic to lay the highest quality wood floor in a high rise without a proper vapor/moisture barrier.

It's an art. My boss Gil consulted on a four-bedroom combo at Riverhouse and moved a kitchen feature that made a subtle difference. He could see this (where the architect, designer, and customer didn't) because he'd had prior experience as a kitchen designer.

In an example that's not about our firm, Michael Bolla (who I believe is now at Elliman) hired a paint consultant to come up with the right colors for a townhouse renovation. I could see that the paint was "right" even before I was told that fact.

So I'd say this is a really open-ended question. Trying to pin it down to any one factor is like asking "What shade of red makes a Rothko?"

ali r.
DG Neary Realty

>My boss Gil consulted on a four-bedroom combo at Riverhouse and moved a kitchen feature that made a subtle difference.

Agree, when the refrigerator door opens in the wrong direction, it is very frustrating.

Crown molding does not belong in Manhattan apartments. Picture rail molding does. Crown is used to minimize the corner-building skills needed in plasterers and drywall tapers.

Brokered,
Interior Design, (and i don't mean furnishings & art, anyway not part of any "renovation"), quality of work, choice of materials used, with "crown" or without, electrical systems (conventional or home automation), HVAC (multi-zone ...), custom milwork ..........

Gabrielle904
I agree...."if you take the time and stand in a space, you can see and feel if it is high end".
http://www.byaccnyc.com/Projects.html