This Old Chicago 2 Flat

Um.....In case you were wondering...

2009-10-31T14:49:00.002-05:00

We still are alive, well, and surrounded by uncompleted projects. That little apprentice I wrote about oh so long ago made an appearance. Funny, as I glanced at some of my last posts and I saw I was hunting for gates. Ironically, that was sort of a recent occurrence around here too as that was Glenn's very last house related project-installing gates! Go figure...

Things are more than a bit different around here. Outside of our son's arrival the related big news is that we are a single family two flat. Huh? You might say. Basically, our perfect tenants moved out at the end of December just as our apprentice moved in. Amazing, once a little baby appears how a single unit seems all the more 'cramped'

So, after some deliberation, we decided to live in the whole house at least for now. We haven't decided if we are going to go through a conversion, just finish off the 2 flat and rent both units, or finish off the 2 flat and sell.

As for house projects before this revelation-we added molding to our son's room. (I sanded and painted when I was 41 weeks pregnant with some delightful photos that I'm not sharing with everyone). Childproofing has been a big focus as our son is quite the active guy. Glenn recently exchanged a window for a door in the playroom attached to our son's room.

It's nearly impossible to get anything done around here with a little one at our feet. We are looking forward to putting him to work as soon as he can.

Ahh...Chicago apparently needs bricklayers

2008-09-22T13:59:00.002-05:00

Last year, we had the issue with the gates. This year, we are in the neverending search for someone knowledgable about brick and old homes to make some deperately needed repairs, to no avail. We began the search in earnest last year with no success. Our first lead ( a recommendation from a friend) never showed up. Neither did anyone I called. Fine.

This year rolls around, and we hire a chimney company to install a chimney liner. I asked this company if our chimney was in good condition-yep, sure, fine. Fast forward to the completion of the work, and our neighbor tells us that brick has been falling from our chimney for months. (there's a locked gate there so we couldn't see).

I called 6-7 places to see about getting someone out for an inspection and to do repairs. Only one guy showed up who gave us a really vague estimate that he took from looking at the street (never went on the roof to see the top of the chimney). The estimate said basically he'd repair a small area only (with no description of what this area is). We received the estimate in the mail.

We end up getting a lead on a union bricklayer who moonlights on the weekends. So, he comes out, and points out (1) the chimney cap is cracked and mortar, not concrete, so must be replaced (2) a portion of our parapet wall needs to be rebuilt (3) there are some issues with the coping tiles that need to be fixed (4) he'll repair the HOLES in the side of our house. We are excited because he really seems to know what he's doing, and repairs are on their way.

He disappears.

So, now back to the drawing board. The irony in all this is we had a very good mason back in 2003, who disappeared. We then had our parapet walls rebuilt in 2005 by someone recommended by our roofer. There's clearly a parapet wall problem-so we can't go back there.

I really don't know what to do. I don't want to just drop money on "work" that will need to be redone if we ever find anyone competent. But, even finding a potentially bad contractor is impossible. People always wonder why we do work on the house ourselves-we have such a disasterly time finding competent contractors that it becomes "easier" for us to study how to do something and do it ourselves.

We're Adding an Apprentice

2008-08-19T08:36:00.003-05:00

We've been awfully quiet around here-and I apologize. A lot of the quietness surrounds the most prominent project we've been working on- our apprentice. (We've also had a wonderful vacation and some illness).

Anyway, we've decided to follow in House in Progress's footsteps (or should I say blueprints?) and will be adding a new resident to This Old Chicago 2 Flat. As a result, a lot of our time has been filled with probably the most mind numbing of all our research- the analysis of all that baby gear and decisions. Should we spend $100 or $2000 on a stroller? (no worries there-but if you haven't been stroller shopping you should go-amazing how advanced they've gotten in the last 20 years!) How to navigate in a BPA world? How hungry can I really be in one day- and how long between eating does it take for me to get ravenous?

Despite all that, we have done some blog worthy work around here which I need to write about- Glenn a few weekends ago installed new back doors (screen doors to come), we got a new chimney liner, we did some summer planting (due to travels, illness, etc. spring planting didn't happen), and most recently we shut down the big condo development on our back porch.

The buffet project

2008-02-27T07:42:00.003-06:00

After what seems a fairly long hiatus, we have started a pretty significant project of stripping and repairing our built-in buffet outside our bedroom and bathroom. Once you start living in a home that has ongoing work, after cleaning up from a project and making rooms look liveable the cleanness acts as a permanent psychological barrier to beginning any future project which might descend the house back into chaos. Well, this time around, after we covered the furniture, moved bookshelves and removed books, and did a lot of prep for repainting our living room, I thought, now's the time for the buffet!

The buffet suffered from perpetual filthiness. It's been a bit of an embarrassment that it's lasted this long before serious effort. (actual living space was always more important for us). Repeated times before I thoroughly scrubbed the buffet to have it remain looking filthy. It really needed a new coat of paint-which required a fair amount of prep work. In some places, the paint had chipped down to the wood revealing a coating of about 1/8 inch.

The second problem was the interior of the buffet. The back was the original plaster wall which was in disrepair. It looked really bad. Then, there were the shelves. They suffered from the perpetual and neverending filth problem, but they also seemed split and cracked. They also were tiny and hard to get to.

The third problem is some broken exterior molding. When our mason installed the exterior vent for our bathroom fan, some brick fell down and broke 2 pieces of curved molding. We will need to replace these pieces.

Now, onto the work!

I used a heat gun to remove the paint. It was really thick so took a long time. (quite fun with a window open when it's snowing and 15-not the optimal time for work!). It was a slow process. Since most of the buffet has vertical surfaces in a finished area of the house, I preferred to use the heat gun. Stripper is just much more of a challenge on vertical surfaces. Plus, there's the risk of stripper migrating to the finished floor. The down side with the heat gun is the fumes. I had to wear a respirator plus keep the window open.

Here's the buffet in progress, after one long day of stripping:

I also removed all the doors and drawers to be worked on separately. (note do not ever paint hinges!!!)

Now, after completing the paint stripping, and waiting for sanding:

I also was able to knock out most of the shelving.

Next on the agenda? (1) finish the stripping with the heat gun (2) remove damaged molding (3) remove remaining shelf and chisel out bottom splintered shelf (4) work on plaster back of buffet . (I'm thinking for this, we'll just cover the plaster with painted hardibacker. If there's clearly crumbling plaster though, I'd like to take out the broken pieces).

We will use citrus stripper on the drawers and the doors. For the crumbling shelves, I think we might just change them out with new shelves. The original plywood is in bad shape.

Flooding and a Multi-pronged Hunt

2008-02-19T09:40:00.004-06:00

When last I left you, we were returning from vacation to water in the basement. Not to disappoint, this past weekend, the flooding got worse. Basically, an inch of water throughout much of the basement. We were running out the door, when our tenants sent the casual e-mail, and we had to investigate. The fact that we have tons of belongings in our basement did not help matters. But, eventually, after 3 hours, with the help of a broom, 2 wet vacs, fans, etc. we were able to get most of the water out. (we used the broom to push water to the sump pump) We still need to move all our belongings and thoroughly dry them/toss etc. That will be a longer process. (and I don't know how exciting to write about).

We were already immersed in one hunt, but besides for the water source-we are back on the contractor roulette wheel.

Now, our first hunt of the weekend concerned paint. As I've written before, we painted our dining room, then, were planning on painting the living room the same color. We had a big flooring project, and took out radiators to be painted. Prior to reinstalling the radiators, I got another gallon of paint to do touchups. Which, actually didn't match. This weekend, we tried to go back with the original quart container and have Home Depot just use the same formula on the quart can. Well, they couldn't do that because (1) a gallon formula would be different and (2) the base apparently changed-which is the issue. (I don't know why a gallon formula wouldn't just be 4 times whatever the quart kind was). So now, we need to try color matching. Fingers crossed on this. (I'm trying to figure out who would be best with this).

Added to the hunt is a preliminary search for a waterproofer. We'd also like to get a structural engineeer out because we might as well have one assess the waterproofing issue, and while
(s)he's at it some other things around here such as what kind of load our roof can take if we added a green roof, which is on our wish list. Contractors just make me really nervous as they provide possibly a huge price tag, and risk. Yes, getting things done is magnificent. I love having someone else come in and give them a few days-massive progress. But, we've had contractors that we really thought would do great fail miserably and there's nothing more frustrating. There's the added thing that I like when contractors come in and do improvements, not just maintenance sort of things.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-02T08:44:00.000-06:00

We've been on our Christmas hiatus where all extra time was spent on all holiday happenings...a quick summary.

We started by hosting a total of 10 for Thanksgiving, due to Glenn's sister getting a kitchen redone (the normal host). After basically wrestling Glenn's mom for the turkey, we kidnapped it, and were able to cook it for dinner. We also made crustless quiche and crudite (appetizers), mashed potato casserole (yum!), waldorf salad, my mom's rolls, broccoli puree, apple pie, and pumpkin pie. Glenn's family brought stuffing, sweet potato casserole, and creamed onions.

After Thanksgiving, we jumped into Christmas prep. Glenn had to work his real job a whole bunch in December, so I largely did most of the decorating. We were excited to use some solar lights for the first time this year. (which, oddly enough have an "on" button that took a bit to find-I had assumed poor sun was hindering the charging and lighting for a bit).

I really like how our outside came. But here are some decoration photos.

(the above photo shows the solar panel for the lights.

Our Christmas tree. (we have 2 angels that are currently MIA) Since we already have 2 we weren't going to buy another. Hopefully they'll appear next year.

We have a little niche in our hallway which, at this point, has a sole purpose of displaying another tree.

We also did the wide amount of shopping, and card mailing. Oh, and baking! We always do a ton of Christmas cookie baking and distribute the cookies to friends and family. This year, we had 10 kinds of cookies.

We had bourbon balls too...but I must have taken the above photo before we added them.

Oh, and we hosted glenn's family again for his mom's birthday and brother-in-law's birthday. On that day, I had the idea to have our niece and nephews over early to help decorate the sugar cookies. Unfortunately, while this seemed like a good idea (and they did do a great job), our yield from sugar cookies was seriously compromised due to kids and adults alike siphoning them off.

For Christmas itself, we headed to Stowe, Vermont where my little brother lives and works. As a professional chef, he didn't have off any time around Christmas so we all went to him. He has a cathedral ceiling so opted for the 15 foot Christmas tree. (no, that is not a mistype-I did say 15 feet). Since he lived in the land of Christmas trees, it was a whopping $25! For prospective, my mom, brother's girlfriend, and I are all posing in front of it.

Back in Chicago, we celebrated Christmas with Glenn's family yesterday, January 1. Some gift highlights included, Glenn's pipe wrench ornament (I couldn't resist! We do so much radiator work-that this is perfect-I give him an ornament each year that represents something we did together.) We also gave Glenn's mom a bag of silver bows which were a surprising hit. (she is quite vocale about saving bows and in December commented on how silver bows were so hard to find, so we gave her a bag that we found 75% off at Target-she was quite thrilled. who knew?)

From a weather standpoint, I've lost track of our snowstorms. It snows, warms up, snows, warms up...so on and so forth. Since returning late on the 27th, I've already shovelled twice. As I write, it is 4 degrees, (much colder when you factor in windchill). Sunday, it is supposed to be 55-go figure. I see from our google hits that we are getting many hits for unfreezing pipes. Best of luck to anyone in that predicament.

Hope your new year has started off well and you had a wonderful holiday. Our near term house projects involve taking our house back from the holiday.

Our latest concrete project

2007-11-06T09:29:00.001-06:00

Of course, despite the November date and Thanksgiving fast approaching, we have decided to add another project to our "get done before frost" list. We are in the process of repairing our front step. The prior owners at some point patched the front step. However, they did not do it right-opting for quickness/ease over longevity. As a result, last year, the patched piece finally gave way.

This time around, Glenn used rebar. This past weekend, he drilled holes in the step, glued in rebar cut to fit, then wired the rebar together.

The epoxy takes 24 hours to dry, so we had to wait until this coming weekend to pour the concrete into a form (to be made). We can pour concrete as long as it is 40 degrees (and not currently raining). We are hoping that this weekend that will be the case.

Bulbs and Thorny plants

2007-11-05T15:30:00.001-06:00

I finally got around to planting them. This year, I opted for just digging out (with Glenn's help) a whole section of the garden and planting the bulbs in rows. In so doing, we uncovered previously planted bulbs in various stages of grown. (crocus' and some mystery bulbs-perhaps daffodils). I opted to just add the old bulbs back in with the new.

I hope waking them from their slumber didn't mess them up at all.

I tried to plant some more bulbs in with the ivy. The ivy grew in too much though so it was basically impossible. I think a couple were just planted perhaps 4 inches (instead of 6) down. I'm hoping they still bloom. All in all I planted 100 new bulbs in our front yard-a mix of purple hyacinths, red tulips, snow crocus', dwarf iris, and tahiti double blooming daffodils. The crocus' and dwarf iris' are very early spring blooming. I think I read somewhere there's a possibility of them blooming in February! I'm really looking forward to that.

I also planted a barberry bush-a plant to hopefully deter possible plant or other thieves. At the very least, it should maybe hurt any intruder.

I bought the barberry bush before I started the massive fence project. For a couple days, it was sitting in my front hall. Promptly, it seemed to die. (shriveled up leaves). I brought it outide thinking it needed sun and water. I watered. and watered. and watered. A week goes by-nothing. I, of course, think it's dead, but I leave it there, hoping it would come back to life. (and I stopped watering it). And it did!! Leaves started sprouting up all over. I decided to plant it in hope that in its new home, it will be happier. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

The rose bush I bought, on the other hand, seems to be struggling a lot more. It has black spots on the leaves so I'm not planting it. Right now, I'm trying to figure out if I could winter it indoors, or if it's a gonner.

For good measure, here's a picture of the two boxwood we planted last week. One of my 2007 summer goals was to plant items in this section of the yard that would have some seasonal interest. In prior years, outside of the sleeping sedum, we just had the mulch to attract and attention. (now it's cocoa mulch). I still need to come up with a more complete landscape plan for that area of the yard. We'll see next year.

Off to the Market

2007-11-04T19:18:00.001-06:00

Kane County Flea Market, that is! Saturday, en route back to Chicago from visiting friends in Milwaukee (we found out that this was even less en route home than we thought), we thought we'd stop by the Kane County Market. We had heard good things.

The Flea Market happens the first weekend of every month in St. Charles Illinois and attracts sellers from all over. (The ones I noticed included Minnesota and Wisconsin, at the least). The market was much larger than we anticipated. Countless times we would say, oh, lets go down that row, (expecting a quick turnaround) to find at the end of the row basically another football field full of vendors. (or so it seemed). In our quick little "run through," we were there for 3 hours. They have a combination of sellers out in the open, inside permanent buildings and underneath large tents. The permanent buildings are usually used for the county fair, and include names such as sheep 1, sheep 2.

I'm sure that every month the sellers change a bit. This time around we saw a bunch of jewelry (some older and vintage coupled with newer stuff), vintage light fixtures, tools, antique hardware, stained glass, garden planters and decorations, and random older items (such as vases, knick-knacks, dishes, toys (beanie babies and antiques), and cash registers). Pretty much everything. Sprinkled in with all the vintage sellers, were (1) food vendors (including baked potatoes, popcorn, hotdogs/hamburgers, ice cream, apple cider and apples); and (2) newly made items including dog treats, sweaters, garland and Christmas decorations, quilts, among other items.

There were a number of furniture vendors including some antiques, antique furniture that had been refinished, new furniture, and a personal favorite, new furniture made from reclaimed wood. There was a fair amount of furniture that looked to be well made, but very affordable. It seemed like a great place to go if you needed to get something solid. We saw a mahogany table, with 6 chairs for $200.

Before you go:
1. Make sure you bring a vehicle appropriate for your purchases. If you are looking for furniture, a truck or van would be a great idea. (and we saw a lot of them in the parking lot).
2. If you think you may buy something, bring a shopping cart. We saw a number of people with the folding shopping carts you would see in the city. (clearly they had come before) It makes that puchase decision all the easier.
3. Wear comfortable shoes.
4. Have an idea about what you want. There's a lot of ground to cover in a relatively short time. It would be a lot easier if you knew that you wanted a nightstand, or something to put on your living room wall, or vintage toys. It's hard to look at everything at once. I saw a lot of "neat" items that I didn't have a place for.
5. Remember it's a market not a brick and mortar store. That being the case, haggling is the game. Sure, a lot of items have prices but unless it says "firm price" it isn't.
6. The Antiques Roadshow advice. (I remember this from an episode they had showing how to navigate a flea market). Talk to the seller-get a sense of what he/she is saying is true, and whatever he/she might know about the particular item. Buy what you like and don't necessarily buy what you think you can sell to make money. Sure, there are those finds-hidden in the rough items that will sell big at auction. However, there are a lot of items out there that you may think would be worth money, but aren't. If you are looking to really make money, know what you are buying.

Oh, yeah, we didn't get anything. We didn't know enough about stuff we may have been interested to know if items were reasonably priced and are stuffed to our gills in our house as is. We weren't opposed to getting anything-just nothing jumped out as a "must have this." (plus, that long walk back to the car didn't encourage us to buy anything). But, we had fun, and that's what's important.

Halloween in Chicago

2007-10-31T16:47:00.000-05:00

Our Halloween, despite its irritating beginnings, was overall just what Halloween should be. Then, we heard of an absolutely horrendous ending that saddens and angers me.

The Trick or Treaters started late, but ended up coming out in droves. The vast majority of them said "trick or treat" and wore a costume (and were overall polite). Our first 10 kids at 4:45 were not in costume, and included a parent not in costume expecting candy. (Um..nope) One little princess (probably around 5) came with a lunch bag that was ripping apart, so in addition to her treat she got a plastic bag to help her through the night. Our tenants took over around 6 while Glenn and I left for dinner in Greektown. One bonus this year is that they were able to lock the gate when they ran out of candy. (4 costco bags, not bad). Yes, we still had one year olds (but they had costumes, so they got candy). It was a bit stressful trying to give them something that they might be able to eat. (solid milk chocolate it was)

Now, for the horrible sad news that I was confronted with before bed time last night.

From the Chicago Tribune website:

Pregnant Woman Fatally Shot While Trick or Treating with Kids

followed by:
Car Pelted with Eggs, Angry Driver Shot

It's been a touch week particularly for women in Chicago. We also had a woman with a 2 week old and an 18 month old fatally stabbed in her apartment in Aurora; A mother of 3 jogging in the Sauk Village Forest Preserve who was beaten, had her throat slashed and died; A wife of a police Sergeant in Bolingbrook disappeared. (He's claiming that she left him for another guy. She's his fourth wife. Both wife number 1 and wife number 3 died in a bathtub. (both deaths were deemed accidents). I hope he's telling the truth and she did leave him. Time will only tell. This is just one week, only in the Chicago area. Horrendous.

A Housebloggers Photo Montage

2007-10-24T08:52:00.000-05:00

I recently switched my screen saver over to display random photos-of course, forgetting the randomness of my photos. I'm all set whenever we have a party to have it in the background. It's the most eclectic group of photos including holiday photos, vacation photos, photos of the tenant's apartment before move-in and after move-out, plus of course the litany of random photos I take for the blog.

For your amusement, just a selection...

Derailed

2007-10-22T08:27:00.000-05:00

Where have I been hiding? A beach with a mai tai in hand? No, of course not. I've been attempting to save our front fence. Every year, I say, let's do the "must happen in warm weather" projects in the beginning of spring so that I'm not running around like a chicken with a head cut off come fall, dreaming of random house stuff, begging off social committments to get work done. Praying that weather holds off for another week. I hate this.

This year, I started off well- I put together my "spring to-do" list. The vast majority of things didn't happen. The very first thing that was started was fence work. Way back when in April (I think), Glenn cut down the forsythia so we could get to the fence and work on sanding the iron rungs and painting them, as well as do some concrete repairs. (both much easier to do without forsysthia and plants everywhere). I had hoped work would be done before planting my flowers. Hah!

I sprained my ankle which really slowed down house related tasks. I was out of commission, and Glenn was busier trying to do all the "must get done" stuff that he usually does, or I usually do. Then, we furiously got things ready for the rental. Then, my bout of food poisoning...(and various other things taking us away from our task. Our August, September, beginning of October were also riddled with some social and work commitments which were unavoidable (though enjoyable)

Finally, a month or so ago, I said we really need to paint the fence before winter. (and patch a couple holes that were the reason why we tore down the forsythia in the first place). I also want to plant thorny bushes by the front fence to deter plant thieves that needed to happen before the frost).

In preparation for the painting, I pressure washed the whole fence. Once everything was washed, we got to see a whole bunch of other areas that needed to be patched plus a lot of areas where the concrete was worn down to the aggregate.

My wonderful idea? Skim coat the whole thing. So i've been in concrete skimcoating hell. I keep on forgetting to take pictures. Once I do, I'll do a fence post with what I've learned with working with concrete.

Oh-and the other list of "really must get done-please cold weather wait a few more weeks, includes bulb planting, shrub planting as well as the rest of concrete repairs/paint."

I'll be back...

Radiator Snafu

2007-10-22T07:55:00.000-05:00

You would think, that our radiator saga, written about at nauseum, would be done-or on hiatus. We thought so.

A few months ago, we bought a few new to us radiators. One was for our kitchen (Glenn wants to build a bench over a radiator and exchange out the current radiator) The other two were identical-one for our rental and one for our unit to replace a wrongly installed baseboard.

[When we had heat added to one of our rooms, the professional we hired put in baseboards. The result? The heat never worked. (you can't mix baseboard with cast iron radiators-or at the least you need a whole lot more linear space of baseboard to equal the heat put off by a cast iron radiator. If someone ever recommends mixing the two-bring in someone else, do some research on heat loss calculations-don't assume that since it is a "professional" he knows what he's doing. We found contractors on average hate working on cast iron radiators which makes it hard to get anyone in. (which is why Glenn is our favorite radiator guy).]

I digress. Anyway, a few months ago, we got the radiators, took them to be sandblasted, brought them home, primed and painted them, and installed the one in the rental. A little more piping needed to happen in the basement before the radiator could be filled up. Life happened, and it didn't happen. (the past few months have been very busy with non house commitments).

Yesterday, Glenn finished the piping in the basement and started to fill up the tenant's radiator. (I'm outside, in front, working with concrete on our front fence.) He comes out of the house saying he needs my help immediately. (which, I can't do-concrete can't wait). Apparently, sandblasting must have forced a leak in the radiator as it was leaking-not the valves, pipes, or anything easily fixed, but the actual radiator. Luckily, we had a spare radiator (the one we wanted for the same room in our unit) We then had to spend the greater part of the rest of the afternoon exchanging radiators. There was a risk that sandblasting professionally would spring a leak-but we had been optimistic.

Now we are deciding whether we need to run out and buy a "new" replacement one or wait until the spring. We loved the radiators we had chosen. The had all the scroll work on them and were the perfect size. It's too late for any new radiators to be installed in our unit, as our list of "must do" projects before cold is much longer than seemingly humanely possible. We had already pushed off radiators for us until next year.

Environmental Blog Day

2007-10-15T00:32:00.000-05:00

Today, hundreds of blogs are uniting around the world to focus on environmental issues. As a house blog, I thought I'd highlight some of the environmentally friendly things that can be done to renovate a home. Rehabbing an old home is at the core of a environmentally friendly lifestyle-just think of it-what sounds better-restoring the old, or trashing it, and starting a new?

Of course, not everything can be restored or rehabbed. In those instances, there are a number of "better" options than just whatever you can get at the local store. I wished we knew about some of these items when we started:

1. Recycled products-We have been amazed at the wide variety of renovation items made from recycled products. In Chicago, we have Greenmaker's Supply which has a show room with a number of environmentally friendly options. They have a quartz like counter that has flecks of recycled glass in it. They also have recycled glass tiles that can be used for backsplashes.
2. Salvage yards- We've spoken at nauseum about our radiator foibles. We've gone to our local radiator salvage yard for the new radiators we've needed. There are salvage yards around for basically anything-old doors, hardware, molding. Of course, a lot of what you find might need a little elbow grease to use, but the work is worth it. Not only do you preserve some of history, but you cut down on items heading to the landfill or prevent a tree from being cut down for your remodeling purposes.
3. MDF v. solid wood. If you are planning on painting your trim anyway, instead of getting solid hardwood, you can buy trim in a number of different styles made from MDF. As a bonus, the MDF is cheaper. It's not recommended for high moisture areas.

For the garden, here are a few things we've learned.
1. Rain barrels: Instead of wasting water from the tap, why not collect rain water and use that in the garden? In Chicago, the city offers a program to sell rain barrels for $40 (regularly $80+) in its efforts to encourage residents to disconnect their downspouts (that otherwise head into the sewer system prompting flooding in torrential rain storms) We have one that we plan on hooking up to our (to be installed) gutters on our garage. I'll then use that water for the back yard plants.
2. Native landscaping- Depending on your yard, a rain barrel may not cover all your water needs. An even better thing to do is to make sure that you plant native plants. Native plants have adjusted to the water expectations of your environment so are more likely to be able to survive without outside watering. I'd like to incorporate native landscape in our backyard when we get to it.
3. Green roofs-We really would like to do this, but don't know if/when it will happen. The city offers many incentives to install a green roof, but still its an expense we aren't ready for right now. The concept of a green roof is to add plant material on the roof for insulation and a natural water user. Instead of a lot of rain off from rainstorms, the plants would use the water to drink. Special soils are lighter than regular soil. By having a natural insulator, the temperature stays more temperate inside the home, decreasing energy costs.

Just one of those days...

2007-09-21T08:06:00.000-05:00

An eventful day, but not necessarily in a good way. A quick summary: schedule snafus, broken items dropping like flies, and a violent attack.

We had our parade of contractors come in yesterday to give estimates and an exterminator. The way the day was supposed to work is (1) an exterminator was to come from 9-11 a.m. (a bit of a centipede problem compounded by minimal molding in our unit); (2) two chimney contractors to assess our water problem with the chimney and give an estimate for a liner. Both decide they want to come 12-2 p.m. The other little tasks I had planned for the day aren't really important.

8:05 a.m. I get a call from the exterminator-his truck has been towed so he will be late, but will put our house down first to get exterminated. Alrighty then. I hang up the phone then realize this could be a problem. I have visions of 2 chimney contractors, plus an exterminator arriving all at the same time. That wouldn't be good.

After I get a call from chimney guy number 1 saying he was en route (early) I call the exterminating company and push his visit back until 2. I get both estimates for the chimney work. (one calls for just a liner, the other calls for liner plus replacement of brick). Somehow, I'm able to sneak lunch in, then the exterminator shows up.

During the exterminator's movement around our unit, he moved some furniture around. At one point, I hear an "oh no" look over, and part of our futon has broken. The exterminator is extremely apologetic. (I think it already was broken-but he solidified this). Something for Glenn to fix at some point in the future.

We then proceed to the tenants apartment. They have a cat. The exterminator suggests we just close the cat in one room, and work on the rest of the apartment, then after the chemicals dry let the cat out. I head everywhere looking for this cat-looking under beds etc. The cat can not be found. One bedroom door is closed (the carpeted bedroom). I don't bother to look in there because one tenant sent an e-mail about how upsetting it was when I had inadvertently left the cat in one room with the door closed when we were in there last week. But, what would you know- the cat was in the carpeted bedroom- and ran out when we opened the door.

I end up closing the door to another bedroom to keep the cat at bay, and continue on.

Exterminator finally leaves. I head in to let the cat out of the one bedroom. (so he has access to food, water, and bathroom). Open the door. The cat comes over to me and looks like it wants attention. I feel bad for the thing being locked in a bedroom all day and try to show it some attention. I put my arm down, it slides up next to the wall, then comes over to me, then loops its paws around my arm. I tried to pet it, then it walks away, comes back, and BITES ME ON THE LEG! The bite did not break skin, so in retrospect we determined that it was probably trying to play with me. Its plan backfired though as I promptly shut the door and went back to our unit.

In our unit, I go to empty the dishwasher and notice that there's water in the bottom of our dishwasher that never drained after it was run. Another of the "we'll have to look at that." items.

My next simple task is to upload new software to my windows based treo. Should only take 35 minutes. Of course, 3 hours later, the software is finally uploaded, and treo is synching appropriately.

Poor Glenn has had an extremely busy week at work, so got to come home at 11 p.m. and be confronted with some of my travails for the day. If it wasn't 11 p.m. I think he would have turned around and left.

Finding a contractor is like dating

2007-09-19T21:35:00.000-05:00

Among the many other things we are doing now, we are trying to find a chimney person to inspect our chimney and give an estimate on repairs and possibly a chimney liner. I called a few places, and arranged for 2 estimates. One scheduled one tomorrow from 12-2. The other said "they'd just stop by and leave an estimate." (Odd, I thought, but it's their business). Well, the second person calls back a few hours later and says "I want to come by on Thursday (tomorrow) 12-2.

I like to space things out a bit. It just doesn't seem right to have 2 here at the same time. Of course, a contractor should know that a homeowner will call a couple places, but it still seems shady to confront them with it. Dating is the same- you might go on a date here and there with a few different people, but I don't know how much each person would want to know there's someone else. When I was dating, I was always uncomfortable going out with muliple people at once-even if it was just a first or second date. Contracting is no different. I've been burned too in the contracting world by contractors who promise to stop by, or give an estimate, or countless other promised. Hence, the need for calling multiple contractors.

What's the best way to handle this? I opted to just come clean and explain I have another estimate at the same time. I was just a bit flustered and both chimney people wanting the exact same time, what are the odds?

I suppose I should have just scheduled them at different times. This can either work out well-competiting for business etc., or both can just walk away.

A slight hiccup with the gates

2007-09-19T21:16:00.000-05:00

We now have lockable gates, but we haven't really locked them yet. The two gates (one for the side of the house, and the other for the front of the property) require 2 separate keys. This is just not practical-particularly with tenants. That would mean that we would have (1) front gate key (2) side gate key (3) front door key (4) 1st floor apartment key (5) first floor apartment skeleton key for some of the locks (6) 2nd floor apartment key (7) storeroom key (8) 2nd store room key. Doesn't that seem like a lot for one house?!? Of course, we don't carry all these around at once, but it is still a lot!

I didn't realize I needed to specify at installation that both gates should use the same key. I really don't feel like paying $100 for a locksmith to correct the problem. I'm now on the quasi hunt for somewhere to get them rekeyed. (yes, I know, a locksmith or home depot or something). The little wrinkle is that we upgraded to Baldwin locks. Home Depot is by far the cheapest option, but when I asked about Baldwin locks, the person said "they are the same as schlage." I have a bit more faith in a locksmith...

Besides for that, the gates have garnered a little attention. We have been here for 4 years (about). There's a woman who lives across the street who has never smiled at us, said hi, acknowledged our presence in any way. Odd. Wednesday, I'm getting in my car, and she says "do your gates lock now?" She follows with "my landlady said someone stole all your flower pots."

Hmmmm....

No, I don't think this woman was responsible for the pots or other stolen items-I just think it a bit odd that in 4 years now it's time to call out across the street.

Mission Accomplished

2007-09-18T20:09:00.001-05:00

After 4 years from the first time I contacted an iron worker for an estimate, WE HAVE GATES!!! They finished things up today.

Here they are:

We also had the workers paint the spokes on the concrete fence and insert some spokes where there were none. Each gate requires a different key to lock it, which we will need to fix. Sort of nice to know though that I can lock it. Of course, with the height of the fence, if anyone really wanted to get in the yard, he could. We weren't up to dismanteling a 100 year old fence though-and it adds some character. I'll be planting some thorny bushes to act as a bit of a deterrant, or at the least, to give any intruder a rough entry onto our property.

We had a fair amount of confusion with our contractors during this process. Overall, they were responsive, did good work, and got the job done. However, due to a death in the family, they originally sent out a dentist to perform the estimate. (yeah, I know) His estimate wasn't detailed enough and apparently was incorrect. Then, Glenn and the owner worked through a second estimate that was a lot more specific. Finally, I handled dealing with the actual project manager. The result was a lot of "who's on first" scenes. In Glenn's dealings, he said he wanted black locks, and paid for an upgrade in the locks. We ended up getting nickel locks.

I still think it looks nice.

Now onto painting the fence...

Gates and More Gates

2007-09-17T08:42:00.000-05:00

We've had a number of gate projects that we've been working on along with a variety of other activities. On a positive note, we have located and hired a gate contractor for the front gates! :D. Last I wrote, we had estimates brewing. One guy we just eliminated because he kept on telling us things than not following through. (ie. estimate tomorrow, then calling at 8 p.m. 5 days later on a Saturday night). Today, the gates should be installed! We are really excited. It took 3 separate visits to come up with the design and finalize the installation. I'm crossing my fingers that it comes off without a hitch.

Now, of more house-blog related interest, we spent labor day weekend and the following weekendthe building and installing a new back gate. We sort of had one-but it was extremely hard to open, and clearly in a whole bunch of disrepair.

For the project, I was the painting queen. (I also happened to sell an old TV while I was in the back yard painting all the slabs-talk about efficient!) Glenn, on the other hand, handled the construction.

The play by play (sort of):
1. Glenn affixed a post support into the concrete. In the bottom right of the photo of the dilapidated gate, you can see the black post support. It is set back from the other gate because he needed the gate support next to the garage to be attached to a garage joist. If he tore down the gate, then put in the gate, we would have been without a gate for a period of time, which we didn't want.
2. Paint like a fiend. We used pressure treated lumber, and I furiously primed and painted everything. (I handled the painting, while Glen did the rest)
3. Build the gate "surround" Ie. A 2x4 along the garage (where the lock will go), the post in the post support on the other side, and a bar going across the top for added support.
4. Add in post support. (the angled 2X6 in the photo)
5. Construct the door with a gate making kit. We found ours at Menards I believe finally after looking for months, so it seemed. It came in a big yellow square box and had the hardward that would allow the user to construct the rectangular structure for the door.
6. Add the slats to the door. These were affixed to the gate structure from 5.
7. Hang the door. With this, there's a lot of finangling with a level. if the door is not hung right, with everything level, this will cause neverending issues with the door not closing properly.

We completed these first 7 tasks all in one long, drawn out exhausting day.

The next day, we worked on installing the locks and fine tuning the work from the day before.

I'll have to come back to add photos, as apparently, my memory card wasn't as complete as I thought. I'll try to get Glenn to revise this as well to be more accurate with the how tos.

Help put a murderer behind bars

2007-08-15T15:41:00.000-05:00

Although not house related, the seriousness of this warrants mention. The father of a good friend of my friend was brutally murdered in his office, (and found by his daughter). They have now found the murderer who escaped the country and is now claiming French citizenship. I beg of you to take the time to e-mail the following to your Congresmen/women. This family deserves justice.

Dear Respected Official:

I would like to bring to your attention and seek your support in obtaining American Justice in the tragic death of Dr. David Cornbleet. Specific details on the case are available at:
http://www.nbc5.com/news/10152819/detail.htm &
http://www.myspace.com/dr_david_cornbleet_murder

On October 24, 2006 the beloved father, husband, doctor and friend to many was found by his daughter, tortured and killed in his downtown Chicago office. Stabbed over 20 times, Dr. Cornbleet was brutally murdered and left for dead by a former patient named Hans Peterson.

After committing this horrendous crime, Peterson fled to and hid in the French portion of St. Martin. Before confessing and turning himself into French officials, Peterson applied for and was granted French citizenship merely based on his mother’s nationality. Even though he was born and raised in the United States and filled out his French citizenship application after committing the act of murder, France granted him citizenship in May of 2007 based on the fact that there is French blood in his lineage. As a French citizen, France claims that he is protected by their laws and has refused extradition. If he is ever tried and convicted, under French law at most he will face 20 years in prison, what the French consider being “a life sentence.”

As an elected official it is your responsibility to protect your constituents from criminals. Even when dealing with domestic criminals, this responsibility cannot end at our country’s borders. In this situation, by failing to force the hand of the French government to extradite this suspect, a template is created in which all domestic criminals may operate. A loophole within our legal system has been found, and any domestic criminal, no matter their location, can strategize a full proof plan to escape American Justice.

The Cornbleet family deserves an American court to adjudicate this crime under American law. Hans Peterson sought French citizenship as a criminal and his application is solely for the purpose of bypassing the American justice system. We cannot allow American criminals to pick and choose which country’s law should apply to them!

As a “Friend of Dr. David Cornbleet” I plea to you to put continued pressure on both the United States and French governments to bring this cold-blooded murderer back to the United States to face trial for the vicious and unjust murder of Dr. David Cornbleet under American law.

Sincerely,
(Provide your name)

All good things must come to an end....

2007-08-15T10:27:00.000-05:00

For the past month, we've been getting rent and the tenants have stayed away. (Love that arrangement!) There's been a slow moving in of furniture, repair/upgrade requests, but we've basically had the run of This Old Chicago 2 Flat. (of course, we honored their tenancy and weren't hanging out in their unit, but the laundry room, front hall, etc. were all ours. I didn't have to pay attention to whether I was calling for Glenn in another room, wearing my shoes over hardwood, stepping on creaks...)

Well, last night the two tenants took up permanent residence. One (I'm assuming) arrived late late at night from California. (we still haven't met her, but will do so tonight). Her flight was supposed to get in after 11 and we were long asleep.

I'm really hoping that it all works out. Fingers crossed.

Iron Contractor Status

2007-08-14T10:55:00.001-05:00

All is good and done that we came up with a design but we are still on the hunt for a contractor. The contractor (dentist) who came down on Friday was supposed to drop off an estimate on Monday. Never received it.

Then, we were supposed to have someone call us between 8 and 10 a.m. on Saturday about stopping by, and noone did.

Servicemagic sent out our request (including a contractor in Georgia-go figure) and no one was interested. (what a surprise!)

Finally, I saw our neighbor on Sunday, mentioned the flower pet thefts, and she said "oh, you need a gate." Which, I responded, well, yes, I've been trying for 4 years and noone has been showing. She was able to give us a card of someone who she thought could help. He's in the suburbs.

I call the neighbor's contact on Monday morning(who had been told about the flower pot incident) and he said he'd come by that day, after lunch. Fast forward to 5:30 p.m. and I get a call saying he tried to call but no one answered (leave a message!), then that he'd be over after 7 definitely wants to get there today.

Fine. So, finally he shows up at 7:45. (right when Glenn gets home)He mentions some concerns which are valid (ie. the size of the door opening). Says he can do the work this week and he'll give us the estimate today.

So, under normal circumstances I might write the guy off for not calling until 5:30, and coming 45 minutes later than I anticipated. (always wonder if they can't show up for an estimate-will they show up for the work?) But, under the circumstances, if the quote is reasonable, we'll probably go with him.(oh, and if we get the quote).

Another little concern I have is no photo of the lintals. He drew a rendering real quick, but I'd fell more comfortable if the person actually doing the fabricating has a plotted picture. I think if we get to a contract, I'll ask for a clearly drawn picture or do one myself.

Gate Design and Plant Security

2007-08-14T10:38:00.001-05:00

We may be one step closer to having a front gate. In connection with actually trying to get people here for an estimate, to get an estimate and maybe one day someone to actually work, I've been trying to figure out the actual design.

Maybe I'm the only one who sort of stresses about this. It's just so permanent. You put a plant in, and don't like it, you can move it. (or inadvertently kill it) Don't like the fence color? Paint over it!

A gate? I guess in theory I can just drop a whole lot of money on new ones, but that's not too realistic.

So, as a reminder, here's our house:

We originally wanted to put the gate at the front of the fence, but that would only leave a 28 inch opening which wouldn't be practical for moving things in and out. Now, we are going to put the gate at a little in more at the end of the fence. (so in effect there'd be an entranceway). We will also add some spindles on the sides to prevent large animals from coming in and using the restroom. (and also bump up the security component. I'll also need to plant more prickly plants on the sides to hopefully increase the security more.

Of course, this isn't fort knox, which in keeping with the design of the fence, and house, would not be feasible. (8 foot fences with barbed wire would not look too nice!)

Having the gate look like part of the house was extremely important. To do this, we decided to pull out the scroll work in the lintals and the basic shape of the lintals. I'm hoping it comes out as planned.

A Perk of Tenants

2007-08-10T22:55:00.000-05:00

We share a DSL connection with our tenants. Imagine my surprise when all of a sudden I had access to 3200 more songs on itunes. Apparently, my tenant has clicked "share songs with network" clicked and I have "look for shared songs." Do you think I should now include a music interest question on my application?

A contractor showed!

2007-08-10T14:01:00.000-05:00

Sure, he's a dentist, and came in scrubs, but we had someone come to give us an estimate on the gates. I found this guy in a google ad. The first question I asked, of course, when he came was "so, are you looking to switch careers?"

Apparently, the business was his uncle's. He has work people who know what they are doing. Let's see if we get an estimate...

As for everyone else-the guy I contacted on Monday, then again yesterday morning, never called. I e-mailed someone yesterday-haven't heard anything. I'm supposed to have someone come by tomorrow. I've heard nothing from Servicemagic.

I think I'm going to call a few people from Angies List. (I called everyone on there on September and never heard anything).

Groundhog Day

2007-08-09T17:32:00.001-05:00

You know the movie? I feel like I'm living it. Yes, back on the search for an wrought iron gate contractor in the city of wrought iron gates. (seems like everyone has one, or a fence). The first time I looked (way back in September or so 2003) our neighborhood guy said he'd stop by. Never happened. Called a couple other places, noone stopped by. Put it on the back burner.

September 2006, after the air compressor theft, I went back to the drawing board. I called every iron worker in the phone book. (7-8 people). One person came by, gave an estimate. (whose name I forget). Never got another estimate, and got distracted with getting our radiators sandblasted.

August 2007, after the flower pot incident, back to the drawing board. Called the local guy after someone else recommended him on Monday. The guy said he'd send an estimate.....Today, I call back and say "hey, didn't get an estimate yet, but wanted an idea on timing for the estimate." I was told someone would call me today. Humdedum.....no calls.

So, back to the drawing board. I did service magic, googled a bunch, clicked on a google ad, and supposedly someone should be by tomorrow and Saturday for an estimate.

What are the chances?

Current Projects

2007-08-08T12:24:00.000-05:00

For the past few weeks or so, we've been largely doing maintenance related work. We've had to do some minor things to the rental after one of the tenants took their keys. (I'm hoping that the requests will dwindle one they are here full time-we'll see).

This past weekend, Glenn had to replace one of the circuits in our kitchen (for our refrigerator). The circuit just plain stopped working. (after ever increasing times of failure).

In light of the flower pot robber, I've renewed efforts to locate a contractor to install a couple front gates. I'd like to keep the front gate (when installed) locked at night. But, locating a contractor is easier said then done. There are not enough iron gate contractors in Chicago! i've gone back to the drawing board calling contractors who I've called in years past but never showed up. This is not soemthing I like to do-but one was recommended by someone. It's quite frustrating.

We are also trying to figure out how best to secure the pots to protect against the lowlife who goes around and steals other people's flowers. Ironically, if I google flower pot security, alarm and the like I come up with flower pot safes. It would be nice if we were able to just stick tracking devices in the flower pots. (then I can catch the $%$^$#%$# too!) Optimally, we'd have an aesthetically pleasing security system on the pots that either would (1) secure the pots and prevent a theft (2) scare the perpretrator through sound/light (and my favorite, mace) (3) act as a deterant.

The hurdles to cross with the security are (1) the pots will be wet, or might have standing water in the dish (2) the pots need to sit flat (3) the pots are full with flowers now and can't really be emptied then replanted (4) the pots are a mixture of ceramic and terra cotta so risk breaking.

We've been brainstorming. One idea I have is a steel cable rope lock that would connect the pots. However, the locks would need to be affixed to the pot in some manner-either glued (with a glue that would be strong enough to withstand the lock as well as the moisture).

If anyone has any suggestions that work and are aesthetically pleasing, we are open to suggestions.

The $%^&#@& Stole Another One

2007-08-06T08:41:00.000-05:00

I brought in the 4 smallest pots yesterday, and overnight, someone came and stole one of the larger heavier ones. I'm so discouraged. It really upsets me that there's someone out there who thinks so little about other people's possessions. I'm sure that whatever jerk who took them have them in their back yard and is not from our immediate neighborhood. The pots have been out since May without incident. I kept whole flats of flowers out without incident.

I'm just extremely disappointed with society and people in general today.

Here's a photo of the pots from a few weeks ago:

They were bigger. The front two pots, and the one on the back step on the right were the ones stolen.

Criminals Stink

2007-08-05T13:20:00.000-05:00

Overnight, someone stole 2 of my flower pots. (I had a total of 9 on my front porch). Needless to say, I'm in a bit of an aggavated mood. We've left potting soil out front, flats of flowers, and they've survived on evenings past. We've been here 3 years, and this is the first time that happened. The pots were cheap terra cotta ones.

I don't know who would do such a thing. It's quite upsetting.

Now, we're trying to figure out what we can do to protect the pots while not subtracting from the view.

The Hazards of Summer Vacation

2007-08-04T13:20:00.000-05:00

I just returned from a week long trip to Wichita, Kansas to visit my Grandmom, various aunts and uncles, many cousins, and my mom (who also made an appearance). Glenn stayed in Chicago. I was a bit worried when I left town as there's a lot I do in the garden on a daily basis that get done, but Glenn might not see. The big one, of course, is watering. The first couple times I spoke to him when I was gone, I kept on asking "did you water, what about X plant, what about that one."

He had a really busy week while I was gone. For the most part, he did okay. The vast majority of our plants were looking relatively happy when I returned. One rose bush actually grew a lot under his care. The troublemakers of the bunch were plants that had been struggling a bit before I left. One new rose bush that we planted, consistently struggled, but flowered while I was away. (its last hoorah before promptly shriveling up and dying before my return). I'm thinking sunlight may have been a problem.

The second casualties were our tomato plants. For whatever reason, they have consistently been unhappy and migrated over to despair while I was out of town. A couple waterings may have been missed, and now, every branch looks dead. Overall, I'm disappointed that this was such a bad season for tomatoes. Our peppers, on the other hand had been doing well before I left, and still are.

I'm thankful though that Glenn was around to do a bunch of watering because otherwise I'm sure there would have been a lot more casualties. Everything that wasn't already struggling survived without issue.

A New Resident at This Old Chicago 2 Flat

2007-07-19T12:11:00.000-05:00

Sunday, one of our residents picked up her keys and began moving things in. This time around, we made some adjustments with our lease and process, in hopes that we will have a much better relationship with our tenants. (as a refresher, our last tenants liked to watch loud movies in the room underneath our bedroom at 2 a.m. all the time. They didn't have much furniture, which compounded the problem. They also chose to sand the brand new floors themselves.) It was horrible.

We:
(1) were a lot were vocal about quiet hours. We had it in the lease before, but had it highlighted at different spots-including a whole separate "plain english" page.
(2) we e-mailed the lease, which I think gave them time to thoroughly read it before signing.
(3) we placed a bed underneath our bedroom and positioned it as a bedroom. We also pointed out that our bedroom was right overhead.
(4) we gave the felt circles that you put on furniture to prevent the furniture from scratching the wood floors. Once they had them, we thought they wouldn't have an excuse not to use them!
(5) one of the tenants is moving from out of state, so we offered them furniture to borrow. I think by doing this, it helps build a positive relationship from the get go
(6) We were clearer about when the rent is due. Our old lease said payment was due on the 1st, with a 5 day grace period where there wouldn't be a late fee. The result? We always got rent on the 5th. (technically late) One time, when we didn't get it until the 8th, we charged a late fee, which the tenants thought ridiculous. This time around, I included a sentence that the rent is late regardless of whether or not a late fee is charged if it is not received on the first. I clarified that the 5 days is merely a grace period.

I'm optimistic that things will go better, but fingers crossed just the same. The tenants haven't fully moved in and aren't here all the time, so we have an opportunity to ease into having more people in the house. It's always funny that when you've spent all this time with free rein over the whole house, that there's now a bunch of it that's now off limits.

Tenant Prep

2007-07-18T15:27:00.001-05:00

Sunday, our lease began with our tenants.

In preparation, Friday night (after a grueling week), Saturday, and part of Sunday we furiously made preparations for the move in. We did some spot painting, which led to complete painting when the whites did not match up. (a bit aggravating). We did some cream touch up paint in the rooms that we had painted cream. (I ran out of paint initially with maybe 10-20 sf to paint). We also thoroughly cleaned.

Glenn worked on installing the radiator that we just picked up from the sandblaster. (he also handled the priming and painting of the radiator). Unfortunately, we were missing some parts, so will go back on Saturday to do the actual install.

Finally, we successfully got rid or moved the variety of stuff temporarily living in the rental-including a bed and entertainment center. I had posted the entertainment center on craigslist, received loads of interest, but never got anyone to actually pick it up. You can imagine on Saturday night the stress I had with this, when I had an e-mail from a person interested. She came over right away on Sunday morning, thanking us profusely (when we were so appreciative that not only did she show up to get the entertainment center, but she also was here before 10, making our finishing tasks MUCH easier). For the bed, we asked the tenants would they be interested, and they were. We just left it in the room underneath our bedroom. (a good anchoring scheme).

It feels so good to have the vast majority of our "to'do's in the rental done. That means, we can migrate over to some of our other house projects (which have sorely been lacking this year! Sprained ankles and bouts of food poisoning leading to an ER visit do not help move projects along!

Radiator moving logistics

2007-07-17T15:53:00.000-05:00

Originally, I thought I'd rent a pickup truck from Home Depot or Lowe's to pick up the sandbasted radiators. They had a per hour charge which seemed like a better deal than U-Haul. (U-Haul wanted mileage too) The pick-up had to be carefully orchestrated to minimize u-haul time while insuring that Glenn would be available to get the radiators off the truck. (normally, it's a multiple person job, and there's no way I'd be able to handle it on my own.)

Anyway, so I have a brief for a pro-bono client due on Friday, and we need to get the radiator primed, and painted for a Saturday install. (tenant gets the keys on Sunday). So, Thursday afternoon, I call our sandblaster to verify the radiators were ready for pick-up. The manager tells me no, pick them up in the morning. (absent the fact that I have a brief due, if I pick them up in the morning, I'd have to rent the truck for 8 hours or so which is outrageous). I say, "okay, I'll pick them up in the afternoon."

Nope, the manager says he leaves at noon. Huh? I called on Monday, and he said he's there until 5. If I knew he'd jerk me around, I would have just sandblasted them myself. Who does that? Have arbitrary hours they are open? Of course, my aggravation is increased by staying up until 3:30 the night before. I have a few choice words to say (which were modified from what I actually had wanted to say)

Despite my lack of sleep, on Friday, I wake up with an idea-I'll just rent a van from enterprise! We'd have it for 24 hours. I head out to pick up the radiators (which was quite an adventure, filled with many 8 point turns). When I arrive at 11:45 a.m., the manager is not to be found. He, apparently, went to "lunch." Alright then-I thought he was leaving at noon? (quite the operation he runs!) I convice some guy to give me the radiators, and I paid him, showing the receipt for how much it would cost. After the radiators are delivered into the van via a forklift, I highttail it out of there. Whew! Never needed to see the manager.

I even had the joy of parallel parking my van. For future reference, when a van is loaded up with with radiators only, driving over a blade of grass makes it sound like the radiators are going to go shooting out some door. I was quite happy to finally make it home.

A leap of faith

2007-07-17T14:06:00.000-05:00

I was swallowed up in the black hole of work, volunteer stuff, a bout of food poisoning, radiator activities, and tenant move-in prep for the last week. As a result many of my blog posts for the week stayed in my head-now I'm putting fingers to keyboard and playing catch up.

After choosing our 3 radiators at the radiator graveyard, we decided to get them sandblasted and painted before coming into the house. The tenant's radiator, we want to optimally install before their lease begins on July 15th. Of course, as seems typical at This Old Chicago 2 Flat, we decide to coordinate this feat when life is extremely busy for me. The week of July 8-July 15 resulted in many sleepless late nights and a fair amount of stress for yours truly.

We decided to have our radiator supplier deliver the radiators to a sandblaster in Melrose Park. I had called around to places closer to home, but apparently sandblasting radiators is not a popular activity in Chicago. Go figure. I even looked at the one that House in Progress wrote about, but it was just as inconveniently situated to us. So, ultimately we decided on the recommendation from our radiator supplier.

On Monday, July 9th, I called, got the price ($40/radiator), the hours of operation (7-5 p.m.), the turnaround time (2 days) so we were good to go. On Tuesday, I headed to "pick up the radiators" and "drop them off" at the sandblaster. (though they were deliver by 3 guys and a pick-up-I just was there to handle the particulars and insure the steam radiator was converted to hot water, we got the right bushings, and the radiators we picked out were the ones that made the journey.

When I arrived at the sandblaster, I was told (1) no guarantees they won't crack the radiator through the sandblasting and (2) they only accept cash. At this point, I really had no choice but to leave them there and cross my fingers. I did have the foresight though to at least get a receipt for our radiators, and take a picture to try to protect against a switcheroo.
We also spoke about picking the radiators up, and the manager said Thursday afternoon.

The Radiator Graveyard

2007-07-05T20:24:00.000-05:00

The last week, we visited what we affectionately call "the radiator graveyard" a couple times.

It's the place in Chicago where many radiators that are pulled from buildings in Chicago go, to wait for their next owners or their demise. It's the place to go if you have radiator heat with no intention of switching over to forced air but need a different size radiator, or need a radiator to heat a new area of your house. You can order brand new radiators, but they don't have the charm, and boast a much more hefty price. The selection is enormous, and they test the radiators for you to make sure they are leak free.

They also carry a bunch of cast iron tubs and claw feet.

Prices have gone up a bit since the last time we purchased a radiator at B&B Formica. Now, they are $14 a section. Delivery to our home was questionable.

We finally decided on 3 radiators. One for a room in the rental with inadequate heat, one for the same room in our unit, and another for our kitchen. Glenn would like to make a bench over it. After these purchases, we'll still have 2 radiators kicking around our house not in use.

One day, we will be done with radiator projects-but I don't think it will be anytime in the near future.

An Unusual Morning

2007-06-28T15:32:00.000-05:00

We had a rather rough beginning to our morning at This Old Chicago 2 Flat. (though I think Glenn was more amused then anything else). I started my day like I usually do, open the blinds and look out into our front yard. Usually, this is a great way to start the day-to look at happy flowers, pleasing hostas, and the occasional construction vehicle...Ahh..

But Ahh promptly turned to AARGH! and a vision of me quickly changing from pajamas into suitable outdoor clothing. (we are in the middle of the city, so there's quite a large chance that someone would see me in my pajamas if I stormed outside). The quick change was promptly followed by my quickly running around to get my camera (I try to be a good blogger), and our "varmit spray."

You see, this is what I spotted:

A close-up:

I'm sure for many of you, you are thinking, aw...how cute, a baby bunny. yes, it is cute-as long as it is on the other side of the fence.

I don't want it eating our newly planted japanese maple, or any of the plants that I like to look at first thing in the morning. Of added concern is locating and discouraging the marigold beheader. You see, that's something else that's been going on. I'm not talking about deadheading (removing spent blooms), but the really odd taking off a marigold bloom that is thriving then leaving it next to the plant. I would never do this, nor would Glenn-so who is? The bunny is the most logical critter to point a finger at. If it were a passerby-wouldn't he/she take the flowers with him/her?

Anyway, armed and ready, I ran down the stairs and out the front door to encounter the young bunny. For a moment I was at a loss, couldn't see the bunny, and when I did, it was eating something I didn't mind it eating. So, instead I stood guard a few feet from the bunny, and the bunny popped right back through the fence. Whew.
I then promptly sprayed around the japanese maple in hopes of scaring it from coming back.

Of a larger concern is whether the more frequent bunny sightings signal a much larger problem. In the city, we don't have the foxes or coyotes that the suburbs do that might keep the bunny population to a bearable minimal. We have cars, but I don't usually see bunnies hanging out in the middle of the road. There's also more concrete and asphalt and buildings then green space.

I really didn't think I'd need to deal with wildlife unless we were living in the suburbs.

Aargh!!

2007-06-26T08:38:00.000-05:00

We finally got to investigating the mysterious wall problem, after the wall problem got worse. (I noticed flaking paint in our laundry basket). There were a number of possibilities tossed out there-maybe our chimney needed a liner, or maybe the high efficiency boilers have prompted problems.(I'm still upset about those boilers because they have not lowered our heating costs and have instead increased our operating costs. Great recommendation American Vintage!).

Well, today we had our roofer come in to make sure there wasn't a leak. He called us at 6 a.m. about stopping by, again at 6:45, then I called him back at 7:30 to find he was in our neighborhood. I don't know if I've ever gotten dressed so quickly!

Glenn was home, so all three of us trapsed up to roof to find our chimney cover cracked and some disintegrating brick. (actually, a pile of a single brick on the ground). It was clearly a problem with the parapet walls and the installer not using okay brick.

So now, we need to figure out what we should do. The roofer said we can just cap off the chimney and put a covering over the bricks to prevent them from decaying, caulking cracks etc. I can call the parapet wall contractor and get them to come fix their work(but do I want them to "fix" their work?) The lawyer in me is thinking of the cause of action. I can call our trusty mason (who was too busy to rebuild the parapets in the first place). Another option is a fancy mason who we saw at a historical building conference in Chicago. Regardless, I want the problem fixed, and not a bandaid.

After we repair the parapet wall situation, we then will have to do massive work in the bedroom-taking down bad plaster, drywalling around a chimney, painting, etc. We are supposed to move forward on the rehab. Sure we might have maintenance issues (mowing the lawn etc.) but we are supposed to shut the door on certain projects when they were done. (like plaster repair!) I think those are the "issues" that frustrate me the most with an older home restoration. The problem solving skills you need to figure out molding an unsquare wall is a challenge, the fact that projects take longer because of little issues that pop up, or doing it the "right way" which takes MUCH longer-I can handle.

Redoing contractor work, or retracing our steps---AARGH!!!!

We have tenants...sort of

2007-06-25T08:14:00.000-05:00

I know I left you all in suspense when I posted about receiving an application and beginning my review of it. In short, we have approved two tenants, but it was a pretty difficult process.

Once I received both applications, I was all set to review them by (1) ordering credit reports (2) verifying information on the applications (3) figuring out what actual income was and (4) calling references. When I went to order the credit reports, I hit my first brick wall. Apparently, beginning January 1, 2007, if you order credit reports, you must have a site visit to verify that you keep personal information secure. I imagine the goals of such legislation (to prevent identity theft I imagine) are definitely worthwhile, but for the landlord with one property, such as yours truly, this puts a delay into application review. They do have tenant search firms that will pull the credit report for you but not show it to you. You just say a certain category of credit scores, and they will tell you if those apply.

While I was working on the credit report issue, we had an issue with both our Internet and our phone lines. They both decided to quit. I had to assess the situation-whether it was a AT&T issue or a This Old Chicago 2 Flat issue. AT&T then gives me 8 hours that they will fix it. 8 hours?!? I'm too reliant on the Internet-that's where I do my research. Then, no phone line made it hard to just call references, send faxes and the like. My big gold star for the day came when I came up with a way to send a fax via e-mail using my treo. (that big use of all the technology at hand-including password protecting the documents, was what allowed us to proceed with the credit report analysis).

With all that, we finally accepted the applications, sent out the lease and disclosures, and are now waiting for the security deposit and signature from one of the tenants. Generally, I'll feel much better once we have signed leases and the security deposit in our posession.

Cicada Mystery

2007-06-21T18:43:00.000-05:00

There are many areas of the chicago area getting inundated by cicadas. From what I hear, it really can be quite a mess. My Inlaw's have a bunch at their place. For those not around Chicago, 2007 is a year that the 17 year cicada cycle happens. Cicadas come out from under the ground, and over the course of the month of June, make a whole bunch of noise, mate, put their eggs into tree roots, and die. Glenn and I have visited the suburbs and passed through areas where the sound of the cicadas can be deafening. They come out in such numbers because they are slow and are bound to be taken out by predators. (from what I hear, birds, wildlife, dogs, everything imaginable enjoys the cicada delicacy). When they emerge, they also leave their shell, so it's a mess.

So what's the mystery? Down here in This Old Chicago 2 Flat's neck of the woods we have seemingly escaped. No hoards coming up from the ground, no mind numbing noise, nothing. But, 2 days ago, we found a dead one on our porch. Just now, I found a dead one on my plant. You think if there's a dead one around, there must have been an alive one, right? My best guess is that something (like a bird)carried it to our neck of the woods, ate the body, then deposited the carcas. Or, decided that they had their fill of cicadas and would just let it be.

Application Review

2007-06-18T21:06:00.000-05:00

We now have a completed rental application, which I'm reviewing. All and all my gut says "approve," but I have to dot my i's cross my t's, which I'll do tomorrow. This is one of the parts I don't like-not doing overkill, but making sure that even if my instincts are wrong, we have the best outcome. We will, of course, run credit checks, which help.

For the best prospects, there's not really a rental history to evaluate. (ie. landlords that I can call up and ask how they were as tenants).

This all should be finalized by Wednesday.

Garden Progress

2007-06-18T12:12:00.000-05:00

We've started on one of my "summer 2007 to-dos") (which actually was a summer 2006 to-do, but this time around, it is getting done.). Our front yard has been a sort of jekyl and hyde-one side, lush, flowers, welcoming. The other side, a mismatch of plants, or nothing but a welcome mat for weeds.

The reason why nothing was done was because Glenn and I couldn't decide on what to do. (a typical occurence with couples). I had my ideas-Glenn had his ideas, and we needed to find some common ground.

Here's an overview of what this portion of the yard has gone through:

This year-success! We got a great deal on this Japanese Maple, and planted it Saturday.
We also switched out our old mulch for cocoa bean shell mulch. I like the dark brown color as a background to the plants. Of course, the bonus is the nice chocolate smell we get, particulary after a little rain.

Apparently, the smell attracts some critters. We kept the mulch bags out a few nights until we could change the old stuff out. The first morning one of the bags was sporting a big hole. I think some nightcritter wanted a little nibble.

Next up, some boxwoods. There's room for more plants, but we need to still figure that out. (any plantings will be going on top of a big bulb garden in the spring)

For good measure, here's the latest garden photos, taken from our front porch:

And our containers:

Rental Rollercoaster

2007-06-17T22:44:00.000-05:00

This weekend created a lot of rental intrigue, with many clamoring for our place. Saturday, we had 2 scheduled showings, one at 1:30, and one at 2. (I did let the 2 o'clock one know about the 1:30 scheduling).

Glenn and I started the day in our garden doing a few projects. (that will come in another post). We are both in our work clothes, getting rather grimy in the process, when three women stop by around 11 a.m. They explain that they are the 1:30, and might they just take a look now.

So, despite my grimy self, I showed them around. They all fell in love with our place. They wanted the rental term to begin August 1, but said they'd take it July 1 if that meant they can have it. (music to a landlord's ears). I was pretty sure they'd put in an application, but we've heard similar wonderful things and we never got an application turned in.

I head out back to the garden, accomplishing a whole bunch (along with Glenn). I head inside at 1:45 p.m. and have a message from the woman who stopped by before, and she wanted to drop off the application! As she's handing the application in, it starts to rain and I invite them inside.

As they are looking around, the doorbell rings, and it's the 2 p.m. appointment! I explain we just got an application, and show the 2 p.m. around. (all and all, very awkward with the applicant standing there!) A pretty productive Saturday all around.

Today, the rental clamoring continued. We hosted Father's Day, with Glenn's parents, sister, brother in law, niece and nephews. At some point, my nephew tossed a frisbee by accident over the fence into our neighbor's yard. I head out to ask the neighbors for the frisbee, and a couple come up to me, very excited that our place is up for rent. (the sign is in the window)I explain that we have this application, but let them see the apartment. (did I mention that I was in the middle of hosting dinner for 9?). I do a cursory showing, and they really want the place. They have been looking to move for a while, and haven't found anything. They ask for an application.

Then, we are sitting down for dessert, and the phone rings. Another apartment inquiry. Phew. I'm thinking I might need to take down that sign.

We are still missing for some information on the application we received, so it's not a done deal. It's nice to feel like our apartment is a hot commodity, as we think it's a pretty special place ourselves. Fingers crossed that the application review goes well, and we have dream tenants...

The Jungle of Chicago (not the Upton Sinclair variety)

2007-06-11T10:48:00.000-05:00

Each year, my relationship with our garden makes it seem like I haven't stepped in the garden the past few years. And no, I'm not talking about massive weeds, though that's a consistent issue. I'm talking about the weird bugs and not so weird animals that try to make our yard home.

Just a little background- We live in Chicago proper, the 3rd largest city in the United States. It's quiet here, and we all have standard Chicago lots (25X125). There's green space, but this is not the suburbs.
2003- Year 1: Our place actually looks like a jungle. We cut down 4 feet of growth in the front and back yards. We till, weed like you would not believe, and ultimately planted some holly, hostas, ivy, and bulbs. All is quiet in the garden.
2004 - Year 2- I have the upper hand on weeding. There are plenty of ants everywhere. Nothing too serious.
2005- Year 3- Mushrooms start popping up. Really odd, and irritating, in full sun. Plenty of Ants still.
2006- In addition to ants, I see pillbugs, slugs, and grubs for the first time. Of course, the mushrooms still go at it. I see a couple lady bugs. Oh, and some type of black beetle with red stripes.
2007- Now, apparently the word is completely out that our yard is the hip happening place to be. We had a bunny incident, have the birds and squirrels.
On a more pleasing note, we have seen cardinals and monk parakeets. The worst thing, is that I have never in my life seen such bugs. Then of course, the pill bugs, ants, and butterflies. (oh, a lightening bug made an appearance over the weekend).

Planting, I've uncovered a few ant colonies. Oh, that was fun.

Now, this weekend, i've seen (1) a smallish red bug. 1/4 inch to 1/3 inch long. It had a pear shaped bottom body, some legs, and a small top body part-with a black tip). the bug is 98% redish orange. It also has long antennas. It was hanging out by the concrete under mulch. (2) Tiny lime green things that look like grasshopper. Really tiny though-maybe 1/4 inch. and (3) a spider with a red body and a clear top. I have not been able to find any of these things in any insect guide.

After I spotted all the red bugs, I decide to go rest on our bench. I feel something crawl on me, look down, and there's an inch long oblong clear/white thing. I acted instinctively, swatted it, and it fell into my hostas. I couldn't find it when I looked to get a better look at it.

I'm sorry, but I have no photos. Typically when I encounter these things, I'm gardening (dirt, water, etc.) which is not conducive for photo ops. And of course, bugs move quickly and are gone when I return. No cicadas here either-which are fine by me.

Ongoing Rental Quest

2007-06-11T09:15:00.000-05:00

Well, we still are in search of tenants. Not just any tenants. (that I think would be relatively easy.) Being picky takes a bit more time. We've had plenty of interest. Just on craigslist, we've shown the apartment to 5-6 different groups, and had phone calls with a few others. I have 2 calls I need to return. I'll put a sign up today. (I've been holding off because then the phone really does ring off the hook).

There's a lot of stuff on the market nearby us now which is part of the challenge. I've been religiously following the ads to see how we compare. Some we are priced higher than, some lower, which makes me feel that we are about right. Pricing is not arbitrary. One interested party in a phone conversation loved our apartment and wanted to see if we would lower the rent a little. I said that I thought we were priced fairly, and he agreed.

I think another part of the problem is our rather unique layout. There's one room that's clearly a bedroom, and we have 2 others that can be bedrooms. The room slated for the living room has 5 doorways in it, a radiator, and windows, which makes it challenging to set up.

The Rental Saga

2007-06-04T08:55:00.000-05:00

Our place still isn't rented yet which is a little disconcerting. We have shown the apartment to 4 different groups. Every single one of them requested an application, including one that indicated they would definitely send one in. But, we haven't received anything yet. I think we'll put a sign in the window this week.

Two groups said no- one had 2 kids and chose another place. (and called us to let us know,which was very nice.). The second, our top choice (an engaged couple where one works, and the other will be a resident), declined to rent because (1) we didn't offer a parking space and (2) he cited rents in the area that were $150 month less than what we are asking.

I sent him an e-mail asking for more information, as I have not seen comparable properties for that much less. We have priced it a little higher then some, but there are apartments higher in the area as well. I saw some rentals that were in a more questionable area for less, but I don't think those are comparable.

In the end, I think the lack of parking space was the issue that really prevented that applicant from considering our apartment more seriously. We'd be willing to compromise a little on the price for the right tenant. (not $150/month worth though-as everything I've seen is much closer to our asking).

Parking isn't a problem on the street. Most people who actually have garages seem to park on the street as it is plentiful. We have a number of elderly and people without cars. If we had a working garage door (that didn't need to be slid open) and electricity in the garage, most likely Glenn would use the garage.) In the winter, the alleys aren't plowed, so with a big snowstorm, it is even harder to get around if the car is in the garage.

Yesterday we showed the apartment to two incoming medical students and their parents. Our unit is best for a couple due to lack of comparison in the bedrooms, but they did seem fairly interested. (and took applications)

I fielded an inquiry for a gentleman who wanted a place for him and his wife. near the end of the call (after I was selling the room under our bedroom as a bedroom) he mentioned that they will have their first child in September. Definitely not something we would like right under our bedroom. I left a bed in that room and have been positioning it for non noisy activities in hopes that will improve the living situation.

On the positive, we seem to be attracting good people. Now, I just need to expand the marketing plan.

Our House's Cousin

2007-06-04T08:49:00.000-05:00

Saturday, we went to an open house in our neighborhood and got to see sort of what our house used to look like. It had the same staircase and the same fireplace that our house does. The house had been in the same family for at least 80 years also.

Some of the difference in histories:

1. Additions. Our house was originally a single family home. But, between the wars, the former owners of our house added on an addition. (currently houses the kitchen and back bedroom for both units). After the addition, both units at some point were rented out. (I think in the 50s). Because of this, there was a kitchen and bath on both floors. In the other house, it stayed a single family home. It was great to sort of see the original floorplan.
2. Staircase. When the upstairs of our house was converted to a two flat, the banister which curved around stopped at a new wall. We found in our basement a number of spindles that were removed in this process. We knew this is what happened, but it was really neat in the other house to see perhaps what the floor plan may have been initially including the full staircase. (in the other house, the staircase was covered in carpet and a whole bunch of paint)
3. Marble fireplace. Our fireplace was bricked in and painted a whole range of colors-orange, black, white. Some of the paint peeled and I noticed that it was marble. I've spent many hours stripping it, and I think it looks a lot better. Why someone would paint it, I have no idea. The house we visited took it one step further. Instead of paint, they decided to put many many layers of something on it, ultimately having a light brown varnish color. (a treatment that under normal circumstances I hate as it looks really fake and not like wood) The paint treatment included the iron grate. (actually, I didn't see the actual grate, it was more the grate surround. I forgot to ask if they had the grate. The fireplace supposedly still works, but was boarded up at some time.
4. Access to the basement. In our place, in the front hall, there's a door leading to the basement. There's no stair landing, which is inconvenient, hazardous, etc. Eventually we might see about how we could make this better, but it is not on the priority list. In the house we visited, they removed access inside to the basement except through a cubby hole, instead putting a 1/2 bath where the doorway to the basement would have been.
5. Bedrooms. The single family home had many bedrooms though access to some of the bedrooms was through another bedroom. they also had ample closet space. (obviously had to have been something they tweaked with over the years as older homes are known for small bedrooms and little closet space).
6. Bathroom. Our bathroom on the second floor (our unit) has a skylight and is located in the same location as the single family home bathroom. The tub, toilet, and vanity are situated the same way as when we bought the place. The tub has been updated though. (ours was originally a claw foot).
7. Radiators. Nope -our cousin house had ripped them out. Central AC and heat. Can't say I mind the AC, but the radiators, though annoying with the floorspace they take up have more charm. (particularly the highly decorative ones like several of ours are).

All and all the visit was really interesting. I'm glad we were able to go in. The problem is, when you make a visit like that, you are almost compelled to start work. I really wanted to head over to that fireplace and bring it back to its original glory, strip the staircase, strip the woodwork, take down some walls, improve the floorplan upstairs, create an interior entrance to the basement...the list goes on and on. But, it's not my house-just its cousin.

They sit next to a vacant lot, so one worry is that someone will just try to buy both lots, raze the house on the market, and build a McMansion.

Oh, and another interesting thing we found out was that the vacant lot in question used to have a trucking company, then a werehouse that was torn down. The owner apparently is off in Bermuda and happy to pay the fines and fees for the city cutting the growth every so often.

Mass Showing Success (sort-of)

2007-06-01T08:02:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, we showed the apartment to 3 interested prospective tenants. Each one took an application and it seemed like everyone was quiet. One tenant actually was asking about us! (ie. how noisy are we?) I think overall that's a good sign. That individual also fully understand our issues with the last tenants for 2 a.m. movie watching.

But, now we have to see if someone submits an application. (which I hope was not too long and cumbersome). All the tenants are looking for different move-in dates-the sooner the better, 8/1, but 7/1 is fine, and 7/15. One has a couple places to look at this weekend, but will make a decision by Sunday. One, I'm positive will submit an application, another is done with the apartment hunt (ours was the last) but there's another front runner and the applicant needs to figure out which one to apply to. I'm really hoping that I get all the applications at once

Here's the breakdown:

Tenant option 1- A woman looking for her parents who are emigrating. There would need to be a guarantor, and we most likely wouldn't meet the actual tenants until they move in. But, the renters wouldn't be college kids so probably would be fairly quiet. (we'd need to delve into that more)

Tenant option 2- A mom with 2 kids who's a student. Overall, they seemed pretty quiet. She's moving because of the noisy building she's living in and having to walk up several flights of stairs. This one showed up late for the appointment.

Tenant option 3- An engaged couple where one works and the other will be a resident.

I also got an e-mail yesterday from someone else who is interested, so I'm probably going to schedule another viewing. It's another engaged couple, and they are both grad students.

I'm going to repost the ad "just in case."

Union Station Meets This Old Chicago 2 Flat

2007-05-31T13:38:00.000-05:00

Tonight, we show the aparment to 3 different interested people. One at 6 pm., another at 6:15, and a third at 7:30. I'm really hoping that we like at least one of them and someone takes an application. I promised one of the parties that there's always parking out front or 2 doors down (he wanted a parking space) which is usually true. (As I said, it's rare for there not to be). So, I'm also hoping that tonight isn't one of those "rare" moments. Last time around, our apartment was on the market for less than a week.

Fingers crossed on this one.

Rental Status

2007-05-29T13:53:00.000-05:00

Well, as I mentioned last week, we just put the rental back on the market on Friday. Over the weekend we had a couple parties express interest, and I just got a third e-mail.

1/2 of the first interested couple party was supposed to come by this morning to look at it. As a result, Glenn and I had quite an exhausting Sunday thoroughly cleaning the unit. The potential tenant was supposed to meet up with Apartment People after seeing our place. (which prompted the, "why don't you stop by here first.") Fast forward to today, and I had a message that the potential tenant did not make it back into town and he wanted to reschedule. Needless to say, this was a tad disappointing as it would have been great to have this settled already. We also held off on further advertising efforts (namely a sign in our window).

So, I've now returned e-mails and are trying to schedule appointments.

All and all though the viewing is pretty tricky. Things are so clean down there-I don't want to do anything to muck it up. Some of the possible projects include sanding the front stairs, going back to the fence, painting (which involves some sanding first).Of course, the other option is more cleaning. I figure I'll do more of that before the next appointment.

The life of a landlord...

Radiator Stripping-A sequel

2007-05-29T13:42:00.000-05:00

We knew at some point this summer that we'd get to radiators-but had no idea that it would be this weekend! But, like any good sequel, you need to do something a little different. Otherwise, who would go see it?

The rental radiators were never done and we never planned on touching them. When we hired someone to move some radiators around, the person also chose to install every single radiator backwards. The result, is typically a color of paint at the top of the radiator, and sides, which looks particularly bad. (even worse than flaking paint!) With the mixture of both flaking paint and 3 or more colors staring back at you, it really was abominable.

So, I mention to Glenn "I think we should paint the radiator in the rental kitchen because it looks particularly bad. But, I think we should not bother sandblasting, just scrape off what we can, and go from there."

In the interest of working expeditiously, we left the radiator hooked up, and Glenn used the angle grinder with metal attachment. It worked magnificently. An hour or so later, this is what we had:

We don't have a before photo (sorry, I didn't expect Glenn to work on it right away-we were showing the apartment this weekend!) You have to trust me that it really did a wonderful job.

Of course, this method is horrible health wise because if there's lead paint on the radiator, you'd be kicking that up, which is a big no no.

We now are thinking that perhaps some huge radiators that we can't take out can be spot grinded. And heck, that system is much quicker than the sandblasting, so we'll have to see how the rest of the paint removal goes.

Up for Rent

2007-05-26T17:06:00.001-05:00

We did it-we placed our rental up for rent. Let the nail-biting begin! We placed the ad on craigslist last night, and already have our first interested couple. They have, from the little we know, a couple similarities with the "sand the floor themselves, blast the tv at 2 a.m. tenants" but I'm crossing my fingers that the similarities are only the good kind.

We haven't put the sign in our window which found our tenants the last time yet. (forgot that today on our Home Depot run)

So, fingers crossed that we like the prospective tenants, and they like us. (sort of like dating on that front with actually a bit more commitment-they would be moving into our home!)

Our Garden

2007-05-21T08:58:00.000-05:00

This weekend was largely spent outside, and mostly on the garden. Spring/summer brings all that maintenance stuff-the lawn mowing, maple seed collecting (we have a maple tree that spews its seeds everywhere), and general clean-up. We also like to get our flowers out as soon as possible-flowers offer such a pick up when you come home, or need to escape construction dust. A sort of funny side effect of the garden is that it gives the illusion that our place is done. Our neighbor came up to me yesterday commenting about when they are done inside then they will work outside.

So, with all that in mind, we headed off to our favorite garden store, located actually outside of the city, Wannemaker's, and picked up some vincas, petunias, ipomoea, Silverdust, perilla magilla purple, dianthus, and some other purple flower I forget the name of. It was so hard to choose! I planted 7 pots, and put in the annuals in our front yard. (I had picked up marigolds last week, and finished planting them as well).

Here are some photos:

The tulips are still dying back, and the flowers will spread so the area will be fuller soon.

I still have a few flowers to get. We also have to figure out a landscaping plan for this area:

It was never planned, and just takes away from the rest of the yard. I think we are getting close to a plan there (Glenn wants a tree there, so I think we might do a sandcherry). We'd also like to put in a couple boxwoods. To the left, there's some sedum. (actually that and the forsythia are the only items in the yard that stayed after we bought it!) To the right, there's a rose bush.

To the right of the last photo, you can see that we've been making progress on getting rid of the rust on the fence spokes for painting. That project is still ongoing and will be in another post.
This year, I'm also putting together a spreadsheet of our annual plantings. Whenever I go to the garden store I scratch my head trying to figure out how much to get. Some flowers also have not done well, so it would be nice to remember that from year to year.

Now, our backyard, needs a lot more work. Glenn's been working on taking out old fence posts. We'll need a landscape designer though for back there as I'm having a really hard time envisioning the best way to use the space. I think that's going to be next year's project, but we'll see.

Operation Mothers Day and Birthdays

2007-05-14T17:25:00.000-05:00

We were supposed to host mothers day, Glenn's birthday and his sister's birthday this weekend, but the condition of our place prevented that. Sometimes we fool ourselves that we can host events but sometimes the rigamarole that we need to go through doesn't make it happen. (which I'm sure any house rehabber can relate to) My sprained ankle just complicated matters. I knew I'd be up for the cooking, but the actual moving furniture and the like wasn't happening.

Instead, I brought all the food to my mother in laws. (I felt bad because it was mother's day, and I originally said I'd host). Cooking is similar to my house projects as i quickly fill up my task list. Yesterday, I threw together "easy" food including lemon saffron chicken skewers, mushroom bouches, and crudite for appetizers, grilled asparagus, parmesean basil corn, chicken in a bourbon marinade, and roasted rosemary red potatoes for dinner. All and all it turned out well. Glenn was a tremendous amount of help particularly since it was his birthday celebration and he should have relaxed more.

Oh, and the presents:

here's Glenn's from me:

Isn't it a great wrapping job? Excuse the wrapping paper. It's all I had that would fit. (except for teddy bears but I thought that was even less masculine). For the curious, the poking item sticking out is a corn grill basket. I could have gotten a bigger box, but that would have wasted paper. (he also got margarita glasses and mix).

Glenn's parents got him house related gifts from his wishlist included a spade set and a "Drill Doctor"

Oh, and we gave my mother in law this:

I tried to convice Glenn that we needed to do 6 more of those for our front steps.

After I finish posting this, I'm heading out to do some spring planting in our yard.

The Memories

2007-05-07T08:59:00.000-05:00

In light of my sprained ankle, actual house productiveness has significantly diminished. Yesterday my big "house project" was going through some piles of papers we had-including old estimates. (Glenn, on the other hand, had to catch up on a lot of things that we might do together-laundry, grocery shopping, home depot trips, dishes...)

I feel for the most part that I've interviewed every random type of contractor in the city of chicago. Some of the highlights of my paper review included:

1. An estimate for $25,000 for painting both units, and installing some drywall. If we paid an extra $1500 "pressure washing and light sanding of the garage would be included". Needless to say (I think) we opted to hire drywallers and to do our paint prep and painting mostly ourselves. Eventually we got around to pressure washing the garage on our own and did a bit more than a "light sand" I remember when the guy handed me the estimate and I had to really contain myself not to laugh.
2 Electrical estimates ranged from $6500-$38,000. In all fairness, the $38,000 estimate was a much wider scope of an estimate. After we got it, we significantly changed the scope of our project. (the estimate included running electrical to the garage). The estimates for just updating electrical in both kitchens and baths and installing outside lights was more along the range of $6500-$17,000.
3. Plumbing ranged i think from $4000-$17000. In the estimates one from the guy we really wanted to hire was included. Unfortunately, the guy dropped off the face of the earth for a week when we were anxious to get started. We ended up hiring this other guy which was a huge mistake. When we tried to get a plumber to come in just to give an estimate it was really difficult. It seemed like every plumber just wanted to do the small project as opposed to the massive overhall.

We also found various floorplans Glenn put together on Visio, and "to-do" lists. I even found my really early wedding planning notes.

The wide range of estimates also revealed a wide range of perceptions about renovation. I heard the spiel over and over again about how we should do forced air heating. "no, we actually like the radiators". How we should just tear down our garage and start a new. "no, this is solid construction." (for that one the guy laughed that we'd be able to scrape and paint it). The flooring guy who basically stormed out of our house and said that none of our floors were salvageable. (we sanded some of our floors, and they turned out great).

I knew getting involved with the project that we'd have to work hard, have patience and the like, but I never in my wildest dreams thought that getting a contractor would be so difficult.

House dangers

2007-04-30T15:33:00.000-05:00

Yes, I did get injured over the weekend. (actually, thinking back, I got injured twice over the weekend) For any rehabber, you know there are a neverending supply of dangers when working around the house- nail guns gone mad, falls from ladders, stripper hitting skin, hammer thumb bashing, splinters, foreign item falling in eye, toxic fumes -the list is clearly neverending. To prevent this, of course, we use a number of cautions. Gloves, a clean work environment, safety glasses, and just a careful attention to safety could prevent these dangers.

So, you might wonder, what dangerous activity was I involved in? For safety sake, I sported a hat, sunglasses, gloves, and my workshoes. But, none of these protections could help me.

I slipped down our outside front stairs en route to fertilizing the rose bush. The result, of course, was a sprained ankle. No fears of any embarrasment, as only the neighbors saw me tumble down the stairs. (calling out several times "are you okay, are you okay"?)

Ever the determined fertilizer, I did eventually pick myself up, hobbled over to the rose bush, and fertilized. I also worked on our fence a bit. But, I did earn a golf ball sized bump and a big black and blue mark. (which I think is getting better.) Since I can hobble on it, I think it is pretty minor. Today I'm trying my darndest not to walk on it and rest. I've been looking a little goofy.

Oh, and the second "injury" was a thumb incident while trying to break up forsythia branches.

A different kind of demo

2007-04-30T15:32:00.000-05:00

This weekend we started a whole other type of demo. Doesn't our yard look a little bare?

We ended up cutting all the forsythia to the ground. Before I start getting e-mails or comments about how on earth I could destroy a plant-there should be no worries. The forsythia should grow back. (and, I think started right away overnight). We should have done this years ago.

The demo was all in pursuit of a goal to restore our front fence. Right after we bought the house, we started with fence repairs. My father-in-law did a bunch of concrete patch work and we painted the concrete. It made a world of difference. Last year we did a quick paint job (needed to be repainted). We never got around though to the side facing the yard. With the forsythia, it was just too difficult to paint without painting half the plant. We also never sanded off the rust on the spokes, or painted them.

Hence, the cutting the forsythia to the ground. The powers that be (a.k.a. various garden sites) say that forsythia should be cut to the ground right after the blooming happens in the spring. Optimally, for pruning, you would cut 1/3 or the branches back to the ground every spring. Apparently, the yellow spring blooms only bloom on old branches, which is why you would do this. Because the forsythia just finished blooming, now is the time to do fence work. If not for that fact, we'd probably do this near the end of the summer. (At this time of the year I feel more like planting than demoing)

Both Glenn and I worked on using an angle grinder to sand all the spokes in the fence. (this takes a fair amount of time, FYI) Here's sort of how it looks before using the angle grinder:

And, after a bit of angle grinding:

We weren't able to finish, but I hope to get some sanding done during the week). Anyway, going forward we need to (1) finish angle grinding all the spokes (2) prime and paint the spokes black (3) power wash the fence (4) do some concrete patchwork on the fence (5) paint the fence. We are sort of in a rush against time-trying to get work done before the forsythia takes over again.

Monk Parakeets

2007-04-24T11:59:00.000-05:00

I've written about how I spotted some lime green birds in our back yard one day. I now think I found the nest! (just a reminder, I'm NOT a bird person and I've actively tried to get rid of a nest on our back porch). Anyway, the other day I was walking to the el. I heard the familiar (to me) gawk of the monk parakeet and looked up. What did I see? A nest! Pretty exciting. I did not see a monk parakeet flying to or from the nest, just heard the unusual gawk.

No worries, I don't plan on doing anything with this nest. I would post a photo, but Glenn worried that perhaps anti-monk parakeet people out there might threaten the nest. Yesterday, both of us walked over to the nest and watched. It's nice to know where they came from.

The Call of Spring

2007-04-23T08:55:00.000-05:00

Does spring offer any stress for any other house renovators? Once warm weather comes calling, I immediately have a huge list of to-dos that I want to do right away. Sort of like waking a sleeping bear... (we spend the winter on sort of house rehab hiatus)

April, May and some of June are THE best times for many types of work, before it gets too hot. For us, we have (1) spring planting/clean-up/maintenance begging for our attention (and the area we are most excited for)(2) painting outside including our front fence, garage, back porch (3) concrete repairs of the front fence and front step (4) sandblasting radiators, priming and painting (5) using the heat gun inside with open windows including a buffet in our unit and some paint on the stairs (6) staining our stairs (7) random painting inside. Of course, not all of this will get down in the next few weeks but I want to do it all right now.

It's just nice doing fume work when you can get some air circulation!

Of course, there's also all the other competing activities of just enjoying the great weather outside.

Hallway

2007-04-22T09:42:00.000-05:00

In connection with getting the rental ready to rent, we've also reconnected with our front hallway. Strangely enough, this is one of the first projects we started. We ended up stopping it when other projects had greater importance. (ie. getting working bathrooms and kitchens, creating a living space before we moved in, etc.)

Sort of funny, because the staircase is what drew us into the house in the firstplace. Sure, it was pulling away from the wall, was surrounded by tons of filth, many coats of paint, crumbling old tiles, but we knew that we could bring it back to life.

When we first got the house, we hired carpenters to straighten out our staircase. Photos failed to capture the effect, but they were crooked. We had to take out the plaster under the staircase (and remove molding) in order to do this. Then, the carpenters came up, and fixed the stairs. When the bannister was removed, it made it much easier to sand the treads and risers so we did that.

We spent hours upon hours stripping, sanding, etc. (I remember one day working 12 hours just on the stairs). At some point, I had enough, so went on to work on other areas of the house.

Then, at some point, we removed the flooring down to the subfloor, and installed tile. (I'm the tiler). We ended up hiring someone to put in drywall where the plaster was missing and later someone to paint the front hall. (boy, what a difference!)

The hallway was really looking snazzy (in our opinion) at that point so we were happy to leave the front hall to move onto the myriad of other projects becking at our feet. I think at that point, our primary mission was to get our first tenants in). Since the painting, back in 2005, we've done nothing in the hallway. (I think I patched some holes in walls that furniture/appliance delivery people made-but nothing significant). With tenants, working on the front hall is just too challenging. Then, they moved out, and we did the big flooring/garage/radiator stripping projects.

But, finally, we are getting back to our pet project. Last weekend we installed the missing door molding in front of the rental, and leading to the basement. We also installed some base molding under the stairs that was hiding out for some time but was refound over last summer. Because the stairs had to be raised (I assume) there's now a big gap on one end of the molding between the base molding and the stairs. We'll have to do something about that. Some other molding is just plain missing, so we'll need to figure something out with that. We also have some drywall repairs in the front hall and a bunch of other little things for the hall to be "done."

And, of course, finally, there are our beloved stairs which are on the short list of our to-dos. I got some estimates for finishing them. (over $2000!) But, this close to being done, it seemed like a cop out to just hire it out. Would be more satisfying to a the end of the day to say that we did them.

We've come a long way, but plenty to be done!

The Devil is in the Details

2007-04-21T10:54:00.000-05:00

We've been having a relative leisurely return back to the grindstone and are busy with all those random details in the rental before renting. These items fell into a few categories (1) new problems post-tenants(ie. repairing holes from the flooring project and the radiator leaking incident) (2) Post-renting issues (ie. Painting, cleaning) or (3) catching up on our to do list.

Part of the issue is the myriad of "details" associated with an older home. Before renting the unit, we wanted to get everything up to snuff but ran out of time. We hired someone to do a lot of the painting but ran out of time with the prep-including filling in nail holes. (nobody seemed to ever do that before around here. Once woodwork changes from dark brown to white, the holes are a lot easier to spot!) Let me tell you there are a LOT of holes to be filled, sanded, primed and painted.

One of the related projects was filling in random gaps that appeared during the project or were there the whole time. In some areas, we removed plaster and replaced it with drywall, resulting in large gaps. One example is a gap between the window molding and the wall in one of the bedrooms.

It was a significant gap too big for just caulk alone. We ended up nailing in some wood scraps, caulking, and we will paint. It's in a bit of a hidden area, so disquising it will probably be sufficient.

We also have been caulking up a storm. There were numerous areas of the picture molding that had gaps.

Once it was painted, the gaps stood out like a sore thumb. (As an aside, I think caulk has to be one of, if not the greatest home improvement inventions!)

Hopefully we'll be able to paint the middle bedroom ceiling this weekend and actively market the apartment. Glenn put the finishing touches on the bathroom ceiling. For a review, while doing our flooring project on the second floor, a workman stepped through the ceiling, resulting in this:

But Glenn fixed it, and it now looks great!

(can you believe someone wanted us to pay $1000 for this?!?)

Sort of an irritating thing that transpired was random paint cracks. For really bad cracks I went back to scraping, taping, compound, etc. I don't think I'll ever put away the compound.

Outside of the house stuff, I've been busy with the chicago chapter of the Red Cross' Heroes Breakfast. It's the chapter's largest fundraisers and a chance to honor extraordinary acts done by local individuals. This year was the second year I was on the planning committee. I'm glad I could have been a part of it.

Lochinvar Boilers

2007-04-04T17:39:00.000-05:00

Our "new" boiler has caused us a lot more problems than our elderly old boiler.

The facts about our boiler:
Installed December 2005. At the same time, we installed a second boiler for the rental unit.

Fall of 2006 wouldn't work- service call indicated that it needed to be cleaned. The techician spent a couple hours going over the boiler to see what might be causing it to get so dirty in a relatively short time of use.

April 2007, must be cleaned again.-originally the installer wanted to charge $300 to do the cleaning and do a thorough analysis on why our boiler kept on overheating.

Technician called Lochinvar who says that their boilers must be cleaned twice a year if in a laundry room. (I specifically asked this in Fall 2006 of our technician) We had to get our boiler cleaned twice in a single season.

We used to have a Weil-McLain. From 2003-2005 never cleaned, no problems. As a preventive measure we got it replaced. In less than the time that we had experience with the Weil-McLain, we have had 2 additional service calls. I'm really regretting that we changed the boiler at all.

After the boiler was installed (1) service calls went up and (2) our heating costs stayed the same.

Spring has Sprung

2007-03-29T16:00:00.000-05:00

We arrived home from Nashville to see that Spring had sprung while we were away. Really sort of odd because certain plants (ie. the crocus) used to bloom first. That's all changed up now. A lot of the tulips (first photo)came up first.

The hyacinths I planted are no where to be found. (though they came up last year) Hmmm.

In light of the warmer weather the last couple days coupled with later daylight, my house related work has been yard clean-up. Our ivy is a bit brown, and has leaves throughout, so I've been trying to clean that out. (I like a neat and green front yard!)

The warmer weather has also sparked my "spring/summer/fall" warm weather to do list. I don't want to be beginning warm weather projects in September. Summer also is just overall challenging because we want to fit in enjoying the weather, increased social things (bbqs and the like-since beginning work in 2003, we now actively try to maintain our social lives too), general yard maintenance issues, along with projects.

As a sneak peak of what might be in store:

1. Renting the apartment. (a fair bit of nailbiting on this one. The tenants will live below us, and share some common areas. Our first tenants liked to watch loud movies at 2 a.m. underneath our bedroom in an unfurnished hardwood floored 11 foot ceiling room. We are really hoping to find some good tenants.)
2. Repainting front fence, and concrete repairs in the front of the house.
3. Hopefully adding some seasonal interest to the south side of the front yard. Right now, it's basically sedum, a rose bush, and bulbs. I'd really like something of interest there in the winter. It's a small spot, so finding something that won't take up the whole space is a bit of challenge.

4. Radiator work! (woohoo!) We have 2 more radiators to sandblast and paint, a radiator we might repipe so it's not sitting out so far, possibly adding in a couple new radiators where a contractor wrongly put in copper baseboards.
5. Finish garage work including (1) constructing new gate to alley (2) reinstalling windows that Glenn's Dad artfully restored (3) finish paint prep on the alley side (once they city wasn't going to tear down the garage I gave that up last year) (4) install gutters and a rain barrel (5) Paint the garage another coat. (I think we only did one coat of paint color).
6. Bird defense. Be more proactive about our bird defense.

Other general "possible" for the list include:
1. Painting back porch.
2. Finish front stairs.
3. Strip buffet outside main bedroom and paint. (would be nice to get all the lead paint out of our unit).
4. Miscellaneous carpentry in our unit. Baseboard, door molding, window sills. Some of this is easy, some of it is more of a mess and challenging.

We'll have to see how far we get on this. There's an endless supply of additional projects. I also haven't really discussed Glenn's wishlist of projects with him, so things may be added.

Adventures in travel-part II

2007-03-28T15:16:00.000-05:00

This past weekend we went away again for our second 2007 wedding in Nashville, TN. In light of last week's trip, although excited to celebrate with our friends as well as see some of Glenn's closest friends in Clarksville, Tennesee, needless to say we questioned how our second trip in the month would go.

All and all, it was a fun trip. Some humorous highlights (1) locating a hotel in Clarksville was harder than we anticipated as there was a big dance competition, many of the hotels only had suites. (2) we enjoyed several restaurants not available in Chicago, including Waffle House and Sonic. (3) I went to Cracker Barrel for the first time.

The first time we went to the Waffle House, Glenn ran into someone he knew that he served in the military with but hadn't seen or spoken to in about 10 years. The second time we went to the Waffle House (in Kentucky) they were out of Buttermilk waffles. (something I found quite humorous. A waffle house lacking in waffles? This visit was also ripe for a Saturday Night Live skit. Workers whistled "The Bridge over the River Kwai," Menonites were chatting on the cell phone.

We also learned that apparently, if you want a desk in a hotel room you must ask about it ahead of time. When we got to our hotel in Nashville, we had a big empty space but clearly a desk was missing. Glenn called downstairs, and he was asked if we "asked for a desk when we made the reservation?" (we did not realize we needed to do this). A hunt around the property insued, ending with a larger woman arriving outside our door, panting, with a desk that she "found in the refinishing area of the basement" She definitely gets kudos for lugging it up a couple flights of stairs assumably by herself.

Finally, en route home we called ahead for a hotel using our Garmin GPS. We thought we made reservation for Hampton Inn. We get off the highway, and no Hampton Inn could be found though Daniel (the name we gave our GPS based on the name of the guy giving us directions) said we had 'arrived'. So, call number 2, and new directions, which were the same that Daniel had. Finally, I call the number a third time, and we realize that the hotel we had reserved at was actually the "Pear Tree Inn"

No more trips planned for the near term, so we will get back to just doing house related projects. I've come up with a spring/summer to do list, that will be in another post.

Our adventurous weekend

2007-03-20T08:29:00.000-05:00

No, it didn't involve leprechauns, green beer or kettles of gold (or hammers, jigsaws, or radiators). Instead, our adventure was more along the lines of where there's a will, there's a way.

Saturday, my cousin got married outside of Philadelphia. Little did we know when we left our house on Friday that a horrible storm was going to reak havoc on many of the guests trying to get there on Friday, including yours truly.

We woke up at 5:30 a.m, heading to the airport to find out at 9:20 a.m. that our flight, along with the next 3 flights got canceled. Glenn and I used our real world power tools-a blackberry, a laptop, one cell phone, and our eyes and ears to immediately assess the situation and determine our best way of getting to Philadelphia in time for the rehearsal dinner that night. (or at the least, the wedding). I scoured the "departure" screens (a great perk at O'Hare as there are yads of flights everywhere) to locate the closest city that had flights going to it (new york, hartford, and boston were all showing cancellations)I noticed that flights were leaving every hour from B12 to D.C, so with phones to ears we started walking.

We were greeted by a line of 6 people at a "check-in desk" without an employee, an open door leading down the gangway and a ticket checker nearby. Glenn went in one line, and I walked up to the ticket checker asking if he had any seats on the plane. Well, yes, yes he did. I asked for them, he quickly obliged, grabbing our Philadelphia boarding passes and telling us he didn't have time to give us new boarding passes. Instead, he said head to 10A and 10B (exit row and together, no less!). By 9:55 we were on a plane to the east coast!

We continued our furious phone calls to rearrange our car reservation, find out about baggage, and alert family members. While en route to D.C. we came up with the idea to arrange lunch with my uncle and cousin (who were in town from Hungary). This involved a quick call to my Grandmom.

After lunch, we started our journey by car to the Philadelphia area. First, it was traffic and rain. Then, the traffic dwindled a bit, but it was ice, sleet, and some snow tossed in. At some points we saw car after car by the side of the road (having clearly glided out of control for a bit). We made a stop at Kohl's on the way in hopes of finding some wedding attire and other necessities since our luggage stayed in Chicago. (we checked bags because of the toiletry restriction). During our route, we got calls from various family members (including a franctic groom). Finally at 10 p.m. we showed up at the rehearsal dinner. After the dinner, we had to borrow an ice scraper, as the car was not equiped. (neither were we!)

The next day, we got up early to find some wedding attire for me and get some toiletries. (a rave for target on that! one stop shopping!) We had called the airline to ask that our luggage stay in Chicago as we wouldn't be able to pick it up. But, they decided to send it to Philadelphia anyway.

On Sunday, we had simple goals- (1) cheesesteaks with the family (2) visit my alma mater (Penn) to get a sweatshirt and show Glenn around (3) find our luggage in Philadelphia (4) recheck the luggage and safely travel home. But, remember, this weekend was about unplanned adventure.

First, we lined up all the cheesesteak partakers, creating a caravan of sorts. (1) Glenn and I in our rental (2) My mom and older brother in her car (3) my brother and his girlfriend in her car (4) a long lost cousin in his rental car (5) and my Dad and his wife in the caboose.

The sun was shining, roads were much better, and we were making good time. Then the red light goes on in the dashboard, the car seems to be overheating. We exit the highway (wondering exactly what kind of neighborhood we were going to) and the car makes it to the end of the exit ramp before promptly dying. The car rental place tells me it will be 2 hours until a replacement car can be delivered. Thankfully, I was finally able to get a hold of my Dad who came by and picked us up and we left the car by the side of the road.

At the airport, we had to sift through a sea of bags to find ours. Hundreds were just sitting there. I was really surprised that they weren’t locked up more.

So back we are, safe and sound. Despite the bumps in the road during the trip, I’m so thankful that (1) we maneuvered well on Friday and made it to the wedding safe and sound and (2) that if our car were to die it did so on a sunny day with many family members around and not on Friday in the middle of nowhere in an icestorm.

Enough with being nice.

2007-03-10T10:11:00.001-06:00

Today, we were attacked on two fronts, and I think the battle has just begun.

First, as mentioned before, we have a bit of an issue with birds congregating on our back porch. This was made worse when Glenn installed the jungle gym (a.k.a. radiator lift). Last year I think we were a tad bit nice, leading to a nest, babies, and a bunch of bird friends moving in. Then, we upped our protection, by buying some Shot-Gun Repels-All animal repellant (a mix of dried blood, purescent whole egg solids, garlic oil and a bunch of other stuff)

Yesterday morning, Glenn headed out there to spray some more after a dove just stared back at him through the window. (the audacity!) This of course, was after a a week or two of my banging on the window. The stuff did work for a couple months, though, which has been a great respite. And, the birds have been staying away since he sprayed yesterday morning.

Now, birds are not our only problem. They recruited an ally.

See how nestled in it looks? We can't have bunnies! I really like our yard, and I already have to combat grubs, slugs, mushrooms, and a variety of other pests. I don't need anything else to attack!

I went out there, sprayed our magic potion, and it left. But, a couple hours later it was back. Sigh. I think this will be quite a spring.

Election Day

2007-03-02T14:46:00.000-06:00

It's over...and we won! My day as an election lawyer was very different from the last time around (in Wisconsin for the Presidential election). I had repeated discussions with people saying to me "but this is Chicago." Trickled in were warnings of intimidation and the "thugs" that congregate at polling places. Prior to the day, I naively discounted that thinking that nothing like that would happen in MY neighborhood. It was explained to me that some of the people congregating might have jobs on the line, thinking that if their candidate won, they would get great jobs. Fist fights outside of polling places are not unusual.

I was called to my precinct for some other drama, but got a first hand view of the "thugs." All big guys (including the ones handing out flyers for our candidate). I was again cautioned that even though they look harmless I should just let the police deal with them. I did go out there nonetheless a few times, without incident, and they all complied to what I said. My favorite was when two police officers asked me about electioneering, so I brought them outside to show them some issues. I wish I had a picture. I was in the middle, in a black suit. I was flanked on either side with an undercover cop, each with multiple weapons displayed and visible. The irony was, at this time, one of the "thugs" showed some overt hostility to me.

When we (another attorney and I) ended up leaving, some of the guys threw snow at us. A bit childish, but nothing we couldn't handle. That night, at the victory party, it was kind of funny to hear these various guys come up to Glenn and say "your wife kept on going and confronting the thugs." (a bit of an exaggeration on many fronts). It painted a portait much grander than the issue. I still do not feel like I was under any threat. I think the campaign workers out there would be at greater risk.

On a sadder front, in the 24th ward, a campaign worker handing out flyers was beaten with a stick. Absolutely unbelievable and a travesty. Noone should have any fear with expressing his or her opinion. It also gives me a greater understanding of why voter turn out may be low.

Now, I can get back to house stuff...

Chicago Politics

2007-02-25T18:47:00.000-06:00

Tuesday is the big election, which has stolen my "work on the house time."
Instead I've been trying to save our ward from a candidate who was convicted of accepting bribes the last time he was Alderman. (for non-Chicagoans a ward is a section of the city that to a certain extent, runs independently, by an Alderman. If you need anything done, you call your Alderman, or Ward superintendent. The primary is the election that counts, and is on Tuesday).

I'm happy to report that the Illinois Supreme Court just ruled that the convict on the ballot can not run. Yeah! The really troubling thing about the whole thing was that despite the fact that he was convicted of accepting bribes, he had a lot of support in the community. I don't quite understand that. But then again, this is Chicago, and there's a whole bunch of things that I just don't understand around here).

Besides for the convicted felon, we also really like our Alderman, think he's honest, works hard, and really cares for the community.

Anyway, I've been campaigning for our Alderman, and have signed up to be an election attorney on election day. Basically, that means that I'll be the "go to" person if any fraud happens, or if any fires start to fester at any of the polling locales. It should be a pretty long day with my showing up at 5 a.m. and working until very late. (there was talk of 4 a.m., but I'm hoping that won't apply to me!)

Through my work on the campaign, I did get to meet Mayer Daley this weekend, which was pretty exciting.

As an added bonus, at two of the "coffees" our Alderman did in our neighborhood, I put in a plug for our CAPS meeting (community policing). At the first one, a gentleman was reluctant to come to CAPS, so I approached him and put in a plea that law-abiding citizens have to take a stand against crime, reporting crimes if need be anonymously. Today, I saw this guy again, and another person interested in CAPS, and the guy I met last time was espousing that we must call the police anonymously. Makes me happy that perhaps I made a difference.

Glenn got some work done around here though-he did some compound in the rental apartment. Not too exciting, and wouldn't otherwise warrant a blog post.

Houseblogging landlord tax nightmare

2007-02-20T10:49:00.000-06:00

Actually, that was last year, but it's peaking its ugly head again this year and helps me reminisce about tax time last year.

Ever since we started work on this place, we have meticulously saved our receipts. 4 big envelopes, Home Depot, Lowe's, Menards, and "other". We knew one day, we would need them. Now what perchance, would make this little story a nightmare? Toss a rental into the picture. All those little expenditures could be depreciated, decreasing our rental income (and our taxes) But, we never really looked into this when we started collecting receipts-hence the nightmare.

Interspersed with all our little house projects, we routinely played the game "what does "INTLTXBS1GL" mean (newbies at the game I think that is 1 gallon interior latex paint)? And round 2 is that a rental expense, general expense, or our expense? can it be capitalized? Fun times. Home Depot is really the worse at descriptions.

After all the joy with categorizing items, 2006 we took a vow to always indicate the category when we brought home a receipt. We ended up doing that about 50% of the time. (much easier though categorizing things over the last year vs. 3 years!)

Anyway, it's not just about demo, stripping, and painting around here-there's plenty more renovation joy to be had.

Radiator Heating Resources

2007-02-17T12:27:00.000-06:00

Online Radiator Resources

HeatingHelp.com is Dan Holohan's website. There's more about Dan in the Publications section below. The website includes a Q&A section with answers to many common questions, as well as a bulletic board where you can post questions for professionals to answer. The site is well worth a visit.

If you have gravity hot water heating as we did when we purchased This Old Chicago 2 Flat, then this article by Dan Holohan has a good explanation of how it works.

The Ontario propane association has a clear, short description of how heat loss works, and the basics of heat loss calcualtions. Heat loss calculations are essential to understanding how renovations such as new windows, adding insultation, or adding an addition will impact your old house's heating.

Slant/Fin is a manufacturer of various types of radiators. Their web site includes an offer for free heat loss calculation software. You can use this software to determine the correct size radiator for a room, or the correct size boiler for heating your home.

If you are looking to buy new radiators, then a few manufacturers that distribute in the US are Radson, Runtal and Myson. Keep in mind that if you currently have cast iron radiators, you should not mix in new steel or copper radiators because they new sytles have very different heating properties.

Offline Radiator Resources

Need to replace a new radiator, but don't want to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars? Try a recycled raditor from B&B Formica at 5617 W. Grand Ave in Chicago. They have a yard full of a wide variety of radiators pulled from Chicago area buildings. They will pressure test the radiators and offer additonal services as well. We have been very happy with several radiators we purchased from them for $12/section. They used to be located on Milwaukee Ave between Ashland and Damen, so if you were wondering where they went, now you know.

When it came time to replace the boilers in This Old Chicago 2 Flat, we hired American Vintage Home to do the work. We were very happy with their service, the quality of workmanship, and the Lochinvar boilers that they installed.

Radiator Publications (Books, Magazines, Articles)

No list of radiator heating resources would be complete without mentioing Dan Holohan. Dan is the expert on old house steam and hot water heating. He has written numerous books and articles related radiator heating. The best thing about Dan's writing is that he is able to convey the mechanics of how these heating systems work without using a bunch of technical mumbo-jumbo.

A few of Dan's books that I have found particularly helpful are:

Hydronic Radiant Heating - A Practical Guide for the Nonengineer Installer

We Got Steam Heat! - A Homeowner's Guide to Peaceful Coexistence

I would like to point our readers towards a good book on how to work on old stream/hot water heatings systems, including how to work with iron pipe, but I have not found any. If you know of such a book, let me know and I will add it to this post.

New Sidebar Topic Areas

2007-02-17T12:06:00.000-06:00

You will see that we have added a new section in the sidebar named "Radiator Heating Info".

This is the first of what we hope will be several topics where we gather information from a number of posts into a single easy to find location. Potential future topics include "Preventing and Fixing Frozen Pipes" (a popular topic in the houseblog community just now) and "DIY Structured Wiring". These are topics in which Christina and I have a fair amount of experience, and which we found it difficult to find information.

In addition to the regular posts that Christina does, I will also be putting together some posts that discuss online and offline resources, tools, and other such information. I am putting together the first of these "resource" posts, which will be about radiator heating.

If we have written about a subject you would like to see a topic area for, please make a comment on this post. If we feel we have something to add, we will create a topic for it.

Neighborhood gossip

2007-02-11T09:52:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I found out where our missing neighbor went, among other interesting tidbits. I went canvassing for our Alderman. (The primary is coming up, and since Chicago is a one party town, that's the "real" election. Some of the competition includes a former alderman who was convicted for taking bribes the last time he was in office, and another candidate who is pretty violent-which I won't get into).I like our Alderman, who has been responsive, and I think works hard for the community (and I think is honest). All reasons to get out and organize the vote.

Anyway, I got to walk around with some people who had the lowdown on the community, so I opened my ears and asked the questions. (and other tidbits were just volunteered)

Around the time of our wedding our neighbor sort of disappeared. It was really odd. This was a gregarious neighbor who really was the only one who really welcomed us into the community. Extremely friendly, and seemed like a really nice guy. Well, last I remember talking to him, I mentioned we were putting the rental on the market and asked him to be on the lookout for people. (something he said he'd do in the past). Well, he reacted sort of oddly-a little less friendly.

We had our wedding, then went away on honeymoon (this was back in August 2005) and we never saw him again. We had noone to ask, as everyone seems to be related to everyone around here. We figured that the guy either got divorced, died, or was in jail, but we didn't know.

Turns out that it was option C. The guy apparently went to jail for "drug conspiracy." We always saw him driving trucks, and new he was out of work, but didn't think anything of it. Sort of sad, as i guess he was just probably trying to provide for his family, and didn't know what to do. (not that that's an excuse, but it wasn't like he was robbing his neighbors which I think some others in the neighborhood do).

I also found out who the other criminals on the street were (this is really good information to have!), who had a problem with horses, who's wife left him, and a bunch of other stuff that Glenn enjoyed hearing.

Now, I need to figure out what other questions I should ask next week...

As an aside, the whole gentrification of a neighborhood brings about really interesting (though I think a bit sad) results. I've talked to various neighbors of different backgrounds ( ethnic background, economic background, older people, younger people, newcomers, old comers.) The commonality is that many do not seem to trust those that aren't similar. (though, oddly, I hear these things). One person (from a different background on the street) onetime told me that I was the only person he trusted (I think because of my CAPS sign). Someone else said, don't trust X person (that was a racial thing). It would be nice if we finished up some of the house more so we can invite some of our neighbors over.

Do you ever feel like your house is rebelling?

2007-02-09T20:50:00.000-06:00

This has just been quite the week at This Old Chicago 2 Flat. So much is going on here, that it's just stuff that you hold back from the average person. Maybe one of the things could be mentioned, but I don't think that the average person would believe that all this would happen in one week.

First, we have the pipe freezing issue. Which, whenever the pipes freeze, it reminds us of our less than stellar plumber (reminder, trust your gut!). It also prompts conversations such as "You know what I want to do this weekend?" (I'm thinking Auto show, chocolate fest, sleeping in, taping the rental ceiling, you know, the usual) But, I just answer "What?" "I feel like repiping both kitchens."

Now, the second issue, that absent all the other stuff might grasp our attention, is the randomly leaking wall. Before we can really deal with that though, we need to move our bedroom to another room in the house so we can demo part of the wall. In the interim, it's just peel off the paint around anywhere we see moisture. Since it only happened when it got ridiculously cold, I'm hoping that the leakage will subside. (I think it will remain positive temperature wise the next couple days!). But, we have no idea what is causing the leakage, nor how to fix it.

Then, the third issue is electrical. Of course, the freezing pipes and the random leaking was not enough, but now, circuits are tripping, and we have no idea why. We run our microwave, and the circuit trips. This is new wiring. It's just really odd. Something we need to look at.

So, to me, that sounds like rebellion.

Mysterious Wall Problem

2007-02-06T07:57:00.000-06:00

A really bizarre thing is going on with our wall. I was all set to post a photo and say "what on earth can it be?" Now, I need help it figuring out possible causes.

This is a section of our bedroom wall. Behind the wall is a chimney (that vents our boilers). The wall itself is plaster, with a skim coat of compound on top, followed by latex paint. (The plaster had a mixture of paint on it as well, oil and the like).

As you can see from the photo, it appears that moisture is in the wall, and is collecting at the "bubble" points. (this is the photo from this morning)

The "water" issue starts at the picture molding and works it's way down. There are no other apparent areas anywhere else on the wall.

The cosmetic fix is easy-relieve pressure, let the water out, scrape, patch and paint. But, more troubling is if water is getting in, where is it coming from, and how can we stop it from coming in?

Of course, all this is happening in our one finished room which doesn't make us remotely happy. Our bedroom to boot.

Oh, an another fact for anyone who didn't read the "unfreezing pipes" post, is that it is currently -1 out. The past few days have been extremely cold.(ie. highs under 5 degrees) Our bedroom has a mega radiator so is really warm.

Unfreezing pipes

2007-02-05T15:40:00.000-06:00

Chicago is colder than Anchorage today. (and probably yesterday, as well) We've had a bunch of days with highs in the single digits. Nothing like waking up to the current temperature of -8 with windchills of -25 to -35. Needless to say, I'm taking the opportunity to spend as little time out of the house as possible.

What wonderous task did we accomplish this weekend as a result? Yep, the title gives me away-we spent several hours unfreezing our pipes.

First, to all those cold weather newbies out there- how do I prevent my pipes from freezing?

1. Do not, if at all possible, have water pipes running through outside walls. If you must do it, add a lot of insulation, and if possible insulation with Heat Tape

2. Keep your heat on! It's tempting to save money by turning your heat off when you leave town in the winter. However, unless you completely drain your system and turn off the water supply, be prepared to come home to a mess. After our tenants turned off their heat last year resulting in their heating pipes freezing, we now suggest 62 degrees as the appropriate temperature. Depending on your insulation situation, I've heard suggestions of a minimum heat of at least 55 degrees.

3. If you know there will be a period of time of really cold weather, leave the hot and cold water trickling for any fixture that has piping in exterior walls.

4. You can also leave the cabinets open underneath fixtures to insure more warmth getting to the pipes.

My problem? I forgot to leave the cold water at a trickle. Whenever I used the kitchen sink, I'd turn the hot water on. Since I was using it frequently, I didn't think there'd be a problem, but I forgot to turn the cold water on for a couple days.

Okay, your pipes are frozen (since no water is coming out of the tap)- What do you do?

1. Open up the cabinets under the fixture that won't dispense water. We usually grab a space heater and put it under there (not unattended, and a safe heater, use caution and follow manufacturer's instructions)

2. Figure out where you can get access to pipes, as well as the most likely "freezing" location. For us, this usually means removing the stove, and/or dishwasher. We cut into the drywall the first time we had a problem (Christmas Eve after Midnight Mass in 2004), which makes it easier. If you haven't cut into the drywall before, you will need to do this. (use a utility knife or drywall knife to score/cut the drywall, and take it out).

It really helps that we have photos of our piping. If you are doing any renovation, I highly recommend taking photos of all the piping before drywall goes up.

3. Once you get to the pipes, heat them up using a hair dryer or heat gun. Leave the water "running" so you can hear when you've accomplished your goal.

4. If all this "fails" you can always call a plumber who may have the capability to put an electrical charge through the pipes, depending on the distance between the accessible pipe and the sink. (I got an estimate of $700 or so for this and was told the total length of pipe could only be 75 feet or so. It really depends on what the plumber's tools are as the plumber who came said that was the length of their cord but they came bigger.)

As a final caution, which probably goes without saying, but it is imperative to deal with frozen pipes ASAP. If left alone, pipes will burst, wreaking havoc. (water damage, etc.) My Sister-in-law's neighbor went away on vacation and came home to a completely flooded house. (the water supply was not turned off so once the pipe burst, water kept on streaming out)

Five things

2007-01-23T22:00:00.001-06:00

Yep, I've been tagged. It's been a bit of a crazy week, so I'm a little late in the game to actually post my five things. For those non housebloggers out there that read the blog (are there non housebloggers who read the blog?), five things is something that is going around all the houseblogs. One houseblogger lists five things that others might not know about them, then tags five more housebloggers to tell five things. I was tagged by Jocelyn over at Chicago 2-Flat. (a great houseblog to check out, if you haven't already. Chicago 2-Flat was the first blog that I read (that Glenn actually pointed out to me) and the rest is history).

Anyway, my five things:

1. I have a bird phobia. I discovered this initially when I was in London during high school. (it's the nasty rodents with wings, pigeons, that really upset me). The ironic thing is birds seem to gravitate towards me as a result. When I was 5 one flew down the chimney flue. One flew into my house in high school. And now, we have a bird condo thing going on our back porch (not intentionally!). It's party central back there. With no exaggeration, there will be at least 10 birds hanging out at any given time. (until i furiously bang on the wall) .

It's also a real popular place to nest. (for those who think "oh, how cute" nesting over a staircase is pretty inconvenient). This is where we take our trash out. When birds are learning to fly, they need to take huge breathers on the stairs-that really complicates things.

2. I was an election lawyer in Wisconsin for the last presidential election. (oh, and with that, I'm also a lawyer). I went up that way to insure that all individuals legally entitled to vote were allowed to vote. (Wisconsin has some really open election laws allowing residents to register the day of). It was an extremely long day which was also sort of invigorating. (nothing like insuring that constitutional rights are protected). I furiously had to argue at the end of the night that some ballots be counted (including appealing to the head election judge of the State). Sort of funny because the one ballot I argued vociferously for was for the other guy. Oh, well. I'd like to be involved with cleaning up Chicago politics but don't know where to begin.

3. I walked down the red carpet at the Grammy's and fans screamed my name. They screamed Christina, to be exact. No, not actually screaming for me, but Christina Aguilera, who chose the same time to walk in. It was the first Latin Grammy awards. I won an all expense paid trip to go to the show in Los Angeles from a contest at a Latin club in downtown Chicago. My number was called, and I was promptly interviewed on a Spanish radio station. (I don't speak Spanish). The station was obviously upset that I won, but rules are rules-and they couldn't exactly discriminate against me. All and all the trip was fun-and really, how many others have people screaming their name when they walk down a red carpet.

4. I can make gourmet meals, but have a lot of problems with pancakes. (though supposedly I'm improving). We make some pretty good meals around here when we have a chance. (ie. Christmas Eve we had herb roasted beef tenderloin, cauliflower soup, scalloped potatoes, broccoli puree, homemade rolls and 8 kinds of Christmas cookies, all made from scratch, and perfectly timed so everything was served hot.) Now pancakes, made from a mix, I can't pour on and flip without some disastorous results. Case in point- the last pancake I made:

5. As Glenn says, my family is a banyon tree and his family tree is actually more like a small shrub. This created a fair amount of stress when we planned the wedding. See, Glenn's total family, cousins, aunts/uncles, not including himself or me, is 9 people. My mom, on the other hand, is one of nine. Glenn really wanted a small wedding-he suggested 50 (and I explained that would mean that he wouldn't be able to invite anyone). We settled on 100. It was agonizing to decide on my side that certain second cousins would not be invited. There was just a lot of stress around that (and really, Glenn wasn't the problem).

I'm going to have to get back to you about who to tag (and requests?) At this stage, I'm not quite sure who was missed...

The importance of having a camera

2007-01-16T15:35:00.000-06:00

Our camera finally arrived and we are back in blogging/photo taking business. No fears about wasting time getting to use it. Arrived last night, played around with it, and this morning, we had the first great photo. What might spark my interest so quickly? transformations around the house? Cute pets? a neat piece of woodwork or other house feature?

Well, of course not! A burglar stealing my neighbors door. I noticed a guy head into my neighbors garage who clearly did not belong. (ie. it wasn't my neighbor). So, I called 911 and took a photo. Got a photo of the burglar leaving the garage with the door. At this point, I've been interviewed a whole bunch of times. The original police officers were practically giddy that I had a photo of the perpetrator in action. Now, I have to wait for a line-up.

The burglar apparently has been convicted 5 times for burglary before. I wonder if this is the guy that stole our air compressor.

Anyway, so keep your camera handy--you never know what you might catch.

Where we stand

2007-01-12T11:47:00.000-06:00

We're still ticking around but our free time has largely surrounded getting a new computer for me (after the laptop screen died) and a new camera (after my father-in-law dropped ours in a bioluminescent lagoon in Puerto Rico). I'm happy to report that our new desktop arrived last night and once we transfer the info from my sick laptop to the new one, we'll be back in computing business at home. My laptop is a relative antique in computing terms (circa 2001) so it will be a transition to a brand spanking new one. The first big decision after arriving is what on earth to name the thing. I didn't know you had to do that these days.

Now, the camera pursuit has been a whole other matter. We just tried to replace our nikon and ordered sight unseen promptly upon our return. (we need photos!) This week, the camera arrived and shocked us by not including a view finder. We didn't realize that we had to request this. Our last camera was only a year old, and it had a view finder. How are you supposed to take pictures on a sunny day without a view finder? So, back the camera went, and on to the next one-a Canon, which we are anxiously awaiting.

Once all the technology is set, we will move on to making some repairs in the rental and getting that back on the market. Both an exciting and nervewracking juncture. We'll be excited to get the rent, but less excited in sharing our house.

Bioluminescent lagoon, laptop lifespan, our new challenges

2007-01-03T18:39:00.000-06:00

We've just returned from a trip to Puerto Rico to celebrate Glenn's parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Even if we were going to blog while we were away, the Internet was very hard to come by. Glenn actually really needed it for his real work, but nothing could be found. Then, we found in our guidebook a warning that looking for the Internet could be "quite frustrating."

Anyway, I digress. The trip did spur two things that could make blogging a bit more difficult. First, our digital camera met a pretty serious fate. One night (this past Saturday, to be exact), my father-in-law, a photographer, was getting ready to take his expensive camera on a kayak to this bioluminescent lagoon. Glenn and I (actually, I think Glenn may have been the one who was the most vociferous) begged him not to risk it but to use our cheap little camera instead. After some persuading, my father-in-law agreed. Well, fast forward to the end of the trip, and my father in law tells me that I'm being quite forgiving about the camera. Which, of course, I don't believe. But then, they tell me that in a freak kayaking accident his kayak was rammed, and out went our camera into the water.

We have to get on getting a new camera real soon. What kind of blog doesn't have pictures?

[as an aside, my father-in-law then lent us his pocket camera and his camera case met a similar disastorous fate. (camera is fine-I still need to return it though after I find a case to replace it with)]

In other blog related news, first thing this morning I turned on my laptop to find that the screen died. I'm now using another screen hooked up to my laptop but this will pose new challenges to the blog. No fear...now that we are in 2007 I'll try to get back to my 2006 pace.

Hope everyone is having a wonderful new year!

Swallowed up by non-house stuff...

2006-12-09T13:08:00.000-06:00

I guess I've been a bit quiet lately. It's the nature of the season, I suppose. After a furious level of house activity, plus the kitchen remodel of my mom's, the rest of our lives have sort of taken over, and I didn't think the house blog would be the way to go on that.

I've taken on another extracurricular activity that might swallow my time. I'd like to do something to clean up Chicago[just call me crazy now]. (the latest travesty in the Chicago area is our county commissioner. She was made temporary President of the county board and decided to quit 20 some days after her re-election to commissioner. By resigning, she gets to take on a much higher pension based on a measly 4 month tenure in office as President. Not only does she get that benefit, but because she resigned, she got to request that her son be made commissioner in her place. The "election" happened in the basement of an Alderman's office by "committeemen." Now, her son represents us to the County board. Of course, the powers that be did that without a general election, which is legal, but hopefully needless to say REALLY upset me as well as a number of other people I talk to). (Nothing like being disenfranchised coupled with a huge pay raise to get me all riled up). I also had jury duty. (quite an experience in the largest criminal court in the country, but I wasn't chosen).

Anyway, on more pleasant distractions, there's all that Christmas shopping and related research on gifts for my DIYer husband.

But, finally, house related, I'm trying to finish up a project to strip the original living room molding. At this point, I'm sanding. (one of those relatively thankless jobs) that just are not that exciting to write about or take pictures of. It's at the stage now that it doesn't look that great. I'd like all the dust generation done before putting up the Christmas decorations, but Christmas decorations might win out.

Then, Glenn's been working on replacing our light fixtures in the living room, dining room, and adding lights in a pass through between the kitchen and dining room. We haven't had much time to work on things, and now this weekend, he's sick.

I still owe a couple posts about the kitchen refinishing project and will really try to get to those in the near term. (I actually drafted a long post that disappeared-oh well.)

Tropical birds and a blizzard a.k.a. Chicago Fall

2006-11-30T18:11:00.000-06:00

As I write this we are waiting in great anticipation for the first major snowstorm of the season. 8-12" with high winds as a bonus. Of course, that could really translate into anything from 1-3" to 2 feet. (with the combination of "lake effect snow" and the unpredictability of the weather-we've had the pendulum swing both ways after a snow prediction.

So, imagine my surprise when I survey my outside (after the cries of the next door neighbor's doberman that lives outside year-round) to find these creatures:

Sort of seem out of place-don't they? (there were 5 of the bright lime green birds eating those berries). I'll have to see if they come back on Friday and I could get a better photo.

After some careful research (performed by Glenn)I think we pinpointed who these creatures are.
Monk parakeets

And, for the record, we do not live in Hyde Park-so these guys are moving at least a little from there. Still a far cry from Argentina.

We're back -kitchen remodel across many miles

2006-11-27T16:39:00.000-06:00

From arguably our most ambitious project ever. We loaded up our tools and braved the 14 hour drive to Connecticut to renovate my mom's kitchen the week of Thanksgiving. Some questioned the feasibility of actually getting it done within our constraints (I promised my mom we'd be out of the kitchen Wednesday/Thursday so as not to impede Thanksgiving). I would have liked to have done some posts while we were away, but we only had one computer between us, and Glenn had to sneak in some work on it each night after the kitchen work.

I'll break up the project into 2 posts-this one, which will give an overview, and another one with more of the nitty gritty details.

Our goal with the project was to increase the marketability and selling price for my mom when she sells her place in the spring. We saw the most value in the kitchen, and decided to paint the cabinets, dress the cabinets up with molding, install a new counter, sink, and hardware, and upgrade lighting. (also in some other areas of the house). Before we arrived, my mom emptied her cabinets, and took down some of the doors. We were able to complete the project over 5 days, with largely just Glenn and I working, and a fair amount of the day on Thursday taken up by Thanksgiving. The total cost (materials) was less than $600.

But, without further ado, how things looked when we finished up:

Our little side project

2006-11-16T13:06:00.000-06:00

As I mentioned, we are in the middle of planning a renovation of my mom's house before she sells it. This past weekend was spent largely doing preparations for the renovation. (and not one iota of work was done on our house) In honor of Veterans Day, we had a 10% discount off at Lowe's and Home Depot, so we wanted to get what supplies we needed-and that was only this past weekend.)

Our plan right now is to remodel my Mom's kitchen (paint cabinets, change hardware, replace counter and sink). Time permitting, we will also be changing out some light fixtures, and perhaps some other tasks. (the list is long, but Glenn and I could only do so much in a short visit).This weekend, we also wanted to figure out all our options for tweaking the cabinets. (they were made on site from plywood).

The whole process has been extremely challenging even before we get started with the physical labor. Largely because of the lack of information. I've only spent a few days in my mom's house (not the house I grew up in) and I haven't been back that way for about a year. It's been hard to come up with a plan without photos (getting any sort of photo is quite a challenge, and the ones I've gotten are largely extreme closeups of items). Then, there have been delays in getting measurements etc. We have certain ideas of what needs to happen (ie. the money is in the kitchen and the bathrooms) While my mom, since she's been living there, has different pet peaves (popcorn ceilings). I think we have finally reached a consensus of what needs to be done.

Because of the distance between our house and my mom's, we need to have planning done before hand so we aren't wasting a day figuring out a plan. The closest home improvement store is 45 minutes away. (we anticipate many trips to the store so plan on staying close to the home improvement stores).

I imagine much of our free time in the near future will be related to this project as we finalize details, collect materials etc. (not too exciting blog material, but we will see)

Thank you to Veterans

2006-11-11T11:19:00.001-06:00

In honor of Veterans' Day, I just wanted to thank all the Veterans out there who might come onto our blog. We really appreciate the service you have given to our country and the sacrifices you have made to insure our freedom.

What next?

2006-11-11T11:19:00.000-06:00

After our furious preparation before winter of projects outside and the big radiator stripping project our project list is open for negotiation. Of course, the impending holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas will also jockey for position. (and we might move into operation "clear space for tree"-but that will wait for a couple weeks) Funny how R&R is so necessary for sanity, but it's also really great at pushing you off the motivation train.

On our "short list"

1. Prepare rental for renting including some ceiling patchwork related to the flooring project, some painting, reworking the lease, and prepping the marketing plan, as well as some other things.
2. Install the door molding we just found. (this should go pretty quickly, I just need to prime/paint it).
3. Finish off an old doorway we converted to a passthrough from our dining room to kitchen. (this actually is a fairly big project as we need to install a built-in, do some electrical work, figure out the molding around the brick, and figure out counter material) It would be great if we finished this before the new year, but with the holidays and all that those entail, that might not be feasible.

As a "side" project, we are also simultaneously planning a quick renovation of my Mom's house before she sells it. I'll have to write a whole bunch of posts about all the trials of planning a renovation at someone's else's house-but that will come later.

We also are still sort of in "unpack" mode rediscovering our winter clothes and trying to figure out where to put them in the improved dressing room. (I'm still missing some clothes, so I'm hoping to find them soon!) It's sort of funny right now, because we also have 5 or so dining room chairs sitting in our bedroom, as we are trying to keep our dining and living rooms clear while we work.

But, today, our day will largely be spent doing non-house stuff. It's both Member's appreciation day at the Art Institute and Veteran's Day.

Voting

2006-11-07T17:31:00.000-06:00

I hope everyone did it. This was a very challenging voting year for me. But, despite the choices in front of me (and how meager they might be), I'm very thankful to have the right to vote.

We almost had a contractor...

2006-11-06T08:16:00.000-06:00

We were "this" close to having someone come in and do our stairs. I suppose, there's still the possibility. I just saw the potential contractor (he was to start Wednesday) and we were going over the work again. It came out that he wasn't planning on staining our stairs. (which is what we wanted). His contract says "refinishing" Whenever we get floors refinished, that includes stain. (which I explained to him) When he came around the first time, he never asked if we wanted stain. Then, he acted surprised that I wanted stain. (and wanted to charge me an additional $200 for it!) I'm already shocked at how much the stairs would cost when we've done the vast majority of the work already.

So many contractors write very vague contracts and it's just bound to make both parties unhappy. I make a point to make sure everything is written down ahead of time before work is started. We had some situations with "oral" contracts, or where one party speaks English as a second language and that compounds the problem-one of us thinks one thing and the other something else. We've learned...

The reason really why we were going to go with him was because of the drywall work that he was going to do. I might still ask him to do that. (It's to repair some ceilings after the big flooring project).

This weekend was spent doing prep work for this contractor, oh well.

Home Sweet Home

2006-11-05T09:06:00.000-06:00

Last night we spent our first night in our new and improved bedroom. (As a recap, we moved out of our unit back in May for a big flooring project, and we're supposed to move up again by July 1. Due to an unexpected garage project, trying to figure out molding patching problems, and radiator work that kept the heat off, our move-in was massively delayed.

But, we are now mostly moved back. (still moving things in the bedroom/dressing room/bathroom-that should be done today)

It's great to be back home!

Back from our R&R weekend...

2006-10-31T08:53:00.000-06:00

Of course, rehab stuff creeps into R&R places that you would least expect it to. After all the radiator work last week, Thursday, I went to go get a mani/pedi. My hands were looking pretty horrible from all the sandblasting, sanding, and just general work over the last few weeks, so I had to explain this to the manicurist. At the conclusion of the manicure, when my hands are under the dryer, the manicurist (a man) starts grilling me about our work. Then, he tries to get me to diagnose his radiator problem. I kept on saying "you should call someone." Kind of hard to explain, particularly when English was not the native language of the manicurist.

So, once I was able to leave the manicurist, Glenn and I headed to Miami for a wedding. It was great to get away and not have some house item pulling at us. Of "houseblog" related interest, we toured a neat property built in the 1880's, the barnacle, in Coconut Grove. We were amazed by all the Craftsman details and really enjoyed it. If you are ever in the Miami area and looking for something to do, I'd highly recommend it. We had a private tour and it only cost $1/pp!

We just came home last night. The next few days will probably be most concerned with all that "return from a trip" stuff. There's also Halloween which is sort of a nightmare around here. Kids start coming around 4 and we get hundreds. Parents try to get candy, and then as the evening wears on, kids start coming by not in costume. Only half the kids say trick or treat. Last year, there'd be instances where the kid would stand on the walk and the parent would come up to get the candy.

I had to walk far on Halloween, and we didn't have sidewalks. Houses are so close together here-I don't understand why a child can't just come up and say "trick or treat" then thank you. I think Glenn might pull up at the corner and save me at some point.

The first year we were here, I was tiling a bathroom on Halloween and ran out of candy. It was really upsetting to have costumed kids on the front steps and nothing to give them.

Heat and molding solution

2006-10-26T08:10:00.000-05:00

As of 10ish last night, the heat is on! So far, so good...so let's all keep our fingers crossed.

In other news this week, our molding problem has also been solved! I called around, and found a place that would allow us to bring in our wood, took off 1/8th of an inch, and then even routed the edges! So, now we have most of our door molding sitting in the front hall waiting for primer and paint. We're pretty excited about this. We did have to pay for this, but the cost ended up being about .55/lf less than our other alternative and we didn't need to buy a bench planer!

To sum up--problem (1) non standard molding size- solved (2) radiator angled piping-solved...now if I could just find an iron worker, all at This Old Chicago 2 Flat would be good.

But, the molding will have to wait. Due to the completion of the neverending (or so it seemed) radiator project, we will have some R&R this weekend.

Momentary Heat

2006-10-25T08:02:00.000-05:00

*sigh* How many times have you completely filled 9 radiators and drained them in a 28 hour period of time? I don't think our living room radiator appreciated being referred to as Devil's Spawn.

Just a little update on the neverending radiator saga and the brick wall we hit on Monday night. Glenn got home early from work yesterday, and we got back to working on our beautiful, freshly painted, ornate radiators. To counteract the angled valve, we took off the dial, added another pipe, and I applied pressure with my legs to maneuver the valve perpendicularly, while Glenn worked on maneuvering the radiator into place, and connecting it. We got it all hooked up, and started refilling the radiators. All was looking REALLY good. Then, after they were filled up we went around to look for any signs of water. We found a miniscule drip (ie. a drip of water every 40 seconds or so) and had to drain the whole system to work on the radiators again. By this point, Glenn was clear out of Teflon tape, so a trip to Menards was in order.

Got home around 9 p.m. and went through the process yet one more time. We got better this time around, as Glenn created a bunch of "water buckets"
that could collect water once all the radiators were filled. (with 2 of us, it is still hard to monitor 9 radiators as they fill up, and we didn't have enough buckets on hand). The shooting water incident from Monday also was a result of my excitingly fully bleeding all the radiators instead of just doing it a little. Tonight, Glenn monitored my bleeding which definitely helped. After filling up, we diligently examined every valve and pipe to insure nothing was leaking and turned on the heat! (yeah!) After an hour, Glenn rechecked the radiators, and now, the dressing room radiator decided to enter the fray. Now it was leaking!! (one drip every 15 seconds or so).

So, at 11:45 we drained the system for the 3rd time in 28 hours.

Tonight, plan C-new valves for everyone!

We hit a brick wall

2006-10-24T07:53:00.000-05:00

In the figurative sense. Our living room radiator has switched over from problem child to devil's spawn. Last night we came very close to having the heat turned on, but we're having a pretty significant problem with the piping to the living room radiator.

To give you a better idea, this is the piping underneath the floorboards. As you can see, the piping angles up so much so that the valve is not perpendicular to the floor. Somehow, when the radiator was installed, they were able to get this to work and it's something that we never noticed before we took the radiator out. I wonder if by leveling the floor, we made the problem worse.

We did notice the problem but tried to hook it up. (this was extremely challenging because with connecting 2 sides of pipes we had to pull the pipes sitting in the floor apart to sneak the radiator in. Anyone who's worked with radiators know the difficulty in this. I was on the ground pushing the pipe with my feet, while Glenn maneuvered the radiator.) It took a bit to fit it into the slot, but we did.

Anyway, so yesterday, we thought everything was hooked up (and we were prety excited about this) we started to fill the radiators up. I put towels under all the connections for safety purposes so that if there was any sort of leak we would catch it early on. Then, we both ran from radiator to radiator to bleed them and check to see if they were filled. (this takes some time)

We've drained radiators several times before as well as filled them up. For the first time yesterday though, we did not hook on a "just in case" empty cup near the bleed nozzle. (usually we caught the radiators before they started spewing water). Well, of course this wasn't the case yesterday. All of a sudden EVERY radiator started spewing water and we were running around trying to get them turned off ASAP and cleaning up the water. (during the process, I got absolutely soaked as I caught the water with my pants!) Then, we noticed the living room radiator was actually leaking and had to do the mad dash to find things to collect the water as well as to clean up the huge water puddle on our brand new hard wood floor. Glenn tried to tighten the connection, but the issue was that the angle of the valve was preventing a good seal. We never noticed this while it was filling up.

Of course, to add to the problem, there's some water damage to the rental apartment and more specifically, our current bedroom, so we also needed to do ceiling water drainage. (and move a lot of stuff out of the bedroom before we did this. I got a whole bunch of exercise running upstairs then downstairs, converting our wet/dry vac into wet mode, grabbing towels, tarps blankets, etc.) Thankfully, water really didn't come out of the ceiling, so only a little must have gotten through. We'll have to monitor the situation to see about what long term impact this has in the plaster.

Now, after that whole debacle, we need to come up with plan B. I'm going to go get a cap so that if worse comes to worse, we can get the heat (absent the living room radiator turned on). Also, some additional piping. We've done some troubleshooting and have some ideas that we need to fine tune to get the valve perpendicular to the floor. (if I stand on the left side, it could work, but we need to see if we can convert the valve top into a pipe-it's hard to stand on a 1/4 inch lip!)

Anyway, this is just one of those things and one of those reasons that anyone dealing with an older home need to have patience and problem solving skills. When you hit a brick wall, you don't give up, you just figure a way around it, which is the stage we are in.

I must say too, that we've gotten used to this and despite the obvious crisis (water shooting everywhere, a completely filled radiator leaking onto the floor, the ceiling leaking, etc.) we wethered it well. Neither of us spent time screaming or let it get us into a bad mood-which it could have. It's sort of funny if you think about it. If there could have been a videotape...

So, the radiator saga continues....

Bring on the heat!

2006-10-23T15:26:00.000-05:00

And no, our heat is not on yet. For the first time over the weekend, I used our new heat gun to do some paint stripping. What a difference! I HIGHLY recommend it for anyone having to do some stripping. It works so much quicker and is cleaner than the the options (stripping and sanding).

We had a couple areas with original molding and at least 1/8th an inch of paint built up on it. In our bedroom, we just sanded, and did what prep we could, but now, a couple years later the paint is cracking and not looking that great. So, with the rest of the original stuff we thought we should strip everything off. Handling stripper in an area with new paint, new floors, etc. would have been quite dangerous. It was great to have an alternative. I just pointed the gun, and quickly stripped off all layers of paint in a matter of minutes. I also needed to use a respirator because the fumes are pretty strong. (would not recommend doing it around kids). After using the heat gun, I sanded very briefly to get off the excess varnish that was left on the wood.

And if you are thinking (as we thought for an instant) "oh, it looks so nice now that it is down to the wood-you should just stain it!" The wood is in bad shape. Someone took great care in stapling all over the place. (it would really just be easier to do a skim coat of wood filler). And heck, we have all that other painted molding now installed.

Now, for those radiators--we are close to heat, really we are. Reinstalling the radiators are just a bit more complicated because of the raised flooring, two pipes to connect, and a cut out radiator that needed to be repiped.

Radiator 1- the dressing room radiator, created its own havoc this weekend because it did not want to fit in with the new window sill that Glenn installed. So, Glenn needed to cut out some of the window molding, prime and paint it before he could install. (which he did! yeah!)

Radiator 2- Dining room. Well, the floor raising required Glenn to replace these pipes again. He originally cut this radiator out I think in 2003, and it had already been repiped, but he needed to repipe it again, which he did, and we got it intalled. Yeah!

Now, the weekend problem child: Radiator 3, the living room radiator. We were missing a part that is not carried at home depot (a 1 1/4 in. return el). I hopefully get to go pick that up today from the plumbing supply store. (woke up to hearing that there was a 3 alarm fire a few blocks away from the store with "noxious fumes")

There's a good chance that we'll have heat turned on tonight, but I'm sure we'll be much warmer by the weekend at the latest.

Oh, and I'm sure that next summer there will be other radiator projects-we'll just do our best to do them in June.

Sexism in home improvement

2006-10-21T07:59:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I went to Home Depot to pick up the wood for our trim. (select pine 1x4x6). As I was loading the wood in the car I was approached by a man in a tool belt who says "so, looks like you are doing some trim work. Are you doing it all by yourself?" I reply "no my husband will be doing it." To that, the guy walks away. I figured that he was looking to pick up some business but since I have a husband, I would not need help.

This isn't the first time I've been hit with the "oh you are a woman and can't be doing home improvement" situation. Shortly after we bought the place, we hired a few people to straighten our stairs that were pulling away from the wall. During the time, we were also working on framing. Glenn would handle the nailing, and might make a list of wood sizes to cut, and I would handle the cutting. Worked out well. Well, one of the stair workers was in disbelief that I would be using a power tool and had to watch me use the miter saw. After I made my cut, the guy applauded! A power tool! Unbelievable. That requires no brute strength, no technical skills, etc. What would they have done if they were here when I took down a wall, or the myriad of other activities that women traditionally don't do.

There are countless other examples which can be infuriating at times. (and don't get me started on the lack of work boots for women!)

Touchups gone wrong

2006-10-18T21:29:00.000-05:00

In preparation for the radiator installation this weekend (yeah!) I decided to touch up some areas of the wall that got nicked and patched up in connection with the big flooring project. Turns out that the color they gave me at Home Depot, did not match the color on the wall. So, now, we get to decide whether we should just paint the whole room over again the "wrong color" or go see if we can get the "right color" made up and retouch up my touch ups. The irony in this is I remember when we chose this color we really agonized over the right shade, choosing to match the color in a rug and some art we were planning on hanging in there. (both of which are now well hidden). To make matters worse, we had painted our living room this same color, so now we have the prospect of painting both rooms again. (I think this is because I was saying earlier today that I was running out of areas to paint!). Oh well.

Some projects are just so much more fullfilling...

2006-10-17T17:12:00.000-05:00

There's so much work on the house that only gets noticed if you don't do it. ie. taping walls, prepping walls for paint, sanding, putting final paint coats or extra poly on are just some of those that come to mind as the "extremely necessary, but unfilling".

I've got to say, probably my absolutely favorite project in the house is putting color on the walls. It's relatively quick and then boom! instant change! I just painted our apartment door red. It matches the hallway color, the other side would be white. My short list of items to do is touching up the paint in preparation for radiator entry-but that's not as much fun. Necessary. Yes, it will look better when it's done, but it's not a project that excites me- so that's why I painted the door red. I even did it while it was still hanging! (usually we put doors on sawhorses, but I was determined.

Other more fullfilling projects include planting things in the yard (wow! what a difference) and putting up molding. (of course, Glenn is doing that so I get to watch the work, but boy, what a difference it makes just sticking a piece of molding up. the filling, caulking, sanding and final paint coat does make things look better-but it's not the big boom of sticking the molding up.

It's great to be in the stage we are now where the "boom" factors are greater then the never ending chores. (though we still have some of those up our sleeves).

As we get closer to the time to open our boxes of belongings (many of which have been in place since 2003) it gets more exciting. A flurry of activity when you can see the finish line. (though if I look at my to do list or show it to anyone, without showing the before photos reaching that finish line might not seem as close as it does to us)

Oh, and our favorite question "So when do you think you'll be done?" The answer, as any rehabber or homeowner will attest "what's done?"

The radiator saga continued

2006-10-15T16:11:00.000-05:00

Today....drumroll please...we finished sandblasting the last radiator!! This last radiator went through 7 bags of sand and we didn't get all of it off-but 350 lbs of sand I think are quite enough-the temperatures aren't going to be warming up much until March or April. (though we could dream). The paint on the last radiator was quite determined to stay on-pressure washing wasn't as effective, neither was stripping (though both helped). I jumped to the sandblasting much earlier in the game. The last radiator was also the biggest-8 columns versus the 5 or 6 column others.

We also primed, and painted the radiator-stainless steel our ultimate color choice.

Finally, we used the hoist again and brought the last radiator up to the second floor. I'm happy to report that we didn't take out the electrical service, nor the side of the house while transporting the radiator. Much more calming for it to be on the second floor now though.

Now, we just have to figure out the hooking up part. The issue is that since we added new subfloor, cork (for sound absorbtion), and new hardwood, the floor levels are different than when we took them out. Next weekend, we will play the "how much could we pull the pipes up" game, and ultimately, we might need to switch out some of the pipe for new ones. But, that's next week. The fact that we have all new flooring makes reinstalling the radiators more challenging because we now really care what happens to the floors.

Glenn had to work a bunch today on his "real job," so radiator hooking up did not happen. We have disconnected and reconnected the vast majority of our radiators, so we will have that working with us next week.

Oh, here's the stainless color:

Sandblasting Tips Part III

2006-10-14T10:05:00.000-05:00

Definitely a learning curve on this. Our latest learning is that you need to check your sandblaster gun periodically for wear. We bought one on Saturday night, I used it for maybe 7-8 hours and apparently, broke it. If I had checked it at some point along the way, I could have exchanged a part, and the sandblaster would have had a bit longer lifespan. Oh well. Maybe this is just something that everyone does-but I had no idea and did not think that a mere 7-8 hours of use would mean the end.

This morning, we needed to run out to the store to get a new one. On the positive side, the sandblaster from Menard's had a 2 year warranty, so we were able to exchange it.

Tomorrow, we whould be done with sandblasting-which is quite exciting around here. (1) no more sand everywhere! (2) priming/painting the last radiator-meaning heat is in our really near future.

Our Summer Vacation- Part 1 -Major Flooring project

2006-10-12T10:42:00.000-05:00

In light of the first freeze (brrr) as well as the first SNOW, I thought it might be good to reflect on some of our summer. (Currently, I have my flowers wrapped in blankets, in hopes that there are still a few good weeks left in them!)

We didn’t start up the blog until the tail end of Summer 2006, which was a very busy home renovating time, filled with many blog-worthy stories. For some, summers are meant to include time at the beach, weekends away, etc. but it is also prime time for a number of projects. (No worries, I’m sure weekends away at the beach are in the future) Every summer, we have a laundry list of items to accomplish that are best done when the temperatures outside are cooperating.

Prior to the summer, our plan after we got our tenants out (April 30th) was to commence a big flooring project in our unit. We planned to pull up all the flooring (including subfloor) in the front 2/3rds of our unit, add insulation (sooo needed with tenants!), level the floor (pretty topsy turvy up there before!), and add new flooring (carpet in the bedroom, new hardwood in the living room dining room). There were side projects associated with the flooring project including adding a couple circuits and outlets and miscellaneous work that Glenn and I would do. I had the project carefully orchestrated, coordinating with different contractors so that we’d be moved back upstairs and could have a July 1 move-in date for a new tenant.

Issue 1- Tenants floors
Well, as previously described, our dear tenants decided to self sand portions of the brand new hardwood, and really scratched up other areas of the floor. And, they were only in there for a whopping 10 months! So, we needed to sand/buff/refinish all those floors before we temporarily moved in there while work was done in our unit. No biggee-still on schedule for July 1. (I’m not new to this home renovation business-so I tacked on extra time for problems like this). It wouldn’t be THAT much work, as I’d just have the person hired to do our floor, do the rental’s floor first, then come up a couple weeks later to do the work in our unit.

Issue 2- The City Garage Department
So, I interviewed contractors and located someone to handle all the flooring issues. Signed the contract, faxed it in, then the mail came in the first week in May. The city was ordering us to repair or tear down our garage “right away.”

A reminder this was our garage when we bought the place:

I’ll explain the garage debacle in “Part 2” but, to sum it up, it was very grueling, stressful, emotionally draining, and we had 2 major projects that needed to happen “right away.”

Flooring Project
Despite all that hullabaloo with the tenants and the city grabbing our attention about another project, we were set to get started the Tuesday after Memorial Day. We brought in 3 guys from Labor Ready to handle the demo (pulling up all the old flooring and subfloor). 100 years of dirt seeping through the floor boards really made a mess! The “grime factor” was made worse by the 90 degree + heat (and of course, humidity). (ahh…those were the days…:sigh:) I was involved in overseeing them and doing my own little projects so I too became awfully dirty on day 1. At 4:45 the prospect of a shower was quite inviting-and I was anticipating when the workers would finish up.

Then, I heard the sound of breaking wood. I look over, and one of the guys is standing outside our bathroom, looking down into the bathroom below. He had stepped through the ceiling! Pushing drywall, plenty of dirt, and splinters of wood into that previously inviting shower…(our only clean, shower worthy bathroom)

A view from upstairs, looking into the bathroom:

So, now we have the rental ceiling to fix. (which we still need to do)…And in the near term, despite my exhaustion, I would need to clean the bathroom before bathing.

In any case, the project continued on and we eventually got our new floors. Here’s a smattering of pictures from the work.

Leveling the floors, and insulation:

With leveling the floor, the transitions to the other areas are the house were a bit challenging, but i think the flooring people did a good job.

We also found some surprises in the floor, particularly underneath the flooring near where the radiator sits. The list included, a variety of spoons, an army man, and the top to a bottle.

Furious flurry of activity before winter

2006-10-10T08:20:00.000-05:00

We've been working on a hodge podge of projects quickly in preparation for winter. Sadly, I don't think we'll be able to finish all that we'd like to do before then. (particularly considering the forecast in Chicago for Thursday is for SNOW flurries!) This weekend was quite busy as a result.

Our first priority is finishing up the paint removal of the radiators as well as priming, painting, and reinstalling them. We've made great progress but are feeling pressed for time particularly when we can't decide on a color to paint them. The first one, we painted "aluminum" but it is Tin Man aluminum. (very shiny-stands out-more obvious in person). We bought a whole bunch of other colors Saturday and tested them out Sunday, but still are not both happy. Monday, Glenn went on the hunt for a stainless color in hopes that it will be less obtrusive then the "aluminum" Of course, all this paint color deciding is made more complicated by the fact that there's a Chicago ordinance that noone could sell spray paint within the city borders. Therefore, we must trek out to the suburbs any time we change our mind. Right now, the front runner color options are "aluminum", "stainless", sort of a charcoal gray (to mimic the cast iron color), or white. We had thought about painting them the color of the walls, but then wondered if we sold the place or rented out our unit whether that would be a turn off. (having to paint a green radiator would be a pain)

But, on a more exciting note, in connection with the radiator project, we got our hoist up and running. (the photos show the hoist in action). The dangling radiator is the next one for me to pressure wash, sandblast, prime and paint.

Although installing radiators is an obvious thing to do before the entrance of winter, we also rushed Sunday to paint our concrete fence. Outside of the cosmetic benefits, the paint will protect the fence from splitting or breaking apart. It really is a unique addition to our house, and we are trying to preserve it. It's actually the second time we've had to paint it since we bought the place. (always frustrating when in the midst of a renovation you have to go back and do something over again!). The family who owned the house before us were in concrete, so the fence definitely connects us to our house's history. (oh, and the family that owned the house before us owned it for 80 years so the fence is fairly old) The other concrete fences that used to be on the street are long since gone.

Now, our short list of projects before winter (and you'll see why I just need to give up)
Sand, prime and paint the back deck
Finish garage (add trim, paint trim, install windows, add new door to alley, prep garage side closest to alley for painting, prime, paint, Do a second coat of paint on the garage)
Repair concrete cracks throughout
Add mulch to garden
Caulk exterior holes (ie. around hose bibs)
Paint the fence piping

All of the above will really depend on weather. If it is cold and/or rainy, we can't do any of the painting. (or really the caulking) Once the radiators go in I'll feel much better-they're the most important!

Sandblasting radiators cont.

2006-10-06T10:01:00.000-05:00

The rain finally stopped, new air compressor bought, and we are back to sandblasting/paint removal for our radiators. This time around, we had the recommended air compressor power (the new one has 1.8rhp, 150psi, 4.9 scfm@90psi or 6.3 scfm @40psi)). My preliminary notations were with the less powerful air compressor. Now, with this one, I worked more efficiently, and seemingly got less messy. (though this could just be because the more I sandblast, there's a cumulative effect of just general mess and sand disbursement-I didn't go at it all day this time around)

To give you a better idea of the sandblasting success, I took a photo before I started:

Then, this is 30 minutes and half a 50 lb. bag of sand later:

When sandblasting, my goal was to remove all the paint down to the final "bronze" color. Then, time, sand, and patience remaining, I'd remove all the paint in the most prominent and detail laden areas of the radiator. In order to rest the compressor so it did not overheat, I'd do 30 minutes, than take a 30 minute rest.

Some observations while I worked:
1. It is really important before sandblasting (with the tools we used) to remove the vast majority of the paint. The sandblaster did not work well on really thick areas of paint. I had a few areas where there were segments of paint that may have been mixed with stripper. It was really thick and the sand blaster seemingly did nothing. (or took a REALLY long time to remove it). Sand blasting is best for really detailed work. It might be better with a more powerful system.
2. Remember to remove water from the hose and air compressor periodically. (it builds up). As the sandblasting time wore on, the efficiency decreased, possibly due to water build up.
3. Be well protected, and assume that despite the precautions you will have sand everywhere. Be cautious when you take breaks (ie. don't wash hands and immediately rub your eyes, clean off the sand on your face). Optimally, you will limit your "break areas" to limit tracking sand all throughout the house.
4. It's a long process, so be smart in what you focus on. I don't see a point of spending an hour getting all flecks of paint off the radiator abutting the wall. Perfection is nice, but not really necessary. Focusing on the areas that are readily seen you get a lot more bang for the time spent.
6. If you plan on doing radiator work, do it in May. Every year it seems like we do something related to the radiators and we mean to do it all summer long but we become distracted by other projects. (summer is such a great project time!) We end up racing to get it done when it is 55 degrees out-which is less fun, and more stressful when rain keeps happening. Your social life also takes a nose dive as you explain to friends and family members (who end up thinking that you just don't want to see them and give you plenty of guilt trips-hypothetically, of course), that you can't do X because you must work to get the heat turned on.