Rehabber’s Rehab

No, progress on the house hasn’t stopped, we are still moving full steam ahead. We moved in on Friday as a matter of fact. We’re been out of touch because we still dont have internet set up at the new house. Right now I feel like once I get home I am suddenly in a black hole. Our house has become a pit in which we are suddenly cut off from the world, and our time and energy is sucked away, and am paralyzed because I can’t do anything else but work on the house. It was a little sobering to realize that I really can’t live without internet.

After some back and forth, we had decided to go with DSL. Even though it’s slower, it’s so much cheaper than Comcast, who I feel like they sucker you with their introductory rates, and their customer service sucks. We’ve been happy with the customer service at AT&T so far, and they’ve been very accommodating after we canceled (when I learned that we would have to install the DSL ourselves, and I thought we could get a better deal somewhere else) and then promptly reinstated our service 1/2 hour later when we realized how much Comcast was charging.

However, we are still facing the challenge of the self-install. The set-up package arrived yesterday and I’m going to try to get it running tonight. Although I am a pretty tech savvy person, these things never go smoothly, and I know that there will be some problem. Problem number one will certainly be that we demo-ed all of the walls that had phone jacks in them, so there are currently no phone lines anywhere in the house. After that we’ll see how I do following all of the technical bruhaha.

If I can get the internet going tonight, tomorrow the cable people are going to fix our initial install (right now we only receive local channels, cinemax, and about 50 home shopping channels. Anyone needing to buy gemstones, I’ve seen a deal or two for you!), by Friday we should be up and connected to the world again. I hope I haven’t missed much.

It started raining Friday, around when the cable guy showed up and just never stopped. We ended up bribing the cable man with a 6 pack of beer to climb up onto the wet roof and install the dish (they are supposed to wait until it’s dry out.) It was either there, or on top of the garage, with a cable running over the yard to the house (ugh). I think if the world starts ending, alcohol could easily become the new currency. It is definitely becoming a luxury item in our house, and we have had positive results with the trash man as well ever since we gave him a 6 pack after he refused to take our trash away two weeks ago.

Anyway, the rain just continued and went on and on. Sunday morning, we woke up, with things starting as usual–vegging on the couch watching CBS Sunday Morning and eating breakfast. Then Thor wandered down to the basement and ruined our peaceful morning.

Two-thirds of basement was flooded. In some places there was an inch of standing water. The water was seeping in through the walls on all sides. After the continual oppressive rain of the past three days, I guess our basement never stood a chance. What a way to discover the basement is not water-proofed at all. We then spent an hour trying to salvage all of our tools and boxes of sopping wet wedding presents which we have yet to open since we’ve had no place for them until now, and pull all of the wood trim out of the water so it doesn’t get warped.

We didn’t have to pump the basement out, all of the water just seeped back into the floor. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or not. On the one hand, we didn’t have to really clean the water out of the basement. On the other hand, it just continues to enforce the porous nature of this space.

All in all, we are grateful, though.  There were a lot of people who suffered a lot worse this weekend.  My grandfather who lives in Galveston has probably lost his home (we won’t know for a few more weeks yet), and it will probably be 3 more weeks until my aunt and uncle who live in Houston have power again.  So a little water in the basement we can deal with

The ultimate goal is to be done with the kitchen, bathroom, and sunroom by Nov. 1, knowing that that goal will probably end up being Thanksgiving.

To keep on track with that goal we have set up a tentative schedule with no real dates yet, but we just keep trying to plug away at things on the list. Here is the rough sequence of things that need to happen.

There is limited things we can do without a permit like floors, demo (under the cover of darkness), painting, and trim. After that things SHOULD be done by permit. Often they are not, but if you get caught you can face some heavy fines and when we sell the house we want to be able to say everything is up to code and we did it right.

So assuming a permit is obtained, the sunroom needs to be framed so that we can do the electrical and the plumbing should go before electrical as common construction courtesy. That leaves us with all the set up to squeeze in between the major work weekend that the sunroom will require before we turn it over to the pro plumbers and electricians. The tricky part will be trying to minimize the amount of time we are living in the house without a bathroom- demoing the tub right before the plumber drops in the new tub and shower and then putting up the tile quickly. All said and down I expect three to four days without a shower. (more…)

So I started my new assignment at work which requires me to work nights 5p-5a.  It is an awesome new assignment that puts me right into the mix of criminal investigations, interviewing suspects, taking statements, putting away bad guys, and letting the innocent go.  It also allowed me to have a lot of time to work at the house during the day.

The biggest thing we were up to this week was taking bids from plumbers and electricians.  Matt sent out the plans last week and set up the interviews and I stuck around the house to meet with the bidders.  I saw two plumbers including a new company we haven’t worked with before and our trusted electrician from the Rice house.

While I was waiting around I painted the trim in the office (white) and covered up the hideous pink in the office closet with white.  It took two coats, but everything looks real sharp and now the office is well along to being finished.  All it needs is the quarter-round around the base board.  Liz is turning the closet into an a craft corner for her sewing machine and jewelry making.  We might also move in a chair and bookshelves to make a nice little library for reading. (more…)

Some nice garden and house images from our walk when we had a friend in town last weekend.  This is touring the Oak Park historic district and the Frank Lloyd Wright houses.