Rehabber’s Rehab

With all the major construction done and the cabinets coming in a week it was time to get our kitchen floors refinished. Under two nasty layers of linoleum lay a roughed up maple floor. Only one person could renew those hardwood floors, our favorite contractor Jerry. Jerry had done great work on our living room floors and the urine damaged spots so we called on him again to rescue the kitchen floors.

Over two days Jerry painstakingly sanded, filled in, puttied and urethaned the kitchen and hallway floors. New replacement maple is a very bright nearly white color compared to the darker honey of old maple from ealier in the century. We had to fill in where the old pantry wall had left gaps in the floor. Jerry’s wood puttying and darkening of the new wood made it the entire floor look pretty similar unless you are looking for the differences. We also had three dark lines from water stains that ran perpendicular to the floor boards that Jerry was able to sand down to the faintest of markings. Any imperfections can be chalked up to the distinguished colorings of an original maple flooring. It looks really great with another buffing and coat of urethane to be done after the cabinets are installed.

Jerry also inspected the damage done by our electrician when they pushed around the couches scarring the living room and dining room floors. He suggested a buffing and extra coat of stain for no charge when he does the last kitchen coat would do the trick.

Jerry and our drywaller Francisco top the list of the professionals we’ve used while our electrician ranks lower because of the slow pace of work and his disregard for our project actually being somebody’s home when he throws furniture around and leaves messes lying around.

We passed our insulation inspection with flying colors and now have permission to cover up the walls with drywall. We originally planned to drywalling ourselves, but then looked into seeing if our mudder knew anybody. He came back with a price we couldn’t beat. So on Saturday morning Francisco and his buddy came by. A few short hours later the entire project was drywalled.

I’ve never seen anybody move so fast. These guys were actually running around the house while working. All we needed to do was finish a couple of framing things and try to keep them supplied with drywall.

On Sunday we took the day off after doing some cleaning and Francisco started mudding the walls to make them smooth. Mudding is an art that it just doesn’t pay to do yourself. You can never be as good as a professional. You can never be as fast, and its cheap work ($500). Unless there is a hole that needs to be patched you will never catch me mudding and sanding.

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By the end of the weekend the rooms had finally come together to look like actual living space. The bathroom had walls, the windows were surrounded by drwall, you could no longer see through to the outside, and a huge plus or plumber returned to install our new upstairs toilet.

With Liz finishing the painstaking cleaning of the slate tile we had a functional bathroom after five weeks of using the nasty and scary basement toilet.

By the middle of the week we could finally move back in, although we remained at Liz’s mom house because of the regular traveling for the holidays and the funeral in Galveston, TX.

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Its been very busy this past month so pardon the dated posts. After mostly passing all of our inspections, we were able to proceed with the insulation. Oak Park is very thorough in its insulating requiring a separate insulation inspection and the highest standards of insulation protection. Although demanding, its good for the heating bills and conserving energy. We have been scraping by with large pieces of plastic sheeting to help keep the heat in and cold out, but this is certainly not ideal.

So we spent the enitre weekend of December 7th and 8th insulating. We got tremendous help on Saturday from Matt’s friends Samati and Maria. They were machines with plenty of experience remodeling their own place. We hope that they will make a guest post with their own (mis)adventures in rehabbing. As they worked on insulating the kitchen, Matt and I installed two new windows in the backroom adding a lot more light.

On Sunday a new crew of friends came over with Matt’s current roommates Brennan and Kim and Matt’s old college roommate Wade. Our progress was significant leaving just a bit of ceiling insulation in the backroom and the attic left to do. The big project of the day was installing the new 8ft long casement and picture window in the backroom. The window was massive requiring the straining of three grown men to lift it and five people to fenagle it into place, but it payed off big time. Later I found out that Kim had been promised that she wouldn’t be working outside and dressed accordingly. While technically true, when you take out an 8×4.5ft window the opening left behind leaves you pretty much exposed to all the elements.

We also had the pleasure of taking down the shanty. It is no more. The back of the house looks ten times better, or at least it will once we get all of the trash out of the yard.

Later in the week, Matt and Allison came out to help finish up the insulation in the attic during the passing of Frank Jr. The help was so greatly appreciated as the inspection was to happen the next day and Liz and I were not in any condition to work.

For the past three months we had the pleasure of having Frank stay in Oak Park with Liz’s Mom as Frank had become a hurricane Ike refugee. On the morning of Thursday Dec. 12 Frank passed in his sleep succumbing to a month long battle against injuries and complications arising from a fall suffered in November. He is greatly missed.

Framing complete, plumbing roughed-in, and electrical racing to get done. That can mean only one thing, INSPECTIONS.

Inspections are like the big toll bridge and the inspectors are the trolls. If you fail your inspections you cannot pass go or collect (spend) $200. The next month is huge for us, because I actually have two weekends off to work. So in theory we could do insulation the first weekend, an insulation inspection during the week, and then drywalling the next weekend. Then the spackler could come in, followed by the floor guy, and some quick painting which would allow us to install the cabinets after Christmas just before the new year. That would be a level of completion that we thought was impossible just a couple of weeks away.

But this whole schedule rested on the decisions of inspectors who could ridicule the slightest problem.

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