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.
Three days off of work in November for Matt and I and a visit from Dad in the middle of the week and Walah! our old slanted roof of the backroom is gone and replaced by a vaulted ceiling gable roof. Probably the most dramatic change since getting our floors redone happened last week when we tore off the roof of the back room and put up the new roof. It was like an old barn raising without the beards and the lemonade.
If it were only as simple as that.
The first day was spent demolishing the old roof which was complicated first by Dad’s car trouble and most dangerously by the existing power lines that run into the house along the roof line. This involved a lot of sawing sledge hammers, and sheer brute force. The only delicate part was peeling away the roof right next to the existing power line to the house. But a long’s day of work and no electrocutions left a large open air sitting room that Liz could not appreciate during the frosty fall nights. Of course none of the demo pics are available because Liz always seems to have the camera when I’m tearing things up. At the end of the night it looked like one big skylight and we contemplated leaving it that way. But Liz quickly put a nix to that idea because she thought it would be a bit drafty.
Day two started off with the required Home Depot visit. For those looking for a new car, twelve foot long lumber fits nicely into the Mazda 5.
By the end of the day, we had framed in the new back door and the roof rafters. We ended by throwing up the plywood sheeting and it was all coming together. You could finally see the outline of the new gabled roof that matched the house and made the back room look so much more substantial. Inside you could really get a feel for the vaulted ceilings and the size of the room. What had started off as a low dingy carpeted after thought of a room had now become a dynamic space for of light that was its own asset beyond just extending the kitchen. In fact the room was bigger than most of the other rooms in the house. Our trash was becoming overwhelming so we got one of the guys who picks up scrap metal that we leave in the back to come back for a load of trash. $250 bucks got rid of all the trash that an 5×8 truck bed piled 5 feet high could fit. It was worth the weight off my conscience and the fear that neighbors would quickly grow tired of our mess.
Now, we were getting a lot done, but it was taking a toll. Each day was at least ten hours. I got sun burned one day thinking that you couldn’t get sunburned in 35 degrees weather. Each day ended with us heading to Liz’s mom’s house showering, having a couple of beers during dinner and passing out.
Then Day Three came, we were racing to get the roof on so that Dad could leave. Usually, he tries to leave early to beat traffic, but we blew past 3PM. We also decided to throw in some skylights, finally at 6pm while hitting our thumbs as much as nail heads in the dark on the roof we decided we should get to a stopping point and call it quits. This was a lot of work and after pulling 10 hours the day before we didn’t know if we would have enough in the tank. The night ended when we couldn’t see where we were hammering at 7pm in the dark and Matt had hammered his thumbs one too many times. But the roof was all sealed up and would only require a half day for Matt and I to finish on the weekend.
Matt told me that he had trouble sleeping because he would be lying awake in bed and as he dosed off he would be startled awake with the sensation that he was falling off the roof. Matt and I spent sunday afternoon finishing up the last shingles on the roof.
In truth it wasn’t very sealed up, because you could see through some of the sheating, there was no insulation and the shingles weren’t completely on, so it made for some really cold nights in the back of the house, this along with the lack of a shower (which we had taken out and given to the junk man so that the plumber could lay the new tub) forced Liz and out of our home and back for another stay at Pat’s.
As exciting as it was having a new roof line that looked clean and consistent, moving out was a major set back on our progression to home sweet home. And the soreness from climbing up and down the roof and ladders would out last the pain of running a marathon
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