Rehabber’s Rehab

As of today we have one working sink, one shower and one toilet, and they are all in different rooms of the house.  Pictures coming soon.

Here’s how it works.  You can take a shower upstairs, but there’s only 3 walls in the bathroom with the fourth covered in plastic.  Needless to say, it’s a bit drafty.  You can go to the bathroom, but you have to go to the basement, steer clear of the mess, and wearing shoes is a must, and the toilet is in a room Liz refers to as the dungeon.  Then you can wash your hands, do your dishes rinse your face, and clean out your painting tools in the utility sink.  One stop shopping, if you can find the basement light, which Liz still has no idea where it is.  I just leave it on all the time for her.

The plumber arrived and started taking out the old cobbled together lead pipes and backed up drains.  Not only were we adding new plumbing for the new shower, second vanity sink, kitchen sink and gas range, but we were also taking the opportunity to do some cleanup and upgrading.  (more…)

Liz is off downstate pretending that a massive earthquake has hit southern Illinois.

This gives me the great opportunity to get dirty and make a mess!

First I finished up the master bedroom closet.  I finished the steaming of the wallpaper.  The top half, thankfully went a lot quicker.  I then spackled some of the plaster that was raw and sanded for two days.  Then I primed and painted, It isn’t immaculate, but its clean and plain white.  Now if I can just get Liz to actually put her clothes in the closet rather than on the floor.  But to her credit, we are in need of a large dresser, all for her of course.  I’m relegated to an old dresser in the back bedroom.

Ink was a great help painting the closet.  But like any painter he got a little on him.  He didn’t appreciate the cleaning I gave him.  I’m afraid his whisker may be white from now on.

But back to the messy part.  (more…)

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…)

Our friends Kim and Terry brought up concerns about having friends run wild throwing hammers into walls hitting electrical lines, water pipes, etc.  Kim and Terry know our friends and their concerns are warranted.  However, the bashing will not be so haphazard and the most reckless of offenders (Drew) are well known and will be monitored closely.  Below is my tentative schedule for the wrecking party and inaugural weekend.  Besides being safe, we want to provide enough “activities” that are safe, enjoyable and allow people to either just hangout or dive-in completely.  Everyone should dress appropriately regardless of your participation level.

PRE-PARTY PLANS:

1.  Documentation- This is important to any project for several reasons.  It is great to see the impact of a project when you can view before and after images of the home.  The changes are dramatic and allows friends and family to share in your project.  Also documentation allows you to compare the difference that various improvements make and how much valuable those improvements when compared with the cost of the project.  We missed out on documenting thoroughly the Rice street project, so we are going to make sure and get lots of pictures from the beginning to end and get a couple of walk through videos. (more…)

An E-mail to Thor and Liz from Matt:

Bathroom idea

Here is some more work. The tub move currently is only giving us a 30×60 tube and requires us to make the door 30″ and move it closer to the toilet and generally is pretty tight. It will be import to verify the exact location of the toilet. I am showing a short depth toilet like in the basement here to minimize the interference with the door. But we will need to verify the location of the collar to confirm that the small toilet will work.

(more…)