Rehabber’s Rehab

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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The Goal:  Tear off the roof on the backroom, finish enough framing to get the plumber and electrician working, and maybe just maybe install new windows.

Well, that kind of got scrapped before the weekend even started.  We planned on finally having our permit after 10 nauseating weeks.  Alas, we achieved plan approval on Friday at 4pm after a lot of red ink and copying by Matt in the Village Hall Building department making final revisions.  However, we did not have all the necessary updated licenses and insurance for our contractors to get the big yellow card for our front window.  Thus, we scrapped the brazen idea of ripping off the back roof in broad day light without a permit.  Also our current electrical service run through where we want the gable to end, so we realized we have to wait for the electrician, who is going to put in a new service.  We’re still on fuses, and are changing the one to the garage every other week with Liz’s projects out there. But it sure would have been fun.  Stay tuned for my Wizard of Oz themed parable on the permit review process in the Emerald Oak Park.

Then our windows plan was in ruin.  Our Jeld-wen windows from Home Depot arrived on Friday morning with a possibility of next day delivery on Saturday.  The only problem was all the back room windows were missing our cottage style grills.  So two hours at Home Depot and much wrangling over the phone, half the windows were going back and the replacement windows for the bedrooms and dining room were be delivered early Saturday morning (I got a call at 6:30 AM when I’ve been working nights for the past month, argghh!).  But this window saga was happening at the same time as the rush to get our permit, so Matt had to leave me to fend through the westside CTA.  I love and hate (late buses) the CTA, but never have I smelled anything so foul as somebody who was s*itting behind me on the Cicero bus. (more…)

Unfortunately the snow in Chicago is usually gray rather than white, just like the blown insulation in our backroom.  Taking down the ceiling in the backroom was something I was dreading because I could see the sixteen inches deep insulation that was in the ceiling from my kitchen view of the horribly sagging back roof.  But it needed to be done and I had the day off in the middle of the week with no car to go anywhere.

So, I put up the plastic barrier, opened all the windows, and donned my mask.  One by one I took down the rows of 1inch furring boards running perpendicular to ceiling rafters.  The Snow began lightly as their is less ceiling where the roof slopes off at the exterior of the back room, but as I worked towards the kitchen, the insulation fell harder until a complete Gray-Out blinded my vision and I stumbled through the three foot deep drifts.

After a lengthy fresh air break, I started picking up the insulation.  After an hour, I felt I had gotten nowhere, but eventually I found the floor again.  In all I filled up forty trash bags of insulation!  Alas there are no pictures of this adventure as Liz had taken the camera to work.

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…)