Rehabber’s Rehab

This holiday season was filled with fun and sadness, and between the two, and the house, I am worn out. However, we have started to turn a corner. It had seemed like everything that had happened until now was progressively making my life worse and worse. Everything was dirty all of the time, the dust had spiraled completely out of control. We lost electricity in half of the house, there was no shower, the only toilet was in the stinky make-shirt bathroom in the basement. To top it all off, it was cold. Really, really, cold. all of the insulation had been removed from the back of the house in re-doing the sunroom, and it was making winter in Chicago pretty unbearable.

So we retreated to my mom’s for a month, but now we’re back.  The cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom are in, the floors look awsome, and there is consistent electricity, including overhead lighting in the living room (a rarity in Oak Park), and now, we finally have the refrigerator actually in the kitchen.

This past weekend was spent on a few miscellaneous projects.  We got the the window trim all put back up, in the dining room and main bedroom and it looks great.  The new continuous window sil blends in beautifully with the rest of the original trim.  Matt and Thor also got the refridgerator put into it’s built-in cabinet.  And it works, too.  Probably the biggest task was getting the giant bathroom linen closet cabinet in.  A good 2 hours was spent with Thor and Matt locked in the bathroom as they tried to lift the cabinet in and maneuver it into place with about a 2 in area of wiggle room.  They got it in, and trimmed out.  We just need to finish drywalling in the top area around it.  Meanwhile I worked on stripping the door to the basement in hopes that putting that back up will help keep the house warm.  We will get there.

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.

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…)

Back yard mess

We went back to the house today after the vacation and the 48 hour waiting period for the floors to dry.  The yard was just as bad as I remember.  I don’t know how much longer the neighbors will put up with it.  We were so excited to see the new floor with out the water stains and the holes filled in.  We arrived only to find that Matt had taken the key home with him after he had stopped by to take some more measurements!!

We had frustratingly locked all the windows and were unable to break in.  I suppose we should be comforted by this fact.  At one point Thor contemplated cutting one of the screens, he wanted to see the floors so badly, but was talked out of it.  I was then accused (for the first time in my life) of being too optimistic because I pointed out we can just wait until tomorrow to get in. (more…)

Beautiful Pines in the Northwoods

This week we took a well earned vacation to the Northwoods of Wisconsin.  It was perfect timing because by Tuesday I was competely exhausted from staying up until 1am every night breathing in plaster dust and wielding a hammer.  We made a token attempt at work on Tuesday morning, but after about an hour it was clear that neither of our hearts were in it at the time.  Looking around at the complete mess we had created I just felt tired and overwhelmed.

The timing on our vacation was perfect as we had arranged to get the floors redone while we were gone, and would be unable to work in the house anyway, and couldn’t walk on the floors over the weekend while they dried.  Also it was so much easier to get them done while the house is empty and we didn’t have to deal with the furniture. (more…)