Rehabber’s Rehab

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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.

Project of this weekend was dressing up the windows we had installed last weekend.  We ordered the windows in wood unpainted or stained so we could do it our selves and make sure the stain matched the rest of the house.

First step was taping off the window edges, during which I have perfected my taping technique to a perfect art.  We are talking edges that meet perfectly in the corner with no gaps in-between.  This is opposed to my usual modus operandi of ripping of hundreds of tiny bits off to have the tape meet and overlap exactly in the corners, and ending up with messy pieces that fall off and are stuck everywhere.  The trick, I found, is to lay the tape  along the edge and up to the corner.  Then placing a putty knife in the corner cutting it into an oblique angle, you can rip the tape along the edge.  You should rip from the corner inward.

The weather is unseasonably warm right now, so we knew this was a project we needed to get done as soon as possible.  We removed the windows from the frames, and stained them to match all of the trim.  It was a bit of a rush job since the windows needed to be put back in before we went to bed, so the stain didn’t get to set as long as it should before we applied the polyurethane, but it worked out.

Taking the tape off, we started out using cotton rounds and alcohol to remove the left behind tape gunk, but then I switched to nail polish remover (acetone), which worked quicker with a lot less elbow grease.

There was one mishap taking one of the double hungs out and the catch on the tension cord that lets the window go up and down was broken.  No word yet on if there is a warranty or replacement part.  We are completely bummed because they are brand new and it is the one in our bedroom.

Either way they are looking really great and add a lot of character to the house.

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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…)

We were asked the question about our previous post “A Window of Opportunity”

What’s wrong with the old windows?

My answer started to get so long I decided to make it a post instead of a comment.  To answer the question: They’re pretty old, and don’t work well anymore - particularly the storm windows and screens.  On some of the windows it’s impossible to pull the storm down.  Some don’t even have a storm window, a must here in Chicago.  Especially since I don’t fancy putting up plastic sheeting every winter.  Some don’t have a screen, another must since mosquitoes are highly attracted to me!

If you look at the current “lastest pics” picture, it shows the backyard, and you can see the metal frames on the windows are pretty unattractive.  This is even more true on the front of the house.

For the sunroom, we are cutting in entirely new bigger windows in some places, and so want the rest of the house to match these so they don’t look like such an addition, but are integrated with the rest.

It’s a good question.  It made me stop and think for a minute, did we really need that?  I think sometimes you get so caught up in remodeling, it can be easy to change things without a purpose or consciously thinking about why.  But change for change’s sake is not always improvement.

I enjoyed his post about this at the blog “Keepin’ It Real“  and I agree, that if you can restore you should (hence the many man hours spent restoring the trim around the house).  Particularly in these older homes, the stuff around your house is of far better quality than you could get today even if you wanted to spend the money.  If our windows were nice wood windows (the kind of casements shown in the windows post), or old counter-weight double hungs we would definitely keep them.  I have reglazed and restored windows before with the Martin’s at Greene & Burke, so that is not the daunting task.  But ours are aluminum inside and out, were cheap to begin with, and in my opinion, not worth the effort.

Our windows are supposed to arrive on Friday, so i thought I’d update you with what we’ve ordered.  When Matt and I got together I already had an idea of what I wanted and what style.  The front and back windows would be the same - a picture window with two casements on the side.  The casements would have mutton going across about 1/4 of the way down with a line dividing that rectangle.  Matt has started calling this the cottage style.  Although I love prairie style (a wide grid that runs just inside the frame) - I didn’t think it would be right for our house.  We also both agreed that we would add trim around the windows and on the house.  Currently the windows are just set in the stucco.  Along the side of the house, the double hungs would be replaced with double hung windows, but the ratio of the two panes would be 40/60 instead of 50/50 with muttons running down the middle of the top part.

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We wanted to go for a walk around the neighborhood to see what we liked, and literally the exact moment we stepped out the door it started raining.  We were pretty confident with our choices, though and Matt ran home to add them to the drawings.  We are both really happy with the way things turned out.

Windows in the back/North side of the house with bedrooms

North side of the house with bedrooms

If all goes well and there is enough time this weekend, in addition to putting a new roof on the back sunroom, we’ll also be able to start putting the windows in.