Rehabber’s Rehab

In the past months things have been happening that have lifted my spirits and made my life better.  The shower is wonderful, and I love looking at the tile I painstakingly cleaned off for hours.  I don’t think anyone else will ever enjoy that bath as much as I do.  Then I wander into the kitchen where I have CABINETS with stuff in them.  Tuesday night was spent joyfully, finally unwrapping our wedding presents and getting to put everything in its proper place.  We just kept everything stored in their boxes waiting for the day we would have a place to put it all in.  It was like Christmas all over again.

In honor of this wonderful progress, we finally updated our Projects sidebar.  The backyard got an extra percent because one of the horrible pine bushes we were going to take down fell on its own under all of the snow this winter.  We argued about the rest of them, Thor wanted to represent everything as a little more done, but I say that he doesn’t factor in the details enough.  I am afraid this is a sign that they will never get done because they don’t “count”.

It is freezing cold here in Chi-town, so Thor spent the evening trying to insulate the attic a little more.  I am huddled under a mound of blankets as I write this because it is 59 degrees in our house.  Our ancient heater just can’t seem to keep up with the -11 degree temperatures outside.  We just hope it makes it through the winter and gives us a little more breathing room before having to buy another big ticket item.  The new windows are doing great, though, at helping to keep the cold out.  The main chinks in our armor are the uninsulated area where the new back door is supposed to go, the entryway to the basement, and the attic door.  I do think this will help me win the argument about tiling the sunroom with a heated floor.  The floor right now is enough to freeze your toes off.  We will see.

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.

I have been feeling oppressed by my house lately.  This has been coming on for about a week or two now.  If you have noticed a lack of posts, it is in direct correlation with (what feels like) a lack of work.  When we are busy working on projects, walls are coming down, windows are going up, I feel good.  Although the situation is not ideal, we are making progress that gets us closer to the end.  Lately, through, it seems that I have been living with 2×4 studs and dirty floors forever.  Instead of coming home from work and having a wave of relaxation and relief wash over me as I sit on the couch and take my shoes off, I just look at the dirty floor and insulation flecks on the couch and feel my skin start to crawl. 

I can barely stand to take a shower any more.  The bathroom is so disgusting and dirty, and cold.  It is impossible to keep warm with the draft that blows in between the plastic sheets.  It used to be that my shower is what got me going in the morning.  Now it is a thing I dread getting out of bed for.

Thor tells me I am a trooper, and to keep it up, and I just sigh.  I don’t even feel up to telling him where to shove it anymore.

Things are happening at the house.  The plumber was there all last week.  But the things he is doing are largely imperceptible.  Sure, a new copper pipe appears out of the wall every once in a while, but it hasn’t changed my life any.  The water pressure is still as bad as ever.

But, real change is happening today.  As I type, Randy, Thor and Matt are ripping off the roof of the sunroom and putting a new one on.  I only hope they have it back up when I get home, because it is supposed to be 28 degrees outside tonight.

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.