We've moved

The move was pretty uneventful. We had some awesome movers - I'll have to post a link once I get my stuff together. They had us moved in 6 hours. Which is pretty awesome considering the distance and the fact that we were moving from a third floor unit.

Sophie seems to be adjusting well and Ileana is trying her first long commute today. My bonus is that she has to drive through downtown on her way to work so I get a ride part-way.

We are living out of boxes right now and things are chaotic. We have the plumber, electrician, and carpenter in over the next couple days to finish up some work. Hopefully things will be ready for when Crazy Nana arrives on Thursday.

I am posting from work right now but once I have our computer hooked up, I'll add some photos.

-CP

All packed up and only one place to go

We spent the last two nights in final preparation to move. My friend John came with me to the house on Wednesday to finish the floors (they look great - more to come), to do a little more demo, and to prep for the electrician. Last night we tried to complete our packing - we are really lousy packers and feel bad for the movers that have to deal with our crap.
It is time to pack up all of the electrical stuff. The next post will be from the OP.

The First Night

This isn't how I imagined I'd be spending my first night in the house but there I was, inflatable mattress and all, spending the night on the living room floor. It was kind of like camping and not having Sophie and Ileana around made it even stranger (though I did get a very enthusiastic "goodnight da da" from Sophie over the phone before she went to bed. It was not a very comfortable night but it did give me enough time at the house to complete the first layer of poly on the floors. I was also at the house early enough to meet the floor levelers for the basement.

Even though things are getting done in a haphazard manner, it looks like a good portion of the work we wanted completed on the home before we move in will actually get done. Sophie's bedroom won't be painted but at least the floor is done. Carpeting arrives for the basement next week and by that time, we should have a good handle on the ceiling and painting in that room.

Only two more nights in Chicago and then we'll be living in the OP every night!

Going it alone... ...well, almost.

Perhaps I was stupid to ask people to help me out. Perhaps I was too optimistic when a few people actually said they would help out. Alas, Saturday came and only one person showed up to helped to ready our house before we move in. Thanks to Telly, we completed demo in the basement and now everything is ready for the floor levelers and other hired help that will be coming in this week. I guess I should plan on proceeding with the rest of these renovations alone.

In addition to the demo, I spent a good part of Saturday loading demolition debris into the H O Schulz truck to be transported to the dump. The rugs, padding, miscellaneous draperies, rods, and other crap around the house practically filled the truck. Unfortunately, since this took so long, I made little headway on the other projects I have going on.

Except for the dust in the living and dining room, left over from sanding the floors, the house is pretty empty and ready to have all of our stuff moved in. I will be spending the rest of the evenings this week in the OP meeting contractors and finishing the floors.

Floors Part 2

I hoped that this weekend would mark the final chapter of the floor-refinishing project but unfortunate circumstances (explained in the next entry) left me with a lot of work this weekend and I still am not finished with the floors.

I made a lot of headway though, with mixed results. I finished sanding the floors on Saturday. No matter how much I sand the master bedroom, I can’t get rid of all of the staining (from pets, adhesive, and other crap under the previous carpet). I guess we will have to live with it – or buy a larger area rug.

I picked a “red oak” stain for the floors, hoping that it would darken the floors to a color approaching the original finish. I had also hoped it would disguise some of the staining in our bedroom. I started applying it in an area where it would not be seen – Sophie’s closet. Holy shit was that dark!!! Thank God I started in a closet. I wanted a color slightly darker than the current living and dining room but not this! I made a trip back to Home Depot to look at the stains again. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a stain that quite fit. I instead went for a more golden color called “Fruitwood”.

I have a dilemma now – I really didn’t plan on taking an extra day for more staining. The floors look nice but are still not quite as dark as I wanted. I may put on one more coat of stain in the hopes of getting the color a little deeper. Perhaps I’ll play with this tonight – in our closet - and see what the results are and decide from there.

Hopefully everything will be sufficiently dry tomorrow morning so I can put on the first coat of polyurethane.

Stay tuned for part 3…

Pick pick pick

I guess you could say that I am the kind of person that can’t resist picking at a scab. I can’t help it. I don’t know what it is that makes me a little obsessed with loose ends. Is it the physical and mental itch or something else?

This weekend, I couldn’t hold back anymore and had to start picking at the pealing paint on the bedroom wall. What I didn’t realize was that I would soon become consumed by the pealing and within twenty minutes, I had de-foliated an entire wall of our bedroom. It caused a pretty crazy mess but what I found was pretty fascinating.

When we started planning the renovation, we wanted to add picture rail to the bedrooms. An aside: the second greatest atrocity one can do to an old house (the first being application of wall to wall carpeting over a hardwood floor) is to tack, nail, or anchor anything into plaster walls when you have picture rail. It is uncivilized and frankly, it makes your plaster crack and fall off the wall but I digress. When we started planning the renovation, we wanted to add picture rail to the bedrooms. I thought that it might seem strange doing this to rooms that never had picture rail (I really am not a purist when it comes to restoration but I get nerdy thoughts like this sometimes).The pealing away of all of that paint revealed, at a height of about 7’-6” above the floor, a distinct line. About every 18 inches along this line is a screw hole. It is most likely that this is the ghost of the picture rail that used to exist in the bedroom. Not that I was sweating adding something new to the house – this just makes it kind of cool that we are putting something back in the house that used to be there before.
Also beneath the layers of paint you can see remnants of the original wallpaper. It is actually nice. It is a robin’s egg blue paper with white foliage and silver berries and flowers. It appears that a slightly different paper was used above the picture rail. I am not a big fan of wallpaper so we will be painting but we have some photos that show what used to be there.

Floors Part 1

They really should outlaw the use of carpeting for people that have perfectly good hardwood floors. The health hazards of all of this stuff growing and festering underneath our feet has got to be bad.

I tackled, I mean I tried to tackle, the floor refinishing this weekend. After removing layers of dirt and other - hmmm, I don't know what to call it - hairy stuff seems a good description, I spent a couple of days pulling up MANY nails and staples. I got to actual sanding on Sunday and made pretty good progress, until I hit the second bedroom.

The floor finish was incredibly hard and gummed up all of the sand paper. I think it was original shellac - which is probably why I thought it was such a beautiful finish.

I started the work with a square buff sander and only completed the master bedroom. I have worked with these many times and have never had any problems. This time I give up, I have lost patience and will go back tonight and get a belt sander to finish the second bedroom. The first three pics are of the unsuccessful endeavor in that room.

The second set of pics shows a more successful attempt in the master bedroom. The second photo depicts the unique hay-like padding that was matted with a unique mixture of dog urine and finish to the wood floor.

Luckily, most of this came up with an application of diluted Simple Green - that stuff is magic. It also got rid of most of the pet staining. I will follow up with photos of the remaining work towards the end of the week - when I hope to be finished.

-CP

Yard work is complete... ...for now

It is pitiful looking but the first part of our landscape work is complete. We have rid our property of all yews and now you get a clear view of all of that wonderful aluminum siding (we won't be tackling that for a few years). I will get around to digging out the stumps sometime this fall. After that, we will just sit around and see what our yard has in terms of plant material and work from there.

The majority of our landscape seems to consist of hostas (about as attractive as the yews). We are fortunate to have some nice raspberry bushes in the back yard as well. Other than that, things seem a little grim. Unfortunately, we have too many other things to worry about so a new landscape will have to wait until at least next year. We did find that we have a squatter on the property. Our daughter Sophie will be thrilled to realize that we have a bunny. Hopefully he will eventually make a dent in the hostas but so far all that seems to interest him is the clover in the lawn.

-CP

Getting Help Lined Up.

This week has not been the most productive one. I finally got hold of a chainsaw and finished the job I started last week with the front bushes and I am almost finished with basement demolition but none of the real work has started.

We met with a guy to level our basement floor and hopefully we will have them on board in another week. We also have a plumber and an electrician coming by on Saturday. The timing of the contractors has not really worked out but I didn't really expect it to.

We did make some money this week and that was nice. Some people thought we were nuts but we held a garage sale. We made about 190 bucks but more importantly got rid of a truck-load of items that we really didn't want to bring along with us to our new place. We have also decided to finally cash in our penny jar. It weighed a good 60 to 70lbs. and Ileana has it now at coinstar turning into a money card. I'll keep you in suspense until tomorrow with how much 70lbs. of pennies is actually worth.

This weekend I hope to make some serious headway on the bedroom floors. I have done a lot of floors for other people - it is going to be strange to actually be doing them for myself. I m feeling this way about a lot of what's going on with the renovation. I probably won't post for a couple more days but hopeful when I do I'll have some great picks of the sanded and stained floors.

-CP