3 engineers and a big house

2006-10-18T16:13:00.000-05:00

Week of Oct 9th

The contractors have started a new front and back porches. Yippee! It’s a little messy but I happy to be rid of our possibly-dangerous porches. There is wood all over the property, broken up concrete, and a dozy of a bottom step in the front. Oh and did I mention the city decided to tear up the sidewalks on our street. Anyway, by the time I get home Thursday, the contractors mostly finished the front porch and had completely removed the back porch. By the end of Saturday, they finished the 1st floor of the back porch. Wow.

2006-10-18T16:10:00.000-05:00

Weekend of Oct 7th Well, we did it. We decided to knock out the walls in the living room of the 2nd floor. Messy and fun. I helped with the south wall, while SS and PH finished the rest of room during the week. That was the easy part. The hard part is we don’t really know what do with the room. SS and PH really want exposed brick. I say exposed brick doesn’t really suit the style of our house. Also, the building is cold and I think we could use more insulation. We have an architect coming in to tell us if any of the wood in the arch is structural. Otherwise we might take out the arch separating the living room and dining room. SS and PH want to ask about exposed brick. I say we should ask stay simple and ask if she’s designed a remodel of a similar style building. I told them we all have to start buying design magazines so we can decide where we are going with this. I’ve bought 3 so far.

2006-10-04T17:13:00.000-05:00

Wow, it's been awfully quiet around here. I tried to get SS and PH to at least post a quick note about the status of our project. They claim I tell the story better but I think it's just an excuse.

Here's a quick summary. I hope to post more pictures and info this weekend. Starting from the top to the bottom....

3rd floor - all the floors have been refinished by EuroFloor. SS and PH have moved their giant tvs and everything else from the 2nd floor to the 3rd floor.

2nd floor - SS and PH primed and painted the front bedroom. They also began removing several layers of wallpaper from the living room walls. They fixed the leak in the tub (which required them to redo the piping an on-the-job learning experience).

1st floor - well nothing really. I unpacked a little more, and our in-house network has been set up,does that count as stuff done?

basement - there is a random leak we can't id. I think it's from the wash basin overfilling due to excess lint blocking the drain. SS has set up his desk and computer but hasn't actually used it. The basement is quickly filling up with random boxes. also the number of bikes has magically multiplied.

backyard - with some help from my dog and SS, I have mostly reclaimed the yard from the overgrown tomato plants, corn, vines, etc. It is amazing how much bigger the yard seem without all that stuff.

Upcoming activities: new porches! yippee the city building dept and our alderman approve our contractors and their plans.

2006-09-03T23:06:00.000-05:00

Sun, Sept 3rd continued…

Take a look this picture. This oddly shaped room is the 1st floor “master” bedroom. I put master in quotes because this is the biggest bedroom on the 1st floor but it does not quite live up to the modern definition of master bedroom. But I digress. The reason I posted this picture is to show an example of the weirdness of this building. The previous owner expanded this bedroom by moving the far wall, thus reducing the size of the entry. Now when he did this, he didn’t just knock down the old wall and rebuild a new wall. No, he used a doorway so when you enter the entry area it looks like there might be a closet. But when you try to open it, the door doesn’t budge. On the bedroom side of the wall, he put drywall up over the door but left the door knob! Yup, smack dab in the middle of the wall is a random door knob.

Other strange things about the building:
-hot and cold water are not consistently on left and right or vise versa even in the same room.
-conduit randomly runs through ceiling lights. Turning off the kitchen light may turn off some of the outlets in the room.
-some bedroom doors are mounted upside down.
-cheap floor molding on top of nice but painted over floor molding.
-a peaked drop down ceiling in one hallway on the first floor.

I’m not complaining here. It’s just hard to understand the mindset of someone who would do this. Oh well. At least SS and PH are getting better at handling the weird wiring so they can install the ceiling fans faster.

2006-09-03T18:55:00.000-05:00

Picture time....

Here are the gym shoes I wore while removing the lamnite tile on the 3rd floor. Sadly, they will no longer be going to the Alabama YMCA anymore.

Here's some of the tile we removed from the 3rd floor.

The top is the floor after we removed the laminate tile. The bottom is after the floor guys did their work. Nice huh?!?

2006-09-03T18:39:00.000-05:00

Sun, Sept 3rd
We’ve had our first injury. SS used a giant knife to cut a little piece of plastic. Yup, he used the wrong tool for the job and it slipped and he cut his finger. He was convinced he needed to go to the hospital – he’s not very good with blood. Lucky for him, I have first aid training for my job. After a stern lecture and some gauze, he was a back to normal. Maybe I should bring home a couple of those safety reminder posters I have posted at my plant?

2006-09-03T17:22:00.000-05:00

Week of August 28
Major projects for the week: Leak in 2nd floor bathroom, fridges delivered, and refinish the wood floors.

This week the entire 3rd floor and the big 1st floor bedroom were tied up by the floor guys. They showed up early and stayed late to sand and refinished the floor. SS and PH were amazed at how this company will make money on this deal. Total price for the floors is $2,000 but they have a crew of about 5 guys every day. By time I got home from Alabama on Friday, the company was done and the floors were dry enough to walk on. The down-side, the floor guys left bags and bags of sawdust and garbage on the porch and in the backyard. Also, everything on the 1st floor is covered in a fine layer of sawdust. For a clean freak this is not so awesome to come home.

Since PH and SS couldn’t work on the 3rd floor, they decided to try and fix the leaking faucet in the 2nd floor tub. Based on information from the internet and a home repair book they went out, bought copper piping and a butane torch. This project is still on going. In addition, we may have discovered another leak in the basement. We’ll have to check the status of this project next week.

The fridges we bought last weekend were delivered without a problem this week. Since the 3rd floor was being worked on, one of the fridges had to sit on the 3rd floor landing. They look good but out of place with current kitchens.

2006-09-03T14:37:00.000-05:00

August 26 and 27
It’s a busy weekend socially and house wise. PH and I are going to the Sears Outlet to check out some appliance and out to buy other stuff (a 3rd fan, outlet plates, garbage pails, etc). One of my best friends is arriving today and tonight a bunch of us are going to the aquarium’s Shark Ball.

When PH and I get to Sears Outlet we discover they are having a sale on refrigerators. Yippee! We wander through their warehouse. PH likes with the freezer on the bottom set up, I prefer side by side or freezer on top, while SS has requested ice and water in the door. PH calls me over to look at a fridge priced about $600. PH asks what I think. Well it’s nice except for the giant scratch across the right door about waist door. PH has me look at another one, it looks good but the freezer door isn’t hung right. It probably would be fine but I worry that the seal will leak and waste cold and energy. We manage to find to similar Kenmore models. One is stainless steel, the other a satin finish, both for about $650. Of course we make the sale guy’s day. Now we look at the stoves - not much of a selection. We find 2 Kenmore stove but in black. PH thinks we should try to find stainless steel ones, but they have only a few and are priced pretty high. We tell the sale’s guy we’ll take the stoves and he says we can’t. They are dual fuel stoves. Apparently it means gas range and electric oven. Okay, we aren’t buying those. Another we like is LP gas, so no go (side note: we learn later to convert an LP gas stove to natural gas is a matter of changing the valve). We decide to just take the fridges and we’ll shop for the stoves somewhere else. Or maybe Sears will have a sale on stoves next weekend? We can only hope.

Our next stop is Menards instead of our usual Home Depot. We passed on our way to the Sears so we decide to stop in. We need to buy a 3rd ceiling fan and a ceiling light for the 3rd floor kitchen. PH and I have a conflict of opinions. PH select an economical, 3 spotlight ceiling light. I select a slightly modern energy saving light. I convince PH we should keep in mind our future design plans for the kitchen. When we remodel it, we will probable go with a modern look (knowing PH and SS) so it’s worth the few extra dollars to go with that style of light. He agrees and off we go to the register.

Back at the house, PH and SS continue playing with the electric on the 3rd floor. They had attempted to finish installing grounded outlets that morning but had difficulty with half of them. They have also taken down the light in PH’s future bedroom to prepare installing the ceiling fan we bought that day. Like everything we are discovering in this house, the wiring in the ceiling is weird.
In the mean time, are friends start showing up for a party at the aquarium we are going to Sat evening. It’s hard to stop while we’re on a roll fixing things and cleaning but it will be nice to take a break.

2006-08-27T12:43:00.000-05:00

Here are those lovely cabinets I was talking about. I've been trying to air them out to get rid of the stinky stale smell.

2006-08-27T11:31:00.000-05:00

August 25 – Yeah it’s Friday and I (AW) finally spend another night trying to clean up my unit. I wouldn’t have gotten home from work earlier than 6pm but decided to make a run to DMV to change the address on my license. You know, I’ve always heard people complain about the wait at the DMV but I’ve never had a problem. I walked in the door at 5pm and walked out the door at 5:15 with a new license documenting my new address. I’m a Chicagoan again, it’s official. On my way home, I also stopped at the post office to drop off a giant stack of mail for the previous owner. First they don’t move out by the closing date, next they didn’t turn off half of the utilities (my phone company and their phone company had a fight), and we’re still receiving all their mail – I’m not sure they really wanted to move out.

Once home, I try to continue my cleaning. I was a little nervous on what I would find in my unit since SS and PH hung out in my place, when they weren’t working on the building, since I’m the only one that has internet and cable setup and right now. Luckily, for me they didn’t make too much of a mess. I straighten out the bathroom and decided it was time to try and tackle the kitchen.

The kitchen is a mess. Boxes are stacked everywhere (floor, counter tops, table and chairs). The cabinets are ugly but will have to do until there is money to remodel the kitchen. But even worst than their look, is their feel. Everything has a layer of cooked on grease which makes everything sticky. Gross! I think the previous owner fried everything and never bothered to wipe down the wall behind the stove or the cabinets. I looked up some tips on the internet for cleaning this stuff. The “Queen of Clean” suggests a spray bottle filled with dish soap and warm water. This makes sense, dish soap is suppose to remove grease. So I start with the dish soap and water. This solution works pretty well for the wall behind the stove. Spray it on, couple passes with a sponge and/or green scourging pad to work it, let it sit, wipe off. But when I move to the cabinets, it doesn’t go as smoothly. I spray it on, scrub with the pad, but I’m hardly getting anything. SS walks in, sees what I’m doing and suggest a stem cleaner he has. He sets it up and tries working on the cabinet furthest away from the stove. It works a little bit but that grease is really sticking on. I start trying other cleaners I have in the house, still nothing is working so back to the internet. A couple other places say vinegar so I give it a try. No go. Then I think, maybe vinegar and water in the steam cleaning. Not such a good idea, vinegar vapors smell worst than the stale smell in the cabinets.

We take a break for dinner. Did I mention SS and PH were working on ceiling fan #2 still and the grounded outlets on the 3rd floor? I really get caught up in cleaning. Back at the house, I start to panic a little. Am I ever going to get these cabinets clean? I need to put all my stuff away since we have friends in town this weekend and next week. Even worst, my dog will be coming home next weekend. She’ll get into everything if it’s put away. So I called my mom, she’s my queen of clean. Mom suggests a wood cleaner she used on our first house – that house’s previous owners were even messier than this place’s previous owner. I relax a little. Tomorrow is a busy day so I head to bed.

2006-08-24T14:37:00.000-05:00

SS - Met another porch guy yesterday. Really nice guy. Gave an estimate for the front and back porches the same day and even emailed them. Why can't everybody use email? When you get a mortgage, they should give you a fax machine because everybody loves to fax. It’s crazy, what is this '87? PH put in a lot of grounded electrical plugs. (AW note: PH took a day off work on his birthday to stay at the house installing grounded electrical plugs. At least SS and some other friends were nice enough to take him out that night for a birthday dinner). If you ever buy 28 electrical plugs DO NOT use the self checkout while home depot is closing. We started a new fan but I think that this one might be a little easier than the first one. But why is every fan instillation a different adventure?

2006-08-23T23:18:00.000-05:00

August 19 & 20
This was the weekend of the big move. I start the day by finishing the recaulking of the 1st floor bathroom. The previous stuff was a mess. The previous weekend, I found several layers of mildewy caulk under a plastic strip. The glue holding down the plastic strip began to dissolve when I started cleaning so I decided to remove all the old caulk. How hard could it be? After all, I’ve been watching remodeling shows for several years now. By the time I finished, I was pretty proud of myself. It wasn’t showroom quality but it looked better than the old stuff

After I’m done, I join SS removing the remaining laminate tile in the 3rd floor bedrooms. (We told PH to sleep in because he had a cold.) This is the biggest pain in the butt. I don’t know if this is typical of removing tile but it took a lot work to pry up the tile and scrape off the glue. On top of it all, everything we touched became sticky and everything stuck to us. Sadly, I think I ruined my current favorite pair of gym shoes – I left the pair my junky pair of shoes at my parent’s house. { Insert the pictures: pile of removed tile, my ruined gym shoes}

After working of the floor, I had to run off to meet my mom at a rummage sale. Yes, it’s bad enough that I’m in Alabama during the week now I’m running off to shop?!? Well, it gives me a chance to bond with my mom and to shop a little for the building. I managed to pick up a nice wire shelving unit, a dish rack, wire basket, and fax machine for $30. I also had chance to ruin off and price some refrigerators and stoves – we only have 1 fridge and oven for the entire building. The warehouse place only had 2 fridges and no ovens. The appliance store wanted an arm and a leg for a fridge a friend got for much cheaper. The third place closed before I got there. Guess we’ll have to check some other places later.

While I was running around the city and suburbs, PH and SS finished installing the fan in my bedroom. Yeah, another project done!

We spend all day Sunday moving and trying to settle into the building. Of course we can only temporarily arrange our furniture since the floor guy is coming next weekend. Once the floors are done, I can officially move into my bedroom and the guys can move their stuff from the 2nd floor to the 3rd floor. For now, we try to relax and enjoy our first night in the house.

2006-08-23T22:29:00.000-05:00

Week of August 14
SS and PH tried to stop by the building every day after work. They were able to do a little more work on the house. They continued to remove the laminate tile from the 3rd floor bedrooms, met with the second porch guy, and even met with potential renters. The 2nd porch guy wasn’t shocked by our porch. When SS asked if this something his company has done before, the porch guy said they put up 3 porches a week. Oh, I guess they know what they’re doing.

The potential renters (one who is an acquaintance) were a little unenthusiastic with the 2nd floor unit. Okay so it isn’t the Ritz but it’s not skid row either. To put it bluntly, the 2nd unit is very plain and could use a little cleaning – I didn’t get a chance to work on it yet. Because of its current décor we aren’t charging a lot for it. There is a small chance we might put some money into that unit but it depends on how much we have to spend on the porch and any work SS and PH want to do to the 3rd floor. We see what happens in October when we’ll be ready to rent out the unit.

2006-08-22T10:33:00.000-05:00

Week of August 14
The contractors started visiting this week. Did I mention we have a lot to repair and remodel?

First was the plumber. We don’t seem to have water on the 2nd floor and there is a leak in one the pipes in the basement – we knew about the leak during the inspection. SS was there to meet the plumber who we found on Angie’s List. The plumber is impressed with the house and surprised that 3 young(ish?) people have bought the property. He goes on to tell SS about how bad the neighborhood used to be and how we wouldn’t have wanted to drive through this neighborhood let alone drive thru this neighborhood several years ago. Of course he described it with much more colorful language then I’m willing to type here but you can only imagine. He also offers to buy the place for a $100K less than we bought. SS tell him we are not interested in selling. Plumber gives a quote to fix the leak, get water to the 2nd floor, and even snake our sewer line. Good deal. Even better, he can start Friday.

Next was the structural engineer, he was here for the porch. It’s a typical of old porches in Chicago. It was constructed before there were building codes for porches (I think that’s what the inspector said). Also, it wasn’t built very well. The engineer tells us pretty much what we thought, not worth trying to patch/fix it up. Better to demo and start over. The bad news, this guy is expensive. Good news, we have other contractors to call for additional and hopefully more reasonable quotes.

This week also saw the start of another project. PH and SS begin removing the laminate tile from the 3rd floor bedrooms. They decided if they were going to refinish the floors in the living/dining room, why not do the whole 3rd floor. I was in Alabama so heard about it after they started – not that I really minded, the laminate was ugly.

On an unhappy note, SS saw a mouse in the 1st floor kitchen. SS and PH added mouse traps to their next Home depot run. They asked me what to bait the traps with, I said peanut butter. They didn’t have peanut butter in the house so they used a couple Teddy Grahams. This didn’t work out well since the Teddy Grahams don’t sit on the lever. By Friday, we got peanut butter and by Saturday we had one dead mouse. SS is hopeful that we only had one mouse. I would like to think that too, but I know better.

2006-08-16T18:32:00.000-05:00

August 12 and 13
We have begun the move and remodeling. Actually by the time this is posted we have moved in already. There is a delay with our posts since our internet connection was installed this weekend and I (AW) live in Alabama during the week for work. Anyway, Saturday Aug 12 was our first day in the house. Here's a quick summary of interesting events that Saturday and Sunday....

- We had to break into the building because none of the keys we received during the closing opened the any of the exterior doors. Good thing we had scheduled a locksmith to re-key all the locks that morning.

- We made the first of probably many trips to Home Depot. We decide it’s impossible to get out that store under an hour.

- I decided to pull up the nasty stained carpet in the 1st floor bedrooms which caused a domino effect of pulling all the carpet out of the building. This was not an easy job. All the carpet was installed in different ways. A couple areas had cheap carpet on padding stapled to the floor. The worst was the 3rd floor. It was carpet, on top of glued on foam, on top of two layers of tile. All these layers were held down with 100s of staples and nails. We spent two days removing the tile, staples and nails. The upside is there are decent wood floors under most the crap we pulled up. PH is gun hoe about trying to refinish them ourselves. I think it might be harder than we think especially since PH and SS are suppose to move into the 3rd floor on Aug 20.

- We begin the first cleaning of the house. Everything is grimy, sticky, or dirt colored. I witness areas change color (dirty brown to white) after a couple passes of a mop. The previous owners weren’t slobs but they definitely didn’t take great care of the house either. The cleaning is also hard because I (AW) am a bit of neat freak while PH and SS are not. Thanks to Mr. Clean, magic eraser, Clorox, and the various other cleaners we are using.

-PH and SS tried to install a ceiling fan in the 1st floor master bedroom. Old wiring and inexperience makes this project a bigger task than expected – the project lasts several days. But hey, once they figure it out, they can install them in the rest of the building.

By the end of Sunday, we are a little worn out. Did we bit off more than we could chew? Well, no one was electrocuted. We all had our limbs intact when we left and no one fell off a ladder. It’s a good start.

2006-08-16T18:20:00.000-05:00

Here's a little back story since I started this blog after we bought the red 3-flat pictured above. Three friends (AW, SS, and PH) who are engineers in various fields got together and decided to buy a piece of property in Chicago. By pooling our finances we figured we could find a building in an good location in the city. We started our building search in on West side (Pilsen, Wicker Park, Logan Square, etc). We decided to take this nifty building in Humbolt Park. The picture may not do it justice, but the building and property is big - 3 floors, full basement, oversized yard, and a 2 car garage.

As the story stands now, we just barely closed on Friday, August 4. The week leading up to the closing was mess. Though it seems everyone I talk to has had bad closing experiences. Their lawyer was convinced our mortgage paperwork wasn’t going to be ready and wanted to change the date of the close in addition to the time. The night before was a flurry of phone calls. When we woke up Friday morning we weren’t even sure there was going to be a closing but we decided we would try.

First, we show up at the property to do a final walk through. We discover the current owners haven’t moved out yet. Half their stuff is still in the house. We moved on to the title company for the closing. Their lawyer tells us that it’s hard for them to move out since the owner work and it’s hard to move 20+ yrs worth of stuff out of house. We remind him, we all took off time to be there. Anyway, long story short, our lawyer tells him we’ll start charging them if their not out by a certain time. Their lawyer tries to be a bully and then writes a crappy contract on the back of a fax. We sign a lot of papers, receive the deed, and TADA, are now the proud owners of a 3-flat.