06.09.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:25 pm by Forgotten Toybox
You think after 2 years I’d have a handle on what we want to do here, but my vision isn’t quite as clear as it should be. There are so many things on the list that it’s really hard to focus on what’s most important and I get overwhelmed. It wouldn’t be such an ordeal if our funds weren’t so limited but we have to pick and choose our projects. I need to figure out what will make us happiest, and most comfortable.
One of the things I want to add to the list is the Trim of Aluminum Siding along the top of the house. I Haaaaaaaate it. Hate. Did I mention hate? HouseInProgress awhile back posted a photo of an Chicago Style Bungalow that looks like the band of trim had been covered up with painted wood trim. I’d like to do something similar. I’m going to have to check with the Chicago Bungalow Association as it’s not exactly period… and I haven’t seen this done to many bungalows. It looks SO much better then the crap-tastic white aluminum though. We’d probably also paint the white wood trim around the windows and dormer too… and maybe the windows themselves.
If I’m able to do that plus add the cement planters and window boxes and paver sidewalk I think it will go a LONG way to making this place not feel like one of the more modest of Chicago Bunaglows. Maybe it will make me forget I want to strangle whomever tuckpointed this place so sloppy. (Very Textured Bricks + Over Tuckpointing = Bad News)
I still have Contractor #2 coming to look at the kitchen tomorrow for estimates. I want to get an estimate from him for the (bedroom/kitchen) room flip and plab B a minor overhaul in the exisiting space (more likely I guess). It might be better to do the minor remodel and save up for the basement or attic dormers sometime in the future.
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06.04.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:52 am by Forgotten Toybox
Our front sidewalk is badly cracked. I’ve decided that I’m going to attempt a paver walk myself later this summer as soon as I figure out material quanity and costs. (Excuse to buy a wet saw! Yeay!)
It looks fairly straight forward. Only thing I worry about if shifting of the stones. However, If I use the right sand and rock base and tamp my heart out it should be okay… and maybe I should cement in the border instead of edgeing. I saw a pro-company do it that way. It can’t look much worse then what’s there now… If that works out I’ll do our patio in the back once the kitchen/bedroom are done. I want to do something alittle more artistic back there, but I want to keep the front very bungalow friendly.
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06.03.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 1:10 pm by Forgotten Toybox
I haven’t been very active here. I suppose it’s hard to get motivated when you have all of just a few people looking at your blog.
Anyway, I’ve been busy this spring with non-house related things. I’m training for 2 triathlons. If you know me this is surprising news. I’m not an athlete, I have NEVER been one. However, I’ve recently lost quite a sizeable chunk of weight and began a running program. I was already biking… so there you guy I figured why not. So I’ve been swimming / Biking / Running my little heart out since January.
On to the house. I’ve finally figured out what I’d like to do with the kitchen. While I came up with a fair plan to work withing the exisit space… I’ve also come up with the “This would be SWEET plan” which I’m about to start getting estimates on. (In fact one Contractor is coming tonight supposedly for an estimate) If we can at all swing this great plan… I’d like to go for it.
It entails switching the back bedroom with the kitchen. Our kitchen is very poor functionally. Like a lot of bungalow kitchens I have 4 doorways and 2 windows. There is a “bump out” on the porch over the basement steps so using part of the porch wasn’t happening. On the other side of the room is the pantry and steps so we couldn’t move inward. The room is only about 9 by 10. The fridge is basically sitting in the way. Its hard to squeeze your way into the pantry. There is 2 feet of counter space. The room is dark because the side window is a high (basement sized) half window. The back window is no longer facing outside it looks out into the porch. We have no dishwasher. We have no Disposal. The microwave is in the pantry. The only appliances I keep out is on a kitchen cart (espresso machine and grinder)
So yeah… If we switch rooms the bedroom is 10 by 12. We can knock out the back wall and finish the currently un-heated back porch room and re-frame it with windows/french doors making it a sunroom off the kitchen. which walks out to a patio. It basically would fix nearly every problem we have. The only issue is the bedroom would be smaller, but somewhere down the line we’d like to dormer out the attic which would give us 2 more bedrooms anyway. The other problem is suspect it won’t be cheap. We’d also be losing the vintage tile. I love the period details of this place but in all honesty the sea-green tile makes me un-happy anyway.
I’d reuse out appliances and I’m willing to put in as much work as my untrained crafty hands can handle so that should knock costs down a bit, but I won’t know until I start getting bids. We’ll have to decide if we can pull this off. Wait. Or have to go back to plan A (re-arrange the current kitchen in an L shape)
Guy #1 is coming tonight. I emailed Guy#2 yesterday but haven’t heard back yet.
Any chicago people want to recommend anyone?
What it currently looks like:
What it could look like:
Feel for the overall house when finished. Note the living and dining rooms I just swapped to look like below. The sofa is currently out in the middle of the room. I have to get that radiator under the window moved.
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02.11.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:15 pm by Forgotten Toybox
It’s been awhile… I tend to get very busy in the fall and this year I had an offer I could not refuse to participate in a BIG art show at the Merchandise Mart. This is the kind of show you usually get jurried into, but I was invited to fill a last minute slot with only weeks to spare. It went very well, but took away all my house time.
Since we last left off not too much has happened mainly due to budget. I did get the bathtub refinished and I’ll post about that soon.
But now that fall madness is over inbetween shoveling the walk and trying to learn how to run I’ve returned to tearing out the basement. Today I removed the celing from the old coal room… so now I’m about 60 percent done tearing it out. Someone thought it would be a good idea to nail up the ceiling every inch or so… so taking it down is proving to be a long, dirty job that I’ve been working on off and on since last spring. And here I thought the fact we didn’t have paneling was a good thing. Ack!
The good news I’m exposing all the pipe work which we would have needed for when we’re ready to re-do the kitchen so slowly… VERY slowly… I’m progressing in some direction.
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09.16.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:42 pm by Forgotten Toybox
I was thrown off track this summer when the entire neighborhood was flooded a few months back. At the time I was in the process of tearing down the ceiling in the basement so there was ancient drywall all stacked on the floor. As you can imagine it was quite the mess to clean up. Water poured down our back stairs into the stairwell. We had alittle waterfall going. In all it was only about 6 inches of water in the basement (and one trapped cat!) But luckily it drained right away. I lost some valueable large paper stock for my bookbinding business… but the rest was old video tapes and other “junk”
We’re going to get the sidewalk replaced along the side of the house slanted away from the house slightly and this should solve most of the issue. Right now my neighbor is in the process of getting theirs redone so I’m waiting to see how it turns out. If they do a good job, then I will use the same people. Right now they tore out the old cement, but it’s been sitting bare all week. Not a good sign. We might possibly get the other side of the house dones as well since the earth is just sitting up aginst the house.
So all our funds at the moment are being set aside for the sidewalk, but I am going to call a tub refinisher and hopefully get that done later next month. Our tub is vintage 1923 Cast Iron. It’s just a small drop-in tub, but it has seen better days and in places it has ben stripped down to bare iron where there was a long-term drip. Hoping they will still be able to refinish it.
So no fun pictures… basement is basically in the same state as it was last time. Kitchen plans are still being fussed around with, but no concrete plans on when we will be able to swing that.
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05.22.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:56 pm by Forgotten Toybox
Since there still aren’t any “major” projects going on in the house I’m going to etch some copper switch plates. I have to order some blanks first though, and unfortunately the price of raw copper items has being getting quite high… so I’ve been putting off placing an order. I’ve made these before to sell before, but never for myself. The tricky bit will be coming up with the right bungalow / craftsman design for our home.
Here is a sample of what I mean. This is one I made last year that is more quirky:
I also want to try to make a house # plate and maybe some panel to put on a mailbox as we need to replace both. Our mailbox is tiny and both that and the numbers are spraypainted an unpleasant fake bronze. Classy. I’m wondering though if copper anything is just crying out to be stolen on the outside of a house? Our neighborhood isn’t exactly crime ridden, but it still is Chicago you know.
Otherwise, things are a bit slow around here. We are about to put up the bedroom crown molding this weekend. Greg has been working on getting the compound miter saw bolted to the work bench in preparation so we should be ready to roll.
I don’t have a measuring tool for angles, so we are going to wing it and follow the ones suggested on the saw. Originally I wanted to get this protractor: http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=10816 but we are going to try it without. Probably silly of us with 80+ year old plaster walls which are likely out of square. I don’t expect it will be perfect, but as these are plain cheap primed wood moldings that will be painted I suppose we can caulk the imperfections.
Basement walls are all down now except for behind the electrical panel. Next step down there is to get estimates on some repairs and work on what to do with the ceiling which will be most likely torn out as well.
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05.07.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:22 pm by Forgotten Toybox
I’ve been planting some perennials out front as it’s been really bare out there since we’ve moved in. I eventually want to boarder the bed out front with pavers, and put it something more substaintial (Maybe something evergreen so our yard isn’t so bare in the winter) but until we get around to that I’ve been sticking in some flowers that will come back next year. I’m thinking about Red Azaleas too, but I’m not sure about those yet with the red brick.
My selection is kinda limited to what my local discount store carries since I can walk there and don’t have the car most days so there isn’t anything super-fancy planted yet. So far I’ve planted these:
I think these were mini blue delphinium…
Osteosperermum (White with dark purple intertiors)
Pincushion flower (Not sure I’m a big fan - but they provide lots of color)
Armeria “Lipstick Red”
Bleeding hearts
Osteosperermum (More purple then the white ones but I put these out back)
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05.04.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:12 pm by Forgotten Toybox
Greg installed a new light in the bedroom that we picked out a few weeks ago at Lowes. I had decided to replace to cheapo-gold fixture as it was one of those projects that doesn’t cost much, but makes a room look more more polished, and in the bedroom it’s one of the rooms that I end up looking up more often as it’s right over the bed.
Trust me the new one looks much nicer in person then in the photos indicate. Photos tend to make the gold fixture better then it is in person too.
The finish matches our bed too (sorta a rust/blacked bronze) and it has a nice sorta veined glass look to it when the light is on. I know the sqaure/scalloped shape was an odd choice, but I wanted something different.
Old Fixture:
New Fixture:
We also finally bought the molding for the bedroom. Nothing fancy, but its nice and wide and matches the molding in the main rooms of the house. Since that bedroom is the one room in the house that has painted wood, we decided to go with the pre-primed wood as is hella-lot cheaper then stain grade. Whole 10 by 12 room at about a buck a foot. Not too bad.
Was a funny sight though 13 foot long crown molding sticking out of the sunroof of our PT Crusier. I love that car I can’t tell you how many large objects we’ve managed to fit in that car. About the most UN-SUV that ever was!
I suppose next weekend we will attempt to cut and hang the molding won’t that be an adventure. Luckily Greg is the resident math geek so I think we’ll be able to figure out all the angles properly.
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04.19.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:09 pm by Forgotten Toybox
Here is what it looks like now… this photo is taken earleir then the one last year, so you can see the lillies aren’t as big yet, but now you can clearly see the manhole cover I mentioned yesterday. You can also see I cleaned up the grass line a bit a few weeks ago. I might mulch this area so it doesn’t become a weed patch like last year. Don’t think I’ll get to the patio this summer. (yes that’s an organ pipe on the right hand side left by the last owners and next to it the metal side arm of my old futon)
I run to to local discount store often (Even though I hate it) for Milk and what not and they had some nice pansies the other day which I popped into the front planters. Eventually we will replace these with traditional bungalow planters. (Also note the painted linestone that wil eventually be stripped)
New Door Matt. Yes it’s tacky with the word Home on it, but I liked the design otherwise and it wasn’t expensive so I decided I’d deal. I liked our old one but it blended in too much. That old one is on the back porch now.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 12:58 am by Forgotten Toybox
Along the back of the house there was this large green bush. I waited all last summer for it to do something interesting besides block the pathway to the side of the house… Alas no flowers nor anything of interest. I figure at this point it’s either a very over grown weed or might as well be because it is in the way of where I eventually would like to place my patio and raised planters, so it was sent packing.
I never really had to dig up something that had a well established root system. To make things more tricky the root ball was sandwhiched on 2 sides by the foundation under the porch in the back and the catch basin on the side (looks like a manhole cover)
I dug around the 2 sides I could get to using rose shears to cut away roots, but there ended up being roots several inches wide and for those I had to get out a hand saw… Then I dug out as much dirt around it as I could and blindly sawed the sides I couldn’t get to and then used my weight to tilt it sideways into the hole and cut the rest. Needless to say it was a pain in the butt and took several hours.
The Weed/Bush is the one in the back of the photo here along the house. I forgot to take progress pictures. Now it’s just ugly glaring plastic siding. I would have left it there for color until I needed to clear the area, but geeze I’m glad I didn’t let those roots get any thicker.
Only other thing going on is Greg ordered some plastic outlet boxes which are lighter weight and are supposed to be better for plaster walls, so hopefully we will get some outlets put in soon… as with most old houses we have only one outlet in most of the rooms.
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