Wrap It Up

Next phase was insulation.  As I've mentioned, it was cooooooooold in that house for a while.  Once the gas was connected (that was a whole other story, the Gas Company behaved exactly like one would expect) a furnace was put in and turned on but without insulation the heat was flying out through the old brick walls and into the greater Chicagoland sky.  When the insulation was in it was a billion times warmer. Plus it helped to visually define what the rooms would look like when the walls were in.     

First floor looking toward front door.  

The library, which is at the front of the house.  This is to the left of the front door in the picture above.  The fireplace will have built-in bookshelves around the sides and over the top.  I can't wait to get the fireplace surround installed. The stone has already been picked out for that and it's absolutely beautiful.

First floor, back of the house.  Living room and dining room (which is currently occupied by the temporary stairs.)

Also at the back of the house, along the wall opposite the living room and dining room, is the kitchen.  The stone for the kitchen counters is pretty great but there have been some bumps in that process and it may still be in New Jersey.  I'm really hoping the stone place pulls through on that and I can get the slabs I like.

Looking up into the guest bedroom / office.  I love the exposed beam ceiling on the 2nd floor.  I would have been happy just to stain it a clear finish but Architect Bill thought it might look too unintentionally unfinished so it'll get a coat or two of dark chocolate brown paint instead.

Up the stairs and around toward the second floor you can see more of that ceiling and a glimpse into the bathroom.

The full bath is at the top of the stairs between the two bedrooms.  There's a soaking tub in there that looks pretty inviting.

Now up on the second floor looking from the guest room toward the master bedroom.

The closet in the guest room will house the washer and dryer.  So convenient.

Second floor looking back toward the guest room.

Master bedroom complete with large garbage bag.  It's those kind of extras that make it feel homey even at this stage.

And here's the entry into the walk-in closet in the master bedroom.  Next up...walls!

You've been framed

The project feels like it's progressing really quickly.  This is what the house looked like when they framed it out.

Here's the first floor looking north, toward the front door.

And now you can see the temporary stairs and sort of see the frame for the fireplace up by the front window. The half bath is the room at the right of the picture.

This is looking south toward the back yard.

and south with the bath and stairs framed in plus a wall this side of the staircase.

Up above you can see into the master bedroom on the south end of the 2nd floor.  The skylight upstairs on the left is positioned over the upstairs bathroom.

Here's the guest bedroom/office upstairs.  This crazy composited picture is a little wonky but you get the idea.  Right now there's a half wall that butts up against the stairs.  My plan is to have a window installed there but that may happen down the road when I have some cash handy.  That bluish light in the ceiling is another skylight.  

Walk down that hall on the left and you'll pass the upstairs bathroom on your way to the master bedroom.

This picture was taken from the master bedroom looking into the walk-in closet and past that into the upstairs bathroom.  The ledge along the closet wall was temporary.  The carpenters used it as a cutting shelf when they were building the upstairs deck.    

This is just a reminder of how old the house is.  These ancient bricks are original from the 1888 build.

Best of the New

Check it out.  Bill Scholtens, my architect, is featured in the Jan/Feb issue of Chicago Home + Garden magazine in their Best of the New section.  You can read about his philosophy on green design and see, floating behind him, a rendering of the back porch at Huron. It's pretty cool.  Bill and Huron are both available at a newsstand near you.

Bill's so awesome.  He's great in a lot of ways but I think the thing I most appreciate is the mix of his big picture vision coupled with his fine eye for detail.  Where I can look at something, he can really see it.  He's just super talented and a pleasure to work with and he's not letting my economy budget get in the way of turning Huron into a beautiful house.  So if you're building or rehabbing something there's no legitimate reason not to give him a call. You can find his info and see his work at elementsarchitects.com.

Yummer Plumber

I had no idea that finding a kitchen faucet would make me so happy.  I had spent a lot of time online looking at plumbing fixtures and filling up virtual shopping carts.   Here's a sample of one list

I put together 3 or 4 more of those.  My search was for interesting fixtures with classic lines, anything that had a little character. Then I'd send the lists off to the contractor but somehow they'd synthesize my order, remold it into what they said I really needed and recommend something like

this.  They just weren't seeing my vision.

For as long as I can remember I've wanted to live in an industrial space.  When I was a kid I wanted to live in my elementary school.  I just loved the oversized windows in the halls, the high ceilings and dark, echoing stairwells. I'd still like to live in a school building or a warehouse or an old fire station. And so would lots of people which means that those cool old buildings are hard to come by and expensive when you do find them.  But there are little ways to introduce that industrial aesthetic into the Huron house and one of them is with plumbing fixtures.  The trick was finding something I could afford that had an interesting design style. Things weren't looking up until I stumbled upon a place called the Chicago Faucet Shoppe (chicagofaucetshoppe.com). These guys know their business and they're a treat to spend time with. The first day I was in their tiny store on Elston the floor was covered in cleaned up, previously owned sinks and toilets. Somebody was rehabbing a house that must have been fairly large because they had a couple truck loads of porcelain that they were recycling through the store. It resulted in a very casual, come-as-you-are ambience and if you like that sort of thing and appreciate a small, independently owned business where they remember your name and seem to really care about what they do then you should check 'em out. And if you need to repair, replace, clean or buy something Adam's your man. I wish I had more stuff to get because he is delightful. He recommend these

and they were exactly what I was looking for. Each piece is heavy and really sturdy feeling. Adam swears they're well made and will hold up and I really like the classic shapes. In less than 20 minutes he had sorted out what I'd spent about 2 months muddling through on my own.  And you know what, just looking at the pictures still makes me happy. Imagine what it'll be like when they're finally installed.

Knock Knock

Here's a flip book look at the progress on the inside of the house.

It started with tearing everything out and taking the walls...

and floors down to the studs.  A plywood sub floor was put in and 2 x 6's (maybe) were lined up to make sure the 2nd floor stayed upstairs where it should be.

  

Framing of the new walls started.  Downstairs there will be a small powder room on the left and a wall next to the stairs that runs from the basement to the 2nd floor.  A temporary staircase was built so we can run up and down inspecting progress.

And, yipee!!, insulation.  Up til now it's been absolutely freezing inside.  It helped when the doors and windows were installed, but only slightly.  Ridiculously cold.  Once the insulation was in it actually held in the heat that was pumping out of the furnace in the basement.  So toasty.  Finally, drywall.  It's sad to see all that exposed brick and wood go away. Drywall is for squares. But exposed insulation isn't really a great look and freezing to death without insulation is for the birds. So drywall.  Next up is priming the drywall for paint. My car was in the shop and in the waiting room there was a xeroxed copy of "Angie's List's Top Picks" from 2008.  My mechanic was one of the top picks, another was a local painter.  So I have an appointment with the painter this week to get a quote on priming and painting the interior of the house.  He sounds normal so I'm hoping for the best.  Actually his company does a lot of work on the north shore so really I'm hoping he's not crazy expensive.  

You should check out my demo

When the demolition started it looked like a bomb had gone off inside Huron.  Messy messy messy. Getting inside was a challenge but for the sake of history I picked my way through the wreckage and took some photos.

They got rid of everything down to the studs which meant there was a lot of debris to haul out of the house.  

This toilet was not always right inside the front door.  I swear they moved it there from somewhere else.

Here you're facing the front door and you can see the backside of the stairs.  They left that ceiling fan in as long as they could because that was the only working light in the building.

This is the living room area looking into what used to be the kitchen.  What. A. Dump.

They sorted everything and took out the various materials in stages.  They hauled off a lot of the lumber already, this round was scrap metal and garbage.

                          

The demo took about twice as long as originally planned.  I've stripped wallpaper before, only to find 3 or 4 more layers underneath.  These guys were pulling off drywall and finding extra layers of walls underneath.  For a small house it was a deceptively big job.

So how did they do it?  With wheelbarrows and elbow grease. Then,once they took out the windows, they were able to pull a dump truck up over the sidewalk, straight to the front of the house and load out directly through the hole in the wall.

Then they would re-board up the window holes at the end of the day.  Better safe than sorry, you never know who'd want to sneak into a vacant house at night and steal chunks of plaster.  

Let's Make a Deal

On the second floor you can choose door number 1, door number 2 or door number 3.  And you know what, it won't matter because behind any door you'd find the same dumpy looking carpet laid in a teeny tiny room.  At least that's how it was before the demo.

But I don't want to spoil it for you before you have a chance to look around.  Starting in the back of the house on the second floor there was a makeshift linen closet right next to the back stairs.  From there you walk into the upstairs master bedroom then down the hall and on into 3 smaller bedrooms.  

There's just not much to say about the upstairs.  The rooms were small and they all looked the same.  And now they're gone.