I say she sounds like a little asthmatic old man.  Paula says she sounds like an owl.

A man says to his girlfriend (wife? sister? friend?) – “The point is, you can’t buy just one twinkie. They don’t come like that. You can only have the whole twinkie experience.”

Word.

(Not only is it raining, but someone is sitting in my favorite chair.  I’m giving him the evil eye.)

But this corner where I’m now sitting has the benefit of a really fantastic color on the wall, and I’ve taken its picture because someday when we move into an arts and crafts bungalow or some such similar period kind of a place, I’d like this color on a dining room wall please.  It’s kind of an avocado color.

So anyway, here’s a picture of our afternoon snack -

Before it was Juice.

This is our favorite juice.  Here are the ingredients:

• one red apple
• one green apple
• 4 carrots
• one large lemon (all of it, peel included)
• 4 stalks of celery
• one beet (today I used half of that golden beet above, and also a chunk of red beet for good measure)
• an inch of ginger

I didn’t take an “after” picture, but all of those fruits and vegetables wind up making about 12 ounces of pure juice.  Whenever there’s a beet involved the juice turns out a shocking red color, which is kind of amazing and delicious once you get past the surprise of its appearance.  A couple of years ago Paula found a set of eight vintage drinking glasses that commemorate the 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair, and they’ve become our official juice glasses.  Usually I juice on my own, for breakfast, but when Paula’s home on the weekend we generally have some variation of this conversation:

“Do you want to be the Pool of Industry or the Hall of Science?” or “Would you prefer Shea Stadium or the Unisphere?” Today it was Port Authority or the Circus. Each glass gives you a history of the attraction it commemorates, and while I’m glad to have the knowledge, in general I’ve pretty much been able to conclude that the New York World’s Fair was an incredibly weird place to be. It did produce a nice set of glasses though.

_____________________

*re: brunch – Juicing makes up for a dreadful new weekend brunch habit, one I don’t see us breaking anytime soon.  It involves picking up a copy of the New York Times and taking it to our favorite cheap and kitschy neighborhood brunch joint where we consume really dreadful coffee and at least one of us eats way, way too much french toast, a fault I can only excuse by saying that at least I tell them to hold the powdered sugar and whipped cream.  Paula does me slightly one better by ordering an omelet, however this omelet is the size of her FACE, so honestly, I rather suspect that maple syrup or no maple syrup, we’re coming out even.

maybe bigger than her face

But I like listening to the pledge breaks, and I like holding out to wait for a matching donation hour and basically I like hearing the pitch from all the people at the station who normally never get to be on the radio. It’s only a matter of time until they get the night security guard on there, and I like to call when people like that are pitching.

(On a different note, I’ve also learned that if you pledge during rush hour, and if they happen to thank you on-air, then you will hear from every person in the Chicago area that you have ever known at any point in your entire life, because it turns out that all of those people listen to WBEZ too.)

So anyway, I was ambivalent about the high fidelity thing. But this time they had a special on the This American Life flash drive – become a high fidelity member and it can be yours for a discount, and it seemed like a fun thing to have, and so…like that. The flash drive arrived this week, and honestly, I was thinking it would be a little metal thing with a TAL logo on it, but it’s cooler than that.

swag done right

The letters are made out of rubber and it comes in its own little box and Paula immediately co-opted it for her desk at work. At some point we’ll even download its contents and listen to some episodes. Nice.

Paint: BM markets Sail Cloth as an exterior color, but I used it as an interior color and it works beautifully.  It looks a bit bland on the paint chip, but it comes up as the perfect neutral taupe.  I highly recommend it and it’s pretty much going to be my go-to color now for any future projects.  Enormous thumbs up.

Floor Stain: The vintage floors here are red oak.  (Note: if you are renovating a vintage Chicago apartment from the 1930′s and you’re not sure what kind of original wood flooring you might be working with, it’s almost certainly red oak.)  Special Walnut came up very nicely when it came time to stain the floors and I’m happy with it.  Dark, but not too dark.  Warm, without being too red.  It’s a solid choice.  Final note, we applied a satin finish.  The alternative was semi-gloss, which I was assured was also lovely, but satin won out in the end and I don’t regret it.

Here are good clean pictures of what “sail cloth” looks like up on the walls, and “special walnut” looks like down on the floors.  These pictures are a good indication of how these finishes appear in reality.

BM Sail Cloth paint color with Minwax "Special Walnut".

The same scheme in better light.

So for all of the google searchers who found their way here….I hope this helps with your decision making process.  If you want to leave a comment, please do, I’d love to hear about the various projects out there.

The apartment is rented.  It went to the first people (I think) who came to see it, which confirmed my general learning from this phase of the process -

* It’s not that easy to rent out an apartment on your own.

* It’s super easy for a professional company to rent it out for you, and now that I’ve seen all they’ve done I don’t even begrudge them the month’s rent it cost me to use their service.  Thanks Chicago Apartment Finders.

Thanks everyone for going on this journey with me.  Now that it’s done I feel like it might be time to make some radio again.  I’m not sure what it will be about, but I’ll think of something.  It’s been too long since I dug out the microphone and put on some headphones.  That’s it….over and out.  Peace.

No tenant yet, but I haven’t been particularly hard-tenant-searching.  After 24 hours on Craigslist I came to my senses and set the rent at a very market-friendly rate of $1025.00/mo.  The problem with Craigslist is the sheer volume of how much is out there, so after a little while with no bites I turned it over to the Chicago Apartment Finders rental company two days ago.  They sent a nice guy out who seems very market-savvy.  He took notes and pictures and today he got a professional sponsored ad up on Craigslist and it’s also listed on their site.  I can also cross list it with other rental companies like The Apartment Guys and The Apartment People, but I’m going to wait a few days and see how it goes.

Want to see the kitchen?  This was the last piece in the puzzle.

Today I bought a plant.   Paula and I both agreed that given this apartment’s history – an apartment that was previously remarkable only for the amount of pot and cigarettes that apparently used to get smoked in it – the place needed a little tiny bit of life in it.  I’ve never lost sight of the fact that I was able to buy this place because someone else lost their home.  That’s a lot of sad karma to counteract.  Now that we’ve poured so much good energy and effort into it, I can barely remember how lost-cause it used to feel….that said, right now it has that “it’s nice, but no one lives here” vibe.  It needs some life.  So until a new person comes to live in this little apartment (and let that be soon!) a plant is just the ticket.  Don’t ask me what kind of plant this is, I forgot to check.  But it was the only thing at the nursery that felt right – it was small, it was green, it was alive, it was pretty, and it was cheap.

Perfect.

I’ve been hinting at great drama with the toilet seat on this renovation, and the best way to sum it up is simply to share the voicemail message that I left for Kaysie about 3 weeks ago.

“TOILETGATE LIVES ON.  Call me back.”

From the very beginning of this project I was intent to save as much as I possibly could.  Refinishing, not replacing.  In the end I can sadly say that not much was able to be refinished.  Most of this job was a gut quite unlike anything that I had anticipated, and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  One of the first things Chris and I discussed was what could be saved in the bathroom.   We both agreed that the tub was a huge save, but he said immediately that I should replace the toilet, and I said immediately that we could keep it.  Quick recap on toilet – original, still working, suits the age of the building and a great place to save a few hundred dollars.

Chris nodded his head that day and said ok, but it was clear over the next few weeks that this bothered him – every few days he would casually drop in a mention of the toilet, “so we should replace the toilet, yes?” “No.” “I think maybe the toilet should go, it’s old.” “No.” “It’s leaking.” “No.” And then I’d be all patting myself on the back for my adherence to the vintage vision, and lack of a contribution to our nation’s landfills.  Good job me.

not nice

I was pretty much the only one who had this vision, however.  Everyone else thought I was nuts, including the upstairs neighbor Yusef who came in for a visit to see what was by then an 80% completed bathroom.  I asked him to vote on the toilet debate.  Note, at this point the toilet was sitting in the middle of the living room covered in filth, where it had been deposited when the bathroom was gutted.  Yusef took one look, raised an eyebrow and said, “oh girlfriend, get rid of it.”  He had a point.  Dirty…already ripped out…sitting on a trash bag in the middle of the living room because even now that it had been disconnected from the plumbing, it still dripped water.  At that point my resolution wavered and I told Chris to throw it out.

“It’s too late.”

“Ummm….huh?”

“I’ve already closed the wall and tiled around the pipe.  If you want a new one I need to open the wall back up, re-do the pipes for a modern toilet, and re-tile.”

“Oh.”

“What do you want to do?”

“I want to say fuck.”

“Ok.”

At this point I had no choice.  Chris and I took a good look at it and decided that some bleach, elbow grease and a brand new pipe set might yet save this toilet, and I crossed my fingers we could get to the source of the leak.  Two weeks later, all those things came to pass and we had a beautiful toilet.  I returned to patting myself on the back.

handsome!

shiny!

I went back to Home Depot, my new home away from home, a veritable Cheers of home improvement, and I bought a toilet seat.  There are two standard kinds of toilet seats – one for round bowls, and one for elongated bowls.  This bowl is most definitely round, and all round toilet seats are 16.5 inches long from middle of the screw to the front of the bowl.  I’ve learned this.  I brought the toilet seat over to the apartment.  It didn’t fit.  Not even close.  Too small.  Huh.  This must be an elongated bowl.  I took the toilet seat back.  Elongated bowls are 18.5 inches long.  I bought one.  I brought it over to the apartment.  It didn’t fit.  Not even close.  Too big.  I have the Goldilocks of toilet bowls. I got out the tape measure. 17 inches.

I went to 3 more hardware stores.  Nobody in Chicago carries anything but the standard sizes.  Let the google searches begin.  I spent HOURS googling toilet seats.  Paula sat right next to me one night and googled with me.  It was insane.

“vintage toilet seats”

“american standard toilet seats old”

“non-standard toilet seat sizes”

“toilet bowl too big”

“toilet seats for antique toilets”

I just couldn’t figure it out – this is not an unusual toilet.  There are a million old apartments in Chicago with this same toilet, and I’m pretty sure they all have toilet seats.  I even called up Katie Mac and left her a message begging her to see if her toilet seat had a brand name on it.  Still, no luck.  What the hell?  Also, no one else seemed to be searching for this issue, because no one else in the entire history of the internet has even posted so much as a hint of this problem.  For days I was consumed by this issue – I could be making supper, but part of me was thinking about the Toilet Seat Issue.  I could be in the pool – half of my brain would be swimming and the other half was most decidedly working on the toilet seat.  Making the bed?  Toilet seat!   Reading?  Toilet seat!   Driving?  Toilet seat!  You get the picture.

I called my sister a few weeks ago, several days into the Toilet Seat Issue.  I explained the problem.  “I just keep looking at toilet seats and none of them fit.”

“Well, why is this an issue?”

“Because they don’t fit!”

“So why don’t you just measure the toilet and buy one that does?”

“Bitch.”

“Hey!”

“ALL I HAVE DONE IN THIS WORLD LATELY IS MEASURE THAT TOILET SEAT.”

“um, ok, crazy, call me later.”

Then, finally……dawn.  A lightbulb.  I don’t have a residential toilet.  I have a COMMERCIAL toilet.  Where have I seen these toilets?  In rest stops and restaurants and gyms and stores.  This toilet may not have been commercial in 1935, but it sure as hell is commercial now, and it’s still being sold.  I googled “commercial toilet seats” – boom! 17 inches!  17 INCHES PEOPLE. And they’re available HERE! and HERE! and HERE!  A word to Chicago hardware stores – buy some of these.  We all don’t have modern toilets.

Look what arrived today:

I called Paula and told her that if this toilet seat doesn't fit I'm going to kill myself.

Love the font.

This box is fantastic.  I particularly like “toilet seat – toilet seat – toilet seat.”  Katie Mac once told me that she likes to put lots of exclamation marks in her emails and that pretty much what she does is hold her finger down on the key until she feels her point has been made emphatically enough.  LIKE THIS:

Toilet Seat - Toilet Seat - Toilet Seat!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!