this morning

Isabelle is snoring and she makes a little noise – hoooo…hoooo…hooo.

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

life lesson

Overheard at the supermarket:

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.

a coffee kind of day

Pretty much I’ve sworn off coffee.  But it’s chilly and raining (which has pretty much been true about this entire month, holy hell Mother Nature, what gives?) and today calls for working at the hipster coffee place up the road from our apartment.  I just couldn’t bring myself to do the herbal tea thing.  No offense, celestial seasons, but I need my daytime beverages to work harder.  So I’m hunkered down now with a latte and a tiny little vegan cupcake that’s so cute you want to kiss it.  Hello, lunch.

(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.

Juicing

We’ve been juicing a lot lately.  I’ll write another day about all of the vegetables that get consumed in this household, but today I’ll just post a picture of our afternoon snack.  We made a quick trip to Whole Foods today and stocked up on stuff for the week ahead. A lot of this was produce, including celery, carrots, romaine lettuce, kale, bananas, green and red apples, a kiwi, a few lemons and ginger.  I wish I’d checked the fridge before we left, but we went to the market straight from brunch* and maybe if we’d come from home I would have realized that we didn’t need another two pound bag of carrots.  Come to find out, when putting the groceries away, there was another two pound bag of carrots in the left crisper drawer and about 6 stray carrots hiding out all on their lonesome in the right crisper drawer.  Damn it. Normally we’re really good about ‘no wasting’…but I really don’t know what we’re going to do with 5 pounds of carrots.  Other than juice them, which is the point, but that’s a lot of juice.

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.

_____________________

*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

TAL, I salute you

Last month I finally caved and became a WBEZ high fidelity member, which means I now give them a little bit of money every month, instead of a lot of money once a year. It isn’t a ton of money in the grand scheme of a ton of money, in fact it probably breaks down into just a piddly amount of money, but it is what it is. I resisted for a long time because I actually like pledging, and once you become a high fidelity member you don’t have to do that any longer. The whole point in fact is that you don’t have to call and make a pledge ever, ever again.

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.

An addendum: Pictures! – Benjamin Moore Sail Cloth Paint and Minwax Special Walnut

So the 1439 project is over, but every day there are hits on this website from people searching for pictures and images of Benjamin Moore’s “sail cloth” (or “sailcloth”) paint color.  There are an equal number of hits from people looking for pictures of Minwax floor stain in “special walnut.” To help all of the google searchers out there, here is some information on both…

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 news, it is good

ok y’all, I have news.

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.

Happy Easter

crossing the finish line

So the kitchen counters went in 2 weeks ago now and I’ve just been lazy, lazy about posting a final recap here.  Somehow all the steam ran out of me.  I go over now and I look and other than the odd wipe down of a window-sill or polishing of a faucet, there’s really nothing left for me to do.  There are still a couple of things on Chris’ punch list, but even those items are so small that if they never got done it’s possible no one would notice.  (Well, one thing might get noticed – the radiator valve in the bathroom has quit valving, but given the recent 80 degree temperatures around here this week, it’s easy to think it might be months yet before anyone needs actual heat when they bathe, so I’m not particularly fussy about when it gets fixed.)

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.

toiletgate

A couple of months ago my friend Kaysie re-did her bathroom, and part of that gut renovation was a new, fancy, sleek toilet.  Getting that toilet, all of it, in all of its varied new, fancy and sleek pieces, turned out to be an ordeal of such proportions that we took to calling the entire project Toiletgate.

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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hey mr. postman

I’m stalking the mail woman.  Literally, kind of.  (An aside – can one “kind of literally” do something?  Is that a rape of the english language, like  “most unique”?  Find out.  Get back to me.  Thanks.)

So anyway, I’m stalking the mail woman postal carrier.  I had to leave her a note earlier today, and I realized that I don’t really know the correct lingo for postal carriers of the female persuasion.  Are they called mailwomen? female mail carriers? postal ladies? mailmen who happen to be women?  The note finally just began “Mail Carrier!”  That will get her attention.

Here’s the deal – you buy a foreclosure, you don’t necessarily get the key to the mailbox.  In fact, you probably almost definitely don’t and unless you’ve bought into a high-rise with a dedicated mail room (which I most certainly did not) then you’re stuck.  At first I thought I’d have to call a locksmith, but last week I saw the mailwoman-postal-carrier-of-the-female-persuasion come down the front pathway and into the lobby and I ran down to meet her.

I explained my problem and she assured me that I don’t need a locksmith.  In fact it’s really simple – “you just pop this lock out and buy a new one.” Believe it or not, correct! I went to Clark and Devon Hardware and bought a new lock set and it cost me all of $8.

no locksmith required

HOWEVER….you pop out the lock from INSIDE the box, and I can’t GET inside the box without a KEY.  This is where the mailwoman-postal-carrier-of-the-female-persuasion comes in.   Now I’m sitting inside this empty apartment, my laptop and real job work on hand, with an eagle eye trained on the front walkway, screwdriver and lockset at the ready.  I’ve also left a kind of beseeching note on the downstairs mailbox begging her to call me should I avert my gaze for a moment and miss her.

I still haven’t told y’all about the toilet seat (sweet jesus mary mother of god the *&%$^!# toilet seat), but other than the toilet seat, getting the mailbox lock re-keyed is practically the very last job left for me to do on this project.  Sweet hallelujah.

the home stretch

This project went so quickly to begin with, didn’t it? Ohhhh the home stretch is slow.  I’ve learned a ton on this rehab, but here’s my biggest lesson – order your kitchen cabinets and counter top early – early, early, early – like on Day ONE.  Because they will take 6 or so weeks to arrive and if you have contractors who work super fast, they will finish the majority of the work before the cabinets and counter top arrive, and then they will be twiddling their thumbs.  And – here is the lesson, pay attention – contractors who are twiddling their thumbs go on to other projects. I.e. projects that are not your project.

As well they should.  They have to make their money, of course they do.  But when you lose your great contractors it’s sort of hard to get them back.

Here’s where we currently stand – all kitchen cabinets are IN, hooray.  Stove, microwave, refrigerator – installed.  But counter tops – well crap on a cracker they take 2 weeks and we are currently at the mercy of the stone company.  Quartz is going in.  I rejected granite from an environmental purpose. I think granite is beautiful and have used it several times in the past, including in my own home, but my ecologically minded friend Carla sent me an email early on in this process that said, essentially, “excited about the rehab! I forbid you to use granite!” and after reading a lot about quartz I decided to go that route instead.  There are more environmentally friendly options, but overall it’s a good choice.  Additionally, it’s incredibly durable and can take pretty much whatever a future tenant or owner might throw at it.  Also, totally beautiful.  So there’s that.  In future projects I want to use wood and concrete.  (Future projects….I have big dreams.  Nothing before next year, but big dreams ’cause this whole rehab thing really floats my boat.)

So anyway, this post is basically an update to say nothing new.  Waiting on the counter top man.   In the meantime contractor has promised me that the following will get done this week:

• Floors finished
• Bathroom floor sealed
• Unused boxes of tiles removed
• Windows cleaned and mini-blinds hung
• Missing baseboards in kitchen installed
• Missing light switch cover installed
• Under cabinet lighting installed
• Back door lock reinforced
• Closet rods hung
• Lobby mailbox slot re-keyed (to be done by me, I am learning a lot about mailbox locks)
• Two shelves in pantry installed
• Kitchen cabinet knobs put on
• Kitchen sink and dishwasher to be hooked up after counter top has gone in

There are a few other things but I’ve run out of steam.  Out. Of. Steam.

Counter top man, hurry UP.

Sneak Peek

I spent late yesterday afternoon sitting in a corner of the apartment’s living room, where I came to work while I waited for the arrival of the appliances.   I tried to find the least dusty corner of this place, but that’s a little like trying to find the least sandy place on the beach, or the least hot corner of hell, as it currently looked like this:

The kitchen cabinets are now in, and the guys got busy getting all of their equipment cleaned up. The appliances came and I have to admit I kind of freaked out a little.  At first I was all, “oh so beautiful!” and then I was all, “this kitchen is so small, oh my god, the kitchen is so small.” Not that it wasn’t small before, but it had nothing IN it, so it was a little harder to tell.  I might have made a big mistake, maybe.  The board president here was kind enough to tell me weeks ago that the only refrigerator that works properly in these kitchens are the shallower counter-depth ones.  Well, I priced those out.  The cheapest of those begin at $1500+ and what you make up for in shallowness you get back in width.  There is no extra width to play with in this tiny space. Then I went upstairs to the neighbors, and they had a regular fridge and it looked just fine.  So I went out and chose the least deep of the regular deep fridges (which only cost $600) and maybe it’s just the shock of the new but did I mention that this kitchen is SMALL?  And that fridges eat up a lot of floor space?

Last night Paula and I went swimming and half way through I bobbed over to her in the water, and asked her to stop what she was doing and calm me down.  “Have I ruined this kitchen?  What else could I have done? I just don’t recognize the place. What if I can’t find a tenant? I don’t know what to do about the countertops.  Is that fridge too big? It’s too big.”

She asked me, “what exactly is wrong?”

“I think I feel like it’s all uncertain now.  We’re almost done and I don’t know what the next part looks like.”

“The finding a renter part?”

“It’s just, before I felt like this was all MY apartment, and now I don’t recognize the kitchen, that’s some new person’s kitchen, and someone else is going to come and live there, but we’re not done yet, and there are still tons of things left to do, and, and, it all just sort of doesn’t feel like mine anymore.”

“It’s going to be fine.” There was a pause. “I knew you’d have a freak out when the kitchen went in.”

Do you want to rent this apartment?  Fantastic beautiful one-bedroom in Edgewater Glen, heat included, thoroughly renovated, available April 1st even though it looks like there’s still a ton to do.  Disregard the current lack of countertops and the missing toilet seat.  I’m working on that, I swear.

the kitchen cabinets have arrived

All has been quiet the last week or so – the project was halted while we waited for the kitchen cabinets to arrive.

Well, they arrived this morning (and arrived and arrived and arrived):

On a different note, how cute is this?

exciting day

The last time I saw the bathtub, it looked like this:

grubby

Ok, not exactly like that, because that picture was taken a couple of weeks ago.  But I promise you, it hasn’t looked any BETTER than this in the last two weeks, and it’s actually looked worse.

Today I went over to drop off the dining room sconces which had finally been delivered, and George was there, working on his own.  We unpacked the lights and while we were opening the boxes he asked me if I’d seen the bathtub. Not in the last two days, no…..

“Is it ok?”

“Go see…”

All I could think was, oh my god.  The toilet has had a slight leak, the tub has been full of filthy construction dust, who knows what might have happened.  WELL, something did happen, something amazing, something I’d forgotten Chris had mentioned that he was going to get a sub-contractor to come in and do.  Reglaze the enamel.  This pretty much took my breath away, it was so unexpected:

80 year old bathtub!

I had no idea it could look like this.  I originally decided to leave it in because A) there was nothing wrong with it, B) ajax with bleach can work wonders, and C) it’s cast iron and I know enough about cast iron to know that removing a tub of that size from a bathroom this small is MAJOR work.  But this….well, I had no idea.

In other wonderful news of the day, the kitchen floor is in and now I’m thrilled that the tile didn’t work out.  Though if you would like 6 boxes of cheap tile let me know, ’cause now it’s just sitting there in the dining room, unloved and unwanted.  I’m still not over what that kitchen floor did to my budget**, but I’m super happy with the result:

new wood floors in kitchen

The camera is playing a little trick here, the floors aren’t quite this dark, but they’ve come up looking well.  Chris applied the same stain (Minwax Special Walnut, satin finish) that he’s applied to the rest of the floors, the only difference is that the rest of the floors aren’t finished yet and they’ve been under pink protective paper for two weeks now, so I haven’t seen them.  I’m curious to see how much of a difference there will be between the new oak floors in the kitchen and the old oak floors throughout the rest of the apartment.

Let’s go out with the sconces – hooray, they’re in, the lighting is done!

Let there...

be...

...light!

______________________

** On a side note, it’s interesting to see what this particular budget overrun has done to my state of mind – up until now everything was well budgeted, about what I expected, no nasty expenses, etc.  It was all coming in slightly higher than I anticipated, but overall, no problem.  However, there’s something psychological somehow about all new wood floors that were never in the budget and never intended that slid me directly from “I can afford this, look how WELL it’s going!” right into “Oh my god, we’re going to be eating ramen noodles for the REST OF OUR LIVES.”