Fireplace Planning

Chris would make a lovely mantle decoration :)

Everyone has a different list of "must haves" for their dream home. Thankfully, Chris' list & my list were quite similar!Both of us really wanted a wood burning fireplace in our forever home, neither of our condos had one & we found ourselves wishing they did.

Surprisingly, it is not too difficult to add a wood burning fireplace to a home, particularly when you will be ripping apart so much of it in the first place!

We misjudged where the fireplace will be on this wall (it will be closer to the dining room; not centered on the living room wall. Its location is determined by the chimney location!), but we taped out the size of fireplace/mantle/hearth to get an idea of its impact on our living room.

Hello there future fireplace!

This planning has us dreaming of when we'll move in (hopefully February, 2016). It will likely be cold & snowy & PERFECT for fires in our future fireplace!

Ordering the "box" where the wood actually burns.

What are some of your "must haves" in your current or future home? We are always picking our family/friends' brains to make sure we haven't missed anything to include in our house plans!

Back yard bliss....someday!

A few of the delicious raspberries that grew in the garden before we took it apart! 

As with many things at our new (old) house, the backyard had been largely ignored by its previous owners. Our tenants did their best to keep it nice, though some of their hard work was undone by yours truly yesterday. Our tenants (who moved out in June) built a large raised bed garden in the backyard. Since it hadn't been tended in quite awhile, it was overgrown with weeds - some of them were simply giant. Jack & the Bean Stalk sized. See the photo below with our friends & the weeds (Dan is over 6 feet tall for some context).

Dan & Maddie with the 8-9 foot weeds

We signed the contract with Matt, our general contractor, 2 weeks ago & our permit application was submitted to the City of Evanston last week. Knowing that in the coming weeks & months work trucks will be using the back yard as a parking lot, we thought it prudent to remove the worst weeds as well as the raised bed.

Some might argue that Chris & I chose an odd time for intense manual labor in our new backyard, given the weather report of highs in the 90s, sunny skies, and high humidity. We probably wouldn't have chosen last weekend if our next several weekends weren't so jam packed with fun plans! 

Before our work - massive weed patch!

Before our work, you can barely see me over the weeds

We pulled, clipped, chopped, raked & hauled for over 4 hours. We filled seven 30 gallon yard waste bags. In some ways it feels like we didn't make a dent in the crazy weed patch; in others, it seems like we made a lot of headway! 

After our day of labor - look all that dirt :)

After our day of labor - I can't say "no more weeds" but there are far fewer weeds!

Chris needed to work Sunday, so I went back to Grant St. to attack the raised bed garden. My dad loaned me his drill to make removing the screws easier/quicker. In his infinite wisdom he also offered a hatchet and crowbar to knock the pieces of wood apart. Breaking stuff apart holds great appeal. It seems I now understand my nephews' inclination toward knocking down anything they build :)

In progress - busted down garden bed

After - breaking apart the roots and packed in dirt in the bed was for sure the hardest part - but voila! Done!

For those of you who I haven't yet complained to about it; our backyard is not just rife with your run of the mill weeds. We also have a bamboo problem. According to our old tenant, a "nutty professor" rented the 1st floor of our house for 20+ years and everyone suspects that he planted the bamboo. It is persistent & grows REALLY fast. I'm in the market for a loaner panda bear if anyone has any leads.....because they would eat the heck out of the bamboo! We are well on our way to backyard bliss. A long way to go to be sure, but we made some progress!







Ah! I almost forgot! Chris wanted to buy a gas powered lawn mower for our new house as soon as the weather warmed enough to warrant lawn mowing. I pushed for a "people powered" mower since I thought it would be easier to manage once the construction gets
underway. I won that battle, but Chris has now won the war! When we were at the house Saturday working in the yard, our neighbor gave Chris a "permanent loan" of his gas powered mower! Chris had Christmas in August! He is pretty happy with his new toy.

Oh carpet, you seem endless

And you are time consuming to rip out. 

But, as I type this, 100% of the carpet that was in our house when we bought it, is now in the garbage. Please note- I hate adding huge amounts of trash to landfills - but the carpet really had to go. It was in such rough shape I didn't think anyone would want to use it for anything.

Here are the things I suspect some previous owner of our home thought when installing this carpet:

-Its durable!

-Its easy to clean!

-It is cozy!

-It masks construction quirks after the back room was added to the first floor!

Here are the things I think about the carpet:

-It is durable!

-It is impossible to make look clean!

-It looks a bit like it fell out of the ugly tree & managed to hit most of the branches on the way down.

So, feast your eyes on some before & afters :)

 In progress- 1st Floor - 1st Bedroom

 In progress- 1st Floor - 1st Bedroom - very serious business for Chris

In progress - 1st Floor - 1st Bedroom

Before- 1st Floor - 2nd Bedroom

After -1st Floor - 2nd Bedroom

After - 1st Floor - 2nd Bedroom

Before - 1st Floor - 3rd Bedroom (yes its off the kitchen & no it won't remain a bedroom in our plans!)

Before - 1st Floor - 3rd Bedroom - like the berber? Looks good, right?

In progress - 1st Floor - 3rd Bedroom - always looks worse before it looks better ;)

Almost done - 1st floor - 3rd bedroom - we love how pretty the wood is!

Almost done - 1st floor - 3rd bedroom - don't mind the mismatched wood, the badly patched wall, or the giant post. That's what our general contractor is for!

After- 1st Floor - Foyer - who knew the bottom step would be the worst carpet removal in the whole house?!?

After - 1st Floor Foyer - hard to tell....but under the green tile & black adhesive stuff is wood flooring....the big question is; is is salvageable??

Sometimes you need to break stuff

Chris on a mission

Practicing crowbar safety

And this was one of those times!

We have 8-10+ foot ceilings throughout the house (of course, not all the rooms have the same ceiling height....why would they?) but in 2 areas, someone thought it was a good idea to install "drop" ceilings. The 2 levels of the house currently have almost identical floor plans, including the drop ceilings :( They are located just outside the 2 bathrooms, the 4 rooms off of these little alcoves all have significantly higher ceilings; which makes the whole thing feel strangely cave like.

Plaster cracks & exposed wiring - nice touches

Admiring my mess er work

We had spent this particular Sunday afternoon ripping up carpet (again) on the first floor and were eager for a change. So we took out the hammer & crowbar and began to break apart the drop ceiling. Not shockingly, it was incredibly fun. The face masks & goggles were a must - we created quite a mess in our mini demolition project!

Chris is a great demo partner!

As with many quirks of our house, we suspect the drop ceiling was a shortcut/easy way out. The plaster above the drop was cracking and had electrical runs that were not hidden inside the walls/ceiling. Maybe it was easier to drop the ceiling than to properly install new electrical runs? Who knows. Once the contractors come in; all of our electric will be replaced so in some ways it doesn't matter, but these peeks into the house's history are interesting if nothing else.

Adios gnarly tile....hola treasure!

Treasure under the tile on the back stairs!

This is the type of thing Chris & I were hoping we would uncover during the DIY demo phase, the front page section of the Chicago Sun dated Friday December 22, 1944!

Chris pulling up the plain black tile that covered the landing

Old timey movie ads

The ads interest me as much as the articles!

Who wouldn't want the Sissy Sailor hat?!?

The back stairs will be removed completely by the general contractor; but I am so happy Chris made the move to pull up this 1 random piece of asbestos tile (kidding about the asbestos...sort of)! Somehow I feel more connected to the history contained in this section of the newspaper than I would if I found it on microfilm at the library (side note - does microfilm/microfiche still exist??). It makes me interested to know why someone would lay down newspaper over painted hardwood, under a plain Jane piece of tile. To even out the height? To give cushion/padding? I would love your thoughts in the comments if you have any!