Goodbye Ladder- Hello New Basement Stairs

No more sketchy ladder to get down into the basement - we've gotten an upgrade!

Standing at the top of the brand spanking new basement stairs!
They will be just inside the new side door.

I suppose it is the little things, but I was so excited to
walk down these stairs for the first time!

Holes for the New Windows

The look and feel of the exterior of the house is really taking shape, 

the framers cut the holes to accommodate our new windows, 

French doors in our bedroom and sliding door in the family room.

New attic window hole is cut!
4 new windows will go in the 3 plywood
spots on the 2nd floor. 

We're missing the hole for the window on the
right, but the opening for the sliding door is
ready and the hole on the left is waiting for
its new window!

From right to left, new stairwell window between the 1st and
2nd floors. 1st floor - new windows above the kitchen sink.
2nd floor new master bathroom window.

December Framing Progress For Real!

Yay! The house smells like lumber because the framers have been building our new walls! Yipee! Hooray! Hurrah!

1st floor bathroom has fresh new studs.

Oh, strange, there is no floor in what used to be
the 1st floor kitchen. Note the giant hole to
Chris' right!

We have a hallway on the 2nd floor! We have a new
(tiny) linen closet that I am creeping out of!

Look at all those new walls! Yahoo! This is a view from the
sunporch to the front of the 2nd floor. Oven is still a
key feature in our future bedroom. You can see the new walls
for our future bathroom and closet on the righthand side.

The giant hole in the floor is a fancy feature
not everyone can have one of those!

The upstairs bedrooms have the closet wall separating them
now! Yay! The look/feel of the 2nd floor is really
taking shape.

The interior window in Chris' office
has been framed! The office is finally
taking shape!

Early December Framing.....errrr.... Demo Progress

December has meant lots of progress on the framing of our house, well really - the framers have been busy continuing to demolish our house! How can there be more to remove/destroy/take out?!? We feel like Christmas came early because we see progress every time we visit.

Check out the photos to see what's been going on......

Loving seeing the framers there each day. Sometimes there
are as many as 12 of them working at any given time.
Zoooooom!

This is a view from the old 1st floor master bedroom (future
family room) looking up to the wall that will become the
mudroom. I'm trying to show that the exterior siding is still
hiding under the walls; reconfirming what we knew - the
back room was an addition to the home in the 1960s.

I realllllly like the sweet broom one of the
framers made out of a hockey stick :)

We got even MORE wood delivered!
I would be thrilled, except more lumber
at this point means more $$$. Ah well.
This is all part of the experience.

Dumpster on the left, giant pile of rubble on the right. Why
isn't the rubble in the dumpster?!?

The 1st floor bathroom used to be here;
the walls, even the studs, came down. The floor
including the subfloor has been removed.
It would be really hard to find more to
remove here!

Lake Grant Street

So this happened last week.......can you say "drainage issues"??

Lake Grant St. The workers have laid out a system of lumber to get to the dumpster & porta
potty without being calf deep in our muddy lake :( I've been baking them cookies to keep
them from walking off our disgusting job site!

Who is coming over to swim?? 

We officially have no plumbing

Ew, right? But it is also great - because the old saying "out with the old, in with the new" applies here!

So strange to see so much of the house gone, we continue to be surprised by the amount of items removed - we keep thinking there is nothing left to demolish. We keep being wrong!

The 2 part white pipe sticking out of the
basement floor used to run up to the 1st &
2nd floor bathrooms....gone!

Without the plumbing coming through the middle,
the (creepy) basement is starting to look a bit bigger!

This is the view from the future kitchen, through
the 1st floor bathroom and into the future
man-cave. No more plumbing running in the wall in
the foreground.

1st floor tub has been gone for awhile, but
now you can barely see where it used to sit!
No pipes to give you any idea of its location!

This is the moment I am thankful we have a porta-potty in the backyard!

See you later chimney!

The framers have been busy busy bees since they got started in the house 2 weeks ago.

They are charged with removing the chimney which ran from the basement up through the roof of the house because it served the old boilers which are being replaced by a newer version which doesn't require venting through the roof. We asked them to save the bricks from the chimney demolition so we could reuse them somewhere else in our project. My request went something like "could you just leave the pile of bricks inside the house so my husband & I can sort through them & pick out the good ones? We'll figure a way to set them aside and you can take the rest to the dumpster on Monday"

Fast forward a day when Chris & I are back at the house to do the brick sorting project. After initially worrying that all the bricks landed in the (almost completely empty) dumpster, we found this:

We were so incredibly happy not to have to do the manual labor involved in finding the "good" bricks in a huge pile. We honestly almost broke out into a happy dance. Neatly piled up next to the fence (& a touch too close to the porta potty.....).

Here are some photos of the chimney removal for your viewing pleasure:

The chimney is down through the roof
and into the 2nd floor

Chris rocking out with the busted up chimney in
our future bedroom!

First floor view of the busted chimney. The framers
are dropping the bricks from the roof through the pipes
and out onto the first floor.

Ha! Its fully gone! All the way down to the
basement! No more chimney!

For real, for serious - no chimney &
honestly - not much house left!

1st Visit to the Evanston History Center Research Room

We took a tour of the Charles G. Dawes House Museum during Open House Chicago in October. My friend Camilla saw that Evanston locations would be shown during OHC this year & passed the info to us, needless to say, it made us very happy! The Dawes House is the home of the Evanston History Center. On the tour we were shown the  Research Room & found out there are files on old homes in Evanston. We vowed to come back when the room was open for business (random hours, limited indeed!) and find out more about our new old house.

Well, yesterday the day finally came that we were in town between 1-4 on a Saturday! 

We made our first visit to the Research Room and were blown away by the information available about our house!

Things that we found that we think are amazing (or just amazingly interesting):

1. My great grandpa, George A. Kearney, was the plumber who installed the pipes & sewer line to the house when it was first built. His signatures appear on the original building permit application! I had to look at it over & over before I showed it to Chris - I thought I must be imagining it! We made a photo copy, showed my Dad, he confirmed what we suspected!

There they are, clear as day, 2 autographs from my
Dad's grandfather!

Close up of the signatures. Incredible.

2. Our house was built in 1906, not the 1880s as we had been told.

A "quick" history of the house. Including year built.

3. Some incredibly talented people owned (& lived in) our house through its history. Namely, Dr. KC Wu ;former mayor of Shanghai, professor & lecturer. Also, Paul Berliner, an accomplished musician, writer & professor.

Seriously smart man, interesting wife &
smart kids too. He passed away in the 80s.

4. There was a 2nd building built on the property in 1906, a "milk house" or a "milk depot" as it is referred to on different forms. I'm still trying to figure out exactly what its purpose was. I'm 99% certain is was not a farm where cows were being milked. I suspect milk was delivered to this building & then the builder/first owner would deliver it in the neighborhood. I'll update as I learn more.

"Milk house" on the building permit
application, "Milk depot" on
another document. I'll keep digging.

5. Real estate ads looked much different circa 1965.

 Additionally, the tree in front of our house is not as old as I assumed it was, since it is not in this photo from 1965! The tree that is visible no longer exists - that is the location of the current driveway.

Front of the real estate listing for our house dated 1965.

Back of the real estate listing for our house dated 1965.
Asbestos shingle roof. Amazing.

6. The mid 1970s were not kind to our house. It seems to have fallen into a state of disrepair (that could be argued lasted until we bought it......) and was the subject of many building code violations. Neighbors complained, the City of Evanston filed suit, eventually the garage (former "milk house" or "milk depot" was torn down in part to get back into compliance with the city. 

Yesterday was just so cool. We were pleasantly shocked by the amount of information available on our house. We are for sure going to go back to learn more. 

Stay tuned!

We got wood!

I couldn't help myself, sorry.

But, really, we did! We went by the house this afternoon only to discover a 

fabulously giant stack of lumber in the driveway!

We were really happy about the lumber delivery.

So what that we've gone over a week with absolutely nothing happening on the house? Who cares, right? OK, well, we care, & care quite a lot actually. Though honestly - the discovery of this giant pile of wood took the sting out of the past 10 days of  work screeching to a halt, nothing doing, waiting, waiting & waiting some more. :) 

Framers: we are ready for you to start doing your thing. Build those new walls! Build our new porches! Climb a wood pile for kicks! 

Seemed like the right thing to do.

The world is your oyster kind sirs. Just show up, ok?

 Our sanity is starting to depend on you showing up & getting to work moving this lumber into our home & making it more awesome than it currently is. Thanks in advance!