Month in Review

Lots of stuff happened here within the last month, but as you know, we were having a variety of issues on the home front that impacted our ability to communicate it all. Unfortunately, too, we didn't photograph everything that went down effectively, so you'll have to take our word on some of it. That said, here's a quick round-up of the last month:

1. You know about the floors, so those were basically in a state of disrepair until Friday. In the meantime, that also meant that our furniture was all over the place, and our second bedroom/guest room/office was in a state of utter and total chaos. That's been resolved - more on that and the beautiful floors tomorrow.

2. For the weekend of the Fourth of July, we decided that in spite of the state of our home, we had a lot to enjoy here, and why not make use of it?! We had the beach, of course, but we got a surprise when after saying it would not be opened, our building opened its pool - and it's a great pool. So the holiday weekend at the beginning of the month basically involved a steady rotation of friends and family moving between apartment-to-pool-to-beach in some variation of that order. And it was delightful! Here are some shots of the family part of that weekend:

 

Good times.

3. Weather. We've had some weather in the past few weeks. Since we basically spend half the year in crappy winter, it only seems appropriate that Chicago have some of the best summer around! And it's summer-summer here this year, and it's great. With the heat and humidity, though, come the storms, and we have had some hum-dingers. One in particular was so intense that it looked like Armageddon outside when I took Lanie for her morning walk the next day. Okay, that's a little dramatic, but it was intense. It also knocked over some patio furniture on our balcony that ripped the screen door in our bedroom. Dave fixed it.

(torn screen)

(screen repair)

4. The next BIG projects we'll tackle will be the bathrooms. But we're not ready just yet to take them on. Until we are, we had some toilet issues that just had to be handled. In the guest bathroom in particular, the old toilet didn't flush easily and then would run for what seemed like forever. While I was co-hosting the best baby shower ever a few Saturdays ago, Dave decided he'd solve that problem by replacing the toilet. This story gets gruesome in a minute, and though I don't have photo documentation on this one, I'll still give those of you with weak stomachs the opportunity to step away from the computer. You gone? Okay, good. Let's continue. I'll spare you the worst of the details, but long story short (and I promise you this is the short version of the story!), Dave successfully uninstalled the old toilet and then went and bought a new one. After a series of incidents led to Dave's realizing that he had to redo the install on the new toilet, a crack in the base of the new toilet led to splintering porcelain, and the slicing of Dave's finger. It was... horribly bloody. But he was determined! So he put a Band-aid, a paper towel, and some electrical tape around his finger (it was the only way to keep it from bleeding out - seriously), and headed back to the store to buy another toilet. He got it home and apparently the box wasn't packaged well, and it fell out the bottom into our driveway where it shattered. You can imagine how well that went over. Back again, and they gave him the third toilet of the day for free. He got it home and was mostly finished putting it in when I got home, though I was distracted from noticing or appreciating that fact by the blood all over our home. Not a joke. After he completed the project (finally), and our after our bathtub was filled with toilets (I am kicking myself that we don't have a photo of our tub-o-toilets), the adrenaline wore off, and Dave realized both that he didn't feel so well and that his finger was still bleeding profusely (several hours later). We eventually made our way to the ER, where we were seated in the waiting area and told that it'd likely be at least six hours before we'd be seen. An hour and a half or so later, when Dave still hadn't been triaged even, and he realized his finger appeared to have stopped bleeding, we decided to leave. Silly us. The bleeder popped open again in the car, so we made our way to the next closest ER (that's a great thing about living in the city - ERs on every corner!), where we were next in line and Dave got six stitches in the "laceration" on the tip of his index finger. It was a long day/night. The take-away, though, is that for those of you who want to/will be coming to visit, you now will have a brand spankin' new toilet that works -- and you'd better appreciate it!

5. And for the last notes on this one, two lovely evenings on our beach. One for the celebration of our good friend KH's birthday... just because you're in Chicago and not California does not mean you can't toast your birthday on the beach, girl! Here's a shaky shot of what was really a beautiful moon-rising that night, which we enjoyed with a great group of friends, and a picnic of snacks and drinks on our little beach:

And last night, relieved to be home again, and have things looking like they might start moving in the right direction again at the ol' homestead, Dave and Lanie and I grabbed the blanket and stepped out back onto the beach to watch the light of day make way for night on the beach again... There was another huge storm last night and we could see the lightning in a big cloud over downtown while we were out there. I tried to get video, but the light was terrible, so believe me. Here's Lanie's pretty face from last night, though (who can resist this face?!):

And on that beautiful note, I'll bid you g'night. More tomorrow with photos -- I promise -- of the floor do-over and the massive organization overhaul that took place here today. This house feels once again like a home... yay!
 

A Few Steps Back

You know that expression, "When it rains, it pours"? Well, no one ever told us that "When it pours, it kind of monsoons, for several days." Sigh.

You may or may not have heard/read (by text or Facebook stalking) about Lanie's run-in with some stingy insect (we think) on Thursday. It led to the allergic reaction of all allergic reactions. Day 1 her face was so swollen she appeared to have furry elephantitus. Day 2 most of the swelling went down, but the hives were everywhere and her eye was so puffy she looked like a little kid with pink eye. We're now on Day 3, and while she's definitely better, there are still horrible hives everywhere, some puffiness around her *other* eye (which she scratched enough this morning that she cut herself under her eye, yeesh), and she's so miserably itchy, she's scratched of chunks of fur all over herself. Poor dog. Pathetic. I won't embarrass her further by posting a picture. Just use your imaginations, and exercise sympathy. She's so uncomfortable!

So that's the raining (although, when it comes to Lanie's health, it's really not normal "rain" anymore, we're pretty much in a constant state of thunderstorms...) and the pouring. The monsoons have struck the Home Sweet Schwab where it hurts: our new floors.

Last night Dave noticed that our floors, in a small area near the dining room table, were buckling. He concluded that it must be due to the humidity we experienced briefly when Chicago thought it might not be winter forever last week. We both got upset, but sprung into action. We shut all the doors and vowed to sweat out the summer so as not to encourage more ruin to our flooring, and Dave called the other flooring guy (the guy we didn't use, who in retrospect is who we should have used) who suggested that we start by setting up fans and a dehumidifier to see if pulling out the moisture would allow the wood to settle again. So, that's what we did:

But then, we realized that it wasn't the humidity. In the air duct you can see exposed there to the left of the last picture, there is a leaky hose:

And now we have a nice little area of ruined flooring that will likely have to come up and be replaced. The good news is, worse things can happen! Also in the good news department, it's not the humidity, so we can stop kicking ourselves for not buying laminate flooring. Finally in the good news department, hopefully not all of the flooring will have to come up, and we have left-over boxes from the original install, so if we have to buy more, it'll only be a box or so at most. Bad news: this just stinks.

But... you learn! As we've said all along, this whole thing is really just a great adventure. We've never done this before, and next time we'll approach every step differently, having experienced some of the mistakes and pitfalls of first-time home ownership in this place. Onward!

Vent Hood... and Snow Day(s?) Anticipation...

I didn't get a chance to upload this one earlier, but over the weekend Dave installed a vent hood over our oven. It looks great! And it works!

We're now in the midst of putting up trim above the cabinets to give it a cleaner, more finished look, and hopefully this weekend, we'll be painting. If it snows enough, maybe we'll just start that tonight! Ha!

We just found out that the sliding door in our living room can't be fixed, and needs to be completely replaced, which is going to mean a delay in our next big project (the floors), but we're just adjusting our plan, and hopefully that means we'll have a lot more "quick" fixes to share soon... paint, shelves, pictures on walls... it'll be good.


I expect we'll have more updates as we near the kitchen project's completion (except for floors) in the coming days.

Today is Lanie's "birthday-ish"... Though we normally celebrate her birthday by picking up her best friend, Lucy, and heading to Dairy Queen for a treat, this year, we'll need to be satisfied with storm watching:

Continuing to Catch You Up... First Projects

Our first non-move-in weekend in our first home was a much-welcomed three-day weekend. Happy Labor Day... and Happy Wallpaper Peeling! Actually, the first project was figuring out why we didn't have hot water in the master bathroom sink.

Dave quickly discovered that the hot water was flowing, it just wasn't getting to the faucet. After a little handy work (and multiple trips to various -- maybe five? -- hardware stores), we determined that the old parts in the pipework couldn't even be replaced, so the faucet and it's related parts needed to be replaced. Off to Home Depot. Our first stylistic decision for our home! Dave got to work, and not too terribly long after, our first successful makeover!

(hard at work)

(super handy)

(voila! new faucet!)

A few other quick-fix master bathroom solutions were accomplished as well:

(new shower head)

(new flusher)

(recaulking the toilet)

Next Project: Wallpaper... Because there is so much of it, we knew we needed to be economical. The night after we closed, we came up here just to make sure the keys worked. It all got very real very fast, and the looming tasks were overwhelming. Our approach had to be to figure out what we could do, and what was priority, and then to chip slowly away at the projects, doing as much as we can do ourselves, but remaining honest about what is over our heads, and not letting the totality of the projects freak us out. Easier said than done sometimes, but having spent many hours watching HGTV, I was pretty sure that we could definitely figure out how to do the wallpaper. Even if it takes a long time, we can do it. Pulling at a corner of nearly every different sample, we quickly discovered that in most of the rooms, the paper just came right off in whole sheets. This applies to both bathrooms, and the kitchen. In these cases, though, the lingering issue would be not the wallpaper itself, but the glue residue. In the front hall, the wallpaper was stuck on pretty seriously. This would require a different approach. Thank you, Internet.

(Ace no-rinse option = great!)

I researched for hours over multiple days, and came up with an approach for our two different situations. For the glue residue situation, we needed: a solution called TSP (or a TSP-like solution -- this is a super-cleaner, meant mainly for walls and other such surfaces); hot water; sponges; crazy arm strength. You mix one part solution with four parts hot water, and scrub the wall. It works. My forearms will look like Popeye's when I'm done.

(fabric softener and water = magic)

For the front hall, I found multiple sources that said to skip the scoring you read or have heard about, skip the steamers or the hair dryers. All you need is a simple solution of equal parts liquid fabric softener and warm water; a spray bottle; and time. As long as you can get up even a tiny corner of the top layer of the wallpaper, you don't need to score it. If you have difficulty, a little sandpaper will get you started. Then you simply spray on the mixture, let it settle in for about three seconds, and peel. Thanks to my sister in-law, Lynn, for her volunteered hours of peeling support Saturday night, the whole front hall was done by Sunday.

(industrial-size garbage bag-o-wallpaper scrapings)

This was actually a really cathartic process. Unlike most fix-it projects, which look worse before they start shaping up, this is instant-satisfaction. You are seeing progress immediately, and it automatically looks better (especially in a case like the Museum of Historic Wallpaper Samples). Even though the paint job under the black paisley resembles lime sorbet, it's a huge relief to see this:

(We honestly didn't know that closet was there at first)

Lanie was obviously a huge help all weekend: