20th Project - June

Due to the current state of affairs at our abode, we were not here the morning of June 20th, so my photo is a false-20th, but beautiful nonetheless. And with things going the way they have been here lately, I haven't yet needed so badly a reminder of why we decided to live here.

Our view on the morning of June 22nd:

(how I wish that were a gull, and not a stupid flying rat pigeon)

Floor Update

We'll file this one under trials and tribulations! Here's the quick update. Thanks to a great suggestion from Dad (why didn't we think of this ourselves? because we've never done this before!), we called our homeowner's insurance. And they jumped on board! Over the past few days Dave has been in touch with our claims adjuster who's instructed our every move. Today, an insurance-directed floor company came over to assess the damage and pull up the flooring so that the drying process can begin before the adjuster himself can come next Tuesday.

Remember these floors?

I have to say, it truly never occurred to me that we'd be seeing them again... or so soon!

They pulled up the warped flooring (as you can see, it was a good portion of the dining room and front hall) to reveal mold already growing on the subfloor beneath the damage. They sprayed anti-fungal stuff over the affected area, and set up several large fans and a giant industrial dehumidifier (that's it in the second picture above)...

(Lanie just does not understand what's going on!)

We're not allowed to open the windows at all, or to turn any of the equipment off. Also, there's a large drainage tube running from the industrial dehumidifier to our kitchen sink:

Clearly this presents a challenge to our routine and comfortable living... so what're we to do? As of tonight, we'll be housed, thanks to our insurance company, at the Marriott downtown (less than a block from my office, as it turns out), until Tuesday. Lanie will be comfortably living at her second home with Dave's parents'. Since we won't be back here until Tuesday, and since nothing can really be done until everything's dry and the insurance adjuster comes to look at it and give us further instructions, we won't be able to provide a next update until next week. So... that's where things stand for now. We'll post what we know as soon as we know it! (Happy Anniversary to us!)

I'm off to pack my bags...

Edgewater: Pink

For the second installment of my Color Project experiment, I challenged myself with picking pink. This will be my first attempt at uncovering pink in our 'hood. I definitely want to go out in different directions and see what else I can find. The challenge here was to find pink in places other than flower gardens, right? So, certainly there are flowers, but I tried to see beyond the flora here and get creative. So here's Pink 1:

(I need to get a better shot of this building - it's a giant pink condo that used to be an old Chicago hotel)

(those might be mine, and this might be staged... but I was wearing pink sneaks!)

(our elevator floor)

(all photos my own)

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!

Biscayne

After a LONG search... new runners in the hallways:

They are the Biscayne runners from Crate & Barrel in Terra. Also at long last, we spent a good chunk of a wedding gift card to Crate & Barrel! Bonus: the color we'd picked out a couple of weeks ago was the only one on sale! (I'll shop like a Heller forever!)
 

Edgewater: Yellow

Inspired by this blog (specifically, this project), and because we're not really doing any big renovations right now (don't worry, more to come...), I've decided to attempt a little photography project. I'm calling it my Edgewater Color Series. Many people know that many (most) Chicago neighborhoods are predominantly settled by one ethnic group. Occasionally there are two or three dominant populations. The Ukrainian Village, China Town, Argyle (Vietnamese), Devon (Indian), Rogers Park (Jewish), Jefferson Park (Polish)--these are just a few examples. Chicago's also home to the third largest Mexican population outside of Mexico City, and there are several Mexican communities throughout Chicago's neighborhoods. There are also areas historically settled by Greek populations, Italian populations, Irish populations, Germans, Ethiopians, Swedes, and the list goes on. It's natural that immigrants from one place in the world or another would be comfortable living around others from their home countries, and this is one of the aspects of living here that demonstrates the richness of culture that makes Chicago what it is.

Edgewater is a little different. It's not one population's or another's. It's a medley. A mixed bag. There are several groups of ethnicities in the neighborhood -- Eastern Europeans, Africans, Jews, Mexicans, Indians, Pakistanis, Americans, and others. It's something neither Dave nor I thought about when we decided to move here, but we both noticed it separately, and agreed how much we like it. I love walking around our neighborhood. It's beautiful. It's urban, it's green, it's the water, it's traffic. I've thought about this Color Project idea for quite some time, as a way to notice more about this place that is and will be our home for some time.

Yesterday was a beautiful day. And when I got home from work, I just had to get back outside. Lanie needed a walk, and I decided that I'd take my camera. As we started walking, I thought about my idea, and decided it was as good a day as any to start, and see what I found. In honor of the beautiful sunshine, I started with yellow. I found A LOT. And the other colors I saw around really inspired me to keep trying this and see what comes of it. Maybe another little gallery wall? There are a lot of photos, so feel free to scroll. And without further ado, here is Edgewater Color Project Yellow...

(all photos my own)