October 29th, 2009
Last weekend was the second one in a row we’ve spent taking apart our furniture. This time: the TV room sofa.
Our move to the master bedroom upstairs left an empty bedroom — since Pete’s girls are grown and we already have a guest bedroom, we don’t need to use it as a bedroom — and [...]
October 20th, 2009
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the Historic Chicago Bungalow and Green Home Expo over the weekend. Of course, our washer and dryer were delivered in the middle of the day, preventing me from straying far from home. I had plenty of other things to do around the house, so I guess it’s just as [...]
October 16th, 2009
I just saw an article today that insurers are dropping homeowner policies if their house was built using Chinese drywall.
How horrible for these poor people who unwittingly bought a house with this imported drywall and then had to move out because it was causing health problems, not to mention corroding pipes and emitting volatile sulphur [...]
September 17th, 2009
For the past couple of days we’ve been working on the bathroom for a few hours after work, and that helps a little. The tile job will be far from perfect, but overall I think it’s looking pretty good.
We had a couple of snafus, one of which was the level of the floor tile (and/or [...]
August 21st, 2009
Finally back online after my switch to a new hosting service. That took much longer than I expected.
I was hoping to change a couple of things in Wordpress while I was at it, but I think it’s more trouble than it’s worth, so I’m just going to leave that one alone.
At least I’m updated [...]
August 20th, 2009
I am sooo fed up with the company that hosts my site. I have noticed way too much downtime (like this morning) and every time it happens I vow to move the site elsewhere but never get around to it. Not this time!
I plan to do it today. Hopefully the move will go smoothly and [...]
August 19th, 2009
We had another visit from our friend, the bat. Sigh.
Although we haven’t yet moved upstairs to our new master bedroom, we decided to try out bed placement and slept up there Saturday night on the air mattress (it’s a
August 12th, 2009
Late last night, or early this morning, depending on your individual perspective, at around 1:30, Pete and I awakened to hear the cat, Günter, scurrying around the house.
This was not unusual, as he prefers to use the litter box when no one is looking — yes, the boy has bathroom issues. Needless to say, sometimes [...]
April 9th, 2009
Some of the good news we’ve had in the past month is that our plans for the attic were approved by the village — no changes required. Yippee!
Back in January, I outlined all the stumbling blocks we were running into. In general, what seemed like hindrances have turned out for the better.
We contacted the architect [...]
January 30th, 2009
We’re in limbo, project-wise.
We thought we had our attic plans solidified, but after talking to lots of contractors and plumbers, we’ve discovered that the roughed-in plumbing to the attic is definitely not sufficient for a bathroom. We had the second floor planned around this rough-in specifically because we thought it’d be the most efficient and [...]
January 8th, 2008
Guess what? My last post got me going and I made some phone calls: first to the village for general information about building codes and then to an architect. Woo hoo!
The village said that staircases should be three feet wide, but it sounded like they’d be somewhat lenient if it were a little smaller in [...]
January 4th, 2008
There are definitely some hurdles to overcome on our 2008 Project list, and some of our projects hinge on each other. What is frustrating to me is that I don’t know the answers to them, and I don’t know anyone personally who can help guide us (i.e. no architect or structural engineer in the family [...]
December 31st, 2007
The New Year is always a great time for me to really focus on my organization system (or lack thereof). I enjoy organizing things and BEING organized, and if I feel disorganized I get stressed. When our previous house was on the market, it was completely free of clutter, and it really helped in the [...]
December 21st, 2007
Our heating guy came out on Monday to see what’s what with our system. For one thing, whoever redid the pipes put a smaller pipe from the boiler to the larger heat pipes, so the water velocity is diminished right from the start. That would probably explain why it takes over four hours for the [...]
December 14th, 2007
Well, I haven’t made a lot of progress on the heating project, and I’ll have to admit I wasn’t very diligent on tracking our temperature fluctuations this weekend. The times that I did track it showed that while the thermostat said 68°, it was usually 5° colder in the family room/kitchen. (And, okay, Chris at [...]
August 1st, 2007
I must say that this spring was not the best time to be selling our house. I had hoped to sell last spring (2006), but if you’ve read my previous posts then you know the PO was not going to get his act together to fit my schedule. I’m pretty sure we would have been [...]
June 14th, 2007
Another staging project for the sale of our current house was the living room. In the dining room, which opened into the living room, Pete had stained the floor a cherry stain, like the woodwork, and it had a glossy finish to it. When I moved in, the living room was covered in white wall-to-wall [...]