“So what are you doing again?”

For anyone visiting for the first time or if you just want a succinct overview of what we’re trying to accomplish, this is it. Sarah and I bought a two flat in Logan Square, a neighborhood of Chicago. It was built in 1896 and over the 115 years prior to us buying it, had gotten into pretty bad shape. We’re fixing it up and turn it into a big single family home, doing most of the work ourselves and with the help of friends and family. We’re going to gut everything down to studs and build a beautiful new home.

Before I tell you what what we’re going to do, let me tell you what we’re up against. The house is full of cockroaches and rats. The kitchen is rotting away, the toilets aren’t attached, and the whole house stinks of animal urine and mold. The floors sag, the roof leaks, the basement is moldy, the bases of the support columns are either rotted away or sinking into the ground. Everything that’s been done to the house in the last ten years was done incorrectly. There are new windows that are the wrong size, leak, and many are broken. There’s new vinyl siding that’s installed wrong and lets water in, the roof was redone recently in hilariously wrong fashion, and the garage is newer but was amateurishly expanded.

“Why did you buy this place?”

We bought the cheapest house in the area. It’s a beautiful neighborhood that’s full of cool shopping and restaurants, big trees line the streets, the neighbors are friendly, it’s close to the train (both the El and the Metra), it’s fifteen minutes from downtown, and an easy train ride to get to O’Hare Airport. The freeway is about a mile away, so it’s just situated really well. The house has ten foot ceilings on both floors, a full basement, a decent-sized lot and yard, and did I mention it was cheap? In the year before we bought it only one house was sold for less in the area and it was less than half the size.

With the housing downturn, we can’t depend on appreciation to increase the value of our home. We didn’t want to float a huge loan and couldn’t afford a really nice house, and we figured the best way to have a nice home to live in and raise a family in was to just build it ourselves. Buying a duplex works well because you can live in it while you remodel it. We’ve watched a lot of home improvement shows and decided that we could do it too. We’ve both done smaller projects in the past, our condo is small and we’re planning to have kids, so with interest rates so low we figured it was time to take the plunge.

“What’s the plan?”

It’s a monumental undertaking for us, and bigger than anything we’ve done before. In order to wrap our heads around it, we’re breaking the project into phases. Here’s the game plan:

Phase 1: Move-in - We bought the house, now where do we start? The plan is to move into the upstairs, but before we can do that we need to make the house livable. This phase encompasses everything we need to do in order to move in. Everything we’re doing is temporary, so the focus is on cheap, quick, and fast. The sooner we can move into the upstairs the sooner we can rent our condo out and not pay two mortgages.

Phase 2: Structural and Planning - Before we can start gutting we need to fix the structural problems in the basement and get our drawings and permits. The second phase is all about planning and preparation. It’ll be a nice break from the scramble to get moved in. We’ll gut the basement and bring in a contractor to replace the basement supports and make the house level. We’ll work with the city and get an architect.

Phase 3: Downstairs - Here’s where the fun starts. We rip down all the plaster/lathe and drywall downstairs. We reinforce the second floor from below so that we can open up the floor plan. We tear down walls, put in new windows, replace the subfloor and stairs, frame new walls, install radiant heat, run new electrical and plumbing, insulate, and install drywall, floors, bathroom and the kitchen. This phase is probably the biggest.

Phase 4: Upstairs - Now we move into the finished downstairs and start working upstairs. We’re taking off the section of the second floor that overhangs the first. We’re redoing the roof and gutting the whole second floor. Then it’s the same story as the first floor: new walls, windows, subfloor, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, insulation, drywall, flooring, bathrooms and laundry.

Phase 5: Exterior - Just because we can live in the whole house doesn’t mean we’re done! In this phase we work on the exterior. We tear off the back enclosed porch, put on new siding, a new covered front porch and back deck.

Phase 6: Basement - We dig out the basement floor and lower it by eight inches, install weeping tile, and pour a new floor. Then we’ll frame and finish the whole basement with storage, workout room, bar, and home theater.

Phase 7: Yard and Garage - We’ll tear down the garage, put in a new pad and build a block or concrete two-car garage with outdoor fireplace, pergola, and  a roof-top garden on the garage.

That’s it in a nutshell. A lot of the bits and pieces are glossed over, but that covers the essentials. some things will probably get mixed up as it makes sense, since sticking to a rigid order may not always make sense. The nice thing is that we don’t wind up living without a kitchen or a bathroom because it’s a two flat. All the plumbing and electrical is split up, so as we’re running new electrical downstairs we’re still using the old electrical upstairs.

The trickiest part will be the HVAC. We want to put in radiant floor heating and forced air conditioning, possibly even a ground source heat pump. The system will be zoned, so installing it a floor at a time should be pretty doable, but there will definitely be snags. We’ll figure it out. We’re hoping we can pull this whole thing off in five or six years. Did I mention Sarah is pregnant and planning to go to grad school next year? Wish us luck!

“How far along are you?”

We’ve completed Phase 1, and we’re on Phase 2. We moved into the second floor unit, we’ve demoed the basement in preparation for the structural repairs, and we’re working on floor plans and finding an architect so we can get the permits we need to start redoing the first floor. My hope is that we’ll finish Phase 2 by the end of Spring 2012.