Category: Ruminating

Discussions on the blog itself, the remodeling process, and life events. Basically, not working on the house.

Plan Revision

August 18, 2015 / Matt / 0 Comments

When we switched to doing things The Right Way™ a big part of the reasoning was that it would simplify the project and save time. By moving into the basement we would be able to completely demo the second floor in one step, and nearly all the work done by contractors could be done at the same time. That last part will translate into some cost and time savings, but it has the unfortunate side effect of putting all the big-ticket items into one big chunk. We’ve paid for the project out-of-pocket so far, but we’re looking at a rapid succession of plumbing, electrical, HVAC, spray foam, new roof, drywall, hardwood floors, cabinets, and appliances. Simply put, it’s not in the budget. At the same time, we’re at the point where we want to get the project finished and not spend the next twelve years picking away at it.

The other option is to take out a loan. While these big-ticket items are a year or more out, we’re also looking at some big expenses with the basement, so I figured if we’re going to have to take out a loan anyway, why not just get it now? I looked into a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC), but after talking to lenders it seems the only way to borrow against the house is if it doesn’t need any work done. So I found a second option, a HomeStyle loan (which sounds like a breakfast side), where they appraise the house based on the completed state and pay out as inspections verify the work. That sounds like it would work for us, but there’s a couple catches. While it’s possible to get a HomeStyle loan that allows you to do the work yourself, most of them want contractors lined up and ready to go. Because it’s based on the completed state, the house has to actually be complete when they’re done, and finally, the process can’t take more than seven months. With all the work we’re still planning to do ourselves, there’s no way we could get the whole house done in that time.

Instead we came up with a modified approach. We’ll pay for the basement work out-of-pocket, as well as the demo, framing, and windows on the second floor. When that’s all done and we’re to the point where all those previously mentioned big-ticket items are looming, we take out the loan and get everything else done. We’d leave the attic and basement unfinished, as well as a lot of the trim and finishing work, but the rest of the house would need to be livable, meaning drywall, bathrooms, and kitchen. In fact, while we’re at it we’re hoping to get a few other big-ticket things done too, like the front and back porches, the siding, and the garage. The result is that the project gets put on fast forward.

We have a lot of things to figure out to make this happen, and a lot of work to do before, during, and after this process, but the idea that we might be able to get the house so much further along so quickly (relatively) is exciting, even if it means we’ll have a bigger loan to pay back. If everything goes to plan (caveat: it almost certainly won’t) then we could be living on both floors of the house in just eighteen months. Since we’ve been living in the house for four years already, that’s pretty amazing. Now if I could just get some plumbing quotes, we’ll be on our way!

Contractor Wrangling

August 12, 2015 / Matt / 0 Comments

For the first part of the year, almost the whole first half, we were going like gangbusters on the house. After we returned the mini-excavator and the last dumpster was hauled away, we kind of ran out of steam. We’d go down to the basement and putter about for a little while, digging up the rest of the disconnected sewer pipe to the catch basin, hauling out some of the remaining dirt piles, breaking up the landing outside the back door, but for the most part, a sense of dread and just being overwhelmed took hold. Digging by hand in the clay soil is just terrible and with our dumpsters gone we didn’t really have anywhere to put it. A series of over-tonnage charges came through on the dumpsters that added up to a lot of extra money. We basically got screwed on the dumpsters and should have gone straight to the hauler instead of using a service.

There were some also simple realities of life going on: our son Derek is going to speech therapy twice a week in the evenings, which occupies a decent chunk of our work time. Until she got a new job a few weeks ago, Sarah was working at a temp job that put a lot of uncertainty into our house budget. As for me, I was just sick of the basement. It’s summer, there are all kinds of things to do, and our weekends were more often than not full of fun activities with friends and family. In short, not much got done on the house.

Now that Sarah’s permanently employed, we’re back to hoping we can move into the basement before winter sets in. The only way that’s happening is if we hire out a big chunk of the work: namely finishing the dig out and pouring the new concrete floor, and the sewer plumbing. So over the last month or so we’ve been in contact with a few concrete contractors, a GC, and a couple of plumbers. We got a couple quotes on the dig out and the floor, as well as the new exterior back steps, but getting a plumbing quote has proven elusive. The GC we met with first said he would give us a quote but he never did, plus a lot of what he said really didn’t align with what I understand code to be, even though he said he knows all the inspectors and does it all the time.

Then we met with a plumber that gave us a whole different idea for how to do the sewer plumbing. We were planning on having our sewer pipe run underground, gravity-fed, with a backflow preventer (since Chicago has a combined storm system and high rain can lead to sewer backups). The plumber told us that the city now has additional requirements for backflow preventers that makes them difficult and expensive, and to instead use an overhead sewer line from the main stack to the front of the house. The basement fixtures would drain into an ejector pit that pumps up to the overhead line. The advantage is that it’s unlikely there would ever be a backup because it’s much higher up, and even if it did it would just back up to the ejector pit. Better still, we could run the whole thing in PVC instead of cast iron (which the City requires for below grade sewer). As a result it would be cheaper as well as a performing better. The disadvantage is we would have a bulkhead along the outside wall, but I think we can make that work. Unfortunately, he also said we’d have to have a trench for the new water main, since the city inspectors want to be able to see that it’s one contiguous pipe.

Unfortunately they still haven’t gotten us a quote, and now they want to come back out next week since their “outside guy” missed the last appointment. Needless to say I haven’t gotten a quote yet. We have another plumber coming out on Saturday morning. Hopefully they’ll both get us quotes; after wasting most of the summer, now we need to get moving on this project, but without quotes we can’t plan or budget.

Marking Time

June 26, 2015 / Matt / 1 Comment

Sarah and Matt at Closing

Changing locks

Four years ago, on a sunny day in June 2011, Sarah and I bought our house. She was three months pregnant with our son Derek. I changed the locks still wearing my dress shirt and pants. We had just sunk a large portion of our savings into a moldy two flat that smelled so bad that just walking through it made you want to take a shower. Everything was sticky, as in everything. You couldn’t touch a door knob, a wall, a bit of trim, or the floor without feeling like you were contaminated by roach droppings and a pervasive, cloying, humid funk.

Our inspector had told us that he would normally recommend not to buy this house, but we seemed like we knew what we were getting into. Before we bought this house, I had never seen an actual rats nest. I’d never used a shop vac to suck them out of wall cavities, or dug them out of the dirt under a concrete floor or had to dispose of a rat carcass. I’d never pulled back a piece of trim and had to stand back so I didn’t breath in the shower of dead roaches that fell out. In that sense, I’m not sure that we did know what we were getting into. We didn’t know how much having two kids would complicate home improvement. Most importantly, we didn’t understand that knowing what needs to be done is not the same things as knowing how long it takes to do it.

Sarah 2011

Christmas 2012

Dean, Mike, Matt B, Eriq 2013

Matt and Derek 2014

Sarah and Derek 2015

Emily 2015

The past four years we’ve learned a lot, done a lot, spent a lot, and we have a long way yet to go. Going in we hoped this would be roughly a five-year project, but I think we’re only about 25% done. If we want the remaining three-quarters to take less than twelve years, we’ll have to hire out a fair bit of what’s left. Even so I’m sure we’ll be working on this thing for a long time yet, but I also hope that our current basement plan helps us get the inside of the house to a (mostly) completed state in the next couple years. As daunting as what’s ahead is, keeping the goal in mind keeps us going. It also helps to remind ourselves how much we’ve already done.

We’ve removed about 75 tons of material from the house, no small part of which was rats nests, roach bodies, and layers on layers of laminate flooring. By weight, most of it was concrete and dirt with a fair amount of plaster, but in there was a purging of all the awfulness that the house embodied when we bought it. The house was cleansed, not just in the literal sense, but in a spiritual sense. While it’s still ugly on the outside, with its cheap vinyl siding (over cement-asbestos siding over wood siding), Picasso-inspired window flashing and comically bad roof, it’s slowly become ours. We demoed the whole basement and first floor, ripped out the raised cinder block garden in the back yard, took down the chimney brick by brick, tore down the old back porch and garage are gone, and dug down the basement.

Painted living room

Basement demo

First floor demo

Mike welding steel beam

LVL beam installation

Iron door installed

Leveling joists

Stringers installed

Porch coming down

Derek on the digger

Structurally, we have a new steel support beam and columns in the basement on new concrete footings and we have a new LVL beam and columns in the first floor. The first floor has a new level subfloor and is completely framed, including new doors and windows and a front staircase. Mechanically, we have a new high-efficiency water heater and boiler and the start of a new hydronic heating system. We have new electrical service and panel and new wiring and lighting in the basement.

The next big step is new sewer and supply and an interior weeping system so we can get the new basement floor poured. Once that’s done we’ll focus on getting the basement livable: bathroom, temporary kitchen, stairs, and walls. We can move down to the basement and demo the whole second floor. This is our goal for the next six months. It’s ambitious, and historically we haven’t made our deadlines, especially the ambitious ones. Worse, we haven’t gotten much done the last few weeks; it’s so easy to lose momentum. We’re going to try just the same, and I really hope we can do it. We wouldn’t have gotten this far without the extraordinary help of our family and friends, and knowing how much effort they’ve put into our project, how much they’ve given us, makes me all the more committed to seeing it done.

Back Porch Demo

March 30, 2015 / Matt / 2 Comments

We want to dig out the basement, and the only door is at the back. To be able to get a dumpster into the back yard and haul loads of dirt straight out, we need to tear down the back porch and the garage. We’re planning to replace both anyway, so doing it now makes sense. The back porch is a fully enclosed, two-story, vinyl-siding-clad beast. We took out the stairs from the first floor to the second a while back so we could put in the back sliding door, so it just has steps down to the back door and to the basement.

The first step was to move all of our accumulated stuff off the porch, including the old radiators. Fortunately I found a used radiator company to come and take them and even pay me a bit for the trouble. I disconnected and removed all the old electrical and moved the phone line box from the outside of the porch to the outside of the house.

Windows and doors removed

Saturday morning I started work removing the doors and windows and was soon joined most of by Sarah’s family. We discovered that because the porch was enclosed after it was built, the walls weren’t integral to the structure. The walls consisted of some horizontal 2x4s attached to vertical beadboard, some of which was twenty feet long, and vinyl siding on top of that. While not very strong it held together remarkably well. The big challenge was the right side, where there was no landing or stairs to work from, just a big open space.

Walls coming down (with Mike and Matt L)

We managed to rip down the right side of the wall in one giant piece. You can see from this photo how the floor only extends to the door in the middle of the house. With that piece down, the rest of the back wall was pretty straightforward. The right side wall was a bit interesting. We wound up pulling the pieces of beadboard off individually and then the vinyl siding, which at that point was just hanging from itself.

Walls removed (with David and Matt L)

By that point is was evening and we wrapped up for the day. The next day we had a bunch of friends over to start working on the structure. The roof was an open question, since there wasn’t a great way to reach most of it. In hindsight, it may have been better to tear the porch down back when we took out the stairs, since having the landing would have made this process easier, plus we wouldn’t have had to worry about breaking the new sliding door with a piece of falling debris.

Roof removal

We used the ladders and a piece of fencing we bought to fill in the gap to shield the sliding door from the chunks of falling roof. We used a rope on the right column to pull it down after cutting it near the base with a chain saw. At first we tried the pictured system of pulleys to pull it down, but the angle was wrong so we wound up not using them. Unfortunately the porch beams were pocketed into the sheathing, so I have to go back and patch the holes in the outside wall before birds start nesting in the walls. I ordered an extension ladder as well, something that probably would have come in handy for this project, since the folding Werner ladders aren’t quite long enough.

Removing the last section of roof (with Dean, Matt B, and Drew)

We had a bit of a scare pulling down the last section of roof because the left column started to lean out, not only getting close to our power line, but pulling away from the beam that held up the second floor of the porch! After we got the roof section off things went quickly and we got the second floor structure removed. I also screwed the second floor door shut so we won’t have any accidents.

Finishing up (Dean and Matt B)

The first floor went pretty quickly too. We left the section by the stairs so we can still get in and out. We moved all of the drywall out of the garage and the freezer out of the basement and into the first floor, and then Dean and Matt built a new railing while I put up some house wrap over the sheathing and patched the lower two holes in the wall.

All done! (With Dean, Drew, and Hector)

We now have a massive pile of debris in the back yard (scroll back through the pictures to watch it grow). We’ll need to live with it until we get the garage torn down and a dumpster into the yard, but that should just be a few weeks. I plan to salvage some scrap material to build a ramp that we can use to get wheelbarrows of dirt into the dumpsters when we dig out the basement. This was a big two-day project and we couldn’t have done it without tons of help from family and friends.

A huge thanks go out to the Saturday crew: Mike, Lee, Matt L, Amy, Rob, Nicole, David, Collin, Dylan, and Dustin, as well as the Sunday crew: Dean, Hector, Drew, Anna, and Matt B. Thanks everyone!

Going the Right Way

November 21, 2014 / Matt / 0 Comments

We’ve officially changed course. We’re now planning to hold off finishing the first floor and instead focus on the basement. If we can get the basement floor redone along with the below ground plumbing, we can move into the basement and do the whole second floor at one time, which also lets us do nearly all the plumbing, electrical, and HVAC at one time. That will make the rest of the project go faster, which after three years (so far) has become a more important factor. We debated buying another two flat and renting out half of it so we’d have somewhere to live besides the basement, but that would’ve cost a lot up front just to save money on rent and if we wind up needing to borrow money to finish the house it would have complicated things.

I updated The Plan and I’ve been thinking through our next steps. We need to start by cleaning out the basement and re-pointing the brick walls. Then, to make the basement livable, we need to run new electrical and replace the windows. Then we can start breaking up the floor and figuring out how we’ll run the new plumbing. Hopefully we can run some (most?) of the new underground plumbing before we have to move out and disconnect the old stuff, but we won’t know until we can see how the existing stuff is laid out.

One of the challenges is that to dig out the basement we want to tear down the existing garage and back porch so we can get a dumpster into the back yard. We don’t want to tear them down in the middle of winter though, so we’re arranging our tasks to do that a bit later. Another issue is the hot water heater and the water filter. Back when I was shopping for water heaters, I debated getting a tankless unit just so it would hang on the wall and I wouldn’t to worry about it, but since I didn’t we have to disconnect it in order to drop the floor under it. The same goes for the main tank of the water filter. We’ll leave them for last and work around them as much as we can, but it means we can’t completely remove the existing floor before we have to move out.

We want to do everything we can to shorten how long we’ll have to be out of the house, since we’ll have to stay in a hotel or temporary apartment while the new plumbing goes in, the basement floor is poured, and we build the basement bathroom. Once we have a bathroom and a utility sink we can move back in. We’ll move some of the kitchen cabinets down to the basement and set up some temporary partitions for bedrooms. It’ll be cozy, and we won’t have a proper kitchen, but we’ll manage. If nothing else we’ll have a lot of motivation to get cracking on the rest of the house!

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