Lookin' good, Ms. Crabapple.

For posterity, or at least until next Spring.

Our littlest helper

Jimmy is quite adept at tiling

(Thanks Eileen & Brian, for another great photo op.)

Spring is upon us, so I thought the house could use some Spring cleaning. Here are some recent pictures of our *mostly* clean apartment!

The entryway...welcome!

The living room and source of great light

Ferny

The dining room/bar area

Tom's nap couch on the left

The kitchen

The bathroom

The pantry/porch/cat lookout area

My favorite piece of furniture, the lowboy

My dressing room! It's also where Grace Kelly (the mannequin) hangs out.

Thanks for stopping by. Happy Spring!

Moving on Down

After finishing up the major projects on the 1st floor of our lovely mellow yellow 2-flat, it is now a respectable apartment. So, we decided to move on down to the 1st floor, leaving room for us to start on the 2nd floor projects. Currently, Baby cat has full reign of the 2nd floor, and that's how she likes it.

So, the first project to tackle is the bathroom. Tom's sister Eileen has helped out on her days off (thanks Eileen!). Days 1 and 2 consisted of ripping up the old tile, removing the tile around the tub, and then removing the tub.

Bye bye old tub and floor tile...good riddance. Oh, and please don't ask about the several shades of blue on the wall. I can't pick out an acceptable paint color to save my life.

Yeah, that black stuff on the floor is probably mold. We (hopefully) took care of that with a nice bleach solution.

Tommy and Eileen got a little overzealous and tore out half a wall of drywall too. Demo is fun!

But, now the old tub is gone and new plywood has been laid under the toilet/sink area. Oh, and that gray stuff is cellulose insulation, not dust. Actually, it might be dust.

Tommy looking wistfully at the toilet hole. Stop back soon to see an actual toilet where the toilet hole is now!

The Floor Chronicles: Finished Product

Well kids, the elbow grease paid off. After sanding, staining, re-sanding the kitchen, 6 coats of polyurethane, and some extra trim painting clean up...here are the finished hardwood floors. Ooooooh, shiny!

Elbow Grease: The Floor Chronicles

Tommy decided he needed a vacation (i.e. time away from the coffee shop), since he rarely has more than 1 day off at a time. So, I decided to join him for a few days of vacation. This is what we did on our staycation. You may be thinking this is the "After" version. Oh no no no, my friends. This is the "Before" version of the first floor living space.

So, here's the story. The previous owners laid this thin Pergo flooring, which was OK (some may even say nice). But, we were fascinated with the hardwood that lay just beneath that Pergo. It consumed our thoughts whenever we walked over that rickety Pergo. Well, maybe not consumed, but it definitely bothered us.

Well, we got to the bottom of it, but it wasn't easy. Tommy made pretty fast work of ripping up the Pergo. It always seems like the demolition takes so much less time than the reconstruction.

This was an interesting find: a cement-like agent used over the hardwood for leveling the Pergo floor. It was interesting in that it smelled of urine.

We were really regretting our decision when we first saw the condition of the hardwood under the Pergo...as evidenced by Tommy's face.

Goose! No time for fun and games. This is a working vacation.

Amazing what a TON of scrubbing, scraping and mopping can do. The pre-clean side is on the left. The semi-clean side is to the right.

Making some serious progress and expelling some major elbow grease.


About 8 hours of serious scrubbing later...not bad! The next step is to sand and buff the floor, then refinish with a few coats of polyurethane. We'll probably need another vacation to do that. ;-)

Hello 2009, Goodbye Christmas Tree

So, the holidays are over. 2009 is here! Time to take down the Christmas tree. Luckily, there are several spots to drop off and recycle your Christmas tree in Chicago. We took advantage of this again this year, but added to the pile of lovely green Christmas trees with some of our recently pruned crabapple tree.

The red crabapples are a nice accessory to Big Red, don't you think?

A snip here, a saw-saw there...and voila!
A pruned tree that us shorties can walk under now.
Hopefully we didn't kill it.

The first step of recycling your Christmas tree is getting it out of the gangway and into your vehicle. Good luck.

Here we are at the recycling drop-off location in Humboldt Park (see the pile of trees over Tom's shoulder?). On certain days, the city workers have a huge chipper and run all the trees through. Cool. Bye Christmas tree!