Marty’s blog

Easing on down the road, my daughter’s room is almost finished - and the first room in the house that will be completely done (well, almost — except for the closet and the drawers and door for the built-in dresser).

Did you think that when I said it was going to be a Prairie style house I was pulling your leg?

Yesterday I had ‘FMT on - Marriage of Figaro - while I put a final coat of shellac on all the woodwork. I thoroughly enjoyed that.

And today I washed all the screens, installed all the hardware and will hang the grasscloth wallcovering. Stay tuned.

This title reminds of “The Wiz”. I saw it in LA when it premiered, caught a glimpse of Diana Ross in person when I was there. The movie was a bit of a flop, but it did make me realize what an amazing performer Diana Ross was (is)!

A bit further with this digression — I was there staying in LA with my friend Jerome (also a violinist), someone told me he died of AIDS or something. I was thinking about making a music career there. Jerome was black - from Gary Indiana, we went to DePaul together, he was gay, and had a lifestyle that was out of control sometimes. He only hit on me once or twice, I think the second time I made it very clear that our friendship was not going in that direction -enough said about that. He always made fun of me looking at the girls, saying if I wasn’t careful I might catch something.

I never did the LA thing. All the show biz stuff was too much of a zoo for me and I just couldn’t wrap my brain around the place. And it seemed nobody was from there - everybody was from some place else, and they were all going to make lots of money.

Anyhow, I never saw Jerome after ‘79. Talked on the phone a few times (this was before email), and then I heard he died. Now, every time I hear something from The Wiz, or even The Wizard of Oz, I think of him.

Last couple of weeks things have been moving pretty fast. I won’t bore you with all the prep and un-sexy stuff, just the highlights.

The countertops went in today. Augustine and Rolando are skilled installers from Stonecrafters. They did the installation.

These guys are pros! They had to make a couple of adjustments on site, and had no problem working along with my fussy and unusual specs. They were also great about letting me ask a bunch of questions. I love learning from the pros.

The main kitchen slab for the island must weigh at least 500 pounds. These guys have good backs! Augustine cutting the hole for the faucet:

Here’s them carrying the bath counter up the stairs - another 200 pounds.

Got the daughter’s bedroom floor in.

It’s an engineered product by Mohawk, and I did a “floating” installation. I got this (and all my flooring materials) at Exceed Flooring outhere in Crystal Lake. Great tile and flooring supplier, if a bit high end and some of the stuff is pricey. But they’ve been working with me with contractor pricing, and are just amazing. More about them at a later date.

And some trimwork has been going in little by little.

Other tradesmen keep telling me my designs are non-standard and a little odd. But you know - they work. And it gets other tradespeople to think out of the box once in a while. They learn from me, I learn from them. That’s fun.

Stay tuned.

So, what a week! Put most of the furniture back in the living room until I can finish the trim work - about two or three weeks.

It’s Spring and all the views are incredible. That’s a big reason we bought this place.

Since I have a cheap camera, I adjusted this shot so you can see outside of the windows (the room is very bright, actually).

When you enter the living room, it is a few steps above ground level, but at the far end it is already at the second story because of the hill we’re built on.

And this is the view out my daughter’s room, which is almost ready for her to move into.

This is part of our front yard.

Somemore of the dozens of varieties of mushrooms growing around the house:

And all the doors are in.

It took all of a week to make the jambs and get them hung and get all the locksets and hardware installed. Still have to install the stops, and some added trim to make them into true Prairie Style doors. The walls are so out of plumb, some as much as 3/4 inch, so I had to cut each jamb a different width, because the doors must be plumb and square, so they don’t line up with the walls. So now I have to do a lot of mudding to bring the walls flush with the jambs so the trim will fit right.

Today I also built and installed this overhead trim and shelf, then put some of my daughter’s pottery on it to see how it would look.

It took me about an hour to make, but about four months to figure out. I just mulled over it for a while, and it finally came to me a couple of days ago. It was difficult to resolve this trim detail with all the different ceiling heights and interconnected spaces. It turned out well I think.

And finally, when my bathroom cabinets were delivered and I tried to get this one up the stairs…oops!

We couldn’t make the turn into the stairway. So I had to take out some drywall to give me another two inches, and then remove this bannister and rail which I built last year.

But that’s okay, because I wanted to change it a little anyhow. Fortunately, I built it in anticipation of such an event and it was all blind screwed together with the screws hidden under trim. At least there are one or two good things about getting older and having more experience. Of course the rest of my family doesn’t buy the fact that I’m not just as dumb as I always was.

Another crazy day. But the weather was BEAUTIFUL! It was fabulous to be outdoors to trim out the new windows on the exterior.

And just to be up there with the birds - All the animals are horny and mating, the male woodpeckers and their calls - with their rapid pecking of hollow trees to catch the female’s attention, robins, cardinals, geese and herons flying over, squirrels doing their acrobatics in all the trees. These are the days you live for.

And the arrival of these made the day complete - our interior doors.

Also today, measured and ordered flooring for upstairs - all engineered/floating wood floors. Once the floor is prepped, that goes in fast.

Then lots of little stuff, clean-up, and paperwork and going over the budget and careful money counting - - stuff I hate! I’m going to lose the momentum a bit because I have to stop working here until Sunday. Got to go into the big city tomorrow and do a couple of jobs and make some dough to help pay for this stuff.

And Saturday, if anyone is interested, I’ll have a table at the Highland Park Earth Festival. Roger Keys and I will be there to talk with folks about windows, restoration, or whatever. We don’t have any kind of big display, but will mostly just be there to shoot the bull.

Did I say what a GORGEOUS day it was today?!

And the painter comes in a week or two, so these are some of the last pictures of our house dressed in blue. Finally!

The colors will be someting like this. (This was done with Some software that Benjamin Moore put out.) It’s going to look awesome!

BTW, it gets this lush in the summer, but we did have to cut away the bushes in front. The yews were so thick, and right up against the house that they were starting to cause the siding to rot from all the moisture, they were harboring animals and worst, the grade underneath was pitched toward the house and causing a lot of dampness in the basement. More landscaping and some more thoughtful re-planting will fix that. But that’s a subject for another day.

I’m not at all a morning person, but there are some benefits for getting up at the crack of dawn. One is that you can get a lot done before dinner.

Stripped the six old Pella windows in the bedroom. They will have to be replaced in a few years. They have deformed as a result of that part of the house sagging, and have taken a lot of weather because there is no protection from any eaves above, and they haven’t been kept painted by previous owners. But I can get a little more life out of them for now and save some money. Even after a long shower, I can’t get the smell of paint remover off of me — or out of my nose. Yuck.

Pella also delivered the two awning windows and I cut the holes and installed them today as well.

Tomorrow I’ll trim out the exteriors and caulk everything weather tight.

Also got my quotes for kitchen and bath countertops - they’ll come in under budget. Cool! And had to get my faucets ordered so they’re here when the countertops arrive to have the holes cut. Also under budget, I ordered them from eFaucets. Very good prices.

I’m in the thick of a remodeling marathon. My daughter is coming home from college next week and there’s no place for her to sleep! Her room isn’t done. Nor is the new bathroom. So today I got up early and finished grouting the walls. So all the tile work is done, except that I have to grout the joint between the walls and the floor, and later caulk all expansion joints to match the grout.

So far, it does look really cool! And the installation of this is always a milestone!

I framed in the openings and header for the new windows I’m putting in her room. There are awning or “clerestory” windows, so that there is still wall space underneath for the bed. For air circulation, it’s nice to have windows on at least two elevations - cuts down on air conditioning. All the good Prairie School Architects did this.

Frank Lloyd Wright did it all the time, with windows all around a room — except that often he put in too many full windows, and there was no place to put beds or furniture. Many say that’s a sign of his genius - that his designs were so “advanced” that he didn’t have to care about practical considerations. I call it bad architecture. I must say, I’ve learned a lot from Wright - mostly what NOT to do. And so many of his houses were so cheaply built. In a way, our house is similar. They really cut corners in it’s construction. It was built in 1978, and about a third of our remodeling costs are fixing and re-doing things that were done wrong.

Anyhow, windows will be delivered Wednesday from Pella, doors tomorrow from Blue Ribbon Millwork, garage door will be measured and ordered tomorrow, bath cabinets arrive on Thursday or Friday, kitchen and countertops measured Wednesday or Thursday. So I have a lot of prep and installations to do this week. Busy as a beaver!

And I’m supposed to be starting on the fabrication of six art glass windows for another job. So as soon as this is uploaded, I’m going to bed. Tomorrow A.M. I have to pick up some 1-by-six red oak and start making jambs for the new doors. I never order them pre-hung, just the slabs. It would save me a little time, but I can do a much better job myself.

And this, our new dining room table. (The chairs I made years ago.)

And yes, it snowed here today, for about two hours - but nothing stuck.

And here is one of the inhabitants that share our property.

She had her first brood last year, and it looks like she’ll be having another this Spring. They’re so entertaining, year round!

As promised in a previous post, here is the “vertigo” shot from a job I’m doing in Chicago.

For somebody like me, with an inner ear problem, this was really no place to be today. The winds were at about 35 mph, and now I know why they call it a “swing stage”. I never go on rides or roller coasters at amusement parks, and avoid airplanes and boats as much as possible. This thing was rockin’ and rollin’. And the windows were like a moving target for three hours. Well actually, I was the one moving constantly. I’m surprised I didn’t break anything…or throw up, but you get good at it after a while.

And the views are really kind of cool.

You can also see some details up here that you can’t really see from the ground.

So what am I doing hanging by two cables (and a safety rope and harness!) fifty feet above terra firma? Well, the leaded glass needed some final touch-up of the puttying to make them completely weather tight. Since I fabricated them, this was my responsibity. One more day to go on the swing stage. Then I start making windows for the rear facade back home in my shop.

Showed my wife these pictures, she said I look like some pathetic “old guy”. That’s encouraging. Can’t stay twenty five forever, babe.

It seems “the fellas” that owned the house before us also didn’t understand the importance of keeping the septic system maintained. We’ve been here a year and a half, and I knew it was time for me to have the tank pumped. It seems that it hasn’t been serviced for years. It was full up with sludge, and on the brink having sludge flowing into our septic field and causing a lot of damage.

The several companies who service septic systems in the area share maintenance records, and it seems that there are no records of our house being serviced in the past five or six years - at least! It’s supposed to be done every 1-1/2 to 2 years for a family of two or three.

So, here’s Dave.

I’ve got to say, some of the nicest people are those who do these kinds of jobs! And the people who clean up other people’s shit deserve the highest respect in my book, even if they don’t get the highest pay.

Dave also let me ask tons of questions about how the whole thing worked, how to maintain the system, what kinds of things I could plant on the field, and exactly where my tank was underground, for when I have the new front walk put in.

Thanks Dave and Arrow Septic Systems!

Yes, it seems to be Spring.

House stuff:

The strip flooring is installed in the living and dining rooms — almost 400 square feet. I expected it would take me 4 days. It took six. I had to remove the flake-board underlayment because the hardwood manufacturer’s dirctions said “DO NOT INSTALL OVER FLAKE BOARD…”. so I had to to remove it and install 3/8 plywood on top of the sub floor to keep all my floor levels at the same height.

The product is pre-finished oak by Mohawk. Nice stuff, 3/4″ by 2-1/4″ red oak, about $3200 for materials.

Both hands scratched, slivered, bloodied and blistered, sore knees and back. But I saved about three or four thousand by doing it myself. And not bad for an amateur! (I never installed a hardwood floor before - only done repairs and finishing.)

I haven’t touched my violin in weeks — I’m afraid to. But the wife is happy, and that’s what counts.

Bathroom floor tile arrived today. Back in town working until Thursday, but will install that over the next week.

I have music in my head which I’d like to get down on paper, an audition I want to do in May (I’m not yet prepared), and really want to be playing my fiddle again a couple of hours a day. Not to mention the piles of research I want to organize, and the book I want to get published. None of which will happen I don’t think until July.

I promised the Frau that I would get things substantially done on the house by the end of June, and just promised my daughter that, come hell or high water, we would find a way to pay for a her to go to Italy next summer for culinary school.

So it looks like I’m into construction again full time for the next few months on my own house. And have a couple of other much-needed jobs coming in to help pay the bills.

I won’t be painting/staining the exterior myself. I decided to bite the bullet and hire a painter, or else I’ll never get everything done. More “money out” there, but he’s giving me a great price.

And I’m talking to a local artist who does fantastic work and who’s interested in designing and making the Arts and Crafts tile for our fireplace. She’s already testing glazes and will come out soon to look at it see what kind of ideas she might have for the design/layout.

This is my punch list for the house for May and June:
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Finish bath: tile floor/shower floor/base of walls, install toilet build cabinet behind tub, install cabinets, order countertop for sink, paint, trim and install jamb and door.

Start landscape with Barbara.
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I think somewhere there will time to sleep.