La Villa Loca

OK, so here we are. Things continue to progress slightly over-budget and behind schedule, so, situation: normal. We’ve also hit the point of very frequent, “oh wait, now we can’t…”’ moments. I kind of thought these would come earlier in the project like, “oh wait, the wall is full of sludge, now we can’t afford floors.” But, no, no, the devil seems to really be in the small details where the plan collides with the real world. An example: Soffit Struggles Part of opening up the first floor meant putting some huge beams in place of the old walls. Sometimes you can “tuck” beams up into the floor joists that they support; however, in our case, the beams were left below the joists because 1) it was structurally better and 2) we needed to run some plumbing in the same places as the beams anyway, so, no matter what, something would be poking out of the ceiling. So, we knew there would be some big soffits along the ceiling when all was said and done. Then the plumber ran the new sanitary...

Well, well, well. Here we are, less than two weeks from the last blog post and we're making ANOTHER blog post. Don't get used to the consistency, but you know, enjoy it for the moment. Anyway, wow, things are happening. Let's get to it. If you want to skip to the part where something goes wrong and it's funny, just jump down to the section titled "Haha! Comic Calamity!" Stairs: First Blood We try to get over to the house at least 1x/week just to see what's going on and keep an eye on things. The progress to remove the big walls was fairly plodding; we saw it unfold in pieces and no single step was a huge shock. Now we've hit the point where, apparently, entire structures materialize. It's FUN. So I walk in to the place last week and trudge upstairs. As I got to the top I involuntarily just started saying "WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW, WOW," and it sounded even stupider in person than it does written, I assure you. Anyway, I was yammering to...

Yes, yet again, we’re taking a long time in between posts here; sorry, we’ve got kind of a lot going on. And really, I think we were both waiting for a comically horrific story to reveal itself during demo: “Surprise, you’ve got MOLD!” premiering this fall on HGTV. I’ve been psychologically preparing myself for a number of potential scenarios. These were roughly the odds on possibilities as things were getting torn apart: 2-1:    Mold 3-1:    Eye-widening structural defect 6-1:    Plan-altering, dream-ruining discovery 8-1:    Jaw-dropping structural defect 10-1:    Mold (sentient) 15-1:    Dead body in the wall (animal) 17-1:    Something that would require the house be wrapped in plastic a-la “E.T.” 20-1:    Dead body in the wall (human) 20-1:    Treasure Map!! 25-1:    Dead body in the wall (multiple) 30-1:    ~3...

As mentioned in a previous post, over the course of planning this renovation we've had TWO general contractors commit to doing the project and then unceremoniously bail. Via email. At least break up with some class, oye. Why are we so unlovable? We're fun. We're cute. Our baggage is pretty minimal. Well, as is the outcome of most breakups, it's not us, it's THEM. What Is Going On With These Guys? If I were to give advice to anyone thinking about doing major construction on their home, it would be this: don't do it when there's 1) full employment and 2) low interest rates. This is the first combo macroeconomic factor we realized (too late) was working against us. The second is that, in addition to low unemployment, there is a well-documented and outsized labor shortage in the trades (carpentry, HVAC, electrical, etc.). So, homeowners have lots of money to throw at their HGTV-fueled fever dreams of RECLAIMED SHIPLAP FEATURE WALLS, and general contracto...

Y’all, blogging is hard. We’ve been shit bloggers. I think we’d have been better at keeping this updated if we had better news to share, but the truth of the matter is that this year has been ROUGH. But after months and months of two-steps-forward-one-step-back progress (or, sometimes, one-step-forward-two-steps-back non-progress), we finally have some meaningful movement in the right direction.  Let me catch you up. In the nearly one year since our last blog post (ugh, sorry sorry sorrysorrysorry) , this is what we’ve been up to: We survived a truly terrifying Chicago winter. We’ve lived in Chicago for nearly 6 years now, so we’re no strangers to the Midwest winter. Our first winter in Chicago featured measurable snow literally every other day from December to March. Our second winter introduced us to the Polar Vortex. The winter of 2018-2019 was different, in large part because we were attempting to brave it in a 100+ year old home with decades-old, drafty-AF, rotting win...

Dear Diary, The answer still eludes me. And yet ... I can't shake the nagging sensation that an answer exists...  How!? How!? How can I take the chaos, the lack of rational thought, and the overall poor quality of workmanship that I've cultivated INSIDE the house and bring it OUTSIDE as well? ... ... [angry scribblings] ... I've got it. I've GOT IT.  Make the overall usability of the space worse? Check.  Actively breed insects, specifically mosquitos? Check.  But a safety hazard ... a safety hazard ... EUREKA! How could I have been so blind? Electrical hazards are the best ones of all! And I can c ause an adjacent building or system to stop functioning properly to boot! I'm off! Yours Always, The Guy Who Used To Live In This Fucking Place Some "Backmound" On The Situation When we moved in to La Maison De La Merde, there was a horribly misguided attempt at a "water feature" in the back yard. This "water feature"...

As you may have guessed from the tumbleweeds rolling across this page, it’s been a slow summer here at le casa de caca. We more or less knew this would be the case; we had a short list of high-priority fixes and improvements to make quickly (plumbing, AC, carpets), all of which made hilarious blog fodder, but the horizon of the next project, The Whole House, is quite a bit further away. The story well is drying up, the pithy anecdotes fewer and farther between, as life in la maison de la merde has become… actually pretty normal. But, to be fair, we have been making progress, and I DID start this damn blog to keep you updated, so: We found an architect! Getting to work with an architect might have been the part of this project I was most excited about. Sketches, plans, 3D renderings? It all just sounds so… cool. (Spoiler alert: it is.) But we soon understood that architects do more than just design cool shit. They manage the permitting process with the city, will often oversee the bi...