NOTE: Please forgive the long delay in between postings. There have been some "issues," some technical, some less technical to which I've been attending.
Before going directly into demolition, allow me to give a
bit of the backstory on how I came to this point in my remodeling life.
The Coming Home House is not the first house in which I’ve
done a lot of work.
My first house, which I owned with my ex-husband, was a 1911
classic American Foursquare. In the almost eight years we lived in the house,
there was not a room we didn’t touch. The first thing we did was to pull up
1970s orange shag carpet and nailed down linoleum floors to expose original and
beautiful pine and oak picture frame wooden floors. We finished the third floor and turned it
into a family room/office combination with wide plank ash floors, built in desk and media
center, as well as its own heating and cooling system. In the front hall, we
stripped alligatored shellac off a gorgeous quarter-sawn oak staircase and
refinished it. Opening directly into the
dining room was a ridiculously small full bathroom (with a bathtub even my two
year old could barely fit into). So as to make dinner parties much more
comfortable, we moved the entrance from the dining room and divided the space,
turning it into a powder room and a needed front hall closet. We added a
fence, painted the exterior of the house and, last, we gutted and redid a
cavernous kitchen.
When we moved from House #1 in search of a second full
bathroom for our growing family, we moved into a completely different type of
house. House #2 was a 1987 center hall colonial that we bought from its
original owners. When we bought it in late 2000, it came with all its original
parts. The kitchen and both bathrooms came with identical builder’s grade
cherry cabinetry, and every piece of wood trim in the house was painted the
identical color, that of the BandAids in a box that has been sitting in the
medicine cabinet for 10 years. Before even moving into that house, we pulled
down extensive wallpaper and painted almost every room. I thought, foolishly I
retrospectively understood, that would be enough. Shortly after moving in, I
realized the kitchen was not a “cook’s kitchen,” but rather one that had been
designed by a builder using the formulaic work triangle. Yes, the three
main stations – the cooktop and oven, the sink and the refrigerator – were in
the right places, but nothing else in the kitchen was where it should be and it
functioned poorly. So began the work on House #2.
Before finishing, we’d gutted and redone the kitchen, redone the
master bath and moved the laundry room from the first floor to the master bath.
The second bathroom on the upper floor got a full redo, and the powder room and
mud room got the same treatment. We'd moved a large closet and created a wet bar,
and, finally, completely finished the basement, including adding a large wet
bar area, a guest bedroom and a full bath. We had added windows here and there,
replaced windows here and there, pulled up carpet and replaced it with wood
floors, moved interior doors and more. Fairly extensive landscaping was also in
the mix.
My time in those two houses told me that I loved remodeling
and rehabbing, and it also, sadly, brought the end of my more than twenty year
marriage. It was time to breathe deeply and move on.
Closing on The Coming Home House was emotional. Not only would this
house bring me back to my hometown, but Chicago and I had each changed a great
deal since I’d last lived there. I was now the divorced mom of two amazing young
men who would shortly make me an empty nester. This also was the house I
intended to make my last house and I would
live here by myself except for those times my sons came for extended stays. Finally, since
leaving Chicago, both my parents had passed away and coming back to live
without their physical presence in town meant that the rhythm of my life in
Chicago would be greatly altered from what it been twenty-three years earlier.
As I walked out of the closing with my attorney and drove to my new house, I
had no one with whom to share the excitement. It was bittersweet moment.
After closing, I walked silently through the now empty house,
checking each room, each system, making sure each was in the same good shape as
it had been at my final walk-through the night before. After surveying the
whole house, I unloaded my car of the things I’d brought for those first
several days: a coffee pot, clothing and toiletries, some bath and bed linens,
cleaning supplies, a few dishes and a bottle of good red wine. A new bed was
coming that afternoon. My plan was to pretty much camp out in my house those
first two weeks and decide on my next step. Later that afternoon a dear friend arrived with a bottle of Prosecco that we used to toast my new life. It made the day a whole lot more sweet and much less bitter. That night, tired, I fell into bed
and slept deeply.
Those first two weeks I spent doing a lot of standing and
staring. One day a friend dropped by and found me standing in my front yard
just staring at my house. I’d been there long enough that I’m sure the
neighbors had already begun to comment on their new neighbor, the crazy woman
who liked to stand in her front yard. I explained to my friend that I was just
trying to take it all in, figure out what to do and when. And eventually I did
that. By the end of those two weeks, I not only had a plan, but a sort of
mission statement. I knew the many things I wanted to do and in what order, but
underlying every decision I would make was a desire on my part to be respectful
of the architecture and style of the house while simultaneously making the
house livable for 2014 and beyond.
What specific things did I want to do? Here’s the list:
- Pull the nasty carpet on the front porch up, clean and seal the concrete.
- Clean up the garden and then do some pretty extensive landscaping (including hardscape changes).
- Paint, inside and out.
- Change and enhance outdoor lighting including changing all current fixtures.
- Pull the cracked and discolored vinyl siding and replace it with something more appropriate to the age of the house.
- Figure out how to get the many tennis ball dents out of the garage door without completely replacing it.
- Remove or replace the front door storm door.
- Replace the front door . . . or make changes to it.
- Remove current rusted window blinds in the bedrooms and replace them. Find and install window coverings in the living/dining room.
- Replace the dining room chandelier.
- And the list goes on . . . and on . . . and on and on.
So in addition to the substantial changes I wanted to make
in the bedrooms, bathrooms and kitchen, I had a whole host of
other things I needed and wanted to get to. My plan included extensive demolition and
construction. I’d been there before and I was ready to begin again, ready to
begin on a new house and new life.
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