Electrical Hazards, Courtesy of Uncle Jimmy

Part of getting ready for the tenants' arrival was cleaning the kitchen top to bottom. Sounds simple enough. Aside from the ironing board repair, we didn't anticipate having to do much else. So Ted moved out the stove and refrigerator to get at years of accumulated dust behind each one, and found one hell of an "Uncle Jimmy" setup.

A while back we started calling any dubious home repair, amateur fix-it, remuddling job, or downright dangerous setup an "Uncle Jimmy." It goes back to our home-search days, when our agent would say things like "Ugh, it looks like they got someone's Uncle Jimmy to fix that" instead of hiring a professional. So, basically, anything shoddily done is an "Uncle Jimmy."

I was fiddling with the blog when Ted came to find me. This "Uncle Jimmy" needed a second witness. I arrived with camera in hand.

The refrigerator was plugged into an adapter, which in turn was plugged into a 99-cent power cord:

This cheesy white power cord, along with the cord for the microwave, was plugged into a beat-up, cracked, badly damaged (and very, very cheap) black power strip:

The power strip was plugged into another cheap power cord:

This snaked behind a counter and behind the stove to join this mess:

At first, I couldn't entirely make out what was going on here; the entire thing was coated in thick, greasy dust. It's amazing there was never a fire. Clearing off some of the dust revealed that each half of the outlet had one of those 3-in-1 adapters, setting it up to hold six appliances/extension cords (even though the refrigerator/microwave extension was the only thing plugged in on one side).

Ted cleaned up the whole mess; unfortunately, I didn't get an "after" picture before moving the appliances back. He moved the microwave to the other side of the kitchen, where it is now plugged directly into its own outlet. The refrigerator is plugged into a cord that is rated for heavy use, and that goes directly into the outlet. The other half of the outlet powers the stove. Uncle Jimmy would be awed.

I know The Box House is an old house with only a few outlets in the kitchen at present, but sheesh. What were they thinking? We'll be installing some GFCI outlets in both kitchens--and more outlets period--sometime in the future.

Here's some additional info from the U.S. Products Safety Commission:

Limit Extension Cords To Reduce Risk Of Fire

WASHINGTON--If you use a lot of extension cords in your home or apartment, government safety experts say doing away with as many cords as possible can improve the safety of your home.

Noting that May is National Electrical Safety Month, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) said homeowners can use fewer extension cords by taking the simple step of relocating floor lamps, clocks, radios, television sets and other electrical products closer to wall receptacles.

According to CPSC estimates, there are some 4,600 residential home fires each year associated with extension cords; these fires kill 70 persons and injure some 230 others annually. Apart from fires, another 2,200 shock-related injuries happen with extension cords every year.

CPSC offered the following safety hints for using extension cords:

• Don't use an extension cords unless absolutely necessary. If you do, it must be marked #16 or some lower AWG number (the lower the number, the larger the wire and the more current the cord can safely carry). Also, the cord should bear the certification label of an independent testing laboratory. Do not use #18 extension cords which were previously used for floor lamps and other low-wattage electrical products.
• Always use 3-wire extension cords for appliances with 3-prong plugs. Never remove the third prong which is a safety feature designed to reduce chances of shock or electrocution.
• When disconnecting cords from outlets, always pull on the plug rather than the cord itself. Discard any old, cracked, worn or damaged extension cords.
• Don't overload cords by plugging in appliances that draw more watts than the rating of the cord. You can check this easily by examining the cord to see what its wattage rating is. Use heavy-duty cords for high wattage appliances. Use extension cords labeled for outdoor use when powering tools and garden products outside the home. Also, it is good practice to plug into an outlet protected by a ground-fault circuit interrupter (GFCI). The device shuts down power in milliseconds if the consumer is exposed to an electrocution or electrical burn hazard.
• Don't run cords under carpets or rugs since they prevent heat from being released by the cord.

A free brochure on safe use of extension cords is available from CPSC by sending a postcard to Cords, Washington, D.C. 20207.

Would You Rent From Us?

It's not like we're landlord virgins or anything. Ted and I are already renting out our condo in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago--and to three recently-graduated-from-college twenty-somethings to boot. But we don't have to deal with the kids on a day-to-day basis. We don't have to live with them. This is going to be different.

We've decided to rent out the top-floor unit of The Box House, our unit.

Okay, we knew from day one that we were probably going to do this. It's not like we woke up this morning and said, "Gee, this sounds like fun." We bought The Box House in a bad housing market. We got it for less than what it would probably have fetched a few years ago. But the downside of a down market is that it's really not the best time to be selling our other properties. We didn't even bother putting the condo up for sale. After witnessing the sluggish housing market in Chicago and seeing first hand how units in our building were not getting what they would have even a year or two ago, we decided to rent it out rather than try to sell it. To everything there is a season, blah, blah, blah, and waiting a year or two to sell can only be to our benefit. The condo is in a quote/unquote "gentrifying area," meaning that once the overall economy improves, which it will, of course, the condo's location near a train line and in an up-and-coming area will only get us a much, much better price.

But it means we're still taking care of expenses on a property that we don't live in. The rent we're getting covers the mortgage, but it doesn't cover everything, and it doesn't make us any money.

Add to that the fact that Mom still has her other house. It's on the market, and it's adorable. A four-bedroom, two-story tudor-inspired house. But the media has scared buyers into thinking it's a bad time to invest, when the truth is that housing prices won't get any better than this. So like so many other houses, it's still on the market.

Now, The Box House is huge. Really huge. More square footage, even, than my childhood home. There are two units as well as a basement that is, technically, finished. At some point in the past, wallboard was added to divide the basement up into separate rooms. The basement just needs a few finishing details, like better flooring, updates to the bathroom, and fresh paint--lots of paint--to make it pretty again. The basement has the same square footage as each of the units, although, admittedly, some of that is lost to mechanicals and a laundry area.

The point is, The Box House is already too big for an almost-forty-something couple with no children, a retiree, and a dog. My office and Ted's are set up in the basement, we never even see my mom for most of the day. Why not rent out the top three-bedroom unit and use the rental income to work on the most critical features of The Box House--fixing the garage roof, updating the electrical, landscaping and regrading the yard, etc. And maybe have it pay for a really cool honeymoon through China or something.

Still, it may be hard--at least for my mom--to get into the mindset of sharing a building with people who don't fall under the category of "friends" or "family". She grew up in multi-units and apartment buildings in Chicago, but it's been nearly forty years since she lived that way. It will definitely be an adjustment to deal with other people in close proximity.

Anyway, I put up an ad on Craig's List to advertise the apartment, and we had A TON OF RESPONSES. Apparently, we are surrounded by Very Good School Districts, something that, as a woman without children, I paid absolutely no attention to before. Also, despite the fact that the kitchen and bathroom are kinda retro, the unit is very, very nice. We've had several people want to submit an application.

This is, admittedly, where it gets tough. Most of the people who came through seemed very nice. There are some we had a better "vibe" for than others, but in the end it all becomes a numbers game. We'll apply the same criteria to everyone, and select a "winner" based on those criteria. But I'm finding myself more stressed out about the process this time than renting out the condo. These are people we'll have to live with on a day to day basis. But I'm most worried about how my mom will be. She's a trooper; she's been able to handle so much more these last few years since my dad died than I would have given her credit for. But I worry, sometimes, about what I've dragged her into. I've spent the majority of the last two decades sharing buildings with strangers, but she hasn't.

My mom, Ted, and I knew that buying a building together would involve some sacrifices and compromises. And one of them was that, until the market improves and our other properties sell, we might be better off if we rent some of the space out as well.

So I get the not-so-fun-task on Monday of calling employers and verifying employment and checking backgrounds. Based on what we went through last fall renting out the condo, this is going to be a pain in the a**. Most employers are immediately suspicious of your intentions, and I have to explain over and over again, getting transferred from one supervisor to the next, until I am able to find someone to help me. This time, we have a form letter that the applicant signs giving permission for employers and landlords to release information. It should go better just faxing the letter around this time.

Anyway, here are the pictures we placed in the ad. Does it make the place look warm and homey? If any of you out there reading this are landlords, I'd love some general feedback to how you've survived the process.

From dining room looking into living room.

From living room looking into dining room

Bedroom three.

Bedroom two.


Bedroom one.


Kitchen

Goo Be Gone

The contractors have begun staining the floors of The Box House with Minwax Special Walnut. This pic shows the bedroom on floor two that gave Ted and me the worst time when we pulled up the carpets. While we were able to to tear out the carpet and padding ourselves, we couldn't remove all of the gummy glue used to keep the carpet in place. The floor contractors were able to sand it smooth and the stain looks marvelous. They did a fantastic job around the radiators, too, using small hand sanders.

There will be two coats of finish on top of this, which they'll begin applying on Monday.

The quality of old house construction staggers me. Our condo has wood floors, too, which were thrown in as part of a St. Patrick's Day special (the builders were Irish). But the wood, while pretty, is little more than a veneer, and very susceptible to damage. The planks at The Box House are more than half an inch thick, and could probably even withstand several more sandings before hitting the center groove--not that we plan on resanding again in the next few decades.

When budget allows, we'll be scattering around oriental rugs in all major traffic areas to minimize wear and tear, and all the furniture will have felt pads. I'm not sure how well my "no shoes in The Box House" policy will fair, but don't be surprised when I stare pointedly at your feet when you come by for a visit--it's not because I like your shoes. :-)

Love is the thing that enables a woman to sing while she mops up the floor after her husband has walked across it in his barn boots. —Hoosier Farmer

Ripping Out the Ugly, Toxic Carpet

We tackled our first real project at the Box House yesterday: removing the carpet in all of the Floor 2 bedrooms. (There was no carpeting on floor one, thank goodness.) We narrowed down our search for floor finishing experts and have a team coming out later in the week to completely sand and refinish the floors upstairs and down, with the exception of the kitchens and bathrooms. To save money we decided to tear out the carpet ourselves.

We had visions of the entire project taking only a few hours for the three rooms. I had picked up The Black and Decker Complete Photo Guide to Home Improvement and it looked straightforward enough. Step 1) Rip up carpet and padding, Step 2) Throw said carpet and padding away.

Uh-uh. It was a lot tougher than those photos made it look. Our carpets were glued down in some rooms and in others we had to remove literally hundreds of staples because some previous contractor had gone staple happy.

Here's what we started with. (Click to view larger images.)

Bedroom one is off the living room. The quarter round piece of trim that you see was an unfinished piece just sitting in the gaping crack where settlement had pulled the wall out slightly. We'll have to fill that in later...with something...when we redo that trim.

Bedroom two is off entryway and next to the bathroom.

Bedroom three, the smallest of the bedrooms, is off the kitchen. It's so small that I had to stand in the kitchen to take a picture.

My job was to pull up the carpet, cutting it into thin strips that we could then roll up and stuff into construction garbage bags. I used a carpet cutter for the task. We both wore face masks rated for dust and mold, as there was clouds of nasty stuff coming out of the carpets as we moved them. Underneath each one, there were piles and piles of dirt and grit. Whoever invented wall-to-wall carpeting was evil. I don't think your standard household vacuum cleaner can ever get them clean enough and when people have carpets installed, they tend to stay there for decades. Unless you never use a room, carpets tend to look shabby within a few years, in my opinion. Give me hardwood floors and easy-to-swap-out oriental rugs any day.

While I was doing that, Ted pulled up the tackless strip--a stupid name, considering there are thousands of pin-sharp tacks along its length. I guess it's tackless because you're not supposed to need additional carpet tacks to keep your carpet in place. Each tackless strip was nailed down to the floor about every two inches or so with way more nails than needed to keep it in place. He used a molding pry bar to pull it up, but the wood strips were old and weak and kept splitting, making for a rather grueling task.

As Ted was finishing up with the tackless strips, doubling back to pull out all the nails, I began cutting and rolling the carpet pads. This was the worst part of the entire project. In bedroom one, it looked like it had sort of melted to the floor or was glued on in patches. It did not want to come up, and rather than rolling it up in neat strips, I had to tug it up in patches. It was stapled to the floor along the seams, so when I got to those parts I needed to get a hammer and use the nail puller end to pull out each staple, which was held in place with gummy, semi-decayed padding. Ted helped after he finished with the tackless strip. "This is as close to someone else's old carpeting as I think I ever want to be," he said. I agree. We had to work on our hands and knees, peering at the floor from mere inches away as we searched for rogue staples. Thankfully, we had our masks. And the padding in the other two bedrooms came up pretty easily.

Here are a few more intermediary stage picture:

Bedroom One

Wallpaper sample found behind a radiator.

Ted in bedroom two.

Clean-up took a long time as we bagged trash (nine bags in all) and swept out the rooms. Bedroom one with the glued down padding took the longest. I didn't have a floor scraper, as recommended in the Black and Decker book for removing gummy stuff, so I used a putty knife/paint scraper instead, gently running it along each floorboard to pull up as much gunk as possible.

What we ended up with were floorboards of three different colors. I think the original color of the stain was medium-dark, as seen in the next photo. The floors in bedroom two were sanded and not restained before putting the carpet down. Why would they sand first? I have no idea.

Bedroom one--cleaned of all the goo.

Bedroom three--looking good!

Bedroom two--all ready for a light sanding!

By the time we were through -- six hours later -- we were exhausted and starving. With nothing in the refrigerator and unwilling to cook anyway, we headed out in search of fast food. Thank goodness we're only a few blocks from the border with Chicago and all the late night and late late night restaurants that can be found on Clark Street. Although it was two in the morning, we founds a 24-hour place serving burritos as big as our heads. Really, I know we shouldn't be eating this stuff, but it was soooooooooooooooooo good. Heck, I think we earned it.


I can't wait for the sanding guys to get here this week!

Please don't feed the dust bunnies.
—Author Unkown