Think Happy Thoughts

Well, at least one nice thing came out of the tenants trashing the condo: they left behind a couple of nifty planters. I plucked them from the pile of outgoing garbage, cleaned and sterilized them, and transplanted two brugmansia plants that were a gift from a client.

We're heading back over to the condo this afternoon to get an estimate on floor repairs. Let's hope it's not too outrageous. There is a propensity among Chicago contractors to charge more for work done at condos than for the equivalent work done on a single family home or two flat. One couple we know paid the same amount for sanding and refinishing just the living room of their condo as we did for one entire unit of our two flat. We'll see how it goes.

Chatter Marks on the Floor, But At Least the Cat Pee is Gone

There have been a few complaints from friends and family that while I showed pictures of the floors midway through the sanding and refinishing process, I neglected to upload pictures of the finished floors. To remind y'all of what we were dealing with, here we go:

Cat piss stains.

Badly scratched and scarred floors.

Floors with strange orange spray painted bits and gunk left over from the carpets.


Floors with mysterious burn marks.

Old insect damage (more extensive than we thought) patched with whatever was handy.


Floors with water damage.

We chose Stanley Flooring, a Chicago-based company, because they gave us a competitive quote, had high recommendations on Angie's List, and agreed to replace "for free" the insect damaged boards. It took them two weeks to sand, repair, refinish both units and the main stairwell. We could not stay there during that time period, and slept out at my mom's other house. We checked throughout the week to keep track of the progress.

Tools of the trade.

Ted in the living room of the top floor.

The room that previously was coated in gunk and had the orange spray paint.


Insect-damaged portion. It looked like sometime in the far distant past there might have been termites brought in on the wood, or some wood-loving insect. Stanley removed and replaced a patch of boards about five boards wide and 12 feet long in this room as well as a section in the room on the other side of the wall. There is no evidence of termites now.

Overall, the floors turned out pretty well. We noticed that most areas had a very faint ripple pattern that wasn't visible prior to the varnish application. When we questioned the Stanley representative, he indicated it was unpreventable, and that it often happens when dust is trapped under the sandpaper. You can see some evidence of the ripples in the photo below.

Ripple marks on floor.

I later looked this up and these ripples are called chatter marks; while they are extremely common, they are also sometimes preventable with a lot of effort and care. They are the number one complaint people have when their floors are sanded. Here's what PureWoodFloors.com had to say about the causes:

This is one of the most common problems flooring contractors encounter and the cause of many complaints from customers. The chatter marks only become visible after the finish has been applied. There are several possible causes:

• Parts of the floor flex up and down as a heavy sanding machine passes over.
• The abrasive is not tightly fitted on the belt or drum sander.
• A badly balanced drum.
• A shuddering movement in the sanding machine.
• The abrasive is not clamped in properly around the drum and protrudes slightly.
• An overlapping seam on the belt rubs against the floor. Regarding the last of these causes, the problem is easy to avoid by using a belt with a flat butt joint.
  

Short of stripping and redoing the floors (with no guarantee it wouldn't happen again) it looks like we're stuck with these marks. Bummer. However, one site told me that if you use an oil based finish rather than water based, which we did, the natural mellowing will obscure these marks. To be honest, I don't even notice them anymore, but still, I think it wasn't completely fair to be told they were unpreventable.

Our only other concern was the stairwell; I'll have to amend this entry with a photo later, as I just realized I forgot to take an after picture. In the tight corners of some of the turnings, where the angle of the tread meeting the wall is less than 50 degrees, the contractors did not remove the old varnish, sand, or revarnish it. When we complained about that, we were told that their equipment wasn't designed for those tight corners. That's complete bunk, because there are hand tools you can use to get that done. So the stain in the turnings is much darker than the rest of the stair. This only affects about three stairs total, but it's very irritating.

However, we decided not to pursue this, as Stanley Flooring's original quote included replacing the insect damaged wood for free, and this ended up covering much, much, much more square footage than they planned on--from maybe 10 square feet to 35-40 square feet, taken altogether. Considering two of the companies we interviewed quoted us a price of between $300-$1000 for replacing the damaged portion (before we even knew how big it would be), it seems a fair enough trade. Ted and I may, in the next few weeks, try sanding out those corners, staining them to match, and revarnishing the whole thing. It won't be clean, but it will at least look even-toned.

Here are some after shots. Like I said, we're pleased overall:

Dining room looking toward living room, top floor.

Living room looking into dining room.

This is the room that had a lot of scorch marks and about 15 square feet of damaged or partially damaged boards.

Now that the floor refinishing is complete, I'm glad we had someone else do it, and glad that we were able to pay for most of it with the 20% rebate we got from our buyer agent's commission. We were able to get the entire Box House done at once, before moving furniture in.

We interviewed four contractors, and the quotes we received ranged from $2000 to $6500. We chose someone in the middle. (Considering this couple we know paid $1200 to have just their living room sanded and refinished--after interviewing numerous contractors as well--we feel we got a great deal.) My suggestion for anyone considering this is to get as many quotes as possible.

So, that's it. The absolute best feel-good project you can undertake to strip the grime away and make the place feel cleaner and brighter.

Peel, Stick, Repeat: Vinyl Floor Tile Adventures

Crap. Crap.

The tile we picked up from Lowe's to re-do the sewing room floor at my mom's other house, the tile that we thought matched exactly the tile she already had in the rest of her downstairs rooms, doesn't match at all. Not at all.

Under the florescent glow of overhead lights at Lowe's, they looked the same. A perfect match. Even the Lowe's guy said so.

Mom already had three full boxes of Italia Stone tile left over from tiling her kitchen, hall, and downstairs bathroom, and we figured we would need only four more boxes of tile to complete the sewing room. Only the manufacturer, Cryntel, had fazed out the Italia Stone, replacing it instead with their new line of EuroStone tile. But the patterns looked the same. We would all swear to it. I just assumed Cryntel was remarketing their old product in pretty blue packaging with an obviously hipper name.

But back at my mom's house, under her lights, the tile didn't match at all. The new stuff is more bluish-greenish. Hmmm. Although it didn't match the old tile, it did nicely compliment the unplanned for mint-green wall.

Weird.

But now what?

The top half of the photo shows the Cryntel Italia Stone tile in the hallway. Below the wood-like transition piece I still need to install because the floors are not level, I have the old and new tile laid out together. Can you tell the difference between the two?

Our choices were this: We could go back to Lowe's and pick up enough of the new EuroStone to complete the room, or we could return the new tile and search online and see if anyone was clearancing the Italia Stone. But after checking the Lowe's web site and elsewhere, it was clear we weren't getting any more Italia Stone tile without driving to 42 different places. Lowe's didn't even carry the product number anymore. The new EuroStone, no problem. Every Lowe's in the Chicagoland area was fully stocked with the new product.

"We could blend the old tile with the new," I suggested, still hoping to save a few bucks by using what we already had. "You know, scatter them in so it makes a patchwork." My mom the quilter just gave me The Look, indicating what a stupid idea that was. Ted shot it down pretty quick, too.

Stubbornly, to prove it did not look stupid, I arranged several of the old and new tiles out on the floor.

Crap. Crap.


The new tile has a beveled edge. Well why didn't they say that on the package--?

Oh.

"Fine, new tile it is."

When I started to lay out the EuroStone vinyl tile, I was soooo careful, paranoid that just one set slightly off would ruin the whole floor. But by the second box, I was ripping off the backing paper, tossing it over my shoulder, and nearly flinging the tiles in place. The job is not as scary as it looks.

What is scary is this:


Does this really happen often enough, people sliding across the floor and injuring themselves, risking life and limb to tile a floor, that they actually need to put a danger label on the paper, telling you to throw it away?

At any rate, I got the job done without too much stress. Most instructions online advocated using an exacto blade to cut the tiles; those are all packed, so I used a cheap-o pair of scissors to cut them to size for the closet and along the edges. While the scissors didn't exactly cut through like butter, it was not a problem and I got the floor laid out in an afternoon. Or what would have been an afternoon if I didn't spread it out across three days. I can now happily check "lay vinyl floor tile" off my Bucket List.

Here is the final result, with our carefully staged furniture.

Why only two chairs? To make the room look larger, of course! Actually, I have no idea what happened to the fourth one; the third one broke when I sat down on it. Seriously. I'm no wee skinny thing, but all I did was sit on the damn thing. Definitely time to get to the gym.

Look how nicely the unplanned for mint-green paint matches the window blinds. The bowl on the table is one my grandmother brought back with her from Finland when she took her mother to visit with family in Helsinki. Great Grandma Marta (Aiti to those who loved her) emigrated to the United States, alone, when she was only seventeen.

The room looks fabulous now, doesn't it? Surely, someone will make an offer on my mom's house now. Everyone think positive thoughts!

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch...

er...two-story, four-bedroom Tudor Revival, that is.

If Mom hasn't shown up in the blog much the last two weeks, it isn't because she's slacking. Okay, she's slacking on her Box House duties (just kidding, Mom), but that's because she's been working hard on a few updates at her other house, which is now on the market.

For thirty plus years, this was her sewing room:

Actually, I can't find a single picture of it. How is this possible? For thirty years this room was the epicenter of her creativity, where she made her quilts, her stuffed animals and dolls, and the occasional item of clothing for me or my brother (I was the only kid on the block with Holly Hobby jeans. Those were good jeans). What you'll have to picture for yourself is a room cobbled together with mis-matched, second-hand furniture; cabinets; boxes stacked floor-to-ceiling with fabrics or sewing books; and an assortment of finished and half-finished and with-luck-she'll-one-day-get-a-chance-to-finish-it projects.

Three months ago, she began, with a mixture of excitement and bittersweet memories, to pack up the room in anticipation of the move. Unfortunately, there was no room to put the boxes, and so the packed boxes stayed where they were, in the center of the room, obscuring the qualities of late afternoon sunlight streaming through the window and the fact that this downstairs room could be a terrific office, sitting room, or even a fifth bedroom, as it has a closet--a rare find in these suburban-style homes. But all people could see were boxes and more boxes.

Mom's waving through what used to be a wall; shortly after Mom and Dad bought the house, they walled off this opening with two-by-fours and paneling to create her sewing room. The room was entered from the hall to the left (not visible in the photo). A few months ago, she took the wall out to open up the space to the living room. Any future owners have the option of closing off the space again.

Little by little, the boxes filled with fabric and mementos made their way to The Box House, but what their removal revealed was a well-worn vinyl floor, lifting in places and showing the sub floor in other spots. This was even more detracting to the potential buyer than the piles of boxes were.

Biting the bullet, we went to Lowe's in search of replacement vinyl tile. Having watched far more episodes of Curb Appeal, From Junky to Funky, Desperate Landscapes, and other DIY Network shows than is probably healthy, we knew that investing a few hundred bucks in re-doing this room would equal multiple offers on the house in an otherwise tough market. (At least, that's the plan.)

We got distracted by some of the other offerings at Lowe's--gotta get me that red washer and dryer--but we eventually found tile that is a match to what she already has in her kitchen. I think it's really the same stuff in a different package, and at 88 cents a tile on sale, it's a bargain to boot:

Mom rolled up and removed the last fragment of 1970s peach-colored rug that was left in the house; it had been at the bottom of the sewing room's closet.

Pulling up the old tile began in a deceptively easy fashion. The glue had long since lost its powerful hold and all we had to do was lift 'em right up and stack 'em in a pile. We were laughing at the ease of it, high-fiving and congratulating ourselves on what would be a fast makeover. The ones in the center of the room, however, must have been glued down by Satan himself. Right where Mom's sewing chair rolled back and forth over the decades, the tiles had melded together with the wood so that they were now one entity. Pulling them up (I'm not having as much fun as this picture demonstrates) was rough, especially when all I was using was a small, bent-angle scrapper. (The bulk of the tools are packed in boxes at The Box House.)

It took 20 minutes to pull up nine tiles, and a few splinters of subfloor came up with them.

Hi ho, hi ho, it was back to Lowe's we did go. This time, we picked up some floor filler and leveling compound to take care of the rough spots. While I was supposed to be working on that, Mom painted the room with a fresh coat of cream-colored paint. (I slacked; having rented the first disc of last season's Lost, Ted and I watched that instead. We're always a year behind on shows.)

Well, Mom painted three walls of the room cream before she ran out of paint. The final can from Home Depot was not the creamy magnolia goodness we were expecting, but mint green. An odd mistake, and one we were surprised we didn't notice. But what's more strange is that it is the exact shade of the fabric blinds in her room. So, mint green the fourth wall is; it looks good, and don't believe anyone who says we didn't plan it that way from the start.

With the walls freshly painted, the floors cleaned and prepped with a skim coat, and a new chalkline snapped, we laid out the tile:

Or that was the plan for today, at any rate. The floor is still naked to the subfloor. The realtor called to say she was bringing over a potential buyer to look at the house. So instead of prepping, snapping, and laying, we piled all our boxes, paint, and flooring supplies in the middle of the room and went out to the hell that is the mall on a Sunday so they could look at the house. Humph. How frustrating to have people look at the house when you're trying to get it ready to sell.

I Don't Like Spiders and Snakes, a Basement Adventure

I don't like spiders and snakes
and that ain't what it takes to love me
you fool, you fool.
I don't like spiders and snakes
and that ain't what it takes to love me
like I want to be loved by you...

I've had this song, Spiders and Snakes, going through my head all day. It's from Jim Stafford's self-titled album, one of my all-time favorite cassettes growing up--yes, I'm old enough to remember cassettes. Actually, it was my mom's tape, and I swiped it from her when I left for college. It was great roadtripping music between Chicago and Iowa City, where I attended university.

I don't really mind snakes or spiders. Spider egg sacs, however, I can do without. Particularly when they're in my house. Lest you think we've been slacking this week while the contractors sand and refinish the floors, rest assured we've been hard at work clearing out the basement of junk, sweeping, and sorting through the items left by the previous owners. We've put in two full work days so far. (The highlight of this week's Basement Finds: A box of underwear, including boxers, granny pants, long johns, etc. Ted threw it away before I could take a photo. But really, who out there wants to see a box of old underwear? I don't have to chronicle everything.)

So. Spiders. While I only spotted one live spider and a half-dead moth, there where hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of egg sacs surrounding each window and piled in the corners. I don't know if these are all from this year, just waiting for spring to inundate us, but I took no chances. With our handy dandy (actually, it's a bit of a junker) shop vac, I vacuumed the bulk of them up, returning with a broom and rainbow-colored dust grabber to get the rest. Eeew. Our basement has two boiler rooms (one for each flat), three separate storage/bedroom/office rooms (not sure what we'll use them for yet), a laundry room, an under-the-stairs storage area, and a main, general-purpose room. All but the under-the-stairs room have windows. That's a lot of spider eggs. I feel like I wiped out an entire civilization from our basement, a spider armageddon.

Lucky for us, today was trash day, and we were able to clear several bags of assorted basement junk all the way out of The Box House, to the curb, and away. However, not everything can be dealt with immediately. There are old glass table tops, half-used paint cans, nearly-empty-but-not-quite cans of twenty-year-old spray starch, and a host of other things that I need to contact the city about for the means of proper disposal. All in all, we can only get one car in the garage at present because the other half is being used as a staging area for this stuff. I'd like to recycle, donate, or reuse as much of the stuff as possible and keep it from the landfill, but it's not going to be easy.

So yes, we've been busy dejunkifying.

I was going to bore you all with more pictures of how the floors have been coming along, but unfortunately we've been locked out of our own house for the evening. We ran a few errands this afternoon, and came back to find that the contractors had used the chains to lock all the porch doors. We didn't plan on sleeping at The Box House because of all the fumes from the stain and the still-lingering dust clouds, but I did want to stand in the kitchens, which are accessible from the back porches, and survey the overall progress. We can't go up the front stairs tonight because the stairs themselves have been stained today. I was told in no uncertain terms "no walk floor" by one of the work crew, about the extent of our communication. (Only the project manager, who wasn't there today, is easy to talk with.) It's no big deal, really, but it is slighty funny in a frustrating way to be locked out.

Floor pictures will have to wait.

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

Two More Flooring Contractors Visit the Box House

In our continuing quest for floor sanding options, we had two more contractors come in for an estimate in hopes of finding a midway point between the previous bids. Both of the companies that came in were top-rated on Angie's List, with what seemed like reasonable prices and lots of A+ reviews.

We liked the first guy quite a lot; he seemed to know his stuff and answered all our questions. He was here for about 15 minutes, and gave us a quote that seemed pretty decent. We liked that he could provide that on spot without having to go back to his office and crunch numbers.

The second guy provided more of a "presentation," explaining a bit about the sanding process and what we can expect as a result. He even had this nifty little laser tool for measuring rooms, rather than a standard tape measurer. (I have got to get one of those!) He brought a color chart, and based on the samples, I think we like the DriFast Special Walnut by Bona. It's an oil-modified quick drying stain. It's not too dark, not to light, and has a reddish cast to it.

This contractor also discouraged us from doing too much. The floors in the upstairs unit had been recently sanded by the Previous Owners, but we're not particularly happy with the results. He cautioned us that there is a limited number of times you can resand floors, so if we can live with it, that's what he would recommend, thus saving us some money. But he did also say he could probably buff those floors rather than fully sand them, and stain them a color we want rather than the yellowish color it is now. We'll most likely do that; as we will have to rip out the remaining carpet in the bedrooms and sand those rooms, I'd like all the floors to all match.

Most contractors have recommended doing only two coats of polyurethane, and this guy was no different. When we asked about a third coat, explaining that we have a dog and will soon have cats, too, he said he could do it, but it would not be the best use of our money. Then he told us that the stain coat is a sealant coat, and that the more top coats you have, the easier it will be to detect traffic patterns over time, as it will wear much differently. He said the coats are good for only 5 to 7 years anyway, and that we can always just buff the surface and reapply extra layers when we felt it was necessary. He was the only contractor to tell us that.

He did seem a bit concerned about the damaged floorboards in the downstairs dining room. He asked permission to lift one out to inspect the damage, thinking that it was termites. (Yikes!) It's only a few boards, and they look almost dry rotted. He was able to break a piece out pretty easily. He kept asking us if we had had the building inspected before purchasing it, which of course we had, and by someone who knows termites pretty well. I'm not sure what caused the damage, but I doubt it was insects. The building is solid brick, the foundation is concrete for 2/3 with brick above the ground, where the basement windows are. There's no exposed wood, and these floorboards are in the center of the house. Even so, after the contractor left we went into the basement to examine it from below. The great thing about the Box House is that much of its bones are visible or easily accessible. We pulled aside some of the ceiling panels in the basement and looked at the underside of the floor from below. Nothing.

So, now we're waiting for the last guy's quote to roll in, and will hopefully be able to make a decision by Monday.

The Bids Are In...

We've received the second quote for the floor sanding, and gasped at the cost--it was more than twice the estimate we received from the first contractor. It sounds like they'll do an excellent job, particularly in repairing the spots in Mom's unit that will really need to be repaired, but still...

So, it looks like I'll be setting up a few more contractor appointments to see if I can find a price that's somewhere in between the two estimates. It's off to Angie's List for recommendations.

Floor Sanding Options

Today we had a couple of flooring contractors come to the Box House to give us estimates on what it would cost to sand and refinish the floors in both units, as well as the front entry stairwell.

The floors in the main rooms of the top unit (living room, dining room, entryway) were recently "done," but I'm not sure if it was a "professional" or one of the Previous Owner's family members. In any case, he or she didn't bother going under or behind the radiators. The wood there is quite dark, while the rest of the area appears to have only a thin coat of varnish over bare wood. (The stairs are the same way. They have pools of darker stain in the corners, but the rest of the tread is quite light.) The three bedrooms upstairs are covered in ancient carpet.

Living Room of the Top Floor Unit. Sure, it may look good at a quick glance, but what you don't see is how the floor's only protected with a very thin layer of varnish. We also want to get it back to the original color, which is a little darker.

In the downstairs unit, the floors hadn't been sanded at all. Most of the floor downstairs is in decent shape--certainly better than many of the rental units I lived at in my younger days--but there are several boards that will have to be removed and replaced due to previous damage. Boards near a radiator in the bedroom off the kitchen appear to have water damage, and there are holes in the floor of the dining room. There's also a large dark stain we believe to be cat urine, but from what the contractors told us and what I've read on other house blogs, we may be stuck with that unless we replace those boards, too.

Both contractors who stopped by had been recommended by our buyer's agent. J.E. had previously recommended a mortgage broker and a lawyer who we were very pleased with, so we're willing to start with his recommendations here.

The first guy gave us an excellent price, one we can certainly live with, and even said he'd rip out and haul away the gawd-awful carpeting and replace the damaged boards for free. His quote included two layers of varnish; if we wanted more, it would cost more. But even then, it seemed a good price. However, there is a major language barrier and he was only here about 10 minutes or so. I'm not entirely convinced he really saw the full scope of the project, and I'm not entirely sure what we'd be getting. For example, it was difficult to convey that we wanted the floors to be a color complimentary to the rest of the trim.

The second contractor was here for 45 minutes, and she went over every room in detail, discussing which boards should be replaced, measuring everything with her tape measurer, giving us a bit of history of old floors. (The most interesting thing I learned is that they are no longer able to get wood flooring at the same length as was commonly installed 80 years ago. One of the floorboards that needs to be replaced is over 15 feet long; they'll cut only the bad section out at a length that can blend in easily, but leave the rest in place.) She's to send us a full proposal by Monday. My gut tells me it won't be as good as the other, probably nowhere near as good. She's talking about having two crews out here for upwards of two weeks. I'm sure the floors will look spectacular, but will we be able to afford it?

There's always the option of doing it piecemeal, one unit at a time as we can afford it, but right now we have all of our stuff in the basement, and it would be easy to work on the floors. The other option is to do it ourselves. *Shudder*