With winter fast on our heels, the palmer house team has been working tirelessly trying to squeeze in the last remaining outdoor projects for the year. After about 5 weekends of work, we are happy to announce that we are done refinishing the front door! Take a look at the pictures. After completely sanding the old finish and stain, we restained the wood with a reddish-brown color and then resealed it with polyeurathane to protect it from the harsh winter. We even polished the brass mail slot and kickplate!
And FINALLY, a special message from the palmer house team. Regardless of who you cast your ballot for, everybody should get out there on November 4th and...
Trying to make the most of the last days of summer, we have two major projects that have started in the last two weeks. The first project is the long-awaited garden in our sad concrete backyard. The second is to refinish the front doorway.
For the first project, Ben, who loves gardening and plants, has taken charge. The grand masterplan for the backyard is quite complex and will be realized in a number of stages -- this summer (Stage 1) our goal is to simply cut out and remove the areas of the concrete that will eventually contain the raised garden planters.
Check out these pictures which show how Ben has cut and jackhammered out two large plots for the garden. One garden plot will be in along the side of the house, in front of the vestigal garage door. The other will be behind the house along the fence that we park our cars behind.
While this work was incredibly fatiguing, there's the added task of actually removing the concrete pieces once they are hammered out of the ground. For this, Ben got help from Ryan as well as their brother-in-law David, who was unfortunate enough to be visiting them from Santa Fe this past weekend. Good thing he has muscles and is not afraid to use them.
The next step is to rent a dumpster to haul away the concrete rubble. Then we will be ready to pour the concrete footings for the planter walls which we will build next year.
The other big project we are hoping to complete in the next few weeks is a complete refinishing of our front door. We love our front door, although it has been severely negleted over the past few decades. The finish on the door and doorframe is pretty deteriorated, and the wood is very dry and (in a few places) a bit rotted.
What we would like to do is completely resand all of the wood, restain it and then apply a fresh coat of polyurethane to seal out the moisture. This weekend we began the main chunk of the work which is to sand the door down to the natural wood. There are a few places which are large and flat, allowing us to use an orbital sander which makes the work go quickly. Unfortunately the majority of the surfaces are smaller, groved pieces which require hand sanding.
We were able to cover a lot of ground, but we probably have one more weekend's worth of sanding. While the doorway looks rather splotchy now, ideally we will sand all of the surfaces evenly before proceeding with the finish. I guess it needs to get worse before it gets better!
Summer in Chicago is such a wonderful time. It's always crazy busy with activities and projects, as if we try to cram an entire year's worth of stuff into a single season. At the Palmer House, we've been trying to keep outdoors as much as possible beautifying our green space.
In our last post we showed the new fence we had installed in the front yard. With that done, we have been able to make more progress on the final front yard plan. Since our house is on a grade, we need something to hold the soil back against the sidewalk. This wasn't a problem so much in the past because the old fence had a small concrete wall at the foot of the fence that did the job. But with our new fence, we needed to do something to keep the soil from washing away, so the big project was to use the same landscaping brick that we have in the front parkway as a retaining wall behind the new fence.
We spent one rough weekend getting those bricks laid down. This involved digging a trench, mixing mortar and laying two courses of bricks along the side and front of the yard. Compared to last summer's brick work, this was in some ways easier because there was less to lay, but at the same time we did not have the help of Ryan's parents. But they taught us well, and we are pretty happy with how it turned out.
This picture was taken immediately after finishing the brick work. You can also see some new additions ot the yard -- a green japanese maple in the lower left corner, a row of 6 boxwoods lining the fence, and some ferns in the far corner near the stairs. In general we are trying for a more lush green perennial landscape. Here are some images of the yard after some weeks have past and the plants have been able to take root.
And finally, some exciting news on the first floor, the staining has begun! You recall the endless postings about the wood staining work on the second floor windows? Well the wonderful journey has begun for the Harbers. They had a trickier time settling on a color since their wood trim is not as homogeneous as on the second floor, so it was hard to decide what color to match with. Some of their trim is a deep dark reddish brown, while other parts are a more golden, yellowish color. In the end, they decided to match the darker reddish brown color. They have already completed one window and are zipping through the second one! They want to finish the bedroom ones first so they can finally install real window treatments. Looks nice so far!
Before the attempted burglary a few weeks ago, we had already begun the process of ordering a new wrought-iron fence for the front of the house to help with security. The existing fence is kind of puny and just spans the front yard -- it stops at the front driveway, making the driveway (and thus our entire house) openly accessible to anyone on the street.
Our new fence is completely custom designed and contains design contributions from all of us. The general idea of the fence was that we wanted to restrict any access from people walking in off the street and along the house. Additionally we wanted to increase the height of the fence to match the height of the staircase columns (about 4 feet). The last thought was to add a gate for the driveway that would swing open to let a car enter while also locking to prevent people from walking along the side of our house.
Aesthetically, the fence is not especially ornate -- we all prefer clean, straight lines. The only decorative feature we added was that the posts for the gate are not single posts -- we created a 2x2 square of posts to give the gate some visual emphasis and add a little bit more dimension to the fence's profile. We also added a circle design to the gate posts for fun.
After ordering the fence from a local wrought-iron shop about 3 weeks ago, we have been patiently waiting as it has been built, powder-coated, and finally ready for installation. Early this Saturday morning we were very excited as four workers arrived at our house to remove the old fence and prepare for installation.
Removing the old fence took about an hour. Since it was very old, much of its support had rusted away. The workers quickly got busy with digging new holes to concrete in the new posts. Once the posts went in, then they were able to attach the main rails. It was pretty much a full day's work for them. We are all very happy with the results!
Now that the gate is in, we were FINALLY able to debut our big water barrel contraption (the WOW -- water on wheels) that Ryan and Ben worked on during the winter. As you may recall, we have a rain barrel that can catch rain runoff from our house or garage. Ryan and Ben built a raised platform on wheels to increase water pressure and provide mobility.
After the gate went in, Ryan modified the rain gutter off the garage to now flow into the rain barrel. Luckily we didn't have to wait long to see the rain barrel in action. Sunday night a huge rain storm passed through the area and we woke up like excited children on Christmas morning to find the barrel completely filled with water! With the attached hose, we are now able to water all the plants in the back using rain water. Pretty cool. And since it is on wheels, we can move it up to the front of the house as well.
Of course now we want to get more rain barrels to supply more water to our increasingly large plant population (more on those plans later).
Today marks the joyous one-year anniversary of our closing on the Palmer House... yay! It's actually amazing to think of all of the work we've done in the last 12 months. Wow. Feeling in a celebratory mood, this weekend we decided to pimp out our front yard with some new plantings. Since we landscaped at the end of the summer last year, we had planted mostly annuals with a few perennials. Our goal was to add some more fullness with perennials and with a few annuals for some colorful highlights.
We went up to our favorite nursery in the city on the far north side and loaded up on all sorts of goodies. The biggest purchase was a new green japanese maple! This little guy is going to go in the front by the house and provide a nice balance to the purple-leaf maple we planted last fall. We also got a nice species of boxwoods to line our new wrought-iron fence which will be installed in the next week or two. Unfortunately we weren't able to plant these new guys yet since we want to wait until they install the fence (to prevent any damage from the installation).
We were, however, able to plant lots of new guys in the planters between the sidewalk and the street. We got a number of Cotton Easters (which we refer to lovingly as "Cotton Eaters") which should really spread out and provide some nice coverage.
Here's a pic of Katherine and Ben putting one of those guys in. They have long branches that sort of climb on the ground. We hope they really spread out and maybe even poke out onto the planter walls!
The annuals we got included some dahlias, salvia, and osteospermum . The cumulative effect was splashes of yellow, blue and purple. Overall, it was sure nice to be out of doors, the winter this year in Chicago has been pretty brutal. And it's always fun to do activities where all four of us can participate.
Check out how it all turned out:
Living in Chicago, it seems inevitable that some day you will be victim of home burglary. Alas, for the Palmer House, our time came last weekend. Ryan and Katherine were out of town, and Ben and Christina had left for dinner with some friends who were staying over. Twenty minutes after leaving the house, Christina got a call from our security system company saying that our alarm had gone off on the back door of the house. Hoping it was a false alarm (we've had three already due to our own stupidity), Ben went home to see what was going on. When he got back, he found that the back door had been broken into.
The police hadn't arrived yet, so he started walking down to the police station which is just down the block. On the way he saw a police car drive by which he flagged down, and the officers came to check out the scene. They went through the back door and did the entire "POLICE!" charge in with their guns. Thankfully it appeared that the would-be burglars had fled as soon as they heard the security alarm go off -- nothing was stolen. They did however damage a window and our back door trying to break in.
We were all quite shaken about what happened. Even though nothing was stolen, it's scary that someone was able to break into our home. It appears that the burglars were able to pry the door plate for the deadbolt apart and slip the deadbolt out of the door. We just feel so lucky that we had the security system installed and that it did its job. As for the criminals, we have no idea who it was. Christina does remember seeing a suspicious car trolling around the back alley earlier that day, so maybe they were scoping out the scene.
So after all this excitement, this past week we've spent trying to make our house secure again. We were already in the process of getting a new fence installed in the front of our property that would block any people coming in off the street (currently it is an open driveway). As for the back, we have now installed a lock for our back gate (between the alley and our house), so that people can't just walk in from the alley. Once we get the front fence installed later this month, our house will be much more secure.
In the meantime, the major task we have to complete now is to install a new back door. This has proven to be pretty tricky. Ben started by removing the old door and ripping out the old frame. After this was done, he and Ryan spent hours installing the new door and door frame, shimming it in place juuuust so. As often happens with our house, the ground wasn't exactly flat, so it took a lot of careful juggling.
Once that was in, Christina and Katherine helped to install the new locks on the door. The box says that it is a "one person job" but we all spent quite a while trying to figure out how it all worked. It's a miracle, but in the end we did get those installed correctly. And we definitely upped our security by getting higher quality locks and a cover to prevent someone from breaking the deadbolt lock in the same fashion.
Now that spring has arrived, it is time to start working on the yard again. An uncompleted project from last year was to put in a cobblestone path that goes from the street to the sidewalk. This path lies between the two stone planters that we built last year. We had bought the cobblestone pieces last year, but didn't have enough time to install the path. We decided not to mortar in the individual pieces because we want to grow some small plants in the area that will hopefully grow in between the stones. So we excavated the area, placed some leveling sand in, and then inserted the cobblestones. We think it looks pretty good. The white sand you see will eventually disappear and be replaced by dirt. If you look carefully, you can see the we used the house water shut-off valve cap as a cobblestone. It almost looks like part of the design! Ben selected some nice ground cover plants (including wooly thyme!) and we were able to plant those guys too. They should fill in pretty nicely on the edges of the path.
As for the rest of the front yard, you can see some of the spring bulbs have already popped up. The Japanese maple and other annuals are growing pretty well. We haven't planted any perennials or laid down the ground cover yet because we are actually getting a new fence installed in the next few weeks, and that work is going to tear up a bit of the yard.
In order to support our growing garden, Ben and Ryan built a platform for our water barrel and put it on wheels. The water is collected off the garage which is located at the rear of the house. But because most of the plants we water are at the front, last summer we had to keep refilling a watering can and run it back and forth. Ideally, we would have an easier way to transport the water from the back. As you can see, we built a pretty sturdy wooden support system that is capable of handling about 800lbs of weight. The water cistern itself is supported by a cable tension system. The cabling system is mostly meant to prevent the cistern from moving on the platform. We haven't actually tested the system yet, but once the fence goes in we will wheel it out for action.
While the last vestiges of winter remained earlier in the month, Ryan and Katherine stained another three windows in their living room. Once that was completed, they installed the shades for the windows. Finally some privacy for the living room. Now that the warm weather is starting, we will be excited to be working more and more outdoors, hopefully on a big garden project for our currently barren backyard. More details on that will be made available in the coming weeks...
We are finally starting to thaw out here in Chicago, and all of the signs of spring are starting to show -- more people are out walking, the days are getting longer, and the hundreds of bulbs Ben planted in the front yard last fall are starting to peek out. Unfortunately, there was one spring-related problem our house has recently undergone -- bird nesting season. A few weeks ago, Katherine heard a chirping sound coming from the ceiling of the second floor bathroom. Yes, a little sparrow had decided to make the exhaust vent its temporary home. Unnoticed until now, the vent outlet has been uncovered this whole time! Something had to be done.
As luck would have it, this was the second floor bathroom, which means it is pretty much at the top of our house. We have a 20-foot extension ladder, but this does not reach the hole. So, Ryan decided to come at it from the other direction -- the roof. Check it out as he attaches a bird guard / vent cover from up high!
Don't worry, we made sure the bird was out before covering the hole up. We hope the bird doesn't try to dive bomb the cover to get back in -- we'll have to see if this remedy works.
Over the past few weeks while the weather has still been a bit chilly, we have been finishing as much interior staining of our new woodwork as possible. When spring and summer roll around, we want to be focusing on as many outdoor projects as possible. Here are some pics of us staining the bedroom floorboards and the mechanical closet door! Nice!
Ben and Ryan have also been starting a new woodworking project -- a platform for our rain barrel. The City of Chicago was selling discounted rain barrels to capture rainwater from your downspout. We use this water to water the garden in the spring and summer, instead of using pristine drinking water from the hose. Smart, huh? To optimize the watering experience, we wanted to build a platform on which the barrel could rest. By raising it a foot or two above ground, gravity will help provide more water pressure. But that's not all we are doing. We are going to put it on wheels! For real!! This will make it easier for us to water the front yard (we collect it in the back of the house). The official name of this device is the WOW -- Water on Wheels. Christina came up with that one.
We are finishing up the varnishing. Then we will finish up the cabling system to hold the barrel in place, and finally add the wheels. We'll let you know how it turns out!
Happy New Year's! With sub-zero temperatures hitting Chicago, and with a long Christmas break, these past few weeks made the perfect time to resume house improvements (on the inside of course). One of the first tasks was to install all the kitchen cabinet hardware. For the last few months we have had to pry open the kitchen cabinets and drawers with our fingers which was not very fun at all. We would have installed the handles sooner, but we didn't get the actual hardware until the last day we (finally) paid our contractor.
The hardware itself is a simple steel bar design that kind of matches our bathroom faucet. As we quickly found out, drilling two holes to align with the hardware leaves little margin or error. Even though it was a bit time consuming, it's something we wanted to install ourselves. Here is the end result.
Another large task we tackled was to continue the staining effort on the second floor. As you may recall, when we bought the house there was a pair of french doors that had been sloppily installed in the entryway between the living and dining rooms. Over the summer we tore these doors down and restored the original design (which still exists on the first floor). The carpenters did a great job in duplicating the woodwork, but the wood still needs to be strained to match the rest of the house. Like the windows, the job entailed patching all of the holes, sanding, pre-staining, staining, and then finally applying the clear polyacrylic coats to seal it all in.
After two long days of work, we finally got close to finishing the task before the New Year. The pictures below show the almost-completed stain work. One more clear coat is required before we are done.
Concurrently, Ben set up a professional dust filtration system in the basement. Since the basement contains storage for our house also, we really want to minimize the amount of sawdust that gets into the air. And it's just healthier to breathe down there while we are working. As the workshop is nearing its completion, we have a long list of projects that need to get started, including some storage shelving, a wine rack for the Harbers, a stand for our rain barrel, and a myriad of other things. We are looking forward to using the filtration system -- and it looks like it just fits perfectly.
