With Ryan’s parents, Dennis and Lynn, in town for a week
and a half, the palmer house is in the midst of some major improvements! As you may recall, they were instrumental in
getting the house up and running two years ago when we first bought the
house. They helped with the landscaping,
electrical system, and other various odd jobs.
So we knew we were very fortunate to be getting another visit from them
this summer!
The Kirby’s arrived on Thursday, and we did not waste any time getting them to work first thing on Friday morning. We have three projects underway that they are helping out with: the construction of two raised planter beds in the backyard, assembling a new fence, and refreshing the front yard landscaping.
Ryan and Dennis attacked the construction of the planter beds. Ben had found a company called Colonial Brick that sells salvaged common brick from historic buildings in Chicago. In addition to the environmental benefit of reusing existing as opposed to buying new, this brick also better matches the brick that our house and garage are made of since they are about the same age. The kind that we bought are called “Chicago Pinks”. Cute, huh?
Laying the first course of bricks was the hardest since they had to use mortar to make the bricks perfectly level. This required a lot of shifting, tapping and tweaking. Take a look at the progress, from no bricks to the completed 3-course walls. Also check out the side wings that we are going to use for potted plants!
Katherine, Christina, and Ben focused most of their time on
the fence assembly. Lots of cutting, sanding and staining. Over the course of
the weekend, we were able to install most of the back fence! We just need to build the gate and it will be
complete. In the meantime, we can now cut down the old fence so that we can
begin working on the second planter bed (the old fence is kind of in the
way).
And last but not least, Lynn has been working her magic on our front yard. It was a rough winter this year (very cold and very windy), and we had some perennial casualties. Lynn helped to clean up the planters and added a number of new plants. One change was removing the small sand cherry in the back of the planter and replacing it with a much larger one. The smaller sand cherry never quite took off in that spot for a few reasons, primarily because it got crushed when the construction workers were installing our windows. We had enough of waiting for it to grow, so she relocated that one into the street-side planters and added another for balance. She also planted a few more perennials to enhance the planters. And very importantly, she mixed in some much needed nutrients into our soil in the form of manure and bone meal. Our plants are going to be so happy this summer!
As if fixing up our yard wasn’t enough, Lynn even made a little project of the parkway of the empty lots next door to us. She whacked the overgrown weeds and made a little planter out of some concrete pieces left over from our own backyard. She used some extra plants from our yard and transplanted them next door. Not too shabby, huh?
After 3 action-packed days of work, we are all exhausted and everyone is taking a much needed break. We don’t want this trip to be all work and no play for the Kirby parents, so they will be taking the next few days off to enjoy Chicago, do some golfing, and just relax. The kids (and the palmer house) are just so happy to have them here!
This weekend we began to construct the first segment for a new fence in the backyard. Our last few postings have been all over the place (new garage door, pouring concrete for raised planter walls), but there is some method to the madness (or at least an explanation for it).
The high-level goal is to get the
planter wall foundations poured in anticipation of Ryan's parents'
visit, during which Ryan's dad is going to teach us how to do the
masonry for the walls. However, in order to pour the concrete
foundation for the second planter, we have to cut down the current
fence because its posts are sunk into the planter itself!
So this week we have focused on building the back portion of the new fence (which will sit on the concrete pad for our cars, just behind the planter). While we would love a warm, sniffy cedar fence, we decided to go with pressure-treated pine for a couple reasons: cost (obviously) and because some of the old-growth cedar forests are at risk for overlogging. The pine should stand up well to the elements and with some stain we hope to get a nice, warm color out of it.
Much of the weekend was spent buying, cutting and staining pieces of wood. Very exciting, yes we know. As with almost every project we have done to the Palmer House, this is taking a lot longer than we expected. But we hope the results will be worth it.
The design of the fence is a little bit crafty. We wanted something that looked modern and appropriate for an urban setting. After some design work by Ben and some calculations by Christina, we came up with a design for the fence that we are happy with. First we start by installing the main 4x4 posts which are spaced about 6' apart from each other.
The next part will be mounting a horizontal shelf on top of which the vertical fence slats will rest. The shelf will consist of three pieces of wood. The outer pieces are 4” tall while the inner piece is 3” tall, basically creating a slot. If you're having trouble picturing how this will work, here are some pictures to explain the process:
So you can see how the slats will rest in the bottom. At the top we will basically create another piece just like the shelf to cap off the slats. Unfortunately, what you see is about all we were able to do, just a proof of concept for the construction. We are going to try as hard as we can to get the fence assembled in the next week, but most likely we won't have it done in time for Ryan's parents to help with the planter walls. But don't worry, I'm sure we could find plenty more for them to help with if we need to : )
This weekend our garage got a massive makeover! As you may recall, time had not been kind to our old garage door (pictured below). It started to fall off the tracks, and for the last few months it was almost impossible to open and close completely. In fact all winter it was partially open, inviting a few different fuzzy friends to seek shelter inside during the cold weather (and in Chicago, that is usually not a good thing)…
Because it is not practical to use the garage to park our cars (it is almost impossible to fit a car back there) we decided to replace the garage door with French doors and turn the space into a multi-purpose gardening, storage, and possibly entertaining area. Since the garage is so old, it was not possible to buy a standard size door, but we found a local manufacturer through Menard’s to make a custom door for us. The door would be assembled into one large piece (that’s the two doors, the two side panels, and one long upper transom) and delivered this weekend!
Expecting that it would be rather heavy and difficult to move, we asked Monica (Ben’s sister and former Palmer House resident) and her boyfriend Conor to help us out on delivery day. And thank goodness they said yes, because there was no way we would have been able to handle it on our own. Take a look at how the door was delivered. The delivery guy was nice enough to help bring the door to the backyard. Each of the four guys got on a corner of the door and carried it from the street to the back of the house. It was VERY heavy (probably 500 or 600 lbs), awkward and fragile. While there were a few moments of panic (like when Ben had to kick the next door chain link fence out of the way to squeeze through, or when they had to carry the door over and into the planter), they managed to deliver it to the garage in one piece. Phew!
Once we got the door upright and stabilized, it took a while to remove the superfluous pieces of wood that were attached to provide support for the door. The piece of wood underneath the door was especially difficult to remove since it required that we lift the door while someone used the crowbar to pry it off. Once we got the pieces off, we lifted the door and squeezed it into the opening. Thanks to Ben’s excellent preparation of the opening, the door was almost a perfect fit! We carefully got the door positioned and roughly shimmed into place, and we screwed in a few anchors to the masonry so that we could let go of the door.
After about 2 hours, the door was roughly in place, and we figured we earned a trip to Fat Willy’s (our favorite bbq place) for lunch. We also figured we owed it to Conor and Monica for their help. Feeling completely wiped out, we spent the afternoon gathering materials for the remainder of the installation for Sunday (more screws, door hardware and paint -- we are planning on painting the door black).
The next day we spent better securing the door in the frame. Ben and Christina did a nice job shimming and grouting the bottom of the door. We also insulated and flashed around the door and started prepping for the painting. Hopefully this week we will be able to start painting and to install the door hardware.
In addition to the door, there are a couple of other updates
around the palmer house. First a few pictures
from Ben’s project on the first floor. Their
bathroom door frame did not match the rest of the house, and instead of sanding and re-staining the wood, he decided to remove and replace
the wood with new pieces. It’s still a
work in progress, but can see how the frame came together and also how he used
the router to cut an area for the door hinge.
And also just a few pictures of the flora and fauna in and around our house. We LOVE springtime in Chicago! Please stay tuned for more updates on our backyard project, there will be a lot of progress in the coming weeks!
This weekend all hands were on deck as we completed a major step towards our new and improved backyard -- pouring the concrete foundation for the fence and planter on the west side of our property. For the past two weeks, Ben has been building the formwork for the pour. As you can see, along the back of the planter there is a deep hole to support the fence posts, and around the planter we are pouring a short concrete curb on top of which the brick planter walls will sit.
Having completed this preparatory work, we needed to decide how to actually pour the concrete. One option would be to buy bags of concrete mix and then mix them in a wheelbarrow one at a time. We've done this for smaller jobs around the house, but for this size job it would be about 40 bags of concrete. With each bag weighing in at 80 lbs., this would be a ton and a half of concrete -- pretty intense. The alternative would be to hire a concrete truck to come out to our house, and all we would need to do would be to transport wheelbarrows of pre-mixed concrete between the truck and the planter. I think you can guess which option we selected.
Because the concrete service charged us by the minute, we prepared ourselves for a very intense spurt of concrete pouring. We had to buy a second wheelbarrow, and Katherine and Christina constructed a groovy little ramp to aid in the pouring.
Once the concrete truck arrived, it was like we were in a relay race with teams of two manning each wheelbarrow. All in all, it took us about 45 minutes to complete the pour. Hiring the truck was invaluable, we can't imagine how exhausted we would have been if we had mixed it all ourselves by hand. Here are a few photos we managed to snap during the pour.
And here is the final product! The concrete is still setting, and we probably won't remove the formwork for a week. But you can start to see our plan coming to life!
