Little Chicago Bungalow

Above I am breaking up the concrete sidewalk with a jackhammer – just kidding!

Excavation and pouring of cement is a grueling laborious effort and I don’t envy the crew who is doing the work for us. Sam at Urban Construction, Inc. is handling the job for us. He doesn’t have a website so here is his contact information:

Urban Construction, Inc.
Contact: Sam
5151 Foster Avenue
Chicago, IL 60630
(773) 895-9415

One of the pre-existing conditions of our house when we bought it was the horrible condition of the garage. The previous owner used it as a storage space which resulted in a family of very happy rats to move in. Amazingly they chewed through the concrete floor and plaster walls.

Here is a list of how we are cleaning up the garage:

• Exterminate the rats from the garage, yard and alley.
• Remove the previous owners crap from the garage.
• Replace the garbage cans with new ones (did I mention that the rats chewed these up too).
• Called the City of Chicago for a request to spray for rats in the alleyway.
• Breakup existing concrete floor of the garage, haul away, build up with gravel to be above grade (did I mention that our garage was below grade = flooding from the alley), pour new concrete floor, patch plaster walls.
• Install a new garage door (old one is going to fall off any day now).
• The roof is not pitched so it has become sunken and will need replacing.