Little Chicago Bungalow

Removing 12-16″ deep of our Midwest clay in preparation for garden beds. Above are my tools: pitchfork, big shovel, little shovel and flat head shovel. Step back a little.

Standing in the hole…                                         …next to a Tulip in bondage.

1/3rd of the planter bed filled with a compost soil mixture:

1 bag manure + 1 wheel barrel of rich soil

I am 2/3rds done digging out this bed. Tomorrow the waterproofing contractor will be here working on our basement. We’ll be working around each other in the back.

I can’t stop. It’s all I think about. I wake up on weekends at 6am and work until the afternoon.

I’d write more, but I am exhausted and images speak loader than words in this case.

More images right here.

When we bought our home, we anticipated that most of our repairs would be waterproofing the basement. As it turns out the garage has become our major fix up from exterminating the family of 15+ rats, to re-pouring a new concrete floor and currently rebuilding the un-pitched roof.

Also, our garage is 6 feet short and due to that I accidentally ripped the nonfunctional spoiler off our VW Beetle. – I was having a very bad day.

I grew up from age 6 to 18 in a small town called Riverwoods which is made up of an enchanted forest – a get away from the suburbia that surrounds it.

Yesterday Adam and I went to gather boulders from my parent’s and neighbor’s (we got permission) property – to bring a little bit of my childhood back to Chicago.

More photos here.

Secretly I’ve always wanted a Beware of Dog sign and now my dream has come true.

And a few more photos here and here.

Above is a piece of art of my own that I am going to call White Sheep because it’s made from the wool of one sheep whose wool I obtained from a farmer. The raw sheered wool was so beautiful as is but smelled like barn, was too oily to work with and contained plant matter. -So I had the wool cleaned, then spun it in a organic way and pieced it back together to form a “clean” sheep.

Also, I can’t wait to see it framed in few weeks.

I love this photo by Carl Kleiner.

Above is our home in 2001. Photograph was taken by the Cook County Tax Assessor’s Office.

Two owners ago: the lush tree in front passed away from disease + the evergreen bushes have been replaced with other landscaping.

See more here.

To say it more accurately, Adam and I try to be ecologically concious members of the community but sometimes we just aren’t. I was reminded of this when Sarah from A Girl’s Guide to Greenovating a Chicago Townhouse asked about our refinished wood floors.

Although there are a lot of new low-VOC or no-VOC wood floor stains out there, there are very few homeowners or flooring contractors whom actually use these products. Green floor products are expensive + no flooring contractor will work with an unfamiliar stain. -It’s just too much of a liability for them. I actually found one contractor who has worked with a green stain, but their estimate for the job was twice as expensive as the average quote. Our options to refinish our floors ended up like this:

1. Do all the work ourselves.

• Rent a drum and edge sander from Home Depot + sand the floors ourselves = no cost factor, but a lot of labor.
• Obtain samples and test stains on floors.
• Stain the floors with the no-VOC Monocoat wood stain = no cost for labor, but an expensive stain ($100+ per gallon).

2. Do part of the work + hire a contractor.

• Hire a flooring contractor to sand and buff the floors in preparation to stain = no labor for us, but a high cost factor.
• Obtain samples and test stains on floors ourselves.
• Stain the floors with the no-VOC Monocoat wood stain = no cost for labor, but an expensive stain ($100+ per gallon).

3. Hire a contractor to do all the work.

• Due to our budget and time frame, we went this route of  hiring a contractor who stained our floors in Royal Mahagony = a fair cost factor with a harsh impact on the environment.
• Unfortunately this is a common solution for most people.

For those of you who want to explore, here is a list of low-VOC or no-VOC wood flooring finishes:

And just for jealousy’s sake: Baseco is a Swedish company that carries a gorgeous wood flooring line.