Brian Cody

Aaaaaannnd last but not least, the plans for the basement:

The floorpan of the ‘before’ basement is misleading in that it seems wide open and inviting – when in fact there were no proper lights, the mechanical was taking up a huge swatch of the floor plan, and the columns had large footers you could trip over. The ceiling was mostly around 7 feet tall already, which we’ll expand a bit so we have code-appropriate ceiling heights (we have to dig out the floor anyway to put in a totally new water service).

[Kripa: It’s current state has a real “I’m going to steal your organs” vibe. We’re hoping to move it into a less murder-y direction.]

In the new floorpan, we’ve defined the space a few ways:

Rec Room. When you come down the stairs, there will be basically an extra living room. Maybe we use it for a TV/projector room, maybe it’s where our kid plays as he gets older. There’s going to be a column in it, which is something we’ll have to figure out design-wise.

Mechanical. Nothing too exciting here, basically a room for the HVAC.

[Kripa: That’s a laugh. Brian needs central air like he needs actual air. I like how he’s all, “HVAC, NBD,” when in reality if we’re in a humid place and there is no A/C he has a toddler level meltdown.]

Bedroom. We’re adding a bedroom in the basement bump-out which will be across from a bathroom. Good for guests, might also be good for Airbnb?

[Kripa: We have definitely not talked about this yet. Glad to have heard about it through the blog.  #rollingeyesemoji]

Bathroom. A basic bathroom where we might have a little more fun design-wise.

Mudroom. We’re imagining that during the rainy and snowy time in Chicago (e.g. November-April), we’ll want a space to track muddy shoes in when you’re coming from the detached garage through the back yard. This is a large mudroom, where we’ll add coat storage and benches. We’re also adding a laundry hookup so, if/when we sell the house, there’s an option for basement laundry (which some people prefer).

[Kripa: This is so strange to me but apparently laundry hookups in the basement and second floor is good for resale. Who are all these laundry-loving house buyers?]

Bedroom / Woodshop. This is the 2nd bedroom in the basement, but we’re going to use it as a WOODSHOP!! I enjoy doing house projects and woodworking, but haven’t ever had a dedicated space (though I was able to build a few pieces at the Chicago Industrial Arts & Design Center). When we lived in Arizona we did some house projects, which involved parking the car outside the garage until the project ended. My plan is to add a hearty dust collection system and operate a small indoor woodshop.

What’s next? Well, we have plans, we have permits – now it’s time for demolition!

What we originally thought…

We initially wanted to do a fixer upper that we lived in while doing a mix of DIY projects and larger renovations via a contractor. When we decided to work on this project, we realized that the scale was WAY beyond our abilities to do ourselves: not only did we want to change the layout (which makes sense given the conversion from two apartments to a single family home), but the plumbing and electrical needed to be updated which would involve replacing all the existing plaster walls. In other words, for sanity safety and convenience we wouldn’t be able to live there while the work went on.

[Kripa: To be clear, Brian at one point said to me “we could live here while we do the work” LIKE A CRAZY PERSON. ]

For a project that was turning into a major renovation, it was pretty necessary we to hire an architect to help nail down the floor plan and also handle getting all the permits (which is a big deal in Chicago).

[Kripa: By big deal, he means nightmare.]

Step 1: Program requirements

To kick off the layout brainstorming process, we drafted a document back in April on what we were thinking to share with the architect. We want to balance our own wants/needs with resale considerations. In other words, we needed to make sure we were positioning ourselves well for resale, and not dropping a bunch of money on a custom house that no one else would ever want to live in.

[Kripa: This was the argument I had to use to stop Brian for making every room a “hidden” room.]

Below is a mix of the core ‘program requirements’ (architect speak for ‘what you really need’) and some strong preferences:

• 4 bedroom minimum, 5 ideally
• 4 bath, 1 in the basement
• 1 bed/bath on first floor for family members who can’t accommodate stairs
• Master bedroom with master bath
• Hardwood floors
• Finished basement to code
• Kitchen has living space attached
• Large kitchen with lots of natural light
• Place to do woodworking in the basement
• Area near any entry to store shoes and jackets when coming inside, drop off kid stuff
• Mudroom/drop space in back (coming in from garage/backyard)
• Large master closet (ideally walk in)
• Decent pantry

Meeting with the architect

We met with our architect, David, to review the program requirements in mid-April, and started brainstorming floor plans in May. The goal was to get to “schematic design” (a rough floorpan), which becomes the basis for the detailed construction documents and permit documents. David showed up with some initial ideas, and plenty of tracing paper so we could riff on ideas as we went.

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[Kripa: Not pictured: our baby trying to eat all the tracing paper.]

Step 2: Design development

About two weeks later, we got an initial layout from the architect (more on that in a future post). We had been meeting on the weekend, but to keep things moving we decided to meet on a few weeknights remotely via a Slack screen share. Slack has a drawing functionality so we could look at David’s screen and draw over it so we could all brainstorm but be working on the same file in his design software. We got into more details with elevations and some 3D renderings of key areas (like the kitchen!).

[Kripa: Not sponsored by Slack, even though it sounds like it is. Brian is just weirdly obsessed with Slack. I’m not even sure why this is relevant for this post? Note to self, draft all posts first myself.]

Step 3: Construction documents and permits

By June we had 50% construction documents (very detailed to my eye, but I think “50%” helped communicate that changes were still coming) so we could get realistic bids from general contractors. We wanted to submit the bids with the contractor attached, so we needed to select the contractor ASAP.

I’ll note that we had initially met with some general contractors right after making an offer on the building, and had done initial walkthroughs with multiple general contractors to get ballpark estimates (which, in case you were wondering, were not super precise and came with a lot of caveats that the estimate could go up-up-up once real detailed plans were made). So at this stage we were going back and asking for real bids, which took about 3 weeks to get in. We ultimately chose a contractor we had a strong reference for and who we got along with, so we were good-to-go there.

[Kripa: Fun fact, 68% of all general contractors in Chicago are Irish. I am 43% sure of that statistic.]

We kept working with David to refine the decisions, and then we were able to submit for permits in mid-August!

Then the permit process took about 4 months. Yes, that’s a long time, but we went into it thinking 3-4 months was realistic given Chicago’s long permitting process (we heard 3 months as a common estimate from some experienced people), so ultimately not TOO terrible. For those considering a similarly-sized project: there are firms/architects who are part of Chicago’s self-certification permit program which can speed up the process.

The 4-month permit timeline was good in one unexpected way: it gave us time to catch a second wind in terms of having the mental energy to spend on this project after the intense design process. We also had a chance to imagine ourselves in the space, which (we hope) has helped us percolate in preparation for all the sourcing and construction decisions we’ll be making over the next couple of months.

But I want to see the !*$&ing final plans?!?

Gotcha. And good news: we’ll be showing our plans in the next post!!

In our initial first floor walkthrough post, we included a picture of some white tiles peaking out from under the brown laminate flooring that Kripa noticed:

I went over one weekend while we were waiting on permits to dig a little deeper, see if anything was under there. Lo and behold, using a paint scraper to pry up the edges, I found this:

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Very exciting!! I went back the next weekend to try and make some more progress so Kripa and I could decide whether it was worth keeping. Ideally it would be like HGTV and we’d reveal an amazing work of art, but we also knew it was as likely that it could reveal incomplete/crappy/broken tile.

I made three miscalculations when I went to go work on the tile:

1. The heat hadn’t kicked on that day during a Chicago winter, and when I got there the inside of the house was 29 degrees.
2. I only had thin gloves – I had forgotten my work gloves.
3. I decided to work on the tile in spite of items #1 and #2.

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Three hours later, my legs were stiff and cold from being on the tile floor, my hands were killing me from the cold and holding the pry bar as I hammered it to pry up the tile. On the up side, the pattern had started to reveal itself!

By my calculations, at this rate I’d need another 21 hours of work to finish revealing the tile. As I mentioned my heroic labor of love to friends, the unanimous response was “Get a heat gun.” So I got a heat gun for $19 and went back again.

2.5 hours later, here’s where I was:

Much better progress! My new calculation was only another 4.5 hours of work and I’d be done!

At this point we got our permits and demolition was about to start (more on that in another post), and I didn’t have time to do any more on it. I came back after demo started to take a look, and my first thought was “OMG, they destroyed the tile!!!”

I caught my breath, and after sweeping away the dust I could see the tile was still there. Phew.

Fast forward to present day: last week I went and took a look, and the all the old laminate is removed!

Our contractor, Martin, told Kripa that they started removing the laminate and it was slow, so they grabbed a blow torch and had it done in 5 minutes.

Womp womp.

Our plan is to clean it up once we’re closer to completion. There is a crack in ~10 of the tiles across the top left, so we might need to replace those. I’ll post pictures when that happens (I’d guess that will be in about 3 months).

I love the pattern, especially the border. Part of it might be covered by the new walls, but we’ll keep as much of it exposed as we can. We haven’t been able to keep too much of the original house, so I’m really stoked to be able to keep this original entryway tile!

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