Closing (Part 2)

Last Tuesday, we closed on the sale of our West Town loft. The closing was exactly 103 days after we listed it with our amazing realtor Caren (who is beyond great, so you should enlist her help if you're buying or selling anything larger than a puppy or a station wagon [which I don't think exist any more, sorry]). And even though the buyer was kind of an asshat, it's over and we'll never have to deal with him again!

Closing on the loft was bittersweet. We're really happy to be in our new little house--in fact I spent this afternoon planting flowers and playing catch with Roo--but it's hard to close the door on seven years of life in a 700 (ish) square foot shoebox that you and your husband had made your own. In fact, we made it so much our own that it was kind of remarkable. T. put together these photos to show the difference (befores are on the left and afters are on the right):

The previous owner (or her cousin [or sister? I can't remember] who was renting the place) was a bit of a clutter-bug

The bedroom

The entryway (with a custom built bookshelf by John Power--we hope he'll do a few for the new house...)

The kitchen: the biggest and best transformation. (I love the new house but still really miss my kitchen)

Our living room and that stupid mirror that was almost impossible to give away (for freeeeee)

We moved out a month before the closing, and Trevor and I both went by a couple of times to clean up and make sure that everything was fine. It still smelled like our place, and it still felt like our place. But it really wasn't.

Trevor and I were dating when we bought the loft, and while we lived there, we got married, we watched Henry grow from a 6 month old puppy into a 6 year old goofball, and then we lost Henry; but a year later we got Roo--all while living there, at the corner of Grand Avenue and Noble Street in West Town, up the street from Burger Baron, two blocks away from the #9 Ashland Avenue bus stop.

After we'd moved out, my mom verbalized the feeling I'd been having such a hard time identifying. She said that when you make a move like this, there's a transition period during which you feel a bit homeless: the home you had isn't yours anymore, and the home you've moved into isn't quite yours yet, either, even though you have the papers to prove that the title is in your name.

Change this big is hard, and I don't think I've quite accepted the reality that I'll never see my loft again, at least not the way I remember it. And I love the way I remember it: books to the ceiling, art on the walls, a view of the other side of our building that felt both Rear Window-ish as well as tucked away and quiet. Plus, we were totally and completely safe in the case of a zombie apocalypse (bars on the alley windows, twelve inch thick brick walls, double fire doors in the hallway, and a twelve foot high gate around the parking lot. I mean, bring it on, zombie jerks!)

But we're starting on new memories out here, and have two nice consolations: one mortgage instead of two, and a closing sale check in the bank. I can live with that.

So although I will really, really, really miss things like this:

 
I can also live with this:

I Left Something at the Salon

My hair!

Today I served as a hair model for my friend Audrey, who's a stylist for Art + Science. They'd had an instructor from Sassoon in Chicago come to the Halsted Street location this morning to teach a class on Sassoon techniques, and then the afternoon was spent putting those techniques into practice.

I got to the salon around 1 p.m. and left around 4:30, which sounds like a long time, but there were around eight stylists, all doing step-by-step cuts under the Sassoon instructor's guidance, so there was a lot of watching other hair cuts, listening to techniques, and then having eight stylists crowded around Audrey's station while they talked about my hair. It was, in all honesty, totally and absolutely fun. I had two cups of tea, time to flip through trashy gossip magazines and time to catch up with Aud, who I haven't seen in 1,000 years and who recently went on a two week walking trip/pilgrimage through Spain with her mom (my godmother), and I got a spectacularly technical and precise haircut for free! It does not get better than that.

For the past six months or so I've been "growing out" my hair, and I kind of intended to continue doing so through this semester. But I've been so bored with it that on Christmas morning I chopped off some bangs for myself, just to give it some shape. It's not terribly uncommon to want to cut five inch chunks out of your own hair first thing after looking at yourself in the morning mirror; but it's maybe a little rash to actually do it. Here's the old hair (picture from ten days ago):

Me and Julie at our girls' night dinner on Dec. 30

 And here's the new and absolutely improved hair:

It's gone! It's all gone!

It's not like I haven't gone short before; I've had short hair for years at a time in the not so distant past. But today's experience was so much fun, and I had so much taken off in one fell swoop (although that makes it sound violent and arbitrary, which is completely antithetical to the actual event) that I just had to write about it.

When Audrey and the instructor were first starting my cut, they decided that it would be a "B" style (I do not know what that means but I'm pretty sure it's remarkably like what you see pictured above), and then the instructor drew a little diagram on the mirror using a little head stencil:

The left is technique that will result in a bad pizza slice effect. Audrey did not give me a pizza slice head.

What you can't see from this diagram is that the stencil had a little face, too. It was super weird and fantastic; Aud and I agreed that we both really wanted one to use at home on our bathroom mirrors.

I also learned today, during the consultation/planning steps of the process, that I have a small head--finely shaped, they assured me, but small. I'm okay with that, but it makes me sure that I shouldn't ever shave my head or I might look like a little rounded pencil eraser about to fall out of its little metal holder. Yep. I just compared my head to a tiny rubber eraser.

When the afternoon was all said and done (I was the last model to finish), I was thrilled with my new hair and my reunion with Audrey. But we're going out to brunch on Sunday, because even after three hours, we still have more to chat about (and she reminded me that I never did a follow up post about our kitchen remodel, so shame on me, and you can all expect that soon).

Me and gorgeous Audrey

Volunteering and a New Toilet (these things are not directly related)

This summer, other than taking Henry to the vet for his bi-weekly check-ups and chemotherapy medicine refills and readying our house for the kitchen remodel, I've also been volunteering at Open Books, a non-profit literacy center and used book store (best combination ever!). I'm part of the "Book Buddies" program, so twice a week a group of us volunteers head over to Cameron Elementary School in Humboldt Park to read for an hour with a group of eighteen first and second graders.

There are so many great things about this: first, I get to revisit books I haven't even thought about for well over twenty years (I could make that an even thirty years, but let's just not make me feel quite that old right now...), books like Are You My Mother?; second, I get to learn about great new (new to me) children's books, like Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Scott Magoon, and How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight? by Jane Yolen and Mark Teague; and then I get to realize that my first grade buddy can't actually read the authors' names on Spoon's cover because they're designed in cursive; finally, I get to hang out with some super cool little kids and read books with them. That, alone, makes it worthwhile. We've practiced new words like "chewy" (thank you, Bug Stew), "could," and "stegosaurus." We've practiced old favorites like "know," "what," and "busy." And we have also discussed a number of exciting things in my buddies' lives, like birthday parties, scooters (and falling off of scooters), Nerds candies, new haircuts, and puppies.

Unfortunately, tomorrow is the last day of our summer session. I hope that my Fall teaching semester will allow me to do Book Buddies again once the school year starts (and it should as long as my Saturday class has enough students enrolled). But if I can't, I'll absolutely be back next summer, and hopefully throughout the year with another one of Open Books' terrific programs.

Two of my fellow volunteers and their buddies (please also note the amazing notes on the chalkboard)

I was not supposed to take my button home, but I forgot to take it off my shirt

In other, home related news, we got a new toilet! Yesterday, a lovely man from E.J. Sievers Plumbing came out, removed our old toilet, which was, apparently, the real problem (not surprising since it's about twenty years old and was the cheap-o toilet contractors put in when they're turning a factory into condos and are trying to cut every possible corner [like placing studs more than 16" apart, neglecting to build electrical boxes for bathroom light fixtures, using glue to affix shower stall tile to the wall instead of thinset mortar...]). He was in an out in about an hour and our beautiful new toilet works like a dream. A happy indoor plumbing dream.

Um, I don't think this is going to work for us.

Yes. That's much, much better.

And while the plumber was going to his truck to get the new toilet, Trevor was able to sneak into the bathroom and paint that awful square of wall that no one had gotten to in probably, well, ever. It's one of those things that no one but us will really know (until they move the toilet), but we know that it's all clean and evenly painted, and that's very nice.

Yesterday, in addition to the plumber coming out, the electrician came out to fixed a minor crossed wires situation and to install our under cabinet lighting, which looks great but will have to be exchanged because Lightology gave us--out of the three LED strips we ordered to be linked together for one three-foot strip--two cool light strips and one warm. So, the lights don't match. After the odd week we had, Trevor and I weren't really surprised by this. It should be easy enough for us to change out, provided Lightology doesn't give us a hard time fixing their mistake.

The contractor's site manager also came out yesterday to check the work, and we brought a few things to his attention that needed fixing (mis-drilled handle holes, missing bolts for cabinets...); our man Dave is out here today taking care of the list. Once he's done, I should finally be able to put our kitchen contents back in the cabinets--knowing that the second layer of cabinets weren't completely bolted, and knowing that there would be more drilling and more dust made today, I didn't want to start putting stuff away over the weekend. So, while Trevor painted (the ceiling, the outer cabinet wall, and the "hallway" wall between the kitchen/living room and the bathroom/bedroom) Sunday and Monday, I just sort of stood around, feeling useless. I did manage to do our 1.5 weeks' worth of laundry, scour down the bathroom once the new toilet was in, and scrub the kitchen floor, but with the bedroom still chock full of kitchen wares, it didn't seem like I made very much progress. But today's the day! Keep your fingers crossed...

Kitchen Remodel, Part 1

Our kitchen remodel officially started on Thursday morning. The two contractors started by removing our old cabinets, counters, and amazing back-splash tile. They patched everything up, gave us a bit of new dry-wall, and made way for the electrician, who prepped us for the under-cabinet light and the microwave (which he accidentally hooked up to our light switch, so when the lights are off, so is the microwave. This will be fixed.). Here is our newly emptied kitchen:

Weird, right? Check out Trevor's lovely paint job above the cabinet line!

Then the guys came back on Friday to start installing the new cabinets. They got almost through, but our main man Dave called me at 6:30 last night (after they'd been working since about 8:45 a.m.) to ask if he could come back and finish it today because he didn't want to rush through anything. I said, "absolutely," and he's currently in the other room screwing in all of the cabinet handles (they look great).

This was their work at the end of the day:

It's not a great picture because I only had my phone, but you get the idea

So, other than some minor issues with the kitchen (the temporary sink wasn't standard size and the handle screws were too long, so Dave had to run to Home Depot; the aforementioned microwave/light switch; a mis-ordered cabinet that opens on the wrong side), it all went pretty smoothly. They told us upfront that they thought it would take two days, and both T. and I thought that was pretty ambitious thinking. And it was. But other than some possible re-patching when the electrician comes back to fix the wires, we're pretty much ready for the next step, which is getting measurements for the countertop. The guy comes out to take care of that on Monday.

And you know who else will come out on Monday, in addition to the countertop guy and the electrician? The plumber! Want to know why? Because our toilet broke. It BROKE. Thursday morning, about twenty or thirty minutes before the contractors showed up to start work in our tiny kitchen, the one and only toilet we have in the place stopped working. So we called a plumber (after T. tried diligently to snake it himself, but to no avail [and actually I called two plumbers, and almost a third, because no one was getting back to me and I was freaking out]) who wasn't able to come until Friday.

So, the plumber shows up on Friday morning, right before the contractors, and he tries--also diligently--to snake it, too. But that fails and he suspects a bigger problem. He needs to take out the toilet to get in there with a "huge machine" (god only knows what the hell that means; I'm actually terrified of it already) and then when the machine and the plumber can fix the problem, he wants to install a new toilet.

Soooo, that's what we're going to do. We'll have three lovely men in our place come Monday, doing a variety of machining, measuring, and wiring. And, by the luck of Trevor's Irishness, we haven't really felt the sting of no toiletness because we've spent all week at Greg and Paula's dog-sitting while they were in Michigan on a mini-vacation. And they have lovingly and graciously agreed to let us stay the rest of the weekend with them. So our two workmen had to suffer and go to the Burger Baron when nature called, but we've been more or less okay, hanging out in Greg and Paula's basement and living out of a suitcase. I'll be so happy when Monday is over and this upheaval has more or less finished heaving.

Boxes in, Cabinets Emptied

Our kitchen remodel will officially start this week, with the demolition of our old cabinets on Thursday and the installation of our new ones on Friday. We won't get the new countertops for another few weeks after that, and then the backsplash tile will get installed, but it's starting!

Yesterday our cabinets arrived, and they're kind of taking up half of our entire house.

The big corner cabinet in the front almost didn't fit through the door

So today I spent eight hours emptying out our kitchen cabinets and moving the contents into our bedroom, which is the only other room in our house. There are pros and cons to living in a two room, 650 square foot loft, and today I experienced both:

Pro--To move things to the complete other side of our place, I only had to move things about thirty feet
Pro--There were zero stairs involved
Con--There are no extraneous shelves, cupboards, or surfaces to use, since we already make maximum use of our space, so I had to use every nook and cranny available, which resulted in a bedroom that is covered in dishes, small kitchen appliances, frying pans, and cookie sheets, board game boxes, books, and an oddly high number of salt and pepper shakers (warning to all those about to get married: you will get a lot of salt and pepper shakers as wedding presents) and an unusable bed and a barely useable floor

As you'll notice, even though the "con" is long, there's only one, so I think that it about balances out. I can't imagine if I'd had to spend today climbing up and down stairs or walking down long hallways to move my stuff. Here are a few early shots of our stuff (as the day got longer, I got tired of documenting):

These are the books that used to live over our cabinets. They have temporary housing in the bedroom.

Now half of those books share space with our rice cooker, Cuisinart, and hand blender

The books made room for some of the cabinet contents. Some. Let's same a fifth.

Luckily, Greg, Paula and Bo are on vacation this week and T., Henry, and I are house/dog-sitting for them. It couldn't have worked out better, because if we wanted to sleep in our own place, we'd have to go horizontally on the bed to spoon with the ottoman, or sleep on the drop-cloth covering our couch, the couch that is smushed up against the t.v., record cabinet, globe, lamp, and end tables in the corner of the "living room" (a.k.a. the very small area next to the kitchen, which is also the place housing the giant boxes).

But the good news is that T. and I finished up (he spent all day at work de-installing the old show and installing the new show to be ready for Friday's opening, then came home and taped up what he'll paint tomorrow and tarped off the 300 pound bookshelf we can't move) and are now home at G&P's place; our bellies are full of pizza and beer and the giant television is keeping our tired brains happy with Office reruns and The Daily Show/Colbert Report tag-team. I got a little goofy with Trevor when he got home, since he was the only human being I'd spoken to all day long. I didn't even have Henry to keep me company, since he was at G&P's house with the girls. And talking and singing little songs to Henry usually keeps me sane, but not today, friends. No, not today.

And what was even worse was that I finished my audio book about 20 minutes before T. got home, and it was a great book--and excellent book--but kind of a sad one, so I'd spent a little time quietly crying to myself while relocating Cranium, Alfred Hitchcock's Clue, five versions of Trivial Pursuit (Original, Twentieth Century, 80s & 90s Pop Culture, Genius, and Baby Boomer editions), Scrabble, and about fifteen other board games.

So T. came home to a totally stir-crazy and slightly melancholy wife who was more than a little dusty and who had been standing still in the middle of the bedroom, hoping upon hope to find a place for her two cow-shaped creamers (one is small, like for a single afternoon tea, and one is large, for after-dinner coffee with guests. don't judge me.) and a stack of old photo albums.

But we did finish! Here's the result:

The last picture of our kitchen as we know it

You know what I really will miss, though. Our awesome, awesome tile.

Heeeyyyy, rosemary. You so pretty.

Yep, it's on the counter, too. Jealous much?

So goodbye, rosemary, sage, and basil. Hello smooth, green grout-less, spice-less quartz.

We'll keep you updated after the demo.

Sporty

Trevor and I had an unprecedentedly busy weekend. We spent Friday night at the White Sox game with Neill and Fran. It was mullet night and Fran came prepared.

Check out the tee-shirt

Peace. Out.

The view from our seats and some dude's head

The Sox were ultimately defeated, 9 - 5, by the Washington Nationals, and the four of us took off before the end of the game, which went into extra innings (14). But we had a great time and we ate some ball park food, so our night was a success.

Sunday was a soccer day. We went to the Fire game with our friend Jayson. We took a "luxury" bus provided by the Windy City Wanderers from Fado's to Toyota Park. The day was perfect for a game and we enjoyed every minute of it, from the bus ride...

To the field...

Jayson looks angry. Or suspicious. Or both.

And everywhere (the beer stand, the Dippin' Dots cart) in between.

We came home on Sunday afternoon, sun-happy and tired, so we took a two hour nap and then ordered pizza. The perfect kind of day.

Monday we went out hunting for the kitchen remodel. While noodling around the Clark and Barlow hardware store, we came upon the perfect cabinet pull for Pop Power's garage:

T. and I agreed that it would drive us crazy if it weren't actually level, though. But it's pretty sweet. As was the rest of the hardware store.

And we finally found a faucet! We're going to get a beautiful Delta stainless steel fellow named Trinsic.

He's one smooth guy

Now, I'm very excited about my new kitchen buddy, but I do have to show you the runner up, a gorgeous gal named Pilar. She really, really, really wanted to come hang out in our kitchen, but Trevor ultimately gave her the kibosh. He thought she was just too touchy-feely. She was a little fresh...

Oh, pretty, pretty Pilar

We've got the demolition and installation scheduled to start the second week of July, so we'll keep you in the loop about that. This weekend is our trip to Door County with the Power and Madel clan. Trevor got a new pair of swim trunks and some shorts (what?! shorts?? yes, that's right.), so he's ready. Henry's been spending a lot of time in the sun to get his base tan going--he doesn't want to get a burn when he's on the beach.

Can I call it "sun tanning" if I'm inside and the sun is coming through the window?

Stop judging me! I'm a lazy animal!

Bye, all!

The Last Meal

Six months of Bank of America yanking our chain for an absurdly small refinance finally resulted in T. and me getting our money last month. And those six months of paperwork lost and redundantly sent, dozens of e-mails shooting between us and one unbearably inefficient loan processor, Jesus "Jesse" Velasquez (if I had his home phone number, I'd certainly publish it here), and one accusation of forgery later, we're able to finally start thinking about remodeling the kitchen, which was the biggest reason for the refinance in the first place.

We spent a couple of afternoons at Abt Electronics, trying to figure out the best appliances for us, and we settled on a lovely group from KitchenAid. We decided to take advantage of some of the deals Abt was offering and arranged to get them delivered sooner rather than later. So even though we won't do the full remodel until May, once I'm finished with school for the semester, we'll be able to use our brand spanking new appliances, starting tomorrow! Tonight I "cooked" our last meal (a set of frozen dinners because we figured that doing any major grocery shopping right before a new fridge is delivered was kind of silly) in our old oven. The oven and fridge have served us well, and the dishwasher has served us, well...loudly. Very loudly.

Henry says goodbye to the stove

We checked out kitchen cabinets and counter-tops at Home Depot last weekend, and wanted to head to IKEA this afternoon to compare variety and price, but the weather didn't cooperate. We'll probably head out there on Friday night when the traffic is a bit lighter--if not on the roads, at least in the store.

Greg, Paula, and Bosco were in Arizona this week/week-end, so T. and I dog sat. Tequila and the girls say, "hellooooooo!"

And G. and P. have gone a little nutso (or have they gone "bosco"?) over the Bosco website they've recently discovered.

The chocolate bar is actually pretty tasty; once they open the syrups, I'll do a taste test and give a full report.

And here's some other big news: after Thursday night, I'll be a fully tenured faculty member at McHenry County College. The MCC Board of Trustees votes at the monthly meeting on whether or not I and four of my new faculty "classmates" get tenure, but it's a no-contest vote and according to our union president, it's a very underwhelming event. So she's taking us to dinner first at the local Mexican restaurant, Pablo's, and then we'll have a tenure "tea" in a few weeks (where we'll get tiaras and light sabers!) to make the event a little more memorable. So, that's going to be nice, although after almost three years of working towards this, and after finishing the portfolio project and submitting it in November, I feel a little underwhelmed, myself. Or maybe it's just the fifth week blahs. One of my colleagues in the art department gave the explanation, after I'd been complaining about a particularly lackluster class last Tuesday, "Oh, it's week five." According to her, it's the time in the semester when the students top trying to impress you. The bloom is off the rose, and you start to see who they actually are, as students and as people. And the picture isn't always pretty. I think she's right, but the Thursday classes were back on track, so hopefully not all of the students will turn out to be toads.

And before heading off to bed, I've got to read some creative writing essays by some students (and some toads...), so goodnight, all, and if the weather is going to be as crummy as promised, please drive safely!