If you tried to visit this site in the last day and found it unavailable, rest assured things here are now back in order.  I’m sorry for any inconvenience.

Now that the lights are back on at Bungalow ‘23, I’ll also mention the recent addition of a widget from This Old House with daily content updates.  You can find the TOH widget at the bottom of the sidebar on the right side of the page.  I am a TOH magazine subscriber and I thought this looked like it would offer more useful content between issues.  Do you like the TOH widget?  Take a look and tell me what you think in the comments.

and through part of the house

I was marking outlet locations

with help from my spouse…

Since my last post, I received bids from four electrical contractors and selected one to work with me on the bedroom project upstairs.  Tomorrow the wires start running.

If the electrical job simply involved wiring outlets and a light in the bedroom, I would have done the work myself.  However, I am also taking the opportunity to make some house-wide upgrades to the electrical system that are better left to the professionals.

The most significant of these upgrades is the replacement of my old 16-slot fuse box with a new 30-slot box of circuit breakers.  Currently most of the lighting and receptacles in the house are on just two 15-amp circuits.  With the bigger box, I can begin separating circuits for safety, convenience, and code-compliance.

Although I only need one new circuit upstairs for the bedroom remodel, the electricians will be bringing up a total of four new circuits.  One of these will be allocated to the existing outlets in the master bathroom and the other two will be for future rewiring when I get around to redoing the other half of the attic level.

While the electricians are here, they will also be wiring interconnecting smoke and carbon monoxide detectors on all three levels of the house.  This safety upgrade will provide some inexpensive peace of mind because now when a problem is detected in the basement, the detectors in the bedrooms two floors up will sound immediately.

Photos and an update (and a visit from the inspector!) will follow shortly when the rough-in is done and the new circuit box is in.  Stay tuned!

The door needs some restoration work, but this is just the kind of rewarding, small scale project it will be fun to undertake after my big bedroom project upstairs is finally “put to bed.”

This first photo shows the partially-stripped door into the bedroom and the newly relocated doorframe for the closet.  The radiator at the bottom of the image is sitting partially stripped in a kiddie pool waiting for me to finish it up.

In preparation for the spray foam insulation, the roof vents and peak openings have been boarded shut.  The insulation will create a “hot roof” on this side of the house.

With the bedroom closet relocated to the other side of the room near the entry door (see the first photo above) the master bedroom closet has been expanded to absorb all the former closet’s space.  The new, larger master closet will measure about 14′ x 6′, though the ceiling height will be around 6.5′ at the peak.

The upcoming wiring work won’t change the look of these spaces much, but it won’t be long before insulation makes the room look and feel dramatically different.  I’ll also be working on restoring the radiator, windows and doors in the weeks ahead.

After a few hours, the framing was finished and the room was ready for wiring work.  In the two days since then, I have had a pair of electical estimates and I think I will get at least one estimate more before I commit.  That process shouldn’t take more than a couple more days, so it won’t be long before I can report on the start of wiring.

Reaching this stage of the project (finally!) means I have also made a decision about “the closet that never was” that I mentioned back in April.  Even though you readers– or at least those of you who post comments– preferred the secret room option, I have decided to make the space… a closet.  By making this formerly unused space the new bedroom closet, the master bedroom closet on the other side of the room can be expanded to double its former size.  After living without a closet of any kind in our bedroom for a couple years, a new bigger closet will be a welcome reward for completing this project.

So what’s the reality that I’ve been trying to avoid?  Simply this: my upstairs bedroom project will not be finished by the end of the summer if I insist on doing the work myself.

Thanks in large measure to the gentle cajolling of Ms. Bungalow, I finally stopped fighting reality and met yesterday afternoon with a contractor to help with my project.  It was an excellent meeting.  I’ve seen this builder’s work in person– in his own home, no less– and know he shares my preference for making green home improvements while retaining historic character.

Because of the amount of planning and demolition work I’ve already done, this contractor has agreed to work with me on an hourly basis as needed to keep the project moving forward.  I’ll research and hire the additional help I need with insulation and wiring, and I can continue to work on the project myself as my schedule and inclination allow.

This is exactly what I needed.  By serving as my own general contractor and contributing labor (including the significant work I’ve already put in) I am saving some serious money, but I don’t have to give up all my precious summer weekends with my kids in order to ensure my attic is insulated before this winter.

I feel so relieved and energized that I can’t help asking myself why it took so long to take the obvious step of hiring help.  Clearly, I have a gift for avoiding reality.  Therefore, in the spirit of  ”do as I say, not as I do” advice, I offer the following tips for keeping your projects firmly grounded and moving forward:

Tips for Reality-Based Home Projects

• Determine the actual scope of the work to be performed.  This means researching and evaluating your options and then sticking to a plan.  Good planning in the beginning of a project can help minimize distractions later on.
• Consider the resources (time, money, labor) actually available for the project.  It is safe to assume your project will need more time and money than you initially estimate.  Plus, who wouldn’t rather be ahead of schedule and under budget than late and over budget?
• List potential complications and consider alternatives for responding.  You probably can’t account for every possible surprise, but in reality things don’t always go according to plan.  Thinking through how to respond to challenges can help keep minor issues from becomming major delays.
• Set and keep deadlines for milestones and completion.  External deadlines are best, but however you set the dates this should help with staging work and avoiding procrastination.

My new winning ways began with major soil rehabilitation. I removed half of the windowbox soil and replaced it with a mixture of 2 parts new garden soil, 1 part composted manure, and a healthy dash of Soil Moist water retention additive. This improved soil should have the nutrients the plants need to thrive and do a better job of keeping the plants’ feet wet instead of baking to crisp inside the brick planter in the direct morning sun.

The plants I picked for the windowbox are also proven winners. Sweet potato vine, nasturtiums, and lantana were all recommended by a master gardener friend as plants that not only look great in a windowbox but are also drought- and heat-tolerant. Both the potato vine and nasturtium are trailing forms that should look really great when they get big enough to spill over the side of the planter.

Yesterday a Minneapolis Park Board truck pulled up and marked the tree. The inspector left a card in my door indicating that the tree would be removed. First thing this morning a crew showed up with chainsaws and a chipper to take the tree down.

Before the urban lumberjacks set to work, I snapped a final a photo of the tree. To my amazement, it took only three minutes from when the tree hit the ground to convert the whole thing to mulch. Thanks to Dutch Elm Disease, the city has gotten very good at removing sick trees in a hurry.

The video clip below shows what my 5-year-old and I saw as we watched the parks crew from the dining room window:

The shade and privacy lost with this tree will be significant. Of the three trees in the boulevard, this one provided the most shade benefit, protecting the side of the house. Now I will have to start over with a new sapling. I’m sure it will take more than a day to get a replacement tree– and many many days more before the replacement grows as big as the tree I lost today.

At the recent Twin Cities Bungalow Club seminar, “How Green is Your Bungalow?” I picked up a tip that could help homeowners keep or restore  antique bathroom fixtures, while also going green to save water.  The solution is a grey water system.

A grey water system reuses drain water from laundry washing machines, showers, bathtubs, and bathroom sinks to supply the toilets.  This requires altering and adding some water pipes, and installing a grey water storage tank, filter and pump.  Toilets– particularly old ones– are one of the largest users of water in the home, so grey water systems can reduce household water use by 25% or more.

Obviously the economics of a grey water system will depend on the cost of system installation and the cost of water in your area.  Also, some municipalities are more accomodating of this alternative than others, so be sure to check for local grey water information before you proceed.

If grey water works for you, it could be a green improvement that doesn’t require compromising on authentic old house fixtures and details.  It’s definitely something I am considering here.

With the cancellation of the Twin Cities Bungalow Club Home Tour for 2009, local blog friend, StuccoHouse, suggested that we Minneapolis and St. Paul housebloggers offer an online alternative.

Almost by definition, a tour of houseblogs is a tour of works-in-progress –not the fully-finished gorgeousness that is the standard for the Bungalow Club Tour.  That caveat out of the way, I get loads of great ideas and inspiration from other housebloggers, and if you are reading this, you probably do, too.  

While you are here, you might enjoy looking at my photo collections, perusing the 4-year, 300+ post archive, or just reviewing some recent entries.  

When you are ready to move on, head over to the next site on the tour: 1928 Northrop Bungalow.  These nearby neighbors are working on a beautiful and stylistically-sensitive dormer addition that you really should see.

And if this is your first stop on the Twin Cities Houseblog Tour, don’t forget to go back to the kickoff site for the tour: StuccoHouse.

BONUS TOUR SITE: Our Tiny Oak Park Bungalow
Chicago bungalows have a style all their own, and Chris at Our Tiny Oak Park Bungalow puts lots of great house and garden details on display through a wide variety of posts from the heart of Chicagoland.