Humphrey House - Green Remodeling of an Arts and Crafts Bungalow

Building a Prairie-styled porch screen / trellis

2009-06-02T10:11:00.001-05:00

Mention you have a home in Oak Park, and inevitably you are asked if it is near or similar to the many Frank Lloyd Wright homes in the area. The fact is, he had nothing to do with our home, or most of those in our neighborhood. Nevertheless, Humphrey House took one step closer to emulating the famous prairie-style architect this weekend.

Ever since our kitchen remodel, we noticed that one of our windows that brings in tons of daylight also allows unwanted views from our alley. While we do have blinds, I wanted to create a visual screen using one of the existing support posts on our rear porch, and thought a trellis to grow vines up during summer would be a fantastic solution. A homegrown green screen, of sorts.

After purchasing and temporarily hanging some typical diagonal criss-cross lattice, Jen and I both were underwhelmed. It seemed to clash too much with the rest of the porch and there was no clear place to transition it. Enter our friends from Tiny Bungalow, who stopped by to visit one Saturday, and mentioned that a screen could be made out out of spare wood, emphasizing horizontal and vertical lines, which would better compliment the home. Duh! This should have been plainly obvious, but just one of those mental block things we had.

Fortunately, under the porch, I still had a stash of old wood lathe and even some old growth pine 2x4s from the kitchen wall we wrecked on the Today Show, and I realized that creating a screen trellis would be the perfect homage! The space was 4' x 4', and could even be framed with studs 16-inches on center, just like the wall we had torn down.

Onto the design. I knew horizontal lines would be important, and Jen (a designer) always emphasizes the "rule of three". So I figured 3 groups of 3 pieces of lathe would be the foundation of the design. Once this was in place, the top and bottom were too open, so I played with a few layouts and settled on a 1-2-1 piecing. After painting and hanging all the wood, it looked great, but still a bit too sparse.

It was time to figure out some vertical arrangements. I originally planned to bisect the groups of three with short vertical pieces. But this ended up looking too.. eh, formulaic? I played with other designs, doing them in X shape, a diamond shape, but it just didn't look right. I went inside to see the view from the kitchen area, and examined how the rear door's stained glass was done. Then I realized that by partially spanning the groups of three on the trellis to connect one group with the other, I could create a much more organic-looking design. I also remembered that Frank Lloyd Wright's stained glass work often mirrored the prairie grasses and plants, so I tried to figure out how to achieve that. After all, we planned to grow plants up it half the year anyway. I started with a tight group of vertical pieces, representing "leaves" of a plant, which then open to the wider "flowers" of a plant, shown in the image below.

Ultimately, things came together quite stunningly. This is now a very striking addition to our backyard, and I daresay even a focal point of the home when viewed from the rear. Complimented by some nifty little lanterns and soft colorful lighting put up by Jen, our rear porch finally has a welcoming feel to it that draws the eye and body outside. A truly remarkable transformation. Thanks for the inspiration, TinyBungalow! And to Jen, Scott, and Julie, who all were on hand to help me shape and give feedback during the process! And thanks Mr. Wright for your timeless influence!

I added one final artisanal touch that may be hard to notice from the photos here. The very top piece in the middle section has a complete circle from a knot in the wood, perfectly centered in the lathe, and the very bottom piece of lathe has a half-circle in it. From sun to moon, we now have a beautiful arts and crafts influenced screen trellis built into our porch.

Now, I just need to resist the temptation to create other designs with all the other pieces of lathe we have stored under the porch...

Finally Fixing the Back Porch

2009-05-14T17:08:00.002-05:00

Last weekend we started doing some outdoor upkeep around the yard, including the first mow of the season. Each year, I think we get more and more determined to have less and less grass. This year, we're starting a vegetable garden in the already-small backyard. And I love the idea of a "no-mow" lawn mix of groundcover wildflowers and clover for the front yard. Maybe next year?

In any case, this weekend we picked up a new "Earth Machine" composter and yet another rain barrel. Jen wonders if we have enough rain barrels, and I say, No way, there's always room for more! More on the rain barrels in another post.

It was such a nice day that our friends from Tiny Oak Park Bungalow even dropped by while I was working the yard and delivered a much welcome gift of native plants - some purple coneflowers for our front yard! We were pleasantly surprised and very grateful. They'll make a nice replacement for the dead mums that have lived in front of our house for the last six months.

Also, we've been struggling with a way to have a functional and aesthetically pleasing screen visual for the window off our back porch that overlooks the alley (a lovely view in winter). I had some lattice work temporarily attached for about a month, which worked great as screening, but seemed a little too "off" in terms of the design. I just couldn't figure out how to transition that lattice with the stairs leading up the back porch of our arts and crafts home. Here is the power of a fresh set of eyes. A friend commented that a design with more horizontal and vertical lines would complement the home a lot better and look less tacky. Duh! I felt like a ton of craftsman bricks hit me in the forehead.

So with that in mind I sketched an idea for the nearly 4-foot by 4-foot area we would like to screen. In an homage to the old kitchen wall we dismantled, we may even be able to construct this with some of the wood (yes I still have it). The design consists of adding two 2x4 vertical studs (guess what... on 16-inch centers). Then, approximately every foot, have a group of three narrow pieces of wood running horizontally. Throw in a few short vertical pieces to "tie" the groups of three together, and voila! A craftsman-zen type of porch screening that will also allow us to (hopefully) grow a climber like clematis up during the summer months. Here is a pretty lame, but effective mockup I did in Photoshop of how this might look.

Next step: doing the work, as well as finishing the painting job that got cut short last fall. And yes, we'll be fixing the lattice inconsistency under the porch as well, so things aren't quite as ghetto here at Humphrey House.

Reusing an Old Concrete Sidewalk

2009-04-28T10:14:00.000-05:00

I recently re-acquainted myself with a local architect who happened to come through our home during the green home tour last fall. He's doing a renovation of a green detached garage, and told me about a neat idea he's doing that could have a place in our backyard plans.

Instead of completely demolishing an existing sidewalk to better fit our backyard design plan, we could take a saw and cut up the existing 24" wide sidewalk at intervals around every 18" or so. We could then reuse these "blocks" as really big concrete pavers set in a gravel base, as shown below (thanks to Tom for the photos).

We were warned that 18" x 24" sections 4 inches deep turned out to be really heavy, so we'd probably do a thinner section, maybe 10 or 12 high. For our yard, I think it would be neat to kind of stagger sections of concrete, similar to the recycled concrete paver design shown here.

Pros:
Reuse the existing materials on-site
Little to no need for new concrete
Better drainage for stormwater

Cons:
Labor intensive - cutting and making heavy
Winter questions - how will it hold up during snow shoveling?

As other ideas may be less feasible given our modest budget, reusing our old concrete may be a better alternative than leaving things for "next year" as we've been punting on solving the backyard dilemma for four years now. Some of the concrete we have is in really poor shape, especially the stairs leading down to the basement, and need to be fixed this summer. We'll have to seriously consider how well reused pavers would work.

Firmer, but not final, Backyard Plan

2009-04-24T11:40:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to post this for awhile, but here is a more refined version of our backyard plan that we're going with. Now we're starting to get a feel for the costs for redoing portions of the concrete (which need redone badly, especially near house / rear stairs).

The "Dharma patio" may or may not be feasible this year... we'll have to see. Click the image above to view a larger version of this - and kudos to Jen for the excellent digital mock-up using our original plat of survey!

DIY Self-Watering Planters

2009-04-23T17:21:00.007-05:00

For Easter, we made a trip out to my mother's house and were treated with a lovely surprise fresh from my stepfather's greenhouse: Nearly mature tomato plants! John provided us with two plants each of the following varieties:

Heirloom tomatoes
Cherokee tomatoes (which will be purple)

What a great addition to our garden! When we got home though, I realized that with my somewhat forgetful nature, these mature plants and their containers would need some kind of self-watering system to avoid drying out. So I took some terracotta pots from last season and made some deceptively simple outer containers - all I had to do was plug the drainholes.

I came up with a crafty solution of slicing up an old cork (our running cork collection came in quite handy) into "slices" about 4 mm thick. I then planned to insert that in the bottom of the pot, and seal it like a wine bottle.

Unfortunately, the corks were just bigger than the holes, so I had to make the diameter smaller. Doing this left a bit of a gap between the nice round curve of the pot and the chopped edge of my cork though, so I needed to water proof the cork somehow. I took an old candle that had burned almost all the way down, and dripped wax on top of and around the cork to seal the opening.

After letting the wax cool down for awhile, I tested the seal under the sink and it worked great. Voila! Self-watering containers! Now, the tomato plants, comfy in the plastic containers they came in, each have their own self-watering container that will allow them to "drink" from the bottom if they're thirsty. These should serve the plants well until it is warm enough to move them outside permanently.

In the meantime, I can hardly believe it but they are already beginning to flower. We may have fresh tomatoes from our little urban garden at the start of the season this year!

Developing a Garden Plan: part 1

2009-03-20T18:33:00.009-05:00

After the hit-and-miss plantings of the last few years, Jen and I decided that this was the year to actually develop a plan for our backyard that would incorporate many of the the things both of us desire.

space for a table / chairs
vegetable garden
herb garden
raised planters
gravel / porous paving areas
solid paving from house to garage
shade-friendly plants
perennial plants
firepit area
compost area
water efficiency (more rain barrels)
And perhaps a bit of an oxymoron - low maintenance

Of course, there needs to be a lot of compromising because we're working with an area that is effectively 22 x 30, surrounded by a fence, and most of which is shaded by a large maple tree on the north east corner of the area, as well as some very mature lilac bushes. Here is a preliminary drawing we came up with that incorporates the existing site elements with much of our "wish list" items.

After this initial step, we are now working through designing the hardscaping that needs to be done to accommodate all of these features. In addition to the soft lines of the gravel-based plan above, we came up with many other ideas for the space - rectangles, a diagonal patio, a circular theme. With the goal of trying to find a plan that best fit the small space, we have pretty much settled on the octagonal patio idea shown below.

This would ideally be pavers, but may be stamped / stained concrete too. We already need to have some concrete re-done in the left-side area of these plans. The steps leading down to the basement are crumbling, and the slab there is pitched towards the house. When coupled with a large downspout that sometimes overflows, that is a bad combination.

Also, Jennifer is a little concerned about the patio area being limiting - we like to have gatherings with friends when weather allows, and the backyard fills up fast - she's worried it will fill up even faster with a small defined patio space! So this may evolve ... we shall see.

But with a firm(ish) plan in place, we can start to look at how to go about implementing it - and what will fit within our budget.

Our Garden's Solar Window

2009-03-10T09:16:00.002-05:00

One of the neat things about instructing for the Illinois Solar Energy Association is that I have access to some pretty neat tools. My friend Jim loaned me a site assessment tool that has turned out to be a pretty neat device for determining the best location for our garden.

The Acme Solar Site Assessment Tool (manufactured appropriately enough by Wiley Electronics), is a tool that basically is a camera mount that is aligned with true South, and then takes seven photos from different positions from east to west. The neat part is the software, that then brings in all of these images and plots the path of the sun across them at different times of the year. It also determines the shading, and calculates the hours of sunlight available throughout the year.

While our backyard is clearly not a useful site for solar panels, I was more concerned with ensuring that we can get at least 5 - 6 hours of sun for our vegetable garden. So I took photos from two locations in our yard - one near the garage (shown above), and one spot near the back porch of our house (shown below).

Based on these sun paths, it looks like the first location, close to our garage, will be the best location for our vegetable garden. That will receive a bit of morning light, and a healthy amount of afternoon sun. Although, in this location, we may still have to sneak a bit of tree trimming on our neighbor's tree. We may also try to put some container-based plants near the porch and see how they do. That way, we can always move them if needed.

In any case, this was a fun way to see how the sun hits our home all year round, and we also now know where the best location for solar panels would be (our roof), should we ever decide to.

Growing a Garden

2009-03-04T10:05:00.002-06:00

With 20-degree weather in northern Illinois, it's difficult to think about the growing season and summer coming. But, before we know it, warmer weather will be upon us. Especially now that our USDA growing zone has been bumped up to a warmer level (Zone 6), in what I love to hear described as not global warming, but global wierding.

Since most of the major renovation projects are out of the way at Humphrey House, and we don't have much money to spend right now anyway, I'm trying something new this summer: planting a vegetable garden. Jen has grown several herbs and peppers each year in our backyard. And we're slowly getting pretty decent at this. Last year our plants were quite successful.

So for 2009, I figured it was time to leap into a full-fledged grow-your-own-food garden this year. Sort of a victory garden for self-sufficiency. After all, you can't get more local then your backyard! We're beginning by starting to grow plants from seeds ourselves. To make things easy, I picked up a seed starting kit made by a company with the deceptive and tempting name, "Jiffy". I'm hopeful that it really is *that* easy to start seeds, and the hardest part is thinking far enough in advance. We will see.

So with the help of a Mother Earth guide to growing your own food, I've started some seeds for a garden that hopefully isn't too ambitious for us:

Current seeds:
Broccoli
Onions
Eggplant
Thyme

To be joined later by:
Carrots
Tomatoes
Basil
Peppers
And maybe even some sweetcorn growing along the garage!

Coming next: Time to find and start planning space in the backyard to grow this garden!

Soy foam in a can!

2009-02-25T08:30:00.001-06:00

In a fit of early spring cleaning, I recently decided to clear out the basement utility room, and rearranging our old kitchen cabinets and fridge. These had really just been haphazardly thrown in place when we gutted the old Humphrey House kitchen last fall. Maybe it was a winter fit, but the fact that the fridge blocked a window and most of the natural light in the room had become too much for me.

One item on the cleaning list was to visit various hardware stores and take back the assorted excess building materials we had accumulated during our fall frenzy of remodeling. I realized it was quite pathetic and time to take action when my "to be returned" pile started needing overflow storage bins.

One of the return visits involved a trip to Home Depot. I've dreaded the return process here after learning they restrict the number of times you can return items without a receipt in a given year. I found out the hard way after returning a plumbing coupling for a measly $1.31 a few years ago, and being told I couldn't return anything for a year. Fortunately, this time I actually had more receipts than I expected, and the returns went painlessly. But, since some items were purchased so long ago, they gave me in-store credit instead of a refund.

I somehow fought off a strangely magnetic pull to wander the store and spend my newly found "in store credit" and headed for the exits. I know that once the thaws come, we will be making plenty of trips as the growing season begins.

On my way past the checkout aisles, I glanced at one of the end-aisle displays for Great Stuff. Ever since I've become more energy-conscious (and air-draft dodging), I've found that it's always good to have a can of this around (bonus: it's an adhesive better than duct tape!) As I glanced at the sale prices, my eye was suddenly drawn to a new item in the display next to my trusty red and yellow cans: Soy seal. I had to do a double-take from my surprise.

Apparently, the manufacturers of the same soy foam we have in our walls, now make it available in canned spray form for do-it-yourself use in sealing cracks and holes. I think the Soy Seal was like $1.50 more expensive per can than Great Stuff was (both were on "sale" on the end aisle display). And, they carried both "Gaps and Cracks" as well as "Windows and Doors" versions of the foam. I was surprised to see the low-expanding Windows and Doors can was actually closed-cell foam, and not open-celled foam (yes, I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to this stuff).

Since I already have a few cans of Great Stuff waiting to be used, I did not any, but it was certainly shocking to see Soy seal foam in my local big-box retailer.

Slow heating ovens have ignition problems

2009-02-16T09:23:00.000-06:00

As Jen mentioned last year, we at Humphrey House enjoy the art of salvaging relics from other homes. Sometimes you find neat vintage doors with excellent hardware - other times something like a nearly new kitchen appliance can be found at bargain prices. Take for instance, our Dacor PGR30 oven.

The homeowner we purchased this from had recently moved into a nice River Forest home and had issues with the oven not fitting her countertops perfectly (it is a slide-in oven, not freestanding). The oven also tended to take a bit too long to heat up, so she said, "Enough! I'll try out this new-fangled thing I hear about called Craigslist!" Upon seeing the oven listed, Jen expertly maneuvered her way into purchasing this high-end appliance at a bargain rate.

After hooking it up, we did indeed see that the oven took a bit long to heat up. 20 minutes to get to 375 degrees. Hmm. Well, we let this slide as we didn't use it too often, and we had more urgent projects to attend to. Like finishing the rest of the kitchen.

As the kitchen punchlist dwindled (Yes folks, it CAN happen!), we returned our attention to the Dacor. We learned the problem of taking too long to heat could be the result of a faulty ignitor, as the glow bar lost its luster. I ordered a spare ignitor online to be prepared for the eventual outage.

Fast forward several months. After all the holidays hosting we had done, one day right after Christmas, the oven finally quit. Turning on the oven resulted in a token temperature rise. And, more alarmingly, we noticed the distinct smell of natural gas.

So the next weekend, I took apart the oven, removing the back panel of the Dacor PGR30 to access the ignitor. Only to find out the hard way that this particular model actually has two ignitors! One on top (for the broil setting) accessed from the back, and another one underneath the bottom of the oven (for regular baking). Needless to say, I became quite adept at appliance dis-assembly and re-assembly. I also like to think my creativity with profanity increased during this 6-hour ordeal as well.

Several hours later, the ignitor was successfully replaced, and believe it or not, the oven actually heats up in mere minutes! Much better than the pedestrian pace it used to take. So yes, if your oven takes to long to heat, it could be the ignitor. I guess all that wasted fuel we spent waiting for the oven to heat up offsets the savings from our tankless hot water heater. Yet another lesson learned at the school of Humphrey House. So, now that the oven is fully functioning, anyone care for a brownie?

The Poor Man's route to Solar Energy

2009-02-08T16:05:00.001-06:00

You can tell it is the dead of winter and not much is happening at Humphrey House. However, this gives us a chance to give an update on some of the projects we never got around to mentioning last fall when we were too busy working. One of these is the addition of a tubular skylight into our dining room.

This is a bit of unique installation because we really have taken advantage of every nook and cranny on the second floor, which may make you wonder how we managed to squeeze what effectively is a 10-inch HVAC duct through the space to connect the dining room ceiling and the roof. Well, we really got to take advantage of some of the existing architecture, which makes the suntunnel appear as if it goes right through the second floor living space, when it fact, it does not.

I cut in the suntunnel from the attic chase area behind the knee-wall in our laundry room upstairs, as close to the knee wall as possible. This was about 4 feet from where the exterior wall would normally be. But, as you can see in the photo, the suntunnell spills into the room a good six feet from the outside wall. How? By taking advantage of the bay window that juts out of the dining room. This makes the suntunnel appear close to the chandelier light fixture towards the center of the room, and yet the tube does not pass through any living space in our converted attic.

You would think with the windows in the bay that the dining room would receive plenty of light and not need additional daylight. However, if you look through the window in the photo above, you can see the house next door is quite close to us. And worse, it's a full two-story house with a steep roof, which ends up blocking out all direct sunlight to our first floor for 7 months out of the year. With the winter months being dark to begin with, I wanted to brighten up the space naturally as much as possible. And a $150 suntunnel was an ideal solution.

When we were on the green home tour in September, I described this as the poor-man's solar energy. I got quite a few puzzled looks, and Jen pointed out that is a bit misleading as it isn't really power. However, the tubular skylight does replace the need for us to turn the lights on during daylight hours. Just look at how bright it is After, compared to Before (and note the chandelier is not turned on).

During the day, the tubular skylight channels the sun into the dining room, located at the center of our home, making it brighter and feel warmer. So the suntunnel is our small leap into what is a form of solar power - passive solar (no moving parts). Speaking of which, our friend Jim is teaching a free seminar on passive solar and architecture at the Chicago Center for Green Technology in a few weeks on March 12. If you live in the area, want to learn more, and get some great ideas, it will be well worth your time.

As for now, I think I'll take advantage of this sunny day and go read by the daylight flooding into our dining room.

Extra Insulation the Natural Way

2009-02-04T08:59:00.000-06:00

I read in today in the Chicago Tribune that the area has had snow cover since January 5 - nearly a month now! It reminded me of something I did a few weeks ago when the temperatures dropped below freezing and stayed that way for several days.

We had recently rearranged our basement, and as a result, I finally have a room of my own to call an office. But it has been a cold office. Very cold. So I wondered how I could help retain some of the heat in there. I recalled stories of eskimos using the natural insulation of snow in their igloos, and wondered how that would work to help keep in the heat for above-ground concrete foundation walls.

A bit of googling turned up confirmations that yes, you can indeed pack snow up against a foundation wall. However, there is a very important consideration: When temps get above freezing, you must shovel it away or deal with potential water in the basement!

Fair enough. I figured it was worth a shot, so before the deep freeze in January, I packed in snow from a recent storm up against the concrete foundation. I think it has helped somewhat. Especially from the howling winds and air infiltration that can come rushing in from the north and west. In comparing the basement's comfort during the recent deep freeze to the artic blast right we had right before Christmas (on the solstice in fact), I think our basement was equally as comfortable. In other words, it was not any colder with much colder outside temps.

Three weeks later, I'm happy to report that the snow is still packed in up against the wall. Although with a warm-up coming soon, it looks like I'll have to have the snow shovel at the ready.

Welcome USGBC Webinar Attendees

2009-01-14T11:13:00.004-06:00

If you have come to this blog after David Gulyas' presentation on the ReGreen remodeling guidelines and their application to kitchen and bath projects, congratulations. You are in the right spot! For a quick list of projects he helped with, you may look at related blog posts here or here. Or visit a summary of our green remodeling.

I must say David was instrumental in helping us go green with our kitchen remodel of Humphrey House, encouraging us to do things behind the walls such as tightening up the building envelope and maximizing daylighting in the space, as much as focusing on the materials and resources selected in our kitchen remodel. When evaluating materials, he helped us to think of products in terms of their overall lifecycle contributions, pointing out that the "embedded energy" in a product like bamboo cabinets, due to the manufacturing in China and transportation to the US, may make them less sustainable than cabinets made from local hardwoods.

And although the lack of green in our budget didn't allow us to be as green as we may have wanted, David was very supportive by telling us that was okay and "real" because we had to struggle with compromises and trade-offs.

It is great to see David get some attention and allow him to give back and help spread his knowledge among professionals. www.davidgulyas.com

Donating Building Materials Just Got Easier

2009-01-12T08:52:00.004-06:00

At least in Chicagoland anyway, thanks to a new organization, the ReBuilding Exchange. Here's what they do:

The mission of the ReBuilding Exchange is to divert building materials from the waste stream and make them accessible to the public for reuse, protecting community health, creating jobs and saving resources.

They have a great list of all the materials they accept from 2x4s, to old doors and windows, to cabinets and more! Bonus: you get a donation receipt that can be a tax deduction next year.

The ReBuilding Exchange is having a grand opening on Friday, February 13th, with an open house, a live and silent auction, live music, food and drinks. Although Illinois has other locations such as the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Chicago Heights and Elgin, it's nice to see another entity promote the reuse of quality building materials right in the city. The ReBuilding Exchange is located at:

3335 West 47th Street
Chicago, IL 60632

Our garage has been a bit of a storage area for building materials taken / left over from Humphrey House that I was saving because I just couldn't see them going to waste. Now I know where to take them to give them new life when I clean out the garage next spring!

A New Look For 2009

2009-01-09T14:42:00.002-06:00

The Humphrey House Blog has got a new look for 2009 - don't worry you're still in the right place! Just thought we'd spruce it up a bit ... can you guess the three people who are featured in the header?

The Cats Pay Their Rent

2009-01-05T19:26:00.005-06:00

Or at least, one of them did.

Early Sunday morning, we uncharacteristically woke to the sound of our cat Cosmo sitting inside a plastic storage container in our bedroom, playing incessantly with a toy, as our other cat Merlin watched in approval.

Jen awakens several times and yells at him, "Cosmo, cut it out! We're trying to sleep in for once! Go downstairs and play!" But he ignores her and keeps slapping his toy against the walls of the plastic tub.

He finally crosses a line, and Jen gets out of bed to go over to him and shut him outside the room. "Ahh!! Jay! Wake up, Cosmo caught a mouse!"

Having been oblivious to all of this in my usual slumber, I groggily raise my head, and peek in the tub. "No, that's just one of the toy mouses we have for the cats. Go back to bed."

Suddenly, Cosmo removes his paw from the toy and we both see a tail that is much too long for the fluffy little pet store mice strewn about our house. Close by were two small but very distinct red splotches in the tub.

Yes, it was a real, honest-to-gosh, formerly living "Mickey" (as Rocco used to say). A mouse in our house. And whether it was Cosmo or Merlin, both cats were both clearly presenting their kill to us as a morning treat, surely expecting accolades and awards. It was hard to explain to the cats that people do not necessarily enjoy waking up to dead mice.

The oddest part of the experience is that there have been no signs of mice in the house. No chewing, no pooping, no nothing. Who knows where he came from? This weekend we packed up all of the holiday decorations, and completely cleaned and reorganized the basement. A lot of stuff was moved around. Maybe he slipped in from the garage (where we definitely have evidence of mouse). In any case, somehow our cats (both of whom are without front claws) caught the mouse, and delivered him. Ain't no little mouse living in this house!

And so, just a few days into 2009, the cats have already paid their rent.

Happy Holidays at Humphrey House

2008-12-23T15:13:00.000-06:00

Having passed significant remodeling milestones this year (i.e. having a working kitchen), we've found Humphrey House has become a wonderful home to host our families over the holidays. It started on Thanksgiving with Jen's parents and Jay's mom's family all coming over for dinner. The event went so well (and comfortably fit twelve adults and five children) that we invited everyone back for an early Christmas last weekend (actually, on the solstice last Sunday).

It's funny how well some of the decorations we purchased several years (and apartments) ago work so well in our home, especially around the fireplace in the living room and bay window in our dining room. They look like they were meant to be, resulting in displays that Martha Stewart would even be proud of!

The best part of the photo above is our fireplace. Shortly after purchasing the house, we learned that the chimney lining was missing several flue tiles. Unless we wanted creosote build-up to catch fire and burn down the house (which was tempting at various times in the past four years), using the fireplace is just too dangerous until the chimney is either relined or upgraded with a pellet fireplace insert.

Anyway, as we took our Christmas decorations out of storage and tested light strands, we found one balled up strand that was flickering white lights. Sudden inspiration struck Jen, and she put the ball of lights behind the fireplace screen, which instantly transformed the hearth from a black hole into a darn-near-perfect representation of fire. I still occasionally find myself caught off-guard the flickering out of the corner of my eye and wondering why the room isn't warmer!

After a few years putting decorating on hold, Humphrey House is very thankful for finally being done up for Christmas. It's been so good in fact, that Santa came by a bit early to wish us and our blog readers a Merry Christmas!

Solving the Stairway Dilemma

2008-12-15T08:02:00.002-06:00

One of the problems with living in a home during substantial remodeling is the sometimes piecemeal approach you must take to projects out of shear necessity and sanity. Case in point: our stairs from the second floor into the family room / kitchen.

This space was unfinished and open for a long time and was often a ground zero dividing line between living areas and work areas for different phases of our remodeling. And not being very experienced in trim carpentry, we never were quite sure exactly how to complete the transition. But after finally consulting with several people (who insisted it was much easier than we were making it out to be), we developed a sort of hybrid solution of various ideas.

First of all, instead of having the handrail terminate directly into the wood jamb and center column, Jay decided to use some extra plinth blocks he had to make a decorative terminal for the handrail, shown in the image here.

We still have plans to do a craftsman-ish trim design on the center column, which will focus on three raised pieces of oak trim, and to echo that triple motif, we decided to arrange the stair banisters in groups of three. Instead of the typical turned oak spindles, we wanted to keep the straight lines of the era and went with 1" rectangular spindles, shown here as we waited for the two coats of "Rosewood" stain to dry. Speaking of this stain color, it took a lot of experimenting to find a stain that best matched the vintage 1912 trim in the house, and we even mixed different stains together. But ultimately, the rosewood came to be the closest match and after a couple of coats, gave the depth and color that we wanted. Best of all, this is a water-based stain (not oil-based) so cleanup and any mistakes were a breeze to handle, and there weren't any noxious fumes.

Anyway, back to our stairs dilemma. While it was obvious that the stairway spindles would attach to the bottom of the handrail, we struggled with how to finish the bottoms. Should we create a bottom rail parallel to the top handrail that would be slightly above the stairs themselves, or should we carry the spindles all the way to the treads of the stairs? We decided to go with the latter.

Of course, none of this could have been done without Kenny's woodworking expertise, and Jay's meticulous attention to the painstaking detailed work of staining trim. Folks, if you're considering installing trim before staining it, please - learn from us and reconsider! It is very difficult and time consuming to go back after having painted to stain (you'll end up having to do a lot of touch up paint anyway!)

Anyway, although it was incredibly labor and time intensive for just a few square feet, we're very pleased with how the stairwell turned out. When its warm again, we plan to create some detail work on the center column that will echo the triple-pattern of the stair banisters. The plan is to have three 1-inch vertical oak trim pieces hanging from a horizontal band that wraps around the column, to lend the room more of a craftsman feel.

Stairway Plant Shelves with an Arts-and-Crafts Touch

2008-12-10T09:13:00.002-06:00

Ever since we "finished" our second floor in 2007, there have been a few punchlist items we've been meaning to take care of. One of these was to trim off the sides of our U-shaped stairwell with some finished shelving.

When we expanded the stairs from the original bungalow winder stairs into a standard-width staircase and landing, we had to demolish the old "cat walk" balcony that wrapped around the stairs. However, this left some large, 18" deep shelves flanking both sides of the landing in the middle of the stairwell. These would make great plant shelves as the windows in the stairwell are the only ones that truly face south and receive sun all year round.

While wandering through the trim aisle on a recent trip to the hardware store, we stumbled across this nice 2" oak trim with a very arts-and-crafts floral design cut into the oak. It seemed like the perfect trim piece for our plant shelves!

It may be hard to tell from the photo above, but the trim piece has a nice floral vine pattern that weaves along the whole length of the long shelf. Of course, we stained these shelves to match the rest of the new trimwork in our stairs and kitchen area, using a couple coats of a nice low-VOC water-based stain "Rosewood Red", which matches the original trim in Humprey House quite well.

Here's the finsihed plant shelf, already home to our collection of plants and Jen's herbs just in time for winter!

Lost Post: The Magic of Wallpaper

2008-11-20T15:36:00.009-06:00

A while ago, I was talking with a colleague who informed me that she had hired someone to hang her wallpaper. I have to admit, I snickered. After all we've been through at Humphrey House, what with the smashing and sistering and building and installing, the idea of paying someone to do something as simple as decorating my walls with some pretty paper seemed a waste of money to me. When the time came that I decided to try my hand at wallpapering, I was pretty confident it would be no big deal.

The space I wanted to wallpaper was fairly small – just one wall in a hallway, an accent wall if you will. About 18 square feet total. A simple project, one that no doubt I, with my super-amazing-ninja-like home improvement skills, could handle by myself in a Saturday afternoon. Plus, I had a vague memory of assisting my mother when she hung the strawberry vined wallpaper in our dining room when I was six. I was sure to be a natural.

I’m a humbler girl now.

My dad Kenny, my brother Brian and his girlfriend Megan were all visiting for a few days. And anyone who’s spent more than five minutes with Kenny knows that about 5 minutes of inactivity is about all he can handle. So whenever he comes for a visit, we better have a project ready. I figured Dad could give me a few pointers for the wallpaper hanging, and then he and Brian and Jay could work on the porch outside. Meanwhile Megan and I would, naturally, be finished with the wallpaper in record time and spend the rest of the afternoon lounging and eating cookies and watching movies.

Is everyone out there in blogland snickering to themselves yet? You should be.

Over the course of four hours we worked on that wall. And I discovered that, in addition to not being a natural at wallpapering, Megan and I should never be left alone in charge of a project together. While I really like her, probably the most of all the ladies he’s brought to meet me, Megan and I are NOT meant to work together. Unless it’s on a sitcom or horror movie, with a fully staffed cleanup crew to look after us. Within minutes of Kenny leaving us, we had spilled the water from the tray, debated vociferously about the importance of the butterknife’s presence in said tray, gotten paste all over the trimwork and spilled paint on the floor. And that was just the first 10 minutes!

It was, in short, a nightmare. One that Kenny had to rescue us from. He took over the project after coming inside to find us cleaning paint from our feet and the wallpaper literally pasted to the floorboards.

Did I mention the humbler part?

The next time I decide to wallpaper any part of my home, I am hiring a pro. Or changing my mind immediately and heading to the store to buy some nice faux paint. Because while the finished product is lovely and adds a nice accent, I prefer the illusion that my home improvement skills are top-notch, not bottom-rack.

2008-10-31T09:42:00.001-05:00

Where the heck is Humphrey House?

2008-10-26T19:54:00.003-05:00

We've been noticeably absent for a month or two from updating our blog. I'm starting to feel quite guilty about it, but the fact is there hasn't been a whole lot of time to write.

We've been busy with a wedding of our close friends Scott and Julie, hosting family, coordinating a 10k race, studying for the LEED AP, teaching classes, and occasionally, Jen and I have actually been able to have a date nite with one another!

Sadly, there are many stories about some of our recent house work that is just waiting to be told - and we have the photos to prove it! We'll have to get back on our blogging horse soon. In the meantime, be comforted to know that we haven't forgotten about humphrey-house.com; life has just gotten in the way a bit lately.

Humphrey House Musings ...

2008-10-07T12:58:00.004-05:00

"His house was perfect, whether you liked food, or sleep, or work, or story-telling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking, best, or a pleasant mixture of them all."- Tolkien

This past weekend, Humphrey House was host to eight members of my family who had come to town for a wedding, almost all of whom have at one point or another worked on the house. Then on Sunday, we had about 25 people over for a "morning after" brunch. And it was just lovely to have everyone there. Of course, the kids were disappointed you couldn't write on the walls anymore ... but it was great to know that the chances of them running headlong into an errant dremmel tool or accidentally knocking over a can of paint were slim to none. And everyone seemed to love the house too. They were all very interested to see the exact spot where Scott had fallen through the ceiling - but they had to use their imagination, since we finally (two years later) have patched up that hole. All in all, it was pretty cool to sit and enjoy the house with our family and friends. I am starting to look forward to Thanksgiving, which will be our first time hosting it with our family. Bring on the Turkey!

Green Home Tour Redux

2008-09-18T10:31:00.004-05:00

Despite Chicago receiving a record-breaking rainfall last Saturday, we finally had our Green Home Tour. After weeks of preparation, it was great to finally take a step back and take in what we accomplished, and show off our home to the 60+ people that came through to learn a bit about green building.

Looking back at where we were a month ago, I'm amazed at how much work we were able to get done in preparation for the tour. We'll detail most of these projects in upcoming blog entries, but here's the quick hitlist: Exterior painting, stucco painting, replacing broken glass and re-puttying our porch windows, interior staining and sealing of our kitchen trimwork, wallpapering, major ceiling and wall repairs to the dining room (and adding a tubular skylight), installing an arts & crafts stair banister, and putting together a rough landscape in front of our home. Wow.

In particular, the exterior painting turned out to come down to the wire. We had finished painting on Thursday, but it started raining that night and didn't quit until the day after the tour. This made it quite difficult for the paint to dry. In fact, two hours before people were scheduled to show up, Kenny was helping us dry the paint of our front steps using Jen's hair dryer. We had tented off the steps to prevent them from getting wet for two days, but there was just too much humidity in the air. It's amazing what a hair dryer and a little patience can accomplish! As always, Kenny deserves a big shout out for all the help he gave us to prepare for the home tour.

And for all of you wondering how our colors on the house turned out, we managed to snap a photo during a brief break in the rain on Saturday. Here's before, and now our house looks like this:

I also wanted to summarize some of the things we pointed out about our green home. Thanks to Michelle at Seven Generations Ahead for organizing this list and producing a nice tour program for our home and the others on the tour. I'm sure it will be a great resource for the visitors and their future green remodeling. Here is Humphrey House's "green" resume:

Energy Efficiency

Over 40 CFL's in the house
Soy foam insulation in gutted walls
Blown-in cellulose insulation in existing walls
Daylighting tubular skylights
Tankless water heater
PowerZoning air recirculation
Market-based electricity pricing

Water Conservation

Rain barrel
Low-flow plumbing fixtures
Low water usage laundry machine

Healthy Air Quality

Low VOC paints
PhotoHydrolonization (PHI) cell air purifier
Zodiaq recycled content / low VOC countertops
Reclaimed flooring

Resource Efficiency

Salvaged vintage doors
Salvaged appliances
Reclaimed windows

Rapidly Renewable Resource

Soy foam insulation

Locally Sourced Items

Soy-based paint stripper
Oak trim from regional forests

So, that's the virtual Green Home Tour of Humphrey House in a nutshell. We don't have some of the fancy "green bling" such as solar panels (yet), but we like to point out things that show that living or remodeling green doesn't necessarily have to cost a lot of green.

Green Home Tour Coming Up Soon

2008-09-09T08:58:00.004-05:00

We've been working oh so hard over the past few weeks to whip Humphrey House into shape in preparation for the Green Home Tour this weekend.

It's been a nearly murderous pace as we tackle all of the exterior painting, finally fixing Scott's hole and other repairs to the dining room, and finishing the woodwork and stairway trim in the kitchen/family room. I'm sure I'm missing a few things here, but we have been documenting the work and will post individual stories in the weeks to come once the dust settles (literally).

In the meantime, if you are in the area and want a tour where the money goes to a good cause, be sure to check out our home (and six other green homes) on the Seven Generations Ahead green homes tour.