Flooring Update

As you remember, last time I blathered on and on about the ugly carpeting in our bedrooms and the horrors that likely lie beneath. I thought we maybe had linoleum based on the age of the house but after further research, and talking to someone at Home Depot, I now think I was wrong. It does happen.

1880s-1890s linoleum would actually be super awesome looking, likely highly patterned like in this historic home:

This post suggests sheet linoleum in a marbled or swirled pattern would be authentic, not the checkerboard tiles that most people think of. Sheet lino is that stuff you sometimes think of in schools or hospitals that curls up the wall forming the baseboard. It's cool too. Here's some modern examples. As discussed previously, it's a natural material, made of a canvas backing and linseed oil mixed with powdered cork and other things. That's what makes it kinda squishy and comfortable underfoot. A lot of times when people have cheapo sheet vinyl, like my mom does in her kitchen, they say linoleum, but that is inaccurate. This is the stuff that is like plastic contact paper, and easily gets holes if you drop a knife. You can repair a knife cut in linoleum, it's like a starfish (not really but you can fix).

However, everybody says that if you have 9"x9" tiles that are rigid, it's probably vinyl tile. Vinyl tile has a lot of names, VCT for vinyl composition tile which has more limestone in it, luxury vinyl tile, or LVT, etc. A lot of the cheaper fake stone and wood-look tile I saw at Home Depot are vinyl tile. LVT is totally waterproof, made of polyvinyl choride or PVC, and is pretty new. There's also laminate flooring, which is basically a layer printed to look like wood glued to high density fiberboard. It is similar to IKEA particleboard furniture except high density instead of medium density fiberboard (MDF). At least in MDF there is a concern about formaldehyde, I'm not quite sure about HDF. Laminate is generally cheap and kindof crap.

Anyway, I have 9x9 tile, in a weird off-set grid pattern in black and white streaks. Much like this:

This is straight-up VCT. You can still buy tiles like this, but according to a comment on this post, most 9x9 tile is VAT: vinyl asbestos tile. Asbestos is a naturally-occuring mined substance used to make things stronger, heat-resistant, etc. It's a big business removing it but it's my understanding that it only really causes health problems when it become particulate and is inhaled in large quantities over a long period of time, mostly in an industrial or work setting. However, I'd prefer not to take too many risks, especially for my little cat who never leaves the house and has a small body. So after doing some research on local companies, I decided to take a sample and send it out to a lab to get tested! Wish me luck. If we do have asbestos, I might take the cat to a friend's house during demo and then get the air tested.

As you can see in the top photo, under the tile, and the paper or cloth backing, there's wood!

Angels sing.

AND we pulled up a corner in the bedroom and there's wood floors underneath and no tile! Thank you, floor gods!

This makes me think that the back spare room might have been used as a kitchen, once upon a time. That would explain why you would put vinyl tile (or whatever it is) in a bedroom, and I also learned that it is directly above the upstairs neighbor's kitchen so the plumbing may have been aligned at one point in time. The kitchen we have now looks pretty 90s, so if it was moved out there say, 20 years or more after the kitchen in the back room was built, that makes the likelihood of my tiles being in the asbestos era even higher. But still, there's hope.

Dimmer Switch

After my last super long post about the house, where I admitted I'd been putting off installing the dimmer switch in the kitchen overhead light fixture, I got a Monday off and decided to just go for it. It was really easy! I think anything electrical can be intimidating for a lot of people, but it's not hard. You just need to have access to your breaker switch and make sure it's turned off!

When I first took the cover off the old switch I was most intimidated, as the screws in my new plate would in no way be able to attach to the wall or the current regular switch box. I shouldn't have fretted because the friendly guy at Ace had already been through this with me twice, and because the new light switch box has differently placed screw holes.

The interior of the wall is, as expected in this house, truly horrible. The wires are wrapped in this gross dusty cloth. I ignored that. Basically you unscrew the original switch in it's little plate, which is easy, pull it gently a little out of the wall so you can get at the screws. In my case the screws were on the side of the original switch and the wires that came out of the wall were pretty thick and substantial, and they just bent around screws coming in the side of the switch box and the screws had been tightened over them to make the electric connection. This is much like the inside of a light socket, how the wires connect. The new switch had an easier kind of connection, where you twist a more flexible multi-strand copper wire around the thicker wall wire, making sure they are making a solid connection, and then you place the little orange plastic wire cap on the connected wires and twist it on.

Ours was a little more complex because it was a three-way switch, meaning there is another switch on the other end of the room that also connects to the overhead light. I didn't realize this the first time I bought a dimmer switch so that's why I had to go back to Ace. Basically in the three-way box, there's a black wire that was also labelled "common." This connects to the black wire from your switch box. The two other wires go to either of the two red wires. It doesn't matter which is which. I didn't have a ground wire which made me nervous, but also, whatever. Anyway after all the wires are connected you just shove them all back there in the box, carefully, not tearing out your connections, and then screw the switchplate back into the wall. Then the cover fits nicely with it's tiny little screws.

Here's the finished product! So neat and tidy. I tried taking a photo of the difference when it's dimmed but it's hard to tell, and the kitchen is super messy since I also just rearranged the stuff in the cabinets, so it's not worth showing. But you know what a dimmer does! I'm excited to have a nice dinner with less harsh, more romantic lighting. The whole project cost about $35 including the fancy 100W equivalent dimmable LED bulb. Not all LED or CFL bulbs are dimmable, so you have to make sure everything is going to work together. Old-school incandescents are of course dimmable but this is the 21st century so that wasn't an option for me. LEDs (and CFLs) do have a bit more blue light, which is less mellow, but you can get them pretty warm, just look for a K around 2700-3000K. These pictures are taken with flash so they don't represent the color of light at all, obviously the light was out while I was poking around the live wires.

Flooring Sadness

One of the bigger and more intimidating tasks on our list of things to do to improve the house is to rip out the carpets in the spare and bedroom. Both small rooms have this horrible tan carpet which is super dirty, stained, and dusty around the edges. Also after my bookshelf crashed down and some of my nail polish smashed, it has some stains of dark green nail polish. We both have allergies, and the carpet is just the absolute worst and needs to go. I'm sure you would agree if you saw it.

Most of the house except the bathroom has seriously decent wood floors. I don't know if they are hardwood or engineered, or original to the house. There are cracks between the boards that dirt gets stuck in, and some boards are slightly cracked or dinged, but on the whole they are in great condition. There isn't the thick layer of varnish you see in a lot of rentals. There are, notably, no nails visible. Also the boards are on the same level as the carpets. Anyway here's a corner in "my room" showing our great (dirty) baseboards, and the hideous carpet. That trim on the left is the same pukey brown that all the kitchen trim used to be, ew ew ew. Sadly we don't have any original doors, they are all kinda cheap-looking plain hollow-looking wood. Lame.

Ok. I decided I'd take the plunge and see what's below the carpet. Maybe it was hardwood floor?? I really hoped. I mean, maybe the house originally had wood floors? I just used some pliers to grab the carpet and ripped it up, it was easy. The wood around the edge has nails sticking out, it's this trim that keeps it down. The blue stuff is the top end of this padding that goes under the carpet. The whole thing smells kindof bad. I was really afraid this thing has been peed and vomited on by pets and there would be a horrible mildew situation but this was more of a chemically stale smell?

Gross. The specked stuff, which I love the look of whenever I see it in giant rolls, because it looks like these bowls, lifts up to reveal a paint-spattered linoleum floor. WOMP WOMP.

It kinda looks like it might be linoleum tile, based on the black and white sections. Although it's hard to tell having only looked at the corner. Real linoleum is supposed to have a unique smell, maybe that's the smell?

Here's a closer, nastier look. You can see the furring strips, but also that the baseboard looks like there might have been a higher floor at some point? See how the paint is kinda chipped away in the corner close to the furring strips, and it's like, grayer in a strip close to the ground? I don't know. That could just be from the carpet. God, it looks disgusting.

Linoleum might actually be the original flooring. Linoleum has been around since 1860 and was widespread in 1880s/1890s in the US. It's made of natural materials, unlike vinyl flooring, which it is sometimes confused for, which wasn't introduced in US until 1933 Chicago World's Fair. I think in art class in high school we used tiles of linoleum to carve and print with, because it's pretty soft and bouncy. Wood flooring, according to this source, was likely still a luxury (and it kindof still is). Houses might have a pine subfloor and then they'd paint it, cover in parquet or a "wood carpet" or cover in linoleum or oilcloth. Or carpet.

There is the possibility that this is a later addition, maybe vinyl flooring. I need expert advice, or even an uncle in construction. Anything. If it's vinyl, it could have asbestos which would make it a seriously more heinous undertaking. However it's unclear to me if real linoleum, assuming that's what this is, would contain asbestos.

Anyway a comment on this blog and all over, really, suggest that it's possible, though painful, to remove all the linoleum and find wood subflooring, which you can then refinish and they can be beautiful. Another worry is that the subflooring could be gappy and uninsulated to the basement. Pulling it up, putting down plywood, and putting it back in would be the recommended, and terrible, best solution then. The subflooring could look gorgeous if it's wide-plank pine, I would want to keep it light and natural, maybe a soap finish. We could, instead, just paint the linoleum? It's unclear since a lot of people talk about painting vinyl but call it linoleum. Or try to clean it up? 

ARGHH! I DON'T KNOW! HELP ME!

Vintage House Quirks

Hi! Welcome to our house! This is the view from the front window where the cat likes to watch the world go by. When I was writing this post about our house, I had a lot more to write but blogger somehow crashed and I lost a lot of work. 

When I first realized I'd probably be moving in here (March, almost a year ago) I got interested in the history of the house. I read this blog a lot and was super impressed by how Daniel tried to keep his (extensive, insane) home renovations true to the historic character of his 1865 house, and the other properties he worked on (because one home reno isn't enough?) Plus I like watching a lot of HGTV when I'm on vacation.

Anyhow I wondered how to identify the age of the house and the general architectural style. I looked at some books and pamphlets about Chicago architectural styles - Georgian, Edwardian, Victorian, bungalow, American Four Square, Dutch Colonial, etc. This article pretty clearly describes the "frame two-flat" but said the era varies from 1900 - 1920 and could be in a variety of architectural styles. Ours looked similar-ish to the illustrated Victorian, with the bay windows and dormered little front porch off to one side. But the descriptions of other architectural styles seemed to sometimes fit too. The exterior of our house has been covered in vinyl siding like most old houses around here, making it a bit harder to really tell what it used to look like. Then I remembered that our moldings around the windows and doors looked a lot like the windows in Daniel's old Brooklyn apartment, and he had said they were original and 120 years old, and that was in 2011. So I googled around trying to describe them correctly until I found some images of molding that looked just like ours with the date of the house they were found in. That confirmed the general ballpark era, and I was able to search around more effectively. I decided on 1887 although never could find the original building permit.

Here's the first picture I took of the moldings, you can kindof see here where I think someone sawed off (?!) the top bit which is like a little crown. I remember reading somewhere that back in period the house was built the moldings likely would have been painted white with patterened wallpaper on the plaster walls. The walls are still plaster but full of cracks, so many cracks. I am afraid fixing them is going to end up really expensive.

If you look closely in this picture, you can see the little crown. Sorry about the poor contrast in the photo, white on white was hard to capture well. First of all, I don't know why some of the trim has no crown and others do. The kitchen only has basic, boring trim around its three doors and two windows but it does have the super tall grooved baseboards the rest of the house is #blessed with. Second of all, look even more closely at the picture above and notice how the trim on the right side of the closet (that's my closet, you can see my striped dress poking out of the darkness) just disappears into the wall. WTF. This really gave me pause, because I was so convinced that the trim and walls were original and I couldn't imagine why they would have just designed it like this. It just looks so much like an afterthought, like they wanted a closet and put it in and then they were like oh, crap, the trim doesn't fit here, let's just cut it off, no one will notice. 

By the way, see how narrow this closet is? There was a folding door in there (you can see the tracks for it) but when folded, it took up precious inches and wall space, so I took it off. We don't use this room as a bedroom so it's ok with me to have it open (you know if you have your closet door open at night that's how the monsters get you). I'll show you my closet some time, it is a work of art how I squeezed everything in this tiny narrow space.

Back to the topic at hand, which is the crazy things going on with the trim in this house. Ok, this is basically my view right now, lying in bed, except we now have an IKEA light fixture instead of this broken sad thing. The acoustic tile drop ceiling is horrifying and I hate it. I especially hate the parts that are coming loose. But I can't do anything about it, and that's not the point of the picture. The point is where the diagonal line of the bottom of the staircase that that leads up into the neighbor's place cuts off the window trim. Daniel, my hero from Manhattan Nest, dealt with a similar situation on the outside of his house, and concluded that the windows were added later, disrupting the trim line, and so I wanted to conclude that the plastering over of the stairwell bottom was a later addition, but after noticing the closet trim abnormality in the spare room, I am wondering if the original builders were just not as detail-orientated as they should could have been.  I mean, it was a working class dwelling, built probably pretty quickly in a subdivided urban lot with a lot of basically identical working-class dwellings. I was raised in the 1990s version of this, and let me tell you that the builders are not always perfect artisans. However, the tract home nature of the house makes me think, wouldn't they have worked out the kinks if they were working on a plan that they did over and over again? But then again, I think that the original owner was a carpenter. Maybe, just maybe, he decided to take the plans into his own hands, but messed up a few details. I really like this idea. I now have a whole personality in my head for him (basically the dad from Home Improvements).

Now that I showed you the terrible ceiling in my bedroom, I might as well show you the even darker underbelly of it, as a further example of the madness that went into the multiple renovations of this old house. The light fixture that was here when my husband moved in (before I met him) was an ugly frosted glass dome with flowers etched on it that was held flush to the horrible ceiling with the three hook looking things you can see in the picture. One day the bulb blew out and I discovered it was a weird-looking tiny halogen tube. We didn't replace it for, like, a month. I went to Ace Hardware (which is located next to an Ulta, Kinko's, Pizza Hut, my phone carrier, and a coffee shop and across the street from Binny's making it basically the most amazing shopping strip ever) and found the bulb but it was kinda pricey and I hate the light fixture anyway, so I convinced husband we could replace the whole fixture, no problem. I wanted to install in the bedroom the chandelier which I had gotten him to help me install in the kitchen, and in the kitchen I would put a globe light I'd been carrying around for years since I found it in a dumpster. This is making me sound crazy and kind of awful, I know.

However, that plan was not to be. We took down the ceiling tile to assess how possible it would be to install the chandelier and found the scene above. The yellow line of wire comes from the light box, which is sensibly mounted into the ceiling, travels about a foot or so horizontally, and then goes through the foam-board ceiling tile to attach to the light fixture. The whole weight of the fixture is just hanging on the quarter-inch or less of foam tile that hangs on the cross-bars, which as you saw are not all attached to the wall and basically falling down. I reassessed my plan and decided to get something extremely lightweight and something that would detract attention from the ceiling instead of attract it, which in retrospect was a way better plan and a chandelier would have been a terrible mistake.

So we went to IKEA. It was amazing as it always is. I drank a bunch of coffee and bounced off the walls but managed to choose this funny paper lamp. Husband said he thinks his parents had a similar one in a different shape in the 80s, and it does have a sort of retro-futuristic style that I don't hate. Its a very different style from the classic 1880s/90s style that I was going for, but it gets the job done, weighs basically nothing, and has a lasts-forever LED lightbulb. I actually like how the dots on it mirror the dots in the ceiling tile pattern. Since we aren't going to remove and replace the drop ceiling anytime soon if ever, it seems a decent compromise. Once I saw what lies beneath the drop ceiling, which is open ductwork and pipes and a horrific collection of dusty wiring, I see why there is a drop ceiling, and lost interest in trying to tear it down. And after a month of crashing into stuff in the dark trying to get to the bedside lamps, having an overhead light is amazing.

 Here's some more pictures of the living room windows to apologize for making you look at the atrocities behind the ceiling tile. You can get a shot of our bay window, which is a pretty cool thing to have, actually. We are about half-a-story above street level, so we don't get a lot of light, but this window really maximizes what we do get. It's kinda messy; we've made some changes recently since we got terrariums for a wedding present! The cat and his paraphernalia get pride of place. You can see in the top photo the white globe on the floor. Around the time I was in grad school I walked past a dumpster outside one of the 1960s era buildings that was getting some mild renovations and they had tossed out some glass dome light shades. I took three -- two like this white one and one really huge, beautiful gray smokey glass. One white one broke almost immediately, all over my former roommate's apartment building lobby. The gray one went with me to several more apartments, used as a vase, a source of Darth Vader voices, and eventually I dropped something on it and it cracked. However, I knew I could use this globe and it would be worth it, but I needed lamp parts. I tried a lot of places: Ace, Home Depot, and a lighting store. I was finally directed to Midwest Lamp Parts, which is in a giant warehouse in a random part of town. We went over one day only to learn they are only open 9-5 Monday-Friday unless they feel like closing up for a few days randomly. Finally, ages later, I was sick enough to stay home from work but well enough to get in the car and drive over there. I was a little shaky and felt weak and feverish but I am very committed to this project.

It was amazing, dusty, jam-packed with light fixtures and well, lamp parts. I was helped by a Russian-sounding Orthodox Jewish man who at first seemed grumpy and was annoyed with me for not knowing the names of the parts I was looking for, but turned out to be awesome and nice once he realized I was planning to do all this myself. He made me an honorary construction company when he wrote up my invoice on a carbon copy machine. Cash only, of course. At this point I was still planning to put the chandelier in the bedroom so I got a whole new chain, ceiling mounting hardware, etc.

Putting this light fixture in was... difficult. Husband was not happy with me, because I can't reach the ceiling even on the ladder so he had to do all the hard work... four times because we couldn't get it right. It took hours, with lots of going down to the basement and back up to flip the breaker switch. There were a LOT of parts to get in the right order, and at the right height, and get the wires to connect. He is now officially done with DIY and I'm on my own, but all the ceiling-height work is done so I think I'm fine. Anyhow, we had bought the little (plastic!) ceiling medallion when we put up the chandelier, but forgot to put it up. It is necessary because there's a big ugly hole in the ceiling tile (this place and the ceiling tile!) that isn't fully covered by the light ceiling mounting plate thing (edit: canopy. See above where I don't know lighting terminology). I know it looks really tilted in the photo but it's not nearly so bad in real life. I bought the brightest dimmable LED lightbulb I could find, because the original light fixture (pre-blingy-chandelier) had 3-4 bulbs and the kitchen needs as much light as it can get. I haven't installed the dimmer switch yet mostly because I think the heat went off when I switched the breaker and it's just too cold to risk that. But it'll look so great on a dimmer when we have a meal at the table, or if we have people over! And I can crank it up to 11 when I cook, as I require professional-kitchen level lighting or I get grumpy.

In this photo you can also see the boring nondescript trim in the kitchen. The tiny bathroom is on the left, the two windows are on the wall to the left of that, and next to them is the sink and some cabinets. The door to the basement stairs and back porch is in the back. The door to "my room," aka the spare room, is in the right hand corner, and next to it is a strange piece of furniture we use to store liquor and spare glassware (we have SO MUCH glassware), and then cabinets on that wall include the stove and fridge. I want to replace the strange liquor cabinet with a nicer one, that doesn't have ugly faux-rustic metal scrolls on it. Maybe I could use one of our two identical leaning bookshelves, as husband and I both owned one before I moved in.

Here's the living room couch, which is a gigantic dark brown suede-like sectional. I was looking through my phone for photos of the apartment and there is a massive collection of photos of us and/or the cat on this couch, so it is basically where we spend 95% of our time. It is a little bit ugly but extremely comfortable. I got a lot of light-colored pillows to try to make it look better. I also put up one more painting on the wall as I thought this looked like there's a gap. I bought the map of the world that looks like a strange geometric shape for $20 at Brown Elephant thrift store. It's a Buckminister Fuller projection showing ocean temperatures, and it's awesome. Previously he (husband, not Buckminister Fuller) had a non-working weird modern clock there, and while I see (kindof) where he was going with the asymmetry, it just wasn't working for me. I don't want to hear that we hang the art too high-- we are both tall and the ceilings are tall and just let us live, ok? The tall bookshelf on the left has been mine since the apartment after college. It's a Billy and it's much more stable than the wider standard-sized Billys. My wide Billy fell down spontaneously in a giant crash on New Years Eve, after listing to the right dangerously for months, so I'm on the hunt for a replacement. The nice solid wood bookshelf on the right has been his since he bought it at a proper furniture store in New York. I tried to get him to let me spray paint the oval-with-cut-out wood lamp base gold but he said no. I just think there's too much dark brown going on in here.

See, he does love me! This was taken before the kitchen light installation, so I guess it actually proves nothing, except that we are weird adorable and I had just gotten a new phone to play with. This is taken from short end of the sectional couch. You can see the door to the bedroom and the cool archway opening into the kitchen with the spare room door open in the background. That's an IKEA rug and IKEA coffee table, and one of our two leaning bookshelves (the other is in the basement, awaiting its next role). See the strange underwater rippled effect on the blue wall of the kitchen? That's from the blingy chandelier! When I convinced my boyfriend or fiance at the time to buy it because it was on sale, he had a voucher, and it was fabulous,  I didn't realize it would do that, effectively dimming the light and generally just being Too Much. When I saw the same chandelier in multiples in a River North bar, I knew I had made a mistake. 

The blue walls with dark blue trim in the kitchen were another one of my ideas that I regret. Boyfriend did all the painting, but I gave him the idea, and now I feel guilty. You should have seen the walls before, though. They were tan with brown faux-aged sponging. I think the trim was a nondescript but beigeier tan. They were hideous. Together with the light brown wood floors, light brown wood cabinets, faux-aged metal chandelier, faux-aged metal liquor cabinet, and dark wood furniture, it was a brown abomination. However, white on white is what we should have chosen for the walls and likely will repaint. The apartment is too small for creative trim colors, in my opinion. 

Anyway, it's coming together, slowly. I try to get rid of things, style bits and pieces as I go. For example, I want get rid of a lot of glassware, which is so hard for me, and get some boxes or even shelves to contain the random mess on top of the cabinets, but more on that later. You can even see that I've improved the capacity of the spare room door to hold my entire 54 scarf collection. The issue with this apartment is that there are no closets besides the two tiny bedroom closets, so stuff that needs to be reasonably accessible (only long-term storage in the basement) has to be crammed in somewhere basically in full sight. I plan to address this partly with my larger, better, more sturdy shelving unit in the spare room. To be continued.

How I wake up early and go to the gym

Somehow, although I don't even recognize myself, I have become the kind of person who goes to an hour-long barre class before work almost every day. Before that, I wasn't a total sloth, but I didn't really ever work out for the sake of working out, except for a 6 month-1 year stint of Core Power Yoga a couple years back which hurt my knees. When I started this class in the spring, they have you fill out a little intro with how often you exercise and at that point all I was doing was the odd weekend hike, bike ride, or xc ski, and in the warmer months biking around the city a couple times a week. I have been going pretty religiously for about 9 months now. For awhile now I've been going only to the 7 am classes on weekdays. Not going to lie, it's rough getting up, especially after daylight savings as it gets darker and colder every morning. Here's how I am doing it:

1. Find a workout that is tough enough that you can brag about it a little, but not so tough that you won't go. This is the secret, I think. If it's spin classes or P90x or something called Sweat, I'm scared and disgusted and won't go, but I also want to feel like I pushed myself and got more fit. Bonus points for being able to see myself look more fit, and have other people see it too. If I don't have some trouble walking down the stairs afterwards, it's like, what was the point. Also, find a place with some kind of rewards program since getting fit is nice and everything but saving money is much more motivating. My friend said she used to go to a lunch-hour class where the instructor was particularly attractive as an added motivation.

2. Prepare everything the night before. I have the world's longest before-bed routine. I pick out my clothes and earrings and put them in my gigantic purse, along with any products I'll need the next morning to get ready. I grind my coffee beans and set my timer coffee maker with milk already in the cup and put it by my bed so I can grab it right after waking up. I prep whatever breakfast and lunch (leftovers) I'm lucky enough to be taking with me the next day. I have workout clothes already hanging up to put on. I hang them over a floor heat vent, so if I'm lucky they are warm when I put them on. I do my skincare routine at night and I don't even splash water on my face in the morning. This way, in the morning, I lie in bed, drinking coffee, looking at my phone, and cuddling my cat and husband for 30 minutes, then I throw on my workout clothes, brush teeth, put in contacts, and leave in 10 minutes.

3. Soften the blow of getting up in the cold and dark. I recently put a star-shaped lantern in the living room and put it on a light timer so as soon as I open the bedroom door to let the cat in, I can see it's nice soft glow. Hanging star lanterns were popular in Iceland in January when we visited, and I think they are big in Scandinavian winter/Christmas decor because they really help with the long dark winters. I also surround the bed with soft plush things like a faux sheepskin rug and my slippers so exiting the warm bed is slightly less painful. The next step is to get a gradual light alarm clock!

4. Minimal morning routine. After my class, I always shower. Quite frankly I am confused and disgusted by the girls who don't, which is 90% of them. Who are you, non-sweating people? Anyway I really only have 15 minutes from end of class to when I should head out to the train. So I don't wash my hair, I just leave it up, sometimes I wash my hairline/scalp around the bun which, you know, don't knock it until you try it. I've been using DIY deodorant; it's been an adventure. I used to use this spray moisturizer, or the regular lotion version which is provided by the locker room, but usually this step takes too long. If I'm in a hurry I do makeup on the train, but usually I do it there. I mix some SPF lotion with BB cream, or just do the SPF lotion if my skin is even. Sometimes I use some concealer, and/or mascara. Boom, done, out. The endorphin boost from the workout helps me to feel like I look great even if my hair is a mess or I didn't put on as much makeup as carefully as I would for a special event or night out.

5. Second cup of coffee. Eat breakfast once at work. Congratulate self.

*terrible phone picture is from my office window around 4:45 pm, to illustrate early sunsets and late sunrises.

New apartment, Old house

The apartment we live in now was built in 1887. The page on Trulia says 1889 but I'm pretty sure I found a record from 1887. When it was built, the neighborhood we are in now wasn't part of Chicago, but it's own town, Lakeview. Lakeview was annexed to Chicago in 1889 so maybe that's where the incorrect record came from? Chicago, always thinking nothing exists until they acknowledge it. So bossy.

Anyway I did a good bit of research into the history of the house, back in March when I realized I'd be moving in here, and recently as we've attempted some home improvements.  So this picture is from March, sorry about the view of the nasty snow. I am not happy about winter coming. You can kinda see our Scottish flag on the front porch -- it's blue and white.

Our apartment is actually a condo, it's us on the first floor, the upstairs people have the 2nd and 3rd floors, and another couple lives in the coach house. According to census records of 1900, there were about 17 people living on this lot which was laid out the same exact way it is now, including a lot of children, so I think it was even then divided into 3 family homes. I found a really interesting old fire insurance map from 1894 and the whole block was basically laid out in the same way it is now, lots of small narrow houses with coach houses in the back. Fun fact, in 1909, Chicago decided to just renumber a lot of streets. So I had to keep that in mind when looking up early records.

Lakeview was basically farmland from when the first white settler, Conrad Sulzer, arrived in 1837. Some brickyards provided jobs starting in 1863 and really hit their stride as Chicago had to rebuild after the Great Fire in 1871. Settlers arrived from Germany, Scotland, and Scandinavia. Around 1865 or so, land started getting sold off in big packages to developers who divided it into neat tiny lots, instead of plots getting sold here and there to individual small farmers and homeowners. Our house is on one of these subdivided plots. Around the time that this house was built, the transformation was basically complete from farmland/small town to densely inhabited housing for workers at the new industrial plants, factories, and other businesses. Some people still worked at vegetable farms near what is now Western Ave. A lot of the new immigrants opened small businesses, some of which are still in operation. It was pretty middle-class for the time. Some people who lived in this building between 1887 and 1900 were a carpenter (possibly the original builder??), a tailor who lived in the rear apartment, an iron worker, and a "filer." 

Our house is built on the model of the "worker's cottage" which was a common type of modest home, but was usually one-story while ours is basically 2 1/2 stories. A lot of these workers cottages were built in various parts of the city but most have been torn down, as they are tiny and Chicagoans in these fancy northside neighborhoods are terrible and hate history and want big new homes. Anyway ours was always a 2-flat, as far as I can tell which is fascinating because people often assume it was once a single-family home. Some research says that the 2-flats were often occupied by the owner on the first floor and renters on the top floors. But the floor plan follows that of the typical worker's cottage, which had steps going up to the front door, a front parlor often with a bay window, a hall or kitchen behind that, and two little tiny bedrooms off to the side usually with small closets. You'll note there is no bathroom included in the typical worker's cottage plan. I also read in some places there wasn't really a kitchen, but it was just like a shed off the back with a stove. I believe they used outhouses, even in the winter, which, ugh. This would explain why our bathroom is raised several inches higher than the rest of the floors and is poorly insulated, like it was kinda tacked on the back later. The kitchen is also clearly a late remodel so it's really hard to know how it was originally laid out, if it was part of the house at all.

I've been making myself crazy trying to find an image I remember from my early research. I was trying to figure out the style and general age of the house, and I came across a floor plan of a worker's cottage and it was identical to our floor plan. Then I was confused because actually we are in a two-flat, I think that was just a typical layout for the narrow subdivided lots of that time period. I have seen over and over that this type of building went up in that 1870-1900 time period. However, I can't find one with the same bathroom and kitchen layout that I'm expecting! They all have a bathroom in the middle of the house, which I guess could be possible? But I think it's more likely there was no bathroom at all originally. Where did people bathe though? More research is needed.

Famous on Instagram

My friend took a couple pictures of my apartment and put them on instagram/facebook awhile ago, I thought I'd put one up here:

haha the best thing here I didn't notice before -- her foot!

Post-Christmas Decoration

In my house, Christmas isn't over til it's over, and by over, I mean May. So early in January I made this cute wreath (I think it's cute) out of random evergreen clippings which I likely found on the ground. The wire frame is leftover wire from the IKEA curtain hanging project, and I tied it on with dental floss. The rocks are from Lake Michigan, either the dunes or maybe from the Upper Peninsula, and I learned on a recent trip to the Field Museum that the holes are actually caused by small crustaceans slowly burrowing through! I strung them on library cord when I had that library job where I spent hours in chilly stacks shelving forgotten European dissertations and re-wrapping Indian books from the 70s.

Studio Life: A Tour of My Stuff

So I did move into my own studio -- first time living alone, etc. I now camp out at boyfriend's house a lot and use the internet, because (gasp) I don't have it at home. No internet, no smart phone (that is now a lie because I got a blackberry from work), and no TV. But really, my sweet little baby apartment is too small for a TV.  

I feel like my windowsills are too cluttered with random stuff. But I like it all! My plants are loving all the sunlight, and I can display all the glass and lantern-like things that I own. You can't really see, but I made hanging vases out of old lightbulbs like the Pinterest-addict that I am. And yeah, I have Christmas lights around the windows. I put them up during the first snow fall in November and I think I'll keep them up forever.

My wee kitchen! It fits in the closet. After much delay and frustration, and with the help of boyfriend who almost gave up, I installed a curtain wire from IKEA and put up these IKEA-via-Craigslist curtains so that when I'm not using the kitchen (aka almost always, basically all I do is use the water kettle I got for Christmas, thanks mom & dad!) I can close it away and not look at it. I think boyfriend worries about the potential fire threat of curtain near the burners but I tell him I move it out of the way (and then I don't, good thing he doesn't read this.) You can also see so many other things I like in this photo-- the great sunlight, the dishtowel I bought at the Appalachian crafts center, the green & blue painting I got at STOP thrift store, and the perfectly-sized wall-mounted dishrack I got at IKEA. We went nutz at IKEA this last trip. Oh, and the keffiya that I use to cover up the random stuff in the bottom shelves of my little kitchen storage/counter furniture PIECE. (What are those things called?) (Relatedly I think its funny to call things a "piece" like they're a piece of art. It's like when the friend of my old hipster roommates said she wanted to open a "space" for artists or performances or whatever and I made fun of her to her face, or certain old hierarchicly-superior coworkers constantly saying "utilize" instead of "use" and I died inside constantly, or basically whenever most people talk about "culture." I am a terrible snob.)

Me, the snob, picking at the broken zipper of an old (vintage. ok, it's vintage) dress I want to sell on etsy. My apartment is tiny, but not too tiny for an ORB and a vase full of Christmas tree branches that I picked up from the ground outside of Big Star. Folding chair and stool: IKEA, blue chair and plaid blanket: grandma's house, bookshelf: left from previous tenant at previous apartment. On the bookshelves are my small collections of cookbooks, journals, fashion magazines I should stop reading, thermoses, and glassware with shiny rims.

New Studio Apartment

So, I'm off to a new apartment AGAIN. Let's see... this past place didn't make the blog because I was too busy to care about posting anything and I only lived there for 6 months. Before that was the apartment with dirty roommates in Pilsen, where I lived for about 8-9 months. Before that, my last place in Hyde Park (1 year), the brownstone with basement bedroom (1 year), my first post-college apartment  with a tiny purple bedroom (1 year), my college apartment (2 years), dorm II, and dorm I. Add in the mix a variety of non-Chicago or temporary living situations, but that's a lot of moving, y'all. Anyway, I signed up for 16 months in order to get a discount & no security deposit. And for the first time ever I'm living on my own!

 I went over to the new place and took some pictures while the previous tenant was packing up. She wasn't home but I totally judged her (kidding. not really).

The main selling point of this place, besides the ALL MINE aspect, is the window. I know it doesn't look like much in this terrible photo, but it faces south over some lower buildings and trees and notably nothing that seems like it will be remotely annoying (flashing police light and alley people were the major offenders, as was the loogie-haucking showering man about 5 feet away from my bedroom window in the most recent apartment). There is a lovely view from the 5th floor and tons and tons of sunlight. Seriously, this is all I've ever wanted. (It really is! Small: check, light: check, quirk: check, see kitchen, radiator: check, also, heat included BONUS POINTS, laundry: on site, check, cheap: check!)

The kitchen is literally in a closet. There is zero counter-space, but don't worry! I am making plans for various IKEA-related storage solutions (like a hanging dish rack) and I got one of those rolling kitchen storage / countertop bar things from my old apartment for free, so I can put that where that sad excuse for a futon sofa is right now. And the fridge will go in the obvious nook where it belongs and the closet doors will go back on the closet where the fridge is now. My sewing machine table and piles of related sewing crap will go in that closet where I can close the door on them.

The red wall and questionable scroll-y painting thing will need to go, to be replaced by "cocaine white" if I have anything to say about it. I have already made this request to the property manager but there appears to be a slight language barrier. I didn't use the word "cocaine" when I spoke to her, if you're wondering. I don't like off-white. Also, there is a bike room in the first floor of the building so I'm not sure why this tenant used crucial studio space for her bike, but whatever.

I probably won't use a rolling clothes rack as this girl did, given my previous failures with such things, but will put my lovely dressers in this walk-in closet / hallway to the bathroom. I think that I'll put my lavender boxes above the first shelf in this and the other closet to extend the vertical storage space, and also because there is no floor space for them.

My own bathroom! I got so excited last time I had my own bathroom and now I have my own WHOLE APARTMENT! Seriously this is all I think about these days. The walls in the bathroom are currently pink and I have requested them to be painted back to white. No pink.

I have not gotten to move in because the apartment does not become empty and painted and clean and available until this weekend. I had to be out of my old place last weekend so I am executing the famous and grueling TWO PHASE MOVE. Yes, it sucks. I hired the pros for Phase 2 because even though some of the most awesome friends ever came out to help in Phase 1 I was still all "never again." But once I get all moved in (and I have big plans -- or small plans, as the case may be -- either way I am blowing up Pinterest at amyinegypt -- that's how I waste my internet time these days) then it will be the most stylish studio the world has ever seen and maybe I will take some after pictures.

On Cleanliness

I've come to realize that I have a "thing" about cleanliness. So I live in this new, cheap, air-conditioned apartment, which is all well and good except for my roommates, who are lovely and friendly in every other respect, are lacking in home hygiene habits such as regularly removing the trash and cleaning the bathroom. I have no idea how in the past I lived with unacceptable situations such as cat litter (sure, defecate in the dining room or next to my bathroom, little animal! spread your little pee-absorbing pellets all over the place where I walk with my bare feet!). I cannot stand it now though. I do not produce tiny hairs in the bathroom, I hang my towels rather than leaving them wetly on the floor, I do not spill sudsy water all over the floor, I wipe away my general bathroom dirty presence.

In addition, I prided myself on the character trait of assertiveness, but that seems to have almost wholly deserted me in the face of these daily assaults to my preferred state of cleanliness. I think I feel that since I moved in after the roommates, I have no right to ask them to change their preferred method of living in filth. But I am paying rent, and I suppose I do. It's become a silent battle inside my head: do I ask roommate 2 to take out the trash which is almost all his anyway and is no longer nicely inside its bag because he stuffed it too full of beer cans and frozen pizza boxes (the manufacturers should start putting those in bags if they insist on continuing to produce them) and so therefore will be particularly nasty to dispose of; or do I just do it myself again? I have gone to bed resolving to choose the first option in the morning, but I still feel anxious. And I cleaned the bathroom before taking a shower (I prefer to clean my own body in a clean space) as a way to ease this anxiety.

Which leads me to my second point, which is that I consider my relationship to cleanliness neurotic because of its connection to anxiety, as expecting clean shared spaces is really quite normal. Exhibit A: 3 am, July 31, like 3 years ago, my roommate S and I are cleaning out our old apartment and moving into a new one a few blocks away. This apartment had been continually leased to about 6 years of students, we estimate, without the barely-legal landlords ever cleaning it or really, looking at it at all. We are the end of this line of roommates and must leave it empty and clean. Despite our landlord's general tendency to not give a shit, we also know that they can be somewhat arbitrary and vindictive. A few years ago, for example, we got eviction notices because they had lost our leases. So I am annoyed at the injustice of continually moving into dirty apartments that I am required to leave clean, for a faceless corporation that I hated. But since I also feared them, rather than leave the apartment just marginally clean enough to not get in trouble, I went totally insane. S refers to this as the "oven cleaner incident" wherein against his advice, I pulled the stove away from the wall and applied oven cleaner to the side to get off years of accumulated sticky gunk, and he had to make me go sit outside when I became light-headed from the harsh fumes. I was also cleaning the walls with Windex, pleased at how much dirt was coming off. At our final apartment move-out show-down, I compromised by leaving a dirty corner of the top of the fridge and leaving random cleaning supplies and related crap in the apartment for the new tenants who we knew were a bunch of not-giving-a-shit college students. This cleaning insanity is not only related to my fear/hate of my landlords, but is also a self-reinforcing cycle. Both moving and huge and somewhat unjust cleaning tasks cause me anxiety, and cleaning soothes anxiety, and I enjoy seeing things that I never noticed before were dirty become clean, and very quickly things get all out of proportion.

This picture is only somewhat related. It is my very dirty feet from the crap sandals I wore this summer, which were approximately $5 at CVS and left little cheap-metal dark spots on my feet and also caused me quite a bit of pain. My personal hygiene habits are not nearly as neurotic as my apartment-cleaning tendencies, but I do require clean feet & face to go to sleep under normal circumstances. This was one of the habits I developed in the summer I spent on a ranch in Wyoming working as a maid/kitchen wench (the term is "cabin girl"). The other habits are making my bed and whiskey. In one of S's rare dispersions of free psychoanalysis, he pointed out that an anxiety about personal hygiene that does not meet the standards of others (my mother, most prominently) may relate to episodes such as the oven cleaner incident. He might be right.