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.

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.

Color Inspiration at AIC: Ceramics

 Went to the Art Institute Museum awhile ago and actually remembered my camera. I've loved the ceramics in the Asian wing since my long-ago ceramics class but have recently gotten into them more for the colors. Unfortunately due to my own incompetence I forgot to fix the white balance but you can pretty much figure it out. The last three are in the Middle Eastern art wing.

 This one claims to have a "pseudo-inscription." The only thing I can guess that means is that the writing means nothing. It doesn't look to say anything to me but I'm no expert. Anyway what a cool idea! I used to be, as a kid, very into gibberish writing but to just stick it on your plate seems... awesome.

 I'm obsessed with the roughly-painted blue glaze over the low-relief high-detail background.

Next up: kimonos.

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.

Summer, Longing

Summer in Chicago is absolutely the best thing ever. My new roommate stood on the porch and declared: "Another day in paradise!" Yet yesterday I was in a funk, feeling that it's slipping away, that I'm not DOING what I want to be doing, that summer will escape without me grabbing it and shaking the living daylights out of it. It bothers me that I can't just let it happen, that I feel the need to wring it out completely. I think sometimes blogs and the internet makes this tendency worse-- when all you see is swimming holes and sunbathing and glamorous beaches and boats and impossibly beautiful women lounging in the sun, and running through sprinklers and BBQs and fires and backyards and and AND AND (seriously though click on my links, they're some of my most-read blogs and/or most summer-evocative posts). I think this is also, for me, compounded because I am only part-time employed and am waiting on a "real job" that will be "fulfilling" and "pay my bills." (I had a real unconsciously Scarlett O'Hara moment the other day, declaring to myself that I'll never borrow money like this again!)

Anyway, I feel this way when I travel sometimes too, the urge to suck it all up and DO THINGS and HAVE EXPERIENCES and not waste time lying in a hostel bed even if I am feeling sick or tired or really actually enjoying reading my book on the roof or whatever. I think it's a fear of the winter, of the dull months where I don't do anything "interesting" when I'll wish (fear of regret?) that I'd not spent my summer mornings inside typing but outside biking and swimming and being gloriously deliciously happy. I don't think it should be this way. When I take a nap on the grass in the sun with a friend, I shouldn't (shoulda, coulda, woulda) feel a twinge of sadness because this feeling will end. Not everyone does.

I think it's why we document, photograph, try to prove to ourselves that we're taking advantage of things before they slip away (suddenly, I can't imagine what it would be like to have a child, growing up and away before your eyes). This morning, I took back up my planner to which I'm devoted when working and in school, and wrote in what I've done this summer. I've certainly been busy, social, having fun, doing summer things, but it gets overwhelming, somehow. It's very graspy, it's very anti-Zen. It's much easier for me to let go of bad feelings than good ones, which I want to preserve like the summer zucchini in my fridge.

Pictures: by my friend T + Instagram of me at the beach, by me of my friends on the 4th of July.

Clothes for Grown-Ups

I went to Forever 21 yesterday with a friend, even though I'm morally against the throw-away and ripped-off fashion of stores like that, sometimes in a moment of weakness I cave to the lures of fast, cheap consumerism. A week or so ago we'd gone and I tried on an orange loose drapey dress, and I couldn't stop talking about it. My friend had picked it out and told me to try it on -- usually I avoid loose silhouettes, and orange, because it clashes with my hair.

 

There it is! It was nowhere to be found when we went back to the store last night, but I found it online. It was both more expensive and less cute than I remembered, but still a good dress. I ended up buying something "overly sexy" on super-sale. It's short, tight, black and a subtle purple print, vaguely reminds me of a wetsuit, has an exposed black zipper all the way up the front, and has enough coverage for a bra. I'm in love. I don't usually go in for both short and tight, but the rest of it is perfect, and at least it's tough and sexy rather than little-girly and sexy.

Anyway, I was surprised at how few of the dresses there look alright on a tall person like myself. There's just gobs of very short, kinda frilly, flowered dresses that would have looked adorable on me if I was 5. I've noticed a few bloggers seem to go in for this kind of silhouette with a short full skirt, but when I dress like that I feel infantilized and also nervous that I'm flashing the whole world every time the wind blows (which is constantly, because this is Chicago). I actually really like these bloggers, but maybe this style is just not for me. On the other hand, the whole conflation of childishness and sexiness really bothers me. Add my voice to the growing crowd asking for a more grown-up, vintage-inspired look for women. While the femininity signaled in "vintage" clothing is also problematic, I'm much more comfortable in a pencil skirt than a short ruffle.

I hear dudes expressing some kind of interest in "sundresses" and I think the short floral dresses is what they mean. And they look awfully cute on the models, but that's maybe because the photos are cut off above the knee! When you see some girl tugging it down all the time, it's less cute. Heaven forbid she try to bike (not that I can bike in my new dress either). Am I being a prude?

I'm Afraid, I'm Afraid!

I'm moving! I found a place. Things fell through with my dear friend with whom I was going to find a two-bedroom for the summer, so I looked alone for rooms. I found a ridiculously cheap room in a beautiful three-bedroom in Pilsen, where I worked last year. I know the neighborhood well from working there, and while it's not the most hip neighborhood, it's hardly at all gentrified, which is exciting, and also a little scary. My beloved neighborhood is green and lush and rich and gorgeous, with some cheap-ish student housing thrown into the mix. This neighborhood is Mexican and urban and (a lot) grittier. So I'm living the bohemian dream, I guess: cheap cheap cheap rent, hipster stranger roommates, working-class neighborhood, vintage building.

I'm terrified. Not of what could happen (you can get mugged anywhere, even friends can turn out to be annoying roommates) but of... newness, of change, of losing my intimacy with my neighborhood and having lots of friends right down the street. I think it's the alone, cut-loose feeling that scares me the most. And moving away from the lush green beauty that is my neighborhood. I took a whole slew of pictures of flowers one summer in my neighborhood, this rose is one of a profusion.

But, change causes growth, right? I think I need to re-read the Unbearable Lightness of Being, by Milan Kundera, like Jane posted about the other day. When I first read it I was a little too horrified by the main character's infidelities to care about what was being said philosophically. I also tend to turn away too quickly from a philosophy that seems existential enough to give up on striving to be a better person. But, I the questions, as Jane poses them, really resonated with me: "Should life be light or heavy? Should we pursue untethered freedom or bind ourselves to one another and to place? And can we know which is better when we have only one shot at it?" What a thought for a moving day.

Moving is Such Sweet Sorrow

Actually, moving is just sad. It's exciting to think of getting a new place, but very unsettling to me to have roommates leaving, a mostly empty apartment, all their stuff in boxes, all before I've even found a new place to live! Yikes. I tend to be really laid-back about apartment-hunting, trusting that something will come together at the last minute, it's not like I'll be homeless, maybe if I wait a bit longer I'll get lucky... etc. And often, I do. But for all this laissez-faire (or laziness?), I'm kind of a "nester." I feel so uneasy in my heart when my home is in upheaval. I'd like to think that I'm ok living out of a suitcase, but I think that's only the case if I know that my Stuff has a Home somewhere. And when I've lived out of a suitcase, I got very into routine and making a room full of someone else's stuff feel nice and like a mini-home. Anyway, here's our dining room, the bookshelves are all packed up and you might be able to catch a glimpse of the kitchen insanity behind it. This room has a lot of my stuff in it so it looks partly normal.

 Except, of course, for this wall of boxes.

The living room is going to be completely empty except for that little bookshelf as of tomorrow. OH MY GOD. I kind of like empty apartments, their white walls and seeing the floor all the way to the walls. It feels weirdly relaxing, free. But yeah, a little lonely.

As for my apartment search, my problem, I think, is that I'm TOO flexible. I feel like I could live anywhere, so it's hard to narrow it down. I'm basically like, oh it's cheap? Awesome. Let's take it. No closet? Basement? No problem. I saw this quote from Otto Dix, the German artist, on Eilis Boyle's blog, which I found today via Ill Seen, Ill Said:

"I'm not that obsessed with making representations of ugliness. Everything I've seen is beautiful."

It struck me, what a wonderful problem to have, everything I've seen IS beautiful. The ugly places have charm, the dark points in life have wonderful, resilient people that survive through them. I've wanted to write about this before, but I've really struggled recently with reconciling the beauty and happiness in life with the sadness and harshness that I see, not as much in my own life, but in others. We all have a lot of sadness, and sometimes it can seem like that is deeper or more real than the joy and beauty that is also flowing in and around and through us all the time. Theoretically, I believe they have the same strength but it's hard to be sure. Throughout this last year I've felt like I'm swimming in extremes: witnessing some of the worst parts of human experience but also some of the best. I guess I've always been willing to take suffering very seriously, but it's become important to take joy with the same "seriousness," afford it the same status in my view of the world.

So that's all rather abstract, but has to do with the same empty-apartment feelings: it's sad, but freeing, lonely, but exciting, and you have to just deal with those both at once.

On the Hunt Again

 I'm on the apartment hunt again! This time, I'm finally moving out of the neighborhood where I've lived for almost 7 years (!!!) I love my neighborhood but I'm ready to go. I've been looking at places on the FAR FAR other side of the city, which is a huge pain, but it's a great neighborhood and I think it's time for a change. Unfortunately, as always, apartment hunts are a huge pain, especially with roommates with differing schedules and preferences. Tension always ensues. As I remember from Egypt, it's pretty all-consuming when you're doing it by yourself, too. But on the bright side, you get a glimpse at the kinds of places that people live in all around a vast city.

 Notice how this toilet is at an angle to the wall? THIS MADE NO SENSE. Also, talk about all-white.

 World's tiniest kitchen. I LOVE IT but don't think I could find a roommate who would. But it was a great location. I'd live there, but I have low standards, apparently.

 Oh god, this place was beautiful. Old building, vintage features, lots of sun... but it's also practically in the suburbs it's so far from the center of the city. I am not a New Yorker, therefore, I do not have to live in the Arctic Circle to get reasonable rent. But oh, how I long for this apartment.

 LOOK AT IT'S CUTE SUNROOM! (look at my faithful apartment search - helping friend! the best kind of friend!)

 The kitchen is half-janky, half adorable vintage. It's got no cabinets, but a huge pantry with a window, random shelving, an ancient metal sink, a new stove (actually not yet installed...?), old linoleum but adorable back porch. I don't quite know what to make of it.

It's in a really cute building! In a really random far-away neighborhood! I don't know what to do!!!

Ok, here's another place. It's so hard to tell if a place is nice when random people's stuff is all over the place. Is this a reasonable kitchen? I do not know. BUT the doorway to the outside was taped across the bottom and super old-looking, making me think: drafty, icky, bad. I have a high tolerance for old and crappy apartments, but... life is short.

What's hilarious to me is that this was obviously a Muslim family, but what tipped me off wasn't the Arabic wall-hangings but the sectional sofas. What is it about putting seating all around every wall? The one time I went to an actual Egyptian's apartment, they had this going on too, and it worked because they had like 20 relatives over chilling out in the room. Behind the somewhat excessive seating, you may be able to see from my crappy pictures that there is a lot of windows going on here-- on THREE sides of the room. Awesome. I would lose the curtains.

Again, cute building. Also, it was on like the only hill in the city, which was kinda cool.

Happiness

I'm not sure if this video upload will work. I like the flash of green light, though. I took this on a loooong bike ride back from work one windy day, earlier this spring. It was just so beautiful out, and one of those days you feel so full of life you can barely contain it.

Domestic Concerns

Today was pretty horrible and depressing, despite a middling to good day at work, I was ridiculously tired and irritable and impatient coming home. So I cured it the best I know how: a long bath (with school reading to feel virtuous), laundry (new Unique purchases! finally got the plain white button-down every style person seems to think should be a staple of every woman's closet), some cleaning and straightening up, cooked up some healthy food (chickpeas and chard, with onion, garlic, and garam masala) for dinner and for two small lunches in the future, mended a couple things, made some dye from the red chard stems (don't quite know what to do with it, since I added vinegar it might not really work as a food coloring), and orange juice.

I sound so boring! But really, puttering around the house is a great way to cheer myself up on a dreary day. And tomorrow is supposed to be much warmer so I'm taking hope.


 Took the picture a couple weeks ago on a pretty sunny evening.

Spring Fever, New Orleans Edition

"It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want - oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!"
-Mark Twain

So.. all that I was saying about accepting what I'm given and being ok with winter? Well, I went to New Orleans for a visit last week and it shot all those high-minded plans all to hell. New Orleans was warm and beautiful, and I was less than pleased to come back to a chilly, rainy, gray Chicago. I still love Chicago, really, I do, but am starting to think that it might not be so bad to live in a place that makes me happy.

We biked around the Crescent City, and I was continually just overwhelmed by how gorgeous everything was. Azaleas blooming really gratuitously, beautiful old homes, flowers and sunshine, morning coffee on balconies and a glass of wine outside in the evenings. The plants are familiar to me, but even more tropical and gorgeous, so it has the relaxing quality of going home, but it's also a city with a lot of cool things going on, indie shows, coffee shops, things I thought I would give up if I left the big city. I have some big decisions to make coming up, so any input would be welcome, especially if you know New Orleans!