The Tree in the Driveway

The tree in the driveway

When we told our friends and family about the remodeling project we were going to take on, the common first question was, “are you going to take down ‘the tree in the driveway’?”

This beautiful white oak  tree was here long before either the house or its driveway was built.  And, over the past 50 some years, the tree has continued to grow.  Perhaps an oversight by the original owner?   Even with vehicles running over its roots for so many years, it has defiantly expanded into the driveway.  So much so, that more than one driver (and you know who you are), including myself, has hit the tree while backing down the driveway.  We have not let drivers leave our home without the warning, “watch out for that… tree!”

As it turned out, our construction project not only includes the driveway tree, but 4 other trees along the eastern edge of our property that were going to have to be removed.  Including two ‘heritage’ trees. Definition of  “Heritage Tree” by the Village:  “a tree having a diameter of 20 inches or greater at a point 4-1/2 feet above the grade at the tree’s base.”  So, this includes ‘the tree in the driveway’ with a diameter of 22″  and an American Elm with a diameter of 35″.  There is also a mulberry tree and two dead red pine trees in the zone of extraction.

Much of the terrain of the Upper Midwest was shaped by the same glacier activity that formed the Great Lakes.  The very hilly landscape with its many small lakes, rivers & creeks, deep ravines, marshes, fens and deep clay soil filled with glacier rocks probably discouraged early settlers from clearing the forests to create farmland.  As a result, there are pockets of heavily wooded plots of land in Lake County boasting hickories, elms, red & white oaks, maples, walnuts, and too many more to mention for this post.  My village of North Barrington is nestled in one of these beautiful settings!  Which is wonderful if you love old trees, deep shade, and amazing wild life.  But, not so great when you need to remove a tree from your property.

Our village adopted Tree Preservation Standards in 2001 to:  “Preserve trees as an important public resource, enhancing the Village’s natural character and heritage.”  This plan was adopted to not only preserve the character and maintain the natural state of our community, but to also protect the habitat of the existing wildlife, reduce soil erosion & storm water run-off, and enhance air quality through the filtering effect of trees on pollution.

This all affects us how?  We needed to obtain a ‘Tree Removal Permit’ ($).  In addition to the permit, we also needed to provide a Tree Preservation Plan ($). Meet the Village Forester!

Susan really is a very nice lady who lives in our neighborhood.  The Forester’s  job is to protect our trees. Her duties include the issuing of  permits and the approval of the preservation plans.  She also takes action when a disease infects a tree in the area to prevent it from spreading to others.  We have had battles with Oak Wilt, Dutch Elm Disease and, most recently, the Ash Borer.

To obtain our permit, Susan met us at our house to walk the property.  She knew before she made the climb up the driveway, that we were going to request taking down ‘the tree in the driveway’.  We had to hire an arborist to identify, tag and measure the trees in the construction zone (12 total, 5 are Heritage Trees).  We had to have a plan approved for the protective fencing around the trees in the construction zone that were to remain.  We will also need to plant new trees to replace the Heritage Trees that will be lost ($$).

This weekend the trees came down!

Pulling down the tree in the driveway

TIMBER!

And CRASH!

The remains of the elm

At ground level, the base of this elm tree was 48″ in diameter!

We have ended up with lots of mulch and firewood.  More importantly, we have three 10′ logs of white oak and three 10′ logs of elm.  The wood will be taken to a sawmill where it will be milled into boards.  My cabinet maker is going to pick up the boards and I will design something out of this lumber that will be a part of our house.  I can’t wait to see what we make!

 

 

 

A milestone in deconstruction!

We are not quite ready to start new construction, but today we achieved a great accomplishment….the garage is gone!

The concrete block wall starts to come down!

A new veiw to the east!

This was amazing to see when I walked out of my mudroom.  We currently have no windows on the east side of the house so we did not know we had this view.  Its great!!  Our new bedroom above the new garage will have this view.  I am very excited.

The house wtihout a garage

The dumpster that came yesterday, is full and will be taken away tomorrow.  Because it has asphalt shingles, the container will be sorted and the asphalt disposed of properly.  The Illinois EPA has many guidelines about what can and cannot be put into landfill.  We will have a special dumpster for concrete when the slabs that make up a patio in the back and the floor of the garage are excavated in the next few weeks.

As I look at this photo, I see that the fireplace chimney is leaning even more than I thought!  Good thing we had rebuilding the chimney is in the scope of work.

Yes, that is a pipe running horizontally in the air from left to right across the remaining concrete pad.  That is our gas line.  The meter is located where the east wall of the garage used to be. We use natural gas for the hot water heater, the clothes dryer and our cooktop.  The setup is really quite precarious and is only going to get worse.  The excavation  that is about to happen will not only wipe out the current location of the gas meter, but also the entire buried gas line that runs to the street.

Hmmm.  I am so glad I have my general contractor. Steve will contact Nicor for some kind of special hose, that will reroute the gas into the house to make sure we can still use our appliances for the next few months. I really have no idea how that will work, I think he tried to explain it to me.  But I only got as far as, “he was on in it!”  Then I tuned out and thanked God that someone else had figured this out and was indeed taking care of it!

Day 11, Progress!

There was still much activity, today.  Deconstruction is not yet finished, yet, today there was a completed project!  We have a finished front porch!

The concrete crew was very busy today.  This morning crushed gravel was delivered and moved to fill the the gaping hole that rapidly became my new porch.  The bobcat was very busy running back and forth carrying the crushed gravel to the pit and later running back and forth carrying concrete from the pumper parked in my driveway.

crushed gravel and rebar ready for the concrete

Bobcat picks up the concrete

Bobcat dumps the concrete.

I don’t think I have mentioned that when I went to college I wanted to be an architect.  My big state university (University of Colorado) did not offer architecture as an undergraduate degree.  The college of engineering, however, had a degree program in Architectural Engineering.  Sold!  There were classes in design and architectural history that were part of the curriculum, but it was essentially course work in civil engineering.  My major was structural engineering.  Although I did not pursue a career in engineering, I am still facinated by the process of building.  So I had a great day watching my porch evolve.

The concrete crew were not only so very nice anwering my questions, they also did an awesome job!  They were so meticulous in measuring and staking out corners and elevations.  They were artists in the final finishing.

finshing the porch

Ta Da…!

A perfectly finished front porch!

 

Day 10

I am not sure how much uglier my home can be.

The first invaders came at 7:15…the concrete contractors.  They began their morning in the pit that used to be my front porch.

progress! footings for the new canopy over the front porch

The next group to arrive were the crew my contractor calls, “the chain gang”.  They have been here every day whittling away the garage.

The Chain Gang up on the roof of the garage

The concrete crew got an early break while waiting for the inspector to approve the location of the concrete forms.

At some point this morning, Jose, my landscaper, appeared in my front yard, digging out the rest of  the salvagable plants to be replanted in a new home.  Thanks, Jose, you saved me from the work of pulling them out for compost!

The morning wrapped up with the arrival of a very large dumpster and the final topping on this landslide into ugliness….the installation of the Port-o-Potty.  They could not have found a more perfect location…the exact center of the yard.  No picture, you will just have to take my word for it that my eyesore of a yard can only get better!

I had a meeting at noon in Glen Ellyn with a client who is about to do some of the same things to their home.  When I arrived back home late in the afternoon I was welcomed by progress!

There is concrete in those forms!

It was good to see concrete setting up in those forms.  They will be back tomorrow.  I think I may get the front porch!

The remaining pieces of the roof

I really like the feel of the garage.  It was always too dark.  I am a bit concerned about rain.

This is what progress looks like

Progress is a little messy and, in most cases, very disruptive.  The bobcat you see in the picture is right outside the window of my studio where I am sitting writing this post.  I am about 3-1/2 feet  below grade in this room.  As if the orange protective construction fence wasn’t enough to block my view of the yard, the bobcat completely fills the space of the window I am peering out of.   Its very wierd to see it sitting on what use to be the front walk.

Although the house is looking uglier by the minute, the stuff we saved from the garage is haphazardly being stored around our house in very odd places, we are tracking mud into the house because our walking surfaces have been taken away, I have bumped my head on the overhang in front of the house while trying not to fall in the pit that was once my front porch, I am postponing client meetings at my studio until they can safely enter the premises, my son is complaining how he can’t turn the door knobs because his hands are so sore from chipping the mortar off the bricks, we have to move out of our bedroom and move into the smallest room for the next 6 or so months…… I do remember that I chose to do this!  I am so grateful that I have the opportunity and means to be able to answer the call of this poor house, “help me, please, help me”!

This project is a dream come true!  I wish I could just watch the action all day.  We are trying to create a house that will be built upon sustainable building practices.  Everything that can be recycled or reused, will be.  We are building this house to the current 2014 International Building Code, as well as the most recent building energy codes.  We are changing out our 1961 horribly inefficient boiler for a new high efficiency model.  As a family, we are passionate about leaving our little piece of the world better than we found it.  We want to leave a well built structure for a future owner that willhopefully appreciate how his home has stood the test of time!

 

 

It was quiet this weekend

Neither the contractor, nor his subs visited us this weekend.  However, work continued without them.

After John returned from dropping off the toxic materials we found lurking in the corners of our garage at a Lake County facility for proper disposal, he joined our son Aaron in literally chipping away the mountain of brick from the partially dismantled garage.  Aaron is being paid to chip the excess mortar off the salvaged brick so it can be reinstalled on the new addition.  We have to keep reminding him this is how he paying for books when he leaves for college in a few weeks!

They scraped and stacked 550 bricks that weighed in at 1.375 tons of brick!  He is now just shy of halfway to his goal of 1200 bricks.  He is contacting every college student he knows to come help him complete his task.

chipping off the mortar on a seemingly endless supply of bricks

I, too, spent the weekend prepping for the next wave of subcontractor invaders.  I was in the front yard deconstructing the garden along the driveway.  What the trenching company misses when they plow through the center of the garden to change the course of our septic field, the landscaper will finish off when they install a new retaining wall between the former garden and the driveway.

farewell to the front garden.

Before moving to the midwest, our family homes were located in a cities surrounded by concrete and skyscrapers, or urban neighborhoods on postage stamp size lots that demanded very little of our attention.  When we moved to this location, I went to the library to get a book on how to take care of a lawn, because we had plenty of it!

That book led to books on landscaping, perennial flower beds and finally my passion for gardening. I have spent the past 12 years carving out beds for my new found love of plants.  I am sure one day, John will come home and ask, “didn’t we used to have grass in the front yard?” Some people have a shoe fetish, others fine wine… I collect plants.  I can run into Home Depot to pick up a washer for the hose and find that a plant has jumped into my car and followed me home.

Over the past few months, I have had friends and neighbors show up with their shovels to take a piece of my garden with them to new homes.  I have pulled out a few to be replanted next season.  I am not sad about the change.  I have learned that gardeners really need to spend at least 10 years planting and tending their gardens in order to become a good garden planner.

Although my field is design, I work with structure and finishes that are static.  Once in, they stay the same.  So a space I design will pretty much look like I imagined it and it will stay that way until someone in the future decides to change it.  I have discovered that plants are dynamic, they will not be the same next season.  They could be much larger than the space I allowed for them, or they may not come back at all if we had a season of drought.

Things I have learned:

• I must resist the temptation to squeeze a new plant into what seems like a gaping hole in the early spring garden.
• I must use a plants in no less than 5 per grouping or I will end up with a cottage garden.
• I have a three strike rule, if a plant does not survive after it has been offered three different locations, it must be banished to the compost pile.
• I must stop buying the beautiful new variety of hosta offered each spring.  The deer tend to favor only the plants I have bought.  They are not interested in those I gained from splitting and dividing.
• I must remember that every three years I need to thin the Siberian Irises and get rid of the excesses.  I do not have the room or perfect location for any more!
• I must be content with astilbes, ferns and my new favorite…hellebores,  because they are lovely in my moist shade and for the most part, the deer igonore them.

I do hope I will remember these guidlines next spring when I start with a blank canvass along the driveway.

Deconstruction – Day 7

As the day was wrapping up, yesterday, this is what I saw parked at the end of my driveway:

The excavator is here!

Of course, I knew that someday he would arrive, but to suddenly have it appear as I walked out the garage was a bit unnerving.  The operater is storing it just to right of the driveway to be used on several occasions over the next few weeks.

I wish the orange finish would help it blend into the construction background, but it is really big!  Most newcomers to our house usually miss our house while they drive right past. This certainly makes it easy to find.

Did I mention that we are living in our house while it is remodeled around us?  I cannot tell you how grateful and impressed I am with my contractor, Steve Ostrowski, of Ostrowski Builders.  Our lot, under the best of circumstances, is very difficult to access let alone juggle the owner’s three cars and their schedules.  We figured we could swing it as we are not touching our kitchen, living room, two of the bedrooms, one bathroom and, most importantly, my office.

However, that decision, has complicated Steve’s life. The sequence of events will not be very staight forward. Today the excavator took out the front porch and sidewalk because Steve did not want  heavy machinery to damage a new septic system will be installed in the next few weeks. Also, we will need access to the house once the garage is brought down and the door to the mudroom will be closed.   The septic system had to be revised because, not only is it 50 years old, we need to move it in order to regrade the driveway. And the list goes on and on…

Steve has been awesome anticipating all the tiny details that will create smooth transitions during the deconstruction.  I highly recommend anyone considering remodeling, hire a general contractor!  Steve is not only managing the schedule of roughly 15 trades, he has been here everyday swinging a hammer and pulling brick off our garage.  I think I need to set up a mailbox for him, he seems to be here everyday!

I returned from a client meeting to find the excavator made progress:

A giant hole where there used to be the front porch

 

 

Deconstruction – Day 5

The brick on the garage has started coming down.

 

Deconstructing the garage, brick by brick

My thought was to create an addition that looks like it has always been there…that the house was built all at the same time.  And that requires that we reuse the existing brick.  And, why we didn’t just send in the wrecking ball to demolish the garage.

Our mason went out on a mission to find a supply of this unique Chicago brick that would make rebricking the new structure an easier task.  Alas, there is none to be found.

We did learn that this brick was originally made for the sewers in the city in the first part of the 20th century.  The brick has very dark splotches that are burn marks from being too close to the fire in the kilns.  In the 50s and 60s, this brick became popular in the Chicago suburbs in new residential construction. After its hey day during the mid-century building boom, there was no longer a demand for this brick for either city works or for new houses.  It has not been manufactured for over 50 years.

If you look closely in the photo, you will see my son chipping mortar from old brick.

 

 

Our fencing passed inspection

I was finishing up my second cup of coffee this morning when I heard a familiar voices outside in the backyard.  It was my contractor, Steve.  He has been dropping by often with different subcontractors to walk the site so they can bid on their piece of the project.

However, Steve had his nephew with him and several tools.  He informed me that since we had the go ahead to start, he was going to take out the deck, today.

We have been wanting to take out the very poorly constructed deck since the day we moved in.  It was a very weirdly designed, multi-level thing that has had us wondering what was under the deck that caused someone to add an upper level.

In my mind, I have been redesigning a one level, easily accessible, and more spacious deck or even a stone patio.  I have imagined morning coffees and large dinner parties in the private backyard space off the porch.  As the day progressed, I  became aware of what I had not imagined…I now have nothing.  That old, splintered deck that I so despised, had made a good platform for a couple of patio chairs that we could settle in to enjoy evening cocktails.  Tonight, as I step out onto a dirt field, with no patio furniture, I am trying to imagine sitting out in the lawn swatting misquitos for the rest of the summer.

 

Yesterday’s Deck

Home of our future deck

We are on our way!

The construction fencing went up on Friday.  My son’s comment from the view from his bedroom window is that the front yard looks like a petting zoo. I think it looks more like a maze.  It is quite orange and really clashes with the current paint finish on the house.  We are waiting for fencing inspection before we can begin the demolition.

The village we live in has a population of  3047.  We have 6 different Boards and Commissions, and 6 different Departments.  Today we are waiting on the Health Officer from the Village Health Department and from the Village Forester from the Forestry Department to inspect the fences.  As we proceed, I am sure I will be introducing many of the officers that have been involved in the process that has gotten us this far.

In the meantime, the Health Office will come to make sure our septic field is properly secured from any misdirected construction vehicles.  The Forester will make sure the trees and their roots in the construction zone are protected from heavy material or trucks during  the renovation.  Once they are satisfied, we can start the tear down!

 

Why I started this blog…

I have spent 30 years in residential architecture and design and I am about to embark on my biggest project….mine!

We moved to North Barrington exactly 14 years ago where we found a beautiful neighborhood, in a great school district and a not so perfect house on a very lovely lot.  The house is an early 60s split-level shabby (and not so chic) brick house that had seen very little renovation in its first 40 years. For me, it was not love at first sight, however, we succumbed to the cries coming from this ugly duckling, “help me, please, help me!”, and with some trepidation and great imagination, we vowed to fix her up.

I wanted to write this blog to chronicle our journey in our, hopefully final, renovation on this house.  I want to share our experiences with several different people:

• First:  for my future clients.  I hope this experience will make me a better designer, one with a greater depth of first hand experience to guide them through the maze of design and construction.
• Second:  for my current clients.  I hope to be very empathetic as we find ourselves in the same boat.
• And finally:  This is especially for my parents who live in Jacksonville, Florida.  I know they would have loved to be here to follow the daily progress.  So even if I do not post every day, they will stay current on the progress.  I credit my mom for the artistic talent I inherited. In high school she received a scholarship to take classes at the Art Institute of Chicago.  She would take the bus downtown from her home on west 51st street to attend the classes on Saturday mornings.  Due to life’s circumstances beyond her control, she did not have the opportunity to pursue her talent any further.  She would have made a great interior designer!  I credit my dad for my love of building houses.  He used to stop the car at any new construction site and we would trespass after hours to wander around a newly framed structure trying to figure out what the rooms were to become.  He was very active in finding me drafting jobs during summers and Christmas breaks during college.  He kept me supplied with all the necessary tools when we used to draft by hand.