Planning, Planning

Masonry is in full swing this week, along with second floor demo, and the beginning of the electrical and plumbing.  The place is humming with activity (in English, Spanish, and Polish) in every level.

The brick layers are engaged in closing old window openings and opening or modifying others per the plan.  Since it had been a two-flat, many of the old window openings were duplicates and now just don't apply anymore.  In general, most of the spaces aren't being used as they were in 1885, so new openings are being cut into the exterior.

The facade has been entirely shrouded in this blue tyvek-like construction fabric, to contain the dust and bits of whatever is flying around up there.  There is a fair amount of work to be done to bring this facade back to near-original state, but when it is done it should be nothing short of fantastic. I looked at many Chicago two-flat buildings when I was doing the initial property search, and I wanted one with one with a strongly figured facade. This one certainly does meet that requirement.  Now to un-do 100+ years of "deferred maintenance".  There are number of stone finial ornaments that that used to sit atop of the arch as well as these pilaster-like protrusions at the parapet (see the main picture on the blog, you will figure out what I am talking about), which had been removed and have been sitting on the roof for years.  They were probably taken down as they are heavy - and their support structures are all pretty deteriorated.  The fear of them falling off and injuring someone below was very real!  Time to fix this and put them back where they belong. 

Below:  The nasty, concrete and steel stairs that had been present for probably 20+ years are finally history.  The door which had been below the stairs is now bricked up, and will be covered with limestone cladding just like the surrounding stone.  The front entry door gets bigger - it will extend down to the lintel below as there are now two steps down to the door on the interior - this is part of the design which will allow the pitch of the exterior stairs to be thankfully (forgivingly)  lower.  The old stairs were pretty steep going down to the sidewalk, and made for a sometimes scary decent when it was snow / ice covered in the wintertime.