Two storms, only hours apart, worked their way through Villa Park, IL on Thursday, Aug. 23, destroying thousands of village trees, and leaving many residents without electricity due to downed power lines.

The first storm was so powerful, and so damaging, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich designated DuPage County a state disaster area. I have heard conflicting reports as to what the strom was. These reports range from a storm with a bunch of microbursts to a low grade tornado. Nobody seems to be able to get the story straight. Doesnt really matter, the damage is done. Hell, even the O’Hare tower was cleared for the safety of the controllers. SO you know it was bad.

I lost power for 4 days. I also took about 6 inches of water in my basement due to the power failure killing the sump pumps and the battery backup not working like it should have. I lost parts of the big tree in my backyard, and my landscaper, Nick Renello (630-532-9301), was on top of it the next morning, removing all of the debris from the yard. By the way, Nick came up with the inexpensive solution to my back yard flooding problems I mentioned last year (See This post).

“It looks like a war zone” said one of my closest friends and neighbors when he arrived. Trees were uprooted and broken, very few streets could be negotiated in my neighborhood since they were blocked by fallen trees. The last estimate was about 1500 trees down in our town.

I have to give credit though. The village was on top of things. Our trustees were out talking with residents. I spent several hours with Trustee Dave Hegland at the Funky Java coffee shop on Friday, which had both power and internet access, thus giving me a lifeline to my websites. Dave was full of alot of information and made me feel a little more in tune with what was happening. Our Public works deparment worked through the night on Thursday clearing streets so you could get from place to place, our Police department was out almost immediately helping with traffic, and our Fire department spent several days helping homeowners do many things you wouldnt think of, such as refilling oxygen bottles for VP residents that were without power.  I commend all of them. As I told Bob Neimann, our Village Manager, I couldnt say I was satisfied with the Village’s performance, instead, I had to say that I was quite impressed.

ComEd did a great job as well, suprisingly. They called in many many crews from other states and had our power restored much faster then I could have hoped. Even Comcast had Cable back up pretty quick.

I saw many of our residents out helping others. Extension cords could be seen running across streets to share power from generators, and I saw alot of neighbors were helping other neighbors with tree removal. I love it. This is what a neighborhood is suppose to be.

Here are a few photos I took the night of the storm. (click the image to see it full size)

         

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Took me awhile, but I finally got our new bathtub installed and working. All seems to be working well, no leaks, whirlpool works great. I cant wait to actually use it. As you can see, I have the room insulated and the plumbing *almost completed. As I am off to Detroit tomorrow for a few days, I will have to wait until the weekend to work on the bathroom more. Next, a little minor electrical work, enclosing the walls with tile board and drywall, installing a new door.

 

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As I promised a few days ago - I started the bathroom remodel today. Several hours of work got the tub enclosure area free of all tile and most of the plaster. I left one wall of plaster because I need to cut the plaster & lath straight so the new wall of drywall and tile backer board can be blended to the old plaster and lath. You can see here how much debris just this small amount of wall created. That is actually the second full garbage can.

and now - all cleaned up:

As you can tell by the hammer - I started to try to remove the bathtub. Being that it’s cast iron, it was pretty heavy, so I’ll have to wait for my buddy Dave to help pull that out. Yes, we’ll be removing it in one piece. Cast iron tubs are very hard to cut and very hard to break - so pulling it out in one piece is the only real way to do it. Hmm — Might make a nice garden planter in the yard…

I broke some of the existing ceramic floor tile to investigate what was beneath. You can see 3 layers. The current tile, below it is an old asphalt tile floor, and beneath that is a real old mosaic tile which was most likely original to the house. That makes it 80 years old!  Shame I cant restore that..

Here is a cross section of the walls I’m dealing with. You can see the plaster and lathe on the right - and then you see a layer of drywall and then, what im guessing another laywer of plaster topped off by wallpaper and then paint. Lots of changes for this bathroom over the years. Im not sure what I’ll be able to do here. Im hoping to take the floor down to the mosiac, but I may have to pull the entire floor and put down a new subfloor…  Ugh - not fun.

A real dissappointing find as well, no insulation in the exterior wall. (seen here between the horizontal boards)

This means its not likely ANY of the walls in the house are insulated. A tough fix. About the only logical way to fix that issue is to reside the house at some point and in the process to use a foam board insulation on the exterior of the house under the new siding. Not a cheap proposition, but one I expected to do at some point.

SO, thats day one of the bathroom remodel. This is the first of 3 bathroom remodels by the way. Also - the fixtures arrived today. The new whirlpool tub, toilet and vanity. ALthough, Home Depot delivered the wrong size vanity, and will be switching them tomorrow. I have to say this for Home Depot, they do make mistakes, but they rectify them without complaint. When I put in the Sliding Glass Doors, they sent the wrong doors, which we didnt learn until the install was almost complete. Home Depot not only replaced the doors the next day, but also credited me 50% of the door price for my troubles. I am really impressed with their customer service.

More to come…….. Hope all is well…

 

 

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Already bought the tub, an American Standard whirlpool tub with heater. Bought the vanity today. Still need tile and plumbing fixtures and accessoories like the mirror, towel racks, etc..

 This will be complete renovation. I am going to be taking the room completely to the studs and removing the walls. When I replace them, we’ll have tile 5′ up the wall except in the bath which will be completely tiled. 

Materials Ihave already bought will be delivered on Monday, and I expect to get started with the demolition on Monday as well.

One thing I have been  thinking about since I’ll have a rather large tub by comparision, is changing the water heater. I have a 50 gallon gas water heater. I have been thinking about a tankless water heater. They save a good amount of energy because they heat the water as you need it and dont store water like a conventional water heater. Because they heat the water as you need it, you dont run out of hot water. So you can have 3 people take a shower one after the other and have hot wated for all three. They also qualify for a $300 energy tax credit. which cuts their $800 price tag considerably.

 Down side, I dont know if its really all that much savings month to month. So it may not be a urchase qualified by the numbers.

Anyway - I saw this toilet - Hmmm - I gotta wonder how it would work out:

 

Kinda cool but — Eh, I thiink I’ll go with the Kohler – 

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