Frozen (No singing involved.)

No, I haven't abandoned the blog! It's just that there hasn't been a lot to write about - until recently.

Those of you who live in Chicago know that it is just coming out of one of its worst - if not the worst - winters on record, with crazy amounts of snow and freezing temperatures. Of course, this also means lots of frozen and burst water pipes.

We've had problems with frozen pipes in our ground floor bathroom each winter since we moved in, since it had at one time been converted from (we think) a sun room and was poorly insulated. And since it wasn't accessible from the basement, there was no way we could re-insulate it ourselves without tearing up the floor - or circumventing child labor laws to get a kid to crawl through the tiny planked-up hole outside.

Here's what access to that bathroom looks like from the basement:

Not much to look at, is it?

Removing the hand-stuffed insulation in the hole and peeking in, it's obvious that the pipes are wrapped in insulation, but not well. There are plenty of gaps where the metal of the pipes is obvious.So far, we were able to keep burst pipes at bay by just crossing our fingers and letting the taps drip, but it just wasn't enough this winter.

I well remember walking into the bathroom to check on the already-frozen pipes and hearing a gushing sound from beneath my feet, then dashing down to the basement to turn off the water that was already flowing from the hole. Fortunately, not much was damaged as the water made its way across the floor to the basement drain - and since each of the bathroom pipes had a shut-off valve, I was able to turn those off and then turn the water back on for the rest of the house. Now the question became what to do about the bathroom, since the only way to fix the pipes was to open up the floor. Thankfully, we now have an insurance check in hand that should cover all the repairs - and once those are complete, we plan to start on a full remodel.

Now that I've covered the backstory for our new project, let's get to some pictures! To give you a sense of the project and what we and our prized helpers (i.e., a sledgehammer and crowbar) found during the first stages of demolition, I'll start with some 'before' pictures.

BEFORE: West wall (bathroom door)

BEFORE: North wall

BEFORE: East windows and south vanity

BEFORE: South wall

Not too bad so far, right? Not great - lots of wasted space, windows blocked, and fixtures that are not to our taste. Also some water damage where the drywall meets the shower frame. The fixtures and floor will go, but the walls and windows are all good, right? Wrong. Check this out:

Nothing obviously wrong? Look closer.

The window frame has been butchered.

In order to get the vanity as close to the wall as possible (heaven forbid you lose an inch of space in this big room!), the former owners actually cut giant chunks out of the 100+year old window frames. Makes me sick. This won't be an easy repair job, and I'm not yet sure whether we'll be trying to pull out the old pieces and replace them entirely, or find a way to blend and patch the holes with new wood.

Once the fixtures were out (including the shower tiles and the drywall behind them) it was time to bring up the tile and the concrete backer underneath to reveal the wooden floor and the holes in the walls.

No more tile!

Getting the shower tile off also mean taking off the drywall

Fortunately, one benefit did reveal itself:

Wait - what's that on the floor?

Crawl space access!

And that's where we stand for now. It's amazing how cold it is in this room - and there's a serious breeze coming through the holes, so we'll have to do some hardcore insulating of the space and the pipes after they're repaired. Our handyman won't be able to start on the pipes until later in April, though, so don't give up hope if it takes me a few weeks to post anything else!