Mill Ivory
Monday, June 10th, 2024 10:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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62F and sunny this morning.
I ended up not doing anything at all on Sunday.
I didn't mow the lawn, or even drive Sheila's china to the storage unit.
My back did feel better, but I figured it could still use another day, and that became my excuse to just not do anything.
So, last week was kind of a disaster, with the move at Ferry erasing two of my mornings, and leaving me wiped out for a third.
And that move, plus another at PVHS, compromised my back enough to erase the weekend.
And now it's the 10th of June!
Okay, I called Offer Heroes and set up a phone consultation for tomorrow morning.
I decided not to call Mr. Taylor directly, because it's been weeks since we last spoke.
After that I went to ComEd and put in a stop service request for July 3rd.
I then went to Aurora city water to do the same, but you can't cancel your service unless you've sold the house.
I'm on hold with the garbage service at the moment.
I was back in 213 all shift for a lazy day of painting.
I started by sanding the two walls I'd patched late last week, then I vacuumed up the dust.
Then I had to primer the walls, they were so dirty, and had so many patches from the millions of staple holes.
It wasn't until after lunch that I edged and rolled those two walls with Mill Ivory, and then got a start edging the final wall.
But by then it was 9PM, so I cleaned up, put my stuff in the closet, went back to the shop for 15 minutes... and left for home.
I say it was a lazy day because it's so casual and quiet there in the summer.
Nobody's in a rush.
People stand around chatting.
When I go for smoke breaks in the car, nobody's around.
Very different from the days of Cloud!
Even though I was often alone in that building, there was a very rigid, monotonous routine to follow... and, of course, I was usually sweating while doing it.
14,000 steps minimum, every night, and half of them with a backpack vac on my back.
By comparisson, today was 9,929 steps... and I'll never wear a backpack vac again!
I'm happy to have gotten this promotion to Potawatomie, but sad it didn't come sooner.
Because I worry now that once I'm in that studio apartment, life's gonna feel a little pointless and lonely.
Spending this past weekend here, doing mostly nothing, didn't feel relaxing or fun.
Instead, I felt guilty, for not mowing the lawn... and sad, about all the memories I planned to make in that back yard, that now will never happen.
I worry that once I've moved... recording my music, and doing my other desktop based hobbies will feel pointless and empty... because I'm not also fixing up a house, walking a dog, and taking care of two cats, several trees, and a lawn.
But, as I've said before, I can still take care of plants, at least.
And I will still be doing maintenance... just at Potawatomi, instead of a house.
And I may not have a dog to walk, but I can still take walks downtown whenever I feel like it... and play Pokemon Go.
This house would have been a huge money vacuum for the rest of my life, with all the work it needs.
And I haven't forgotten last January's arctic blast.
Just recently, after finally clearing out the music room I discovered a huge gap where the floor used to attach to the north wall.
That's a gap to the crawl space!... which has it's own gaps in the mortar on the south foundation wall under the side porch.
The music room is part of the south wing, which includes the kitchen, and there are similar gaps in that floor where it meets the main house.
Those gaps, and a new, very long crack, on the wall in the music room behind the door... are all evidence that the south wing is pulling away from the main house!
And it's probably pulling away, because the mortar between the foundation blocks has disintigrated.
And this is why the downstairs and basement were so damn cold last January!
Because the south wing crawl space is essentially open to the air outside... and that air can then get through into the basement, and up through the floor gaps into the house!
I had thought, back in February/March, that the south wing foundation just needed tuck pointing.
And that would technically work...
But if the foundation's so compromised that the whole wing is pulling away from the house?... that would mean extensive tuck-pointing, of the entire crawl space, inside and out.
That would re-solidify the foundation for another 60 years... but the floor gaps would still have to be filled in with something.
And it would all probably be WAY too big a job for me to deal with myself.
So, it could well be that... for as much as I romanticized the idea of, "keeping the old gal afloat," she was always gonna tear apart and sink with me and the pets inside it!
Because she's just too old, and was neglected for too long.
So, it could be that the foreclosure was a blessing in disguise!
The pulling away of the south wing, I'm fairly certain, has been accelerating in just the last five or so years.
Because back in early 2018 we had, a full on polar vortex, where it got down to 29F BELOW at it's depth... and the downstairs was nowhere near as bad as it was just last January, when the worst nights were only 13F below.
The daylight seen through that foundation from the basement was new, just this year.
The gaps in the floors, and the crack in the music room wall... also new in just the last few years.
So... righ now, it may be just a few years away from the tipping point, where the foundation caves in, and the wing pulls off and collapses!
If you lose the wing, you immediately lose the side porch and the back room, as well.
It'd be a catastrophe!
I'd think the two-story part would remain standing, but that would depend on how much damage the wing collapse did to the south wall of that frame, as it ripped away.
We'll see if I can get Offer Heroes to take this house off my hands for any price.
If not, I may just have to hang on to it after the move, for a while.
My two options then would be;
- Deed in Liew of Foreclosure: in which I give BMO the deed, rather than waiting for them to foreclose, which could take months.
- Condemnation: in which I talk to the city, and they condemn it.
I'm not sure what's entailed with either of those procedures, which is why I'd have to just keep owning and insuring it for a while, to find out.
If I'm right about the south wing... the house will almost certainly be torn down... by whoever I sell it to, or whoever BMO auctions it to.
Unless they write it off as a loss, because demolition isn't worth it... and sell it to the city for condemnation.
In the case where it's condemned... the city could just let it sit here and demolish itself!
Cleaning up a south wing collapse, after the fact, would be cheaper than tearing it down.
And with abandoned houses, there's always the possibility that crack-heads, squatters, or teenage ghost hunters, could accidentally burn it down!
That's exactly what happened to the old Masonic Temple on Benton & Lincoln.
The city condemned it... then put a chainlink fence around it, and let it sit there for another decade until it mysteriously burned down.
I personally would like the house to become abandoned and be a legit haunted house for a while... before burning down.
Ghost hunters should have the chance to get scared out of their wits by this old DIY relic of the victorian age, with no electricity in it.
And it should go up in a blaze of glory at the end.
And... you know... that could buy Natalie time to grow into a mighty oak!
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