After a while, all rubble looks the same

 Deep into the demo stage.

Not many surprises, and some of them are good. (See previous post. We will be keeping the subway tile in the kitchen)

Primary Bathroom

Primary Bath, floor

Primary Bath

Note the window

Small Guest Bath

Small Guest Bath

Guest Bath

Guest Bath

Still working out a few details about wood selection, floor coverings, and tile selection.

Heading to Houston in a week, new photos will be relying on the contractors.

I won't say anything about the door knob, but maybe later.

Slight change in design?

 This is what we discovered when we torn off the cabinets on the south side of the kitchen:

Don't look at the lath and plaster, look at the tile:

Pristine.

So we are now contemplating saving all the subway tile (which is original to the house) in the kitchen.

Personally, I would love this solution! I think it has a lot of character, even if some of the tile that has been in the open looks a bit, well, "used". 

I prefect the word "character"

(That green stripe is our neighbor's awning)

There is almost NO grout between these tiles! Crazy.

We are zeroing in on a couple of other items, too. The wood type for the upstairs woodwork (Black  Walnut vs Birch)

More later.

Some images

 Northeast corner of the kitchen:

Kitchen table, countertop, coat closet and pantry

No more table, no more cabinet. The soffit is next

Doreen at the table, cabinet along the south wall of the kitchen

Another image of above

South wall of the kitchen. The hole there is where the clothes chute goes

Close-up of the lath and plaster

Kitchen Cabinets. Keep you eye on that little shelf under the cabinets

No more cabinets. But you can still see the shelf

Small radiator in guest bath

Same

I only have a couple of other photos. This is moving pretty fast, and I am sure I will miss some in the meantime.

This is not fun for me.

Demolition Contiues

 Rumor has it that it will take about a week to complete the demo. I hope that is the case, as we are probably heading back to Houston not long after that. 

We have great faith in our team, but it will still be trying without Doreen here to ride herd on the process.

Some of the fixtures we have saved for later use

You can see the "Expulso" in the upper middle right of the photo, and the "Ejecto" in the lower right.

There is a lot of chatter about those two toilets online:

That is a new Blogger trick.

Maple Tree

 

On the Oak Leaf Trail by the Urban Ecology Center. 

Just because I think it is pretty.

Demolition

 It is finally happening. 

We closed on this house on December 28th, 2003.

We spent last summer here from the early July to late October.

This year we arrived in early May, and will leave in early November.

Throughout all that time we have been working with our architects, our general contractor, our landscape architect, and various skilled craftsmen and trades. All to take a perfectly livable house (well, ALMOST perfectly) and turn it into something that reflects our needs and wants. Mostly wants.

There have been a lot of false starts, and a lot of revisions as we have seen plans and made changes. 

We have need surprised at costs, and worked diligently at "Value Engineering" to address those things we have to have, verses the ones we want to have.

Then, on Sunday morning, the first change happened.

Our cool old stove:

was gone.

Donated to what we hope is a good home.

And then with our demo permit in place, and our asbestos testing coming in negative, the first demolition started in earnest.

The "Ejecto" has been ejected.

The Pink Sink is sunk

My beloved Cherokee Red linoleum has been blocked and reported

The Expulso has been expulsed

This is hard for me to watch.

But I know that while all change is loss, and loss must be mourned, you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.

So here's to the old Bogk, and on to the new Bogk. Broken eggs and all.

A new perspective

 Adam took our landscape plan an laid it into a perspective of the house.

Makes it look quite nice! (Thanks, Adam)

Next up, some demo photos! 

Moving Out

 Demolition starts next week.

We are moving out of the house tomorrow.

We have the best neighbors in the world, and three of them offered to let us stay in their places while construction is on-going. The folks right to our east, and I mean EXACTLY to our east, have offered  their carriage house for the duration. It is a very nice, and well appointed one bedroom, one bath that looks out onto the Bogk house.

View of the Bogk House from the Carriage House

We have moved clothes, some kitchen goods and supplies, and various miscellanea that we will need while we are still in Milwaukee, as well as the items we will need for the drive back to Houston. But I can tell you this - even if you have been in a place for a relatively short time (under two years) you have a lot of stuff in your kitchen and bathrooms, which are the rooms that are being renovated.

We moved our stuff over the course of two days, and I believe that we made at least 15, maybe 20 trips in the car. We would load up our boxes, drive the 0.2 miles to the carriage house:

then we would walk with the 10 boxes or so we could fit into the car up stairs, unload them, go back down and start all over again.

It was very tiring.

Moving along

We have our first permit. (well, our second if you consider the COA from the Historic Commission that we needed to move the fence around the trash bins) It is a demolition permit for the bathrooms and the kitchen. Our Architect (Adam, I mentioned him earlier) got this done on a rush basis so we can start the demo before we leave Milwaukee. Thank you Adam!

Sunrise over Lake Michigan, 13 October, 2025

We had to have a "Certified" asbestos inspector look at the rooms. There was a lot of asbestos used in the old days, and you can see why. Cheap, fireproof, flexible. Also, Charles Manville, (from Johns Manville)  lived right behind (to the east) of our house on Wahl Street. So I would expect they might have gotten a deal. I did not see any asbestos in the areas where we will be working, but you never know. But the inspector took some samples, and will send them off to the lab. We already had the linoleum floor tested, and it came back negative, so we are hopeful that the same thing will happen with the other tests.

The inspector has some ideas. He said he was very familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright, and was "surprised that we didn't have an acoustic ceiling". Huh. He also said that Wright "usually" put some sort of radiant heating in the ceiling, and then blew on asbestos "flocking". News to me, but you never know. I believe that some of the two story Usonian houses used heating in the ceiling/floor to increase utility. But I can tell you this - heating a ceiling is not a great way to heat a room, since hot air rises.

Rainbow a few minutes after sunrise

We are tracking down lots of little bits right now:

Pulls:

Locks:

Wood Types (getting a report from a colleague of our Nephew at the Forest Product Research Lab) so we can make sure our new builds will be the right stuff. (Black Walnut downstairs, American Gum (Sweet or Red) upstairs, most likely)

Bathroom fixtures:

Bits for the fountain:

And more.

I will not lie, Doreen is doing 95% of the work. But I am a key employee.

I will post before we skedaddle from Milwaukee