Busy Busy

Everyone is busy. Unemployed people are busy. I've talked to guys in prison who've said they're busy.

The time normally spent watching tv, blogging, has been taken up by trips to Oak Hill Hardware and working late to finish repairs to our office and soon to be home.

Last week the one of my many trips to city hall was to arrange for my business occupancy inspection of our little office on Humphrey. 5 Inspectors!!! I hope they bring oxygen.

Our project on Utah is equally taxing, but more on the contractors than me.

One cool find was a stack of newspapers from ealy May 1927. What a trip. They are disintegrating rapidly and aren't complete, but reading bits and pieces of news about St. Louis in 1927 is wild. The real estate section is equally entertaining. Country residences in Richmond Heights!

St. Louis' Loss

St. Louis lost a friend yesterday. Marti Frumhoff, a colleague and part of the driving force of the St. Louis renaissance passed away.

She was one of my hero's, and will be sadly missed by all--whether we knew her or not. That's just the type of person she was.

Services will be held at Central Reform Congregation tomorrow (5/18/07) at 1pm.
5020 Waterman Ave.
Saint Louis, MO 63108
Phone: (314) 361-1564
Fax: (314) 361-2842

Virtual Memorial page

Grand Living

All weekend I wanted to go to the Grand Living Tour. Unfortunately, the real estate market has hit the 110% mark for me being busy. The closest I came was showing a couple about 15 homes in Tower Grove Heights, Tower Grove East, and Shaw during the tour. The neighborhood really looked fantastic this weekend. It would have been great to participate more in such a cool event. Undoubtedly next year. We're moving into our office next week and I can hardly wait!

Let the Games Begin!

We closed on our house today on Utah. Everything went smooth. Extra smooth.

Susie Gudermuth came by and gave us a fantastic closing gift. The original (possibly) exterior light sconces were restored and re-wired. We'll be finding a great place for them somewhere in the house.

Buying a big house is starting to get expensive. Being so used to things for a smaller frame house, our insurance cost us about double. It's a good deal though. We've been hearing of so many people's earthquake coverage being elimitated. Our new policy is a special plan for older houses that has earthquake and all kinds of other coverage.

Our other estimates are getting pretty hairy.

New HVAC system $40,000
Minor roof repairs $5,600.

The new MSD requirements state that if we replace our stack pipes, we also have to hang the pipes along the bottom of the floor joists and then re-do our lateral line. We want to have a good clean system, but wow! That's a lot of expenses. More will be revealed when we start lining up bids.

So far, our biggest question has been, do we keep the boiler system or do we go with forced air furnaces. Our tendency is to rip out the radiators which tends to upset a small group of people. What would be nice is a person who wants us to go with the radiators and is willing to pay the $24,000 diffence in costs.

Work Work Work!

I spent 2 nights last week working late into the night. Actually late into the morning. Our storefront is taking shape though. Some photos of inside progress would be in order. So far, aside from making an effort to clean up every day, we have had the tin ceilings painted in a cool bronze tone and are having the floors re-done presently. The electrical services were switched out too.

Our goal will be to start moving in by mid week.

It looks like getting the facade changed over, despite being pretty necessary, will take a while if we want to take advantage of the facade grants available.

Closing will occur on our house on Monday morning. I'm sort of in disbelief.

When my architect and I did a walk through and measurement of the place, it started to feel more real than it has.

We'll be up to our ears in contractors and bills for the next few months (or more) but the thought of city living is really starting to get exciting for us.

The Neighbors

The past week I've had a chance to embrace some of my new neighbors and to let some of my current neighbors know we are moving.

We shouldn't be totally "in" the neighborhood for both our home and business until June or so, but during construction we practically live there anyway.

I met Joe and Carmella next door to the office. It was great. Joe knew the modern history of our storefront for at least the past 50 years. One of the previous owners has been coming in and introducing himself to all of our contractors. I haven't met him yet.

Today I had the chance to meet a neighbor on our house, but I was late for my meeting with our architect on Utah and with the guy from St. Louis Development Corporation on Humphrey. Just like me to set up 2 appointments for the same time and be late for both. The bottom line is that I said "hi" and rushed by. Not the first introduction I hope for.

Hopefully there's room for redemption.

I get lots of opportunities to "test drive" areas when my clients move into them. Particularly downtown, it seems like the community is so much more "tight knit" than suburbia.

Being in it for myself, its different. It seems like people so far in the city really want to know you. In suburbia, people are cordial, but you only need to know so much when a half a city block seperates your houses.

More will be revealed.

When I spent the evening with my 2 boys last monday night, we decided to have a picnic dinner. The little guys love that kind of stuff. So I gave them the option of what park to go to and snuck in "do you want to go to the park that's by our new house?" So that's what we did.

Unfortunately it back-fired a bit.

The playground on the far east side of Tower Grove Park wasn't really all that cool in my oldest son's eyes. My 2 year old wasn't able to do much either. The park itself is spectacular, but getting the boys to appreciate it isn't that simple. If I had more time before it got totally dark, I would have tried to find the other playground pictured above. It's apparently more their speed.

To me it was sort of an attempt to explore the city with them.

Like a typical suburbanite, I've really never done a whole lot with my family in the city (they did LOVE the Hartford Coffee Company). My wife and I come in and work here. We dine and entertain ourselves here, but when it comes to our kids, they pretty much stay in the county.

More explorations will obviously be forthcoming.

Any parents out there with the scoop on playgrounds would be most appreciated.