If mythic Greek hero Hercules, famous for his strength and courage, lived today, one of his labors might be as a general contractor bringing a 19th Century house into the 21st Century.
That’s what Cheryl McCabe and Carl Gergits learned during revitalization of their Victorian two-flat in Roscoe Village. That and the fact that such an endeavor is definitely not for the faint of wallet.
It didn’t take long to learn that preserving the exterior and updating the interior was going to be more of a challenge than they anticipated. Just one piecemeal rehab project actually — the gutting, insulating, drywalling and replacing of vintage plaster in the building’s entry lobby.
After one fiasco that involved insulation and vintage doors, Gergits, an architect and vice president/senior technical coordinator for A.P. Epstein and Sons International Inc., went to work on a thorough plan that would ensure the couple realized their dreams.
That was 1996. Nearly 10 years later, the financing was in place, the permits obtained and demolition began in August 2005. The makeover, Gergits and McCabe found, was a lot quicker than the financing. In 10 months, about one-tenth of the time it took to get the money together, the makeover was complete.
And the end result was impressive. Their house was the North Side winner of the 2006 Chicago’s Painted Ladies Competition sponsored by the Chicago Paint & Coatings Association, a coveted honor among Victorian homeowners.
“There were several winners, but I think what makes our house stand out is that we used mostly modern materials rather than the usual cedar and pine,” says McCabe, who served as general contractor.
“The clapboards on the sides of the house are Hardiplank Lap Siding,” the brand name of a fiber-cement siding (cement mixed with fibers and molded), she gives as an example.
Many of the exterior decorative elements are Fypon, a plastic composite — “which means no rot, no bug damage and substantially less upkeep,” adds McCabe. “We went to a dinner for the awards ceremony, where others were complaining about the work to keep up their homes, but we won’t have that problem with the materials we used.”
“What makes this house attractive is you can actually build it with new materials, but create the same aesthetic you had in 1890,” says Gergits. “The decoration makes it different, but it is a very modern home [inside].”
Other modern elements, such as the aluminum for downspouts and the caulking, inspired the color scheme of the house as both come in an easy-to-get cypress color.
The Hardiplank Lap Siding comes in standard taupe or white — McCabe had it painted two custom coats of the cypress green. Michael Miller of Victorian Painting did the painting, adding colors such as sage, forest and wicker green, pumpkin and red miso, a lively architectural polka of color to the gingerbread trim.
The couple put in new fish scale, diamonds, squares and other trim in cedar wood on the front “because the 2 1/2-inch cedar wood looks more delicate,” says Gergits. “We couldn’t keep from doing some things with a few more details,” he says. “If you are going to do it, you might as well do it right for a little more money, so it looks original.”
But he used the 4-inch cement board, which is non-combustible and won’t rot, on the sides, where it won’t look large from 30 feet below. The corbels, the brackets, spindles and window trim are all Fypon.
Meet Gen. McCabe
A nearly mythic heroine herself was McCabe, whom her husband says was “general contractor and drill sergeant,” on site daily when she wasn’t running around looking for lighting or ceiling fans.
She had played the same roles with the house they had previously built on a nearby street and was armed with lists of subcontractors. She gained so much experience, the former bank employee jokes about qualifying for “a general contractor’s license.”
Today, the couple can laugh at their war stories, but not all seemed funny at the time. Such as the day their subcontractor whose primary language was not English, called Gergits and said, “The house is moved!” What he meant was that some of the walls were out of plumb, a problem solved by padding with wooden frames.
When they did the first rehab in the early ’90s, Gergits and McCabe left most of the plaster in place. “We dug out the cracks, spackled it, and repainted it,” says Gergits. “The cracks would always come back.” This time they did all drywall. And PVC pipes went into the walls.
“We ended up with a brand new building from the bottom up,” says Gergits. “Save for the perimeter walls and the 12-by-12 pitch of the roof in the front of the house, from the floor up, it is almost a new house structurally.”
But they had strong motivation, says McCabe. “We had wanted to do this for so many years, but we also thought about how much money it was going to cost. We thought maybe we should just build condos on the property. … But we really have always loved this building. “We really love Roscoe Village and know so many people here, but there is no way we could afford to buy anything close to the quality of what we have built here if we started fresh.”
Gergits’ design reconfigured the interior, which was basically in “shotgun” or linear progression. The original house was 25 feet at the widest and about 62 feet long. (It is now only about a foot longer.) The interior was dark, with small rooms and no shared light from adjacent spaces.
He removed interior walls and put in a skylight over the living room, which retained the height to the roof. But not all challenges had to do with construction. McCabe, who loves traditional style, put in Wood Mode bead board cabinets with recessed doors. She ordered a burgundy Viking double-oven stove and a 48-inch side-by-side Kitchen Aid refrigerator.
“That was kind of a disaster. One of the unspoken secrets in modern appliances is they are giant. They don’t fit in the elevators, even in elevator buildings. You don’t find that out until
you buy them. We’re on the second floor and [our] staircase is a winder,” she says.
The appliance deliverymen took one look and said, “We’re not taking them up.” McCabe argued with them, but the appliances ended up in the garage. Their subcontractor tried to lift them up through the opening of the missing porch, but failed.
Hunting for a forklift
Gergits told his wife he’d seen masons working on a house on nearby Leavitt Street, and they had a forklift. “I ran over and begged them” for help, she says. The Polish masons did not speak English and shifted their eyes at each other with “she’s crazy” glances. But eventually they sent two guys over to give a look.
After which they brought their forklift over and lifted the refrigerator through the new French doors in the front of the house, after the new porch rail in front of them was removed.
“They didn’t realize they still had the stove to go, and left,” says McCabe. “I ran after them down Hoyne [Avenue].” The stove went up too. “They didn’t want to take any money,” she says of the save-the-day guys.
“On July 15, 2006, the same day the house was finished, we had a party and we moved in,” he adds. An invitation went out for the house’s 99th birthday party. “The [sub]contractor cooked two pigs in the side yard of the house, with wood from another house he demolished.”
The tour
Today, the interior is sparsely decorated with things they have long owned, but is a serene, elegant nest with its blue-gray walls and lavish white wainscoting throughout.
Fortunately, both have similar tastes — “eclectic, grounded by major modern pieces, with an occasional antique,” she says.
On the walls are Russian theater posters and a major painting they commissioned of South African women going to vote for the first time.
Here and there are a few African sculptures McCabe has collected. There are new and old Eames chairs, and a large dining table by an artist who makes “tubular stuff,” a couple of Americana style cabinets from the American Barn Co., which recycles old pine into furniture.
Gergits explains the minimalist interior that is the opposite of the coin from the ornate exterior. “Because it is decorated sparsely, it is a very modern home. It is what we like about it. In the modern aesthetic, you create rooms by implication in one big space.”
This is what he has done, one long flow front to back, delineating rooms by changing patterns in the wood floor. “I think Mies [van der Rohe] would have approved of it,” says a satisfied Gergits, an IIT graduate.
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Old house/new house rehabbing tips
Here are words of advice on renovating a Victorian from Cheryl McCabe and Carl Gergits, a pair that’s been there and done it.
– 21st Century fit: “Don’t believe that just because you have an old house, new construction technology won’t fit. With the walls open, we super-insulated the exterior shell. The windows, though oversize for a typical [contemporary] home, are double-glazed, low-emissivity. The whole house was pre-wired for sound and security. We also installed extra conduit for systems that we don’t have yet, such as rooftop electrical solar panels and cable connections for satellite.”
– 19th Century pitfalls: “They don’t build them like they used to, and thank goodness. Check out your structure thoroughly before you begin rough framing. Look for sagging floors, out-of-plumb walls, poor interior wall construction — we reframed an entire floor because the walls basically fell apart once the plaster was removed — rot and insect damage. These are all easy repairs while the framing contractor is on board.”
– Pest patrol: “While you have your home open, it’s a good time to install termite shielding and treat the soil around your building. City and suburban dirt happily supports termites, and termites happily build right across or through brick or concrete walls to attack any moist wood they encounter. Look for superficial mud `tubes’ they build on their way to munching on your beams.”
– It’s gotta go: “Don’t even think about saving old plumbing or electrical systems. Electrical systems have improved so much and demand on household services has increased so much in the last decades that the old systems are simply dangerous. Plumbing systems, until fairly recently, used lead piping for water service. Waste and vent piping may look perfectly good from the outside, but may have an inch of rust inside, waiting to burst the pipe. We had this happen on a pipe we left in during the first partial rehab of the house. Or there may be invisible perforations that leak sewer gas.”
– Let’s talk scheduling: “Build your own schedule by activity. Make a list of the work to be done, either by room or trade, and plot them on a calendar. Ask your subcontractors for durations by activity while you’re bidding them. You’ll be surprised to see how many items need to be ordered when you’re demolishing that you will need desperately when the subs are on site. We ordered our kitchen cabinets right after we finished our foundation work, at about Week 6 of the project, and they showed up 16 weeks later. You’ll also be surprised at the “other work” — referred to as general conditions — that isn’t covered by the subcontractors when you’re your own general contractor. You also can plot cash flow using your schedule, both for the subcontractors and material purchases.
— Mary Daniels
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mdaniels@tribune.com
