LUMINOUS LINCOLN HEIGHTS LOFT

On my dad's first visit to the Lincoln Heights loft the first thing he asked was "are you sure this isn't where they made Klute?"

Though most other visitors focus only on the interior, Dad was struck by the qualities of the "haunting hallway" as he called it. He snapped these shots, one of the stairway (with the doorway eerily reflected on the black granite on both left and right; and the other of the glowing red square in the hallway.

I could see the wheels turning as he roamed around the place. In under an hour he was out in the hallway with a dust mop. On our first trip out the front entrance he wrote "wash me" in the dust on the granite trim.

Five trips to the nearby Home Depot later, he had (not in this order): caulked the bottom of the shower where the tile had separated from the floor; carefully scrubbed off the most egregious paint spots on the floor and then filled in each gouge with a perfect match of plastic wood; created a simple shade for an exposed fluorescent light in the bedroom, with a beautiful curve that matched the room; bought a hardwood floor compatible vacuum, a new string mop, a new cover for the dust mop in the hall; put up rack shelving to hide some of my storage; covered the plastic connector to the air conditioner with insulated foil to prevent the heat from emanating back into the room; hung my silk Persian rug and my photos of Prague and Chicago; and replaced the dead orchid with another bloom.

Needless to say it was a whirlwind. I tagged around trying to stop him from throwing away everything I owned, handing him screws or extension cords, etc. etc. I was so exhausted by the third day that I called my sister in Chicago to plead for advice. In a hushed voice, indicating the utmost gravity, she said "you haven't been giving him caffeine have you Pammi?".