It still doesn't feel like home.

Maybe it's the fact that we like the former owners, or that the close was such a long process. It could possibly be that unpacking with a toddler is like putting mittens on an octopus, but I'm going to put money on the fact that this house won't feel like home until we address the wallpaper. There is so much wallpaper! In the closets, hallways and ceilings. That's right, ceilings. Don't ask because we have no ungodly clue why someone would wallpaper a ceiling.

Jeff seems ready, eager in fact, to tackle the first floor wallpaper and acquire more furniture. He's nesting.

My motivation is stuck in the unopened boxes piled in the dining room, the office, the guest room and lining the perimeter of our bedroom.

The kitchen took three attempts to put things away. It feels like our kitchens since York have gotten smaller and more challenging to unpack. Then I realized it was just the added obstacle of the monkey running around to inhibit one clear thought through decision...it'a like playing wack-a-mole on a lazy susan.

I'm getting a workout on the stairs. My mommy-brain ultimately forgets any number of items on the other floor that I then have to go retrieve only to forget what that item is/was the moment I arrive to retrieve it. My mom always suggested retracing my steps to help jog my memory. Are you seeing a theme yet? Buns of steel, I tell you. Clementine is loving the options as well. "Front or back stairs, Clem?" "Umm, back." and off she goes. I think she prefers the back stairwell because of the PINK carpet and floral wall paper.

The family room is going to be the first BIG project we will tackle. Bye bye wood paneling and carpet. I'd love to see some built in bookshelves but we will have to wait and see.

The guest room we initially selected has become a make shift playroom. Not sure how long that will last but the idea of moving any furniture right now guarantees a six month commitment to said arrangement. 

The monkey picked this room herself. Again, she might get evicted if it proves necessary. Currently, she thinks this arrangement suits her just fine.

The current guest room features military wallpaper (not pictures). The former owners were big on accent walls. But every wall had wallpaper. Not one was left bare.

The backyard is more patio currently but that works out perfectly with the vast number of parks within blocks of the house.

He's downright giddy folks!

Again...giddy.

We weren't even close to being unpacked but I noticed the paper in the living literally peeled away from the wall without any hesitation. So I tested a strip causing my mother-in-law's heart to palpitate for fear that I was making more work, but it came right off. So within that instant I ignited in Jeff the motivation to paint the living room and sun room. Again, I wasn't there yet.                     


The peeling of the paper is cathartic. But the "surprises" under the paper stifle the busing motivation. Plaster lath was the bane of my existence in LA and it has found me once again. This time, instead of tearing it out, we are patching and repairing. The house is old enough that the plaster is cracking and showing signs of wear. This is to be expected but has been hiding under some choice wallpaper for the past...40 years.

Over-achievers.

We finished up the living room and sun room in roughly four days. Peeled (easy peasy), washing the walls (ugh!), joint compound for cracks and holes (plaster lath sucks), sanding, priming and painting. Phew! And then we moved onto the dining room. We are nuts! The paper in the dining room proved to be more of a challenge. We attempted to score and spray but ended up sheeting off the top layer and saturating the paper and paste layer. This was far more effective. We are in the midst of spackling and sanding. Once the dining room is painted we will post some before and after.

Jeff has described the LA house as a sprint and this is a marathon. In LA we needed to overhaul the house inside out before we could even live there. This home will take time and patience...and eternity.

Dear God! We've done it. 2.0

The wait is over. We have secured our names on the wall of the "clinically insane home-buyers" as we recently closed on our forever home; or as Jeff will tease, our home for the next 5-20 years. I'm never moving again!

We decide it was time to start the home search this spring and hooked up with a very cool realtor, Stewart Ramirez. We figured we were old hats at this game and made a laundry list of must-haves for this next purchase. We looked exclusively on the north side of Chicago. Neighborhoods that sat on the Chicago border and some of the suburbs that still have a city feel. There were a lot of duds. But what we found most surprising was the sacrifice of home size:yard size and vice versus. We needed a bigger place and a yard for the monkey. We weren't finding the house, especially in our price range.

One night, it always starts that way, one night Jeff was checking out the local listings on one of the public sites and said, "Look at this house, but don't look where it is." The description was as follows:

A Mini Fortress surrounded by trees set back from beautiful Longwood Dr. Home features tastefully appointed formal living & dining room, sun parlor, den, plus a main floor family room! The grounds are nicely cared for and meticulously maintained. Updates include a boiler, 2010, & a tear off roof, 2004. Short walk to school shopping and Metra.

Um, yes please! The only catch...it's located in Beverly. Where the hell is Beverly? Well, Beverly Hills, as it is officially called, is located on the far south side of Chicago. It is known as the "Evanston" of the south side and the "Village in the City". Needless to say this potential home and neighborhood peaked my interest...so we called Stewart.

This is what we found...

I can see the Christmas stockings and friends crowded around this inviting fireplace.

Jeff has an office and an area to contain his organized chaos...the door can be closed. Big perk!

The arched windows reminded us both of Neah and some of the romantic homes we adore.

Dining room for Thanksgiving and dinners with friends...who will sleep over since the drive is longer and there is room for guests!

More updated kitchen than one might expect.

There are no words.

Master

Family room

Guest

The room I thought Clementine should have but she walked in looked around and said, "No."

Attic...aka playroom or guest or "the kid who we think is most likely to sneak out" bedroom.

It's a "grandma house" with amazing potential but it is very far south from the active and energetic Lincoln Square that we love so dearly. The only way to feel jazzed about this location was to do plenty of research. "What did you find?" one might ask. Well, let me tell you....
-The public school is highly regarded
-Solid and affordable private schools
-Hills and great walking
-Activities at the local park are cost effective and abundant (~$25 per class for 8 weeks)
-The Beverly Art Center (music classes and concerts)
-Downtown Chicago is a 10-15 minute Metra ride, the stop is walking distance from the house.
-We are closer to family because we don't have to brave traffic through the entire city to get in or out of town.
-Close knit neighborhood community

Beverly is known as a blended and integrated community. People flocked here and made a point to create a true community.

So we put in an offer, it was accepted and then the negotiations took us on a ride. Everything was a-okay but instead of a standard 30 day close the sellers wanted a 90 day close. We reluctantly agreed and this summer flew/crept by as we waited to move into our house. The closing process was EPIC and we thought it would never happen but it did.

Here we are, in our new house. And so the work begins....

So long...and onto the next one.

Home, sweet home....

Our beautifully landscaped front yard. Jeff worked long and hard to create this desert friendly space. The house color we selected was Valspar's Autumn Fog.

An unrealistically clean living room. Well lived in and loved. I remember laboring in the living room and watching our parents hold that precious baby for the first time. Clementine learned to crawl on those floors. 

We would stand at the picture window, during the witching hour, waiting for Daddy to come home. 

Christmas dinner, New Year's Eve parties, birthdays, Thanksgiving and all the delicious and wonderful meals we shared happened in a lovely dinning room.

 The old barber shop was finally converted into the additional bedroom we always needed. A cozy room that was perfect for our parents' visits. 

Jeff and I debated as to whether we should build out a shower and have two full baths. We ultimately added the shower and it was a great decision. Roger came up with the refined layout.

Our bedroom

Clementine's nursery. I especially love the colors. So many long nights rocking in that room, miss it.

Hard to remember the orange counters and pink cabinets once the new paint dried. My favorite part was commissioning the woodshop across the street to make cabinets for under the sink. Mike's great-grandfather built the original cabinets and hutch for the house years ago.

Los Angeles was home for four glorious years. I can't say that I will ever get over how much I fell in love with our little house. We put so much care into bringing it back. We created a home and a family in that sweet little house. I miss the hills and the mountains, the backyard lemon tree and its' epic harvests, the limocello and the backyard beers with friends. I miss The York, Cafe de Lece, our little post office and the quaint bookshop Pop Hop Books. I miss the grit in between my toes and the cloth diapers hanging on the line outside, the warm days and cool nights. I miss our garden and the field mice, our wonderful neighbors and the roses. I'll miss the Art Walk, the food trucks, the Oxy students and their youthful, blissed-out enthusiasm. I miss watching Highland Park become what it always was before, once again. I miss our friends.

I know our next home will get the same love and care. I know the next home will embrace our family as it , hopefully, grows in number. At the same time...this little house on York Boulevard will always be our first love.

Thank you, little house.
Love,
Our family

Photographs by a Deasy/Penner hired photographer

Home sweet home.

Well, we moved in.  Hooray!!!!!!!!!  But we still have tons to do.  The first couple weeks we still didn't have a functioning bathroom.  That doesn't mean we were heading to "CVS" every few hours to relieve ourselves.  We did, however, have to leave through the front door and enter into the former barber-shop-now-storage-room to take a tinkle.  I can't tell you how much fun that was.  Picture a 3am "nature-call"...you stumble out of bed and then have to fumble with your damn keys.

Maybe you all are wondering, "Why in the world would these two crazy kids move into a house without installing a toilet in the bathroom?"  I have one word for you...grout.  We had not yet grout the floor or wall tile.  This delayed the installation of our toilet.  So during the first few weeks we were peeing in the front room, showering in the bathroom, and brushing our teeth in the kitchen.




We have lived in our new home exactly four weeks and we have accomplished quite a bit but as one of our many contractors has said, "It's the finish work that takes the longest."  There are still traces of pink/putty/flesh-tone but it will all be painted over...I promise.




The kitchen is still what I would call "a disaster".  We don't have a stove and are limited in our counter space.  The organization is questionable.  I often find myself buttering toast or making coffee on a counter that is littered with tools.  William Sonoma, Martha Stewart and any one who works at HGTV would be appalled at the state of our kitchen.  With that in mind I always try to time my hardware store errands early in the morning in hopes of being approached by a home-improvement host.


On the way I practice my shock and giddiness while planning which aisle might I find a kitchen make-over show.  Appliances...no, too obvious.  Lighting...nope, way too "I've done it all this is the last of my shopping."  Faucets...perfect!  I already have the perfect faucet which I bought from Overstock.com.  It's exactly what we need right now...I just have to wait to paint over the orange laminate counter.  You know...so it'll look "better".



I kind of have the feeling that the kitchen will get done later.  In the meantime I need to find a stove and some temporary but not atrocious cabinetry to frame the stove and give us some much needed counter space.  I'm not worried about matching it all...because I plan to paint EVERYTHING.

I've mentioned my day job is a Sign Language Interpreter.  This means that everyday I show up with paint ALL OVER my hands, elbows, in my hair and any number of places I can't see.  The teenagers look at me with disdain or that oh-you-poor-thing-you're-still-painting look.  Truly!  One of my favorite kids asks everyday, "Still painting?  Not finished?"  NOPE.  "Volunteer?" I ask her.  She smiles and with her devilish, beautiful smile she declines.




So we are mostly unpacked.  Everything has found its rightful place and we aren't losing things nearly as often.








But I still make coffee amidst the tools and we have yet to install a proper sink of the bathroom.  Organization is a luxury but a hot shower puts every long day into a rightful perspective.  We cook dinner in the toaster oven or on the grill. We've found countless uses for the plug-in skillet.  I'm fearless when it comes to light fixture installment while Jeff can wield almost any power tool known to man.  I have a new affinity for Grant Wood's American Gothic or Bob Vila on PBS' This Old House, to name a few.






Lastly, the only analogy to which home-ownership seems to relate is marriage.  It takes work and maintenance but when you find that perfect balance it is, and will always remain, home.

Did you say free time...what's that?

So between our full time jobs and this home renovation we have very little free time.  We consider all of our "free time" the hours we get to sleep and the moments we remember to eat.  Jeff has lost around 8lbs over the course of this whole process and lack of free time.  I always seem to remember to eat so I haven't lost a single pound.  If the scale ever reads lower than normal on a given day it's probably because I sweat a little more and haven't consumed my weight in water yet. 

Like I said...we've been busy and the busiest of late was the big move last weekend.  I wouldn't say it was a smooth move because we were at the house painting, tiling, cleaning and prepping for the move and then at the apartment packing, cleaning, purging and prepping for the move.  None of it got done completely and I have to say the move was pretty ugly.  I'm very organized, I have to be because I'm so damn forgetful.  So imagine my frustration when NOTHING is packed and what has been packed is literally thrown into a boxed and taped shut...WITHOUT A LABEL.  But why not complicate this whole mess a little more.  Leading up to last Sunday, Monday and Tuesday's mass exodus, I said it was ugly, we made the bold decision to get the floors refinished.  This decision was weighed in every possible direction. 





Option A: Tearing out the original flooring and laying all new pre-stained hardwood.

Option B: Refinishing just the living, dining and den leaving the hall and bedrooms with the old sub-floor (which we would paint and live with until more money came down the pipe...or is it pike?).

Option C: Laying in new hardwood in the hall and bedrooms and refinishing the entire lot.





If you've read the blog at all in the past couple months you know that we tend to GO BIG.  Meaning we don't half-ass our way through the process and take a flying leap in the abyss of home renovation.  That said you might guess that we chose Option C.  Keep in mind that we made this decision with barely three weeks left until we had to move into the house so it was imperative we find a trustworthy company that could to the work with short notice and efficiently.  Never mind that polyurethane requires a certain amount of dry time or that sanding the floors would take a minimum of three days.  After many bids and a number of follow-ups we found our guy...literally...his name is "Guy".

And he was great!  This Guy called a number of times leading up to their proposed start date to give me a revised time-line.  With the economy in the pooper and the housing industry in the pooper it was easy to get a company out within a matter of days to get the work started.

It's important to note the condition of the floors and the choices we were asked to consider.  These floors are potentially 75+ years old.  They are maple and they are in need of repair.  We love the look of a darker stain, it looks rich and warm and sophisticated.  When we mentioned this to Guy he expressed concern.  Maple is a tight fiber meaning it doesn't tend to absorb stain evenly which could lead to a cloudy or uneven appearance.  We stressed our desire for rich, dark floors and Guy said it could be done.  "It will be a challenge but we will do it."  My flooring hero! 

And boy did he deliver!  They sanded a number of times until the floors we smooth and then massaged a conditioner into the grain and then on their hands and knees the stained and polyethylened.  These floors are gorgeous!