So we bought this house...

...and MAN is it UGLY! Well, it's ugly on the outside. The inside is pretty amazing, though certainly not anything we expected to end up with when embarking on this odyssey 2+ years ago.
The thing is, it is also a freakin' BARN...I mean it is HUGE...which is definitely not anything we expected (or had any desire to) end up with. But it seems like everything we saw was either smaller than our last house or...well...like this. EVERY medium-sized house we saw we really did try in earnest to get (that would be 5 tries, in 9 months, before this one). Who knew it would be so hard to buy? In THIS market???

So this is what we ended up with, and we really did get a pretty great deal. It's on a "busy" street (not what we wanted), it sits amongst nothing but apartment buildings (not what we wanted), it has VERY little yard (not what we wanted), but we get this:


... and this doesn't suck.

What also doesn't suck is this house's proximity to the best of Oak Park. Walkability to neighborhood amenities was a VERY important consideration to us in our next home. We hope to be here for at least 15 years. This is where we will raise our son. Plus the elementary school district it's in has the diversity we were looking for for him.

This house hasn't been lived in for at least a couple of years. In fact, word is it was converted to a 3 flat at one point. And then some poor soul bought it at the height of the market, mortgaged it to the hilt at the height of the market, then got foreclosed on. Considering the quality of the work done on the house, however, it's highly likely that whoever did it 1) didn't spend all the money that was leveraged out of the house ON the house and 2) had NO clue what they were doing. There are signs of this EVERYWHERE. So, we will be undoing a LOT of the kludgy work that was done, a la Mike Holmes. Sadly, none of it is sexy stuff, but will ensure we can live here for years to come without new (or continued) major problems.

This blog is an attempt to document this journey of renovation, greening, attempts at interior design (and exterior re-design), landscaping...creating a home.