Accepting the Learning Curve of Our First Renovation and what I’m learning along the way…

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This is what my ‘in progress’ kitchen actually looks like right now. It’s not pretty, and it’s not super fun to live in. I had been a bit naively optimistic in hoping that could stack up the kitchen boxes and make a usable ‘counter’ space on top of them until our actual cabinets come, which clearly isn’t happening. Right now we have no dishwasher and only 24″ of usable counter space, if that. It’s definitely not our dream kitchen scenario! I knew we’d have plenty of curve balls and surprises during this renovation, but one thing that’s been kind of…

How We’re Transforming Our Kitchen

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From the first time we walked through our new place and I saw the kitchen layout, I knew exactly how I would transform the space. I have no idea what I’m doing in some other areas of the house, but I am very clear on what is happening to this space, and it’s a good thing since we ended up getting started with this part of our renovation a wee bit {a lot} earlier than we had initially planned. So what are we doing in there?! Here is the plan of the space when we bought it. The kitchen is…

The floors I wanted… and the floors I got…

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When I started imagining what I would do with our condo and how I would transform it, I imagined re-doing the floors in a kind of classic walnut color… not too light, not too dark, totally timeless. In my head I was picturing something like these floors {side note: this is a newly renovated house that our team is listing here in Chicago, cute right?!} Our existing floors were a pretty light color but they were kind of too bright in a way, it’s hard to put my finger on it… here is a before pic. The existing floors in…

Why everyone should treat their house like a flip

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{photo credit: Fixer Upper} You guys, this renovation is stressFUL. It’s also awesome and it also sometimes kind of sucks. But I signed up for this and really, I’m super excited about the project and doing this ‘flip’. Honestly, it might just be my personal preference, but I’d rather take on a huge fixer upper in a house or building that has boatloads of potential, or has ‘beautiful bones’ that has just been a bit neglected, than a newer property. But that’s just me, and the truth is that you don’t have to take on a huge project in order…

Meet our new house!

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I’ve shared some of the ups and downs of buying and starting renovations of our new place… but I haven’t actually introduced you to it! Meet our cute little house {condo}! We bought a super outdated two bedroom two bathroom condo in a loft/courtyard building in a pretty hip part of town. Honestly, I don’t feel cool enough to live in our new neighborhood, lol, but here we are! It’s the ‘perfect’ fixer upper and will {hopefully} be a great flip. Here is the layout of our new condo… So what are we going to do to this puppy? As I’ve…

The whirlwind of living through a renovation…

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Guys, we are officially IN our new place! It still kind of doesn’t feel real, but I’m sure that’s because have no kitchen appliances right now and are living out of boxes for the next few weeks while we get new baseboards installed and hopefully get new kitchen cabinets. And paint colors, I need to figure out the paint colors! When I first started planning this whole thing out… buying a fixer upper, renovating it and selling it, I thought I had a pretty good grasp on everything. I mean, I literally worked on countless renovation projects for a decade…

What it really feels like to buy a house

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You guys, it’s officially official, we bought a house! I shared the super exciting news a few weeks ago, but I also wanted to share our/my experience of going through the actual process, because I feel like it’s something people don’t really talk about. Sure, your friends might tell you when they are doing it, but does anyone really share what it’s actually like to go through this crazy process? So today I’m sharing what it was really like for us, to help de-mystify the whole thing and maybe answer some people’s questions along the way. When I’m the broker…

My 2019 ‘Resolutions’

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I usually don’t do formal New Year’s Resolutions. I tend to feel like if I’m serious about making a change, I’ll make it, New Year or not… but over the past few weeks as I’ve been seeing how some other people handle new year I’ve decided that there are a few things that I really want to focus on specifically as this year unfolds. This year two really big things happened in my life. First, my manfriend and I are buying our first fixer upper which I recently shared {if you want to read a little about it, click here,…

Inspiration images for our new place

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You guys, I have so many things I want to talk about and share this year on the blog, but right now, all I can think about is our new place. I mean, is there really anything else worth doing?! It’s taking some serious willpower to not actually buy anything before we move in. . .   But, there is a lot of planning and coordinating to be done, and before I go pulling the trigger actually buying all the beautiful things, I want to be sure I have a clear vision of what I’m creating in our new space….

Happy New Year! We {might be} buying a house {!!…?!}

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Guys! Happy New Year! I have some super exciting news… we’re buying a house! Well, a condo because that’s big city life, but seriously ~ !!!!! If I’m being honest I vacillate back and forth between this is totally happening and this is not going to happen at least 10,000 times every day. Also between being totally ecstatic and totally terrified too, lol. Somedays I feel like I’ve never been on as intense an emotional roller coaster as being under contract on this puppy. I was really hesitant to share any of this yet because really, nothing is guaranteed until…