Ever since we bought this house I’ve pretty much been obsessed with knowing the history of it. Last year, by chance, a package came for the previous owners. After contacting them so that they could pick it up, they dropped off the original blueprints for the house!

There were two sets of blueprints. The original working blueprints had coffee stains on them and marks. They were so old that they just crumbled upon touching them. The second set, were more pristine and had less wear and tear. I ended up bringing both sets to a professional fine art framer who framed my favorite page of the set. The older set we locked away in a tube not to be touched any further. The rest of the second set were laid flat in a folder on the back of the frame.

Someow, I felt like a huge mystery was starting to unravel. I was able to see all the original plans for the house, and the materials that had been used. It was amazing to see the layout of the original kitchen and learn more about the intent the architect had for the house.

From there I went down a rabbit hole to learn more about the architect. William M Cooley, had built the house in 1956. He was a prominent modern church architect and had won numerous design awards for his buildings.

Tragically, he died at the age of 41 in a mysterious car accident. There isn’t a lot of information that I could find about him other than this. I know he designed 100s of modern churches in the midwest and I’m still on the quest to find out more. Please comment if you happen to have any info you can share.

Anyway, I’m a total nerd about this kind of stuff but I hope some people find this as fascinating as I do.

It became fairly obvious early on that this past summer wasn’t going to be spent in a typical fashion. One of the things I always felt was lacking in particular since we moved in was our outdoor space. The back yard had no landscaping whatsoever and was basically just a big blank rectangle.

The one thing we did have was a basic concrete patio. I had immediately envisioned putting up a pergola to add a nice architectural feature to the yard that really complimented the house. The only problem was that I really wanted a very simple, understated, modern pergola. The more I researched, the harder it was to find exactly what I was looking for.

That’s when I discovered Toja Grid’s diy modular pergola system. It was exactly what I was looking for and boasted an easy build that could be put up in under an hour (FYI - definitely took us longer than an hour. More like a couple of hours with four people). The kit only includes the brackets that connect the wood, and the footers. We also purchased a shade sail for the top of the pergola. I went with the 4x4 kit and really glad I did because I would not have been able to lift the 6x6 lumber.

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I quickly set out sketching up a design and figuring out the dimensions and pressure treated timber I would need to purchase. I will say that the guys from Lowes were a little surprised when I pulled up with my sedan for my curbside pickup. I assured them that I was a pro at fitting all kinds of things in my little car and that this would not be a problem.

Next I stained the wood with a transparent black outdoor deck stain. I probably should have sanded them down a bit but they were already planed and I didn’t feel like it was absolutely necessary.

I had originally imagined that I was going to be able to put this thing together myself but it quickly became apparent to me that I was going to need help. So I bribed my brother in law, Tim, and my nephew, Brady, to come over and help me and Matt with some pizza and some beer. Matt was a reluctant participant as he knows how my crazy projects tend to go and usually wants no part of them. He’s a smart man.

With that I set to building the top of the pergola by laying it out on the patio. For some reason I thought that the heavy brackets would easily glide onto the properly sized wooden posts. I did my best to pound them into place by kicking them but soon realized that I would need a wooden mallet. Since I didn’t have one I tried to fashion one out of a hammer and some foam. It sort of worked until Tim arrived with the correct tools and actual strength. Things progressed a lot more quickly from there.

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I learned a lot from Tim on this build. He showed me a neat trick to figure out the correct drill bit to use. If you hold your screw in front of the drill bit you should just barely see the treads of it from behind. If you don’t, keep sizing your up until you do.

Prior to this lesson I always thought it was that I was too weak to correctly screw things in with my drill. Now I know that the I was just making my pilot holes too small. So thanks for that, Tim!

Pro tip: I highly recommend not putting the pergola together upside down so that you don’t have to flip it like this.

And here’s the finished product where we spent the entire summer relaxing in the shade. Totally worth it!

I found using houzz.com to be a really handy way to organize the entire remodeling process. They have a project tool that helps you break down all the tasks for your project into a checklist. You can also import pictures and add links to your products that you are picking and keep track of prices. I liked how the list was broken down into phases that helped a novice remodeler think about aspects of the project that someone might not be familiar with. It was a very educational process.

One thing I will say is that doing a project like this with your partner is no easy task. I started early by showing Matt pictures and prices for things that I liked. Then we went to Floor and Decor to look at tile as a family. This was awesome because we were able to see tile in person, touch it, and get an idea of what it would look like in our space.

Once I had the general idea for what we both liked I ordered tile samples sent directly to our house. That way we could see them in our space and with our natural light. We ended up picking black hexagon limestone tile for the floor, and grey subway tile for walls. I decided on a darker grey grout color for the walls because I didn’t want the grout to fade and look dirty all the time like our previous grout did. I chose a lighter grey grout for the floor so that the design would be more apparent.

To save costs, we decided to choose all our own materials. The one thing that was staying was the vintage milk glass orb light that my friend and coworker, Nicole, had given me from her parent’s house in Florida. That pendant light was really the inspiration for the entire look and feel of the bathroom. We had decided to also keep the larger wall length original mirror and mirrored 1950’s light that went above it. Unfortunately, the contractor accidentally threw out the mirror and the light that went above it so we ended up having to go with something new. Don’t worry, I made the best of that situation.

Danish modern 1960s pendant light

Aside from the tile, the vanity was the most costly thing we purchased. I was originally looking at having a custom vanity made from Kerf Design. I’ve always loved their work and it was my dream to have all new cabinets made by them for this house. It wasn’t long before I realized the cost of the vanity would be half my budget for bathroom if I went that route so I ended up ordering our walnut vanity with sink and quartz cabinet from Houzz. One thing I will say about going this route with a countertop is that very often walls in an old home are not absolutely straight. The countertop with be cut at perfect 90 degree angles so to make up for this your contractor will have to fill in the space with caulk. It would for sure be better to have the counter top sourced locally and measured and installed correctly.

The work took about two weeks all together and we were very happy with the finished results. I’m sure my contractor thought I was annoying with my questions, text messages, and drawings that I left for him. He really was so patient with me and his work was so beautiful.

Here’s how it turned out.

Two things I would change if I could do this all again. First, I would choose porcelain tile for the floor instead of stone. It’s more durable, and doesn’t need to be sealed. Also, because the stone is so thick and sharp, you can really feel the grooves between the stones and the grout. I would have liked a tile that had more of a rounded edge that was more flush with the grout so that things wouldn’t get stuck in between the tile. Second, I would have picked a lighter grout color for the shower tile as we feel that it is too contrasty and would have liked it better if the pattern was more subtle. But these are things you really don’t learn about until you do a project like this. So all in all the bathroom has turned into a beautiful retreat and we are so happy!

It wasn’t originally our plan to renovate our bathroom at the beginning of a pandemic but I digress. I guess if you are going to be spending all or your time at home for the foreseeable future, you might as well have a nice bathroom. So here’s the backstory. Our original 1956 bathroom was still completely intact when we moved in. That being said it was not in the best of shape.

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I loved the mint floor tile, but it was very badly scratched. The vanity had been designed by the architect but had suffered moisture damage from over 70 years of existing in a bathroom that didn’t have a fan. The original Crane tub was beyond cleaning and the toilet just didn’t flush very well to be honest. No matter how I tried, I just never felt like the bathroom was clean.

Two years ago I tried reglazing the bathtub and shower tile with a Rust-Oleum reglazing kit. I followed all the directions and everything looked amazing. At first. But again, having no fan in the bathroom caused a lot of humidity that is not going to be good for reglazed tile. Within a year the tile and tub was peeling in spots and I hated the bathroom more than ever.

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So the priorities for the new bathroom were:

1. Must have a fan

2. Durable materials/easy to clean

3. Needs to keep with the style of the house

Because our roof is tongue and groove, most contractors have an extremely hard time figuring out how to do things that they would be able to achieve easily in a more conventional house. That does not mean it’s not possible. It just means that you need to do your homework, research, talk to experts in the industry, and push for what you want.

I was lucky that an architect in a mid century modern group I’m a member of came to my rescue and helped me figure out my fan problem. With his help, I was able to explain exactly how to install a fan in the least obtrusive way. That would mean installing it in the wall above the shower, with the venting going in-between the wall and up through the roof. The fan, is hands down the best thing to come out of the bathroom remodel and I am so glad that I fought for it.

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Here are the thoughts we had on tile design and how they could be laid out in the new bathroom. Next post I’ll show you the results!

The first thing anybody should do before they move in, is paint. In our case, the paint colors that the previous owners had painted just didn’t jive with our style. The paint was also pretty old so it needed to be freshened up in general in order for us to feel like we were dealing with clean surfaces.

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I know that gray is having a moment right now, but it does happen to be my favorite color. I like having a neutral background so that my decorations can have the pops of color. I also wanted to have a consistent color scheme throughout the house. Something that would unify all the natural elements, like unfinished wood and brick. If the brick hadn’t already been painted it would have been cool to have left it in its natural state. But sandblasting isn’t really something we wanted to take on inside. Plus, we just didn’t have enough time to do that much work before we moved in.

One thing I will warn you about is that gray is really difficult to get right. I had to paint various shades of grey on the walls in each room to get the shades that would appear the way I wanted them to in our house with all the wood and natural light we have. This charcoal gray is actually a chocolate brown believe it or not. All the shades of grey we ended up painting upstairs had to be shades of taupe in order to look the right way against the wood. True gray actually appeared purple!

We did all the painting ourselves with the help of our family. We were able to make quick work of the entire upstairs. I will say after six years, the paint has held up great especially on the brick walls. The deep gray looks great in the living room with all of the light we get in there. But lately I’ve been gravitating towards a much lighter gray and have even been thinking of possibly repainting some of the walls white to make the rooms look bigger. We’ll see.

In my next post I’m going to start posting some of my pandemic projects from the past year so you can see everything we accomplished in the past year on the house.

When we first moved in, it was pretty easy to see that there was lots to do. Unfortunately, we had just spent all our money on the actual purchase of the house. So where to begin? And how?

We are definitely list people so it just made sense for us to think about all our most important projects and prioritize them.

Here’s the gist of what we came up with:

• New rugs

• Paint upstairs

• Paint basement

• New garage door

• New roof

• Repair cement patio/steps

• Garbage disposal?

• Refinish floors

• Rehab bathroom

• New HVAC

• Replace windows

• Fix plumbing

• Update electrical

• Repaint the exterior

Phew! That’s a long list. And this didn’t even include things like landscaping, or changing out some of the updates that had been made to the house in the nineties. Those things were going to have to wait. The HVAC for instance was the same age as my husband, But at forty years old, it was still going strong and they really don’t make things built to last like that anymore! So since we live in Chicago it only made sense to update the terrible vinyl windows that had replaced the original windows that opened at the bottom of our floor to ceiling windows. One of the things that drew us to our home was all the windows and natural light, but that very thing was also making our house extremely inefficient to heat.

We couldn’t afford to replace the entire windows, and the large 90” x 90” upper windows are actually in surprisingly good shape. The seals are intact and they are double glazed. But the bottom windows had to go. Some of them were bowing from the changes in temperature and they had cracked in places. It also looked pretty odd having white vinyl windows on the bottom of windows that were entirely cased in wood.

We ended up getting new sliding wooden window from Anderson Windows. They were hella expensive. Like we had to take out a ten year loan to pay for them. But they were so worth it. Look at the difference in appearance after an expert painter came and matched the window stain to the stain we had throughout the house. Also, I have no idea how he did that. How do you match 70 year old faded by the sun wood stain coloring?

On The outside, they were framed in grey to match the front door. It was important for me to have the windows appear to be original to the house. I wanted them to look like they had always been there. And aside from how they looked, they were so much easier to open and immediately created better airflow (and helped save on heating and air conditioning too).

Next post will be looking at the interior changes we made with just a new coat of paint. See you then.
~ g