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