It is officially official; we bought it!

We are happy homeowners! It is official!

I'm starting a little late in the game on this blog, but I wanted a place to track the progression of our house to a home!

We bought the 2 flat in February, 2015 with plans to convert it to a single family home. A single family home that will be our forever home! We fell in love with the location of the home before we knew the home was an option for us. We live closer to the El at this home than we did in our city house, closer to the Metra too! There are lots of parks, some tennis courts & a golf course within a block or two. We can easily walk to a few different neighborhoods for bars, restaurants & shopping. Once we were able to see the inside of the building, we saw past the mold & mildew (see photo below), past the beer signs & bed sheets cum curtains, saw past the messes and saw lots of potential. One of our tenants even allowed us to see how nice the home could be despite its less than up to date state. I should have mentioned that the house was built in the 80s. The 1880s! Depending what record you believe; it was built in 1883, 1885 or 1888. Regardless of its true age, I know 1 thing....it is very old. The other thing I know; Chris & I like old houses! Fun fact; we are nerds & watch a whole lot of the PBS show This Old House. Check it out - it is amazing.

Sweet blue tub with LOTS of mildew

One thing we both knew was that we could envision having coffee and/or happy hour on the home's sweet little front porch:

Honestly, I can't wait for coffee out here!

Also, there is a little porch off the back of the house on the 2nd floor....there will be many mornings spent reading the newspaper and drinking coffee up there. There is a lot to love about this building and lots to be improved upon (mainly the electrical system & plumbing system!). Our plan is to do some of the demolition ourselves and hire a general contractor to complete the bulk of the renovation.

Things started off slowly, as they tend to do, mostly because we had tenants living in the building until the end of June, 2015.

So, here we are, July 14, 2015 - almost exactly 5 months after we closed on the building, really getting going on transforming this house into our home!

Stay tuned, I'll be sharing lots of renovation photos in the coming weeks & months!

Thanks for visiting,

Liz (& Chris too)