chicago ~ the vacation city!

I've always loved this old postcard. I love that it advertises Illinois as being the perfect place for a vacation... after the blizzard of 2011 and a winter that has extended far into the spring, I'm not exactly convinced. But now that it's starting to get warm, I suppose I can start to believe it again, since the past 6 months have been pretty wet, cold and inhospitable.

Thankfully however, the sun is now shining, the flowers are blooming and beautiful lake michigan is blue once again! With the return of spring, Justin and I have been hard at work trying to get our second bedroom in order to welcome good friends for fun summer vists. Our first reservation is for this weekend; our good friends Brooke & Steve are coming to town!! ...And just in time for the unveiling of our guest room! (Actually, they were a major source of motivation to get it done... ) Aren't they awesome friends!?! =)

Here's a few photos of our newly completed room. Enjoy and see you this summer!

Electricians for a Day!

Justin and I decided to give electric wiring another shot this weekend by putting up a dining room fixture and installing new light switches. We had our eye on a light at CB2: the Firefly Pendant Light. We really like that it looks contemporary but also has a vintage feeling to it. After spending a couple hours this afternoon messing with the wiring, mounting and hanging the fixture, we finally have a dining room light! Now that's it's dark out we are really loving the shadows it creates on the ceiling. We also used clear bulbs which look really cool when the light is dimmed.

I've had a dream of installing 'push button' light switches (common in homes in the early 1900's) ever since we purchased this condo. When I was a kid, for a time, we lived in a very old house in Wilmette which had all the original push button switches on the walls and I remember loving the sound of pushing them in and seeing the other button pop out. So, I was super excited when I found these could be purchased... not from Lowes or even your local lighting store however. We bought a couple from Classic Accents online and I'm hoping they will be a fun addition to our victorian condo. We still need to purchase the faceplates but here's what they look like installed!

the blizzard of 2011

a few photos...

Over the past few months we've been working on getting our dining room more 'put together'. We managed to hang a few photos, put up some curtains and install a wall shelf for all our books. It's so nice being able to use this space, considering that only 6 months ago it was filled with tools, wood and sawdust!

before

after

our bedroom chair (i just reupholstered the cushion with striped yellow fabric)

smallest space, longest project.

We've gradually been working on our bedroom closet for about 4 months now. You wouldn't think such a small space would take so long to complete, but then again, pretty much everything we've done has taken about 3 times longer than we've initially thought. Nevertheless, we have a real closet now and it's SO nice!

The original closet was a bit torn up from some brackets that the previous owner had installed incorrectly, so we did a lot of skimcoating to fill in the holes and uneven walls then we planned a new system for hanging shelves with rods. We selected solid wood double doors instead of the hollow bi-folds that were there previously. Once we were able to install the doors we could complete the new casing around the doors and finish repainting the interior, adding the wood shelves, rods and baseboards. We still have to add the crown trim to the top of the door frame but we'll be doing all of the doors at the same time (once we pick out the crown we want to use).

Today we installed the doorknob hardware so it's finally feeling complete! Here's a few photos:

We also finished installing the light for our guest room. Another task completed! Woohoo!