From the amount of time I sometimes hold onto things, you might think I’m a hoarder but that isn’t the case at all. We frequently purge “stuff”, but it seems like we rarely need to throw something in the trash.

If it’s clothing or small household items, we’ll donate them to Amvets, Salvation Army, or Goodwill. If it contains metal, we’ll leave it out for one of the local “scrappers” who drive around the neighborhood before trash day. It’s usually picked up within a couple hours of leaving it by the trash.

Gently used furniture usually finds its way to Pete’s family cottage, where I like to say “furniture goes to die.” But sometimes, something from the cottage is reborn in our house, like a dresser (probably once belonging to his grandparents) which Pete uses, its matching vanity, which I use for a home office desk, or this awesome mid-century chair which I’ll eventually reupholster and which now sits in my studio space.

The area rug beneath it came from my apartment when I was single and living in Chicago. It’s well-worn and not valuable monetarily, however it’s valuable in providing some warmth over the hardwood floors, a place for the cat to stretch out, and in adding a finishing touch to the room. I bought it, along with a bunch of other things, for not much money from friends who were moving to Hawaii. I also sublet their apartment, which I loved and lived in until I moved in with Pete.

In others cases, something that began with one use becomes something else, like this counter-height work table. Those same Hawaii friends built it for the Chicago apartment over 20 years ago because the kitchen had absolutely no counter space. None.

Since it was freestanding, I decided to take it with me when I moved into our previous house and we used it in the laundry room (shown here). It was perfect for folding laundry and storing gardening supplies and other things.

And then when I was in grad school and the university was going to throw out a light box, we brought it home and installed it in the work table (seen at the far end) which I use from time-to-time in my design and illustration business.

When we moved to the bungalow, I moved the work table to my office space, and now that I moved my studio space to the remodeled attic, the work table has become my main storage for files and things.

I wanted to give it a fresh look, however, so first we stripped the varnish off the wood and then I painted it with a black semi-opaque satin stain/varnish combo. It’s made of plywood, so I wasn’t too concerned with the quality of the finish; I just wanted to update the look to match the rest of my decor.

The black finish looks great, but I also needed a way to hide all that crap. Using some curtains that I bought several years ago at IKEA and used in my old office space as a way to hide storage shelves in an open closet, I cut them down to size, sewed strips of velcro at the top, and instead of solid blue panels, I decided that the large grommets, intended for a curtain rod, would make a nice design element at the bottom of the panel.

I positioned the velcro strips so that I could completely obscure everything, or leave it partially open to reveal some colorful boxes.

Repurposing something, to me, is much more satisfying than buying something new because it looks and feels like something new without spending the money. Sometimes it takes a little elbow grease or hard work to make it into something new, but other times just using a piece in a different way makes it brand new, like our vanity-turned-home-office-desk. If you think beyond what the piece is, or was, and instead think about how it can be utilized, it may turn into something completely different.

How about you? Do you have any great repurposed pieces?

Tags: furniture, recycling, repurpose, reuse

It’s hot and humid, and while we thankfully have central air conditioning, we certainly don’t want to work on any projects outside. So recently we’ve been turning our efforts to the basement, which had become rather disorganized ever since our attic remodel last summer (it’s been a year since the contractor finished up with us—that just blows my mind!).

I couldn’t find any photos, but trust me, it was a mess.

We gathered up some things to donate to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Gurnee and set them aside for a future trip (we already donated the vinyl windows we removed from the attic).

On a couple recent visits to Costco, I saw some nice, heavy-duty shelving units for $60 apiece. They were too heavy for me to handle alone, so last weekend Pete and I went back and bought two of the last 3 units they had.

They’re made by Whalen. I think this is the model. If you can find them, I’d recommend them: each (black melamine) shelf holds up to 1500 lbs. I saw a similar model at Office Depot for over $100, so it looks like a great deal.

I already claimed a couple shelves for paint but still need to go through the rest of the cans on the floor and see if some need to be dropped off at the next local household chemical waste collection.

Under the stairs where I used to store the paint, everything has been recycled and reused:

• The white base cabinet came from my old office space
• The stacked bins were our recycling center waaaay back when we used to have to sort everything
• The laminate counter remnant first came from the old house, then I used it in my office and now it’s here
• The little corner wall cabinet is from our kitchen but is fairly useless and didn’t fit into the new layout
• The tall metal cabinet on the right came from my childhood house and is from the early 1970s

All of this storage is for my paint and wood refinishing supplies. It makes me very happy.

We moved the treadmill, which used to face the stairs above, into the finished part of the basement and rearranged the furniture to hide it a little (on the left behind the couch). While the couch faces away from the pool table, it now faces toward the fake fireplace and TV so I think this will work better. It’s also much more pleasant to use the treadmill there rather than inhaling kitty litter fumes in its previous spot.

Finally, we removed the old basement door, which I plan to strip and use in the upstairs laundry room, and Pete installed this steel door which the contractor had from a previous job and was going to toss. He used it temporarily in our attic to help keep the dust down.

It had no doorknob, but we scored there too and got a really nice sample that our friends at Evanston Lumber were going to toss.

All the door needs is some elbow grease to clean it up along with some weatherstripping and it should be good as new.

It’s so satisfying to reuse a bunch of old things that would have normally been tossed into a landfill long ago. They are perfectly functional and will be well utilized here!

Tags: basement, freebies, organization, reuse, storage

One minute our robin fledgling was standing on the edge of the nest, and the next s/he was gone! All that’s left is the well-constructed nest and a little poop.

On Tuesday, sometime soon after I posted about it we noticed the nest was empty and we haven’t seen the robin family since. I heard a robin this morning though, so hopefully they’re doing okay.

In other wildlife news, Pete and I were sitting on the patio last night and shortly before sunset we noticed our friendly neighborhood bat swooping in and out over our yard, hopefully eating up lots of mosquitoes.

Still no inhabitants in our bat house though. Supposedly it may take a season or two before they move in, if at all. Thankfully, also no sign of him residing in our house any longer.

Speaking of which I don’t think I ever posted the “after” shot of our bat house, which we installed over the compost bin (to catch nitrogen-rich bat guano droppings), so here’s a shot of the garden taken about a month ago looking toward the alley.

The neighbors who have inquired about it have been receptive. It’s incredibly thin—we bought it through Bat Conservation International, so I’m sure they know what they’re doing. I would have liked to mount it on the side of our house, but since the walkway is directly under it, it would have been rather risky to mount it there (see previous paragraph).

The next best thing is to mount it on a post 10-15 feet high, which is what we did. The cedar post will weather and turn gray, which is the color I painted the exterior of the bat house per the instructions, so it will eventually blend in a little more.

Tags: birds, garden, wildlife

Not only do we have our garden growing like gangbusters, thanks or no thanks to all the rain we’ve had this summer, but we also have a baby robin who looks ready to leave the nest very soon.

We’re not sure what happened to the other two eggs, but there always seemed to only be one that hatched. Here he/she was three days ago:

And now this morning, looking much fluffier, standing on the edge of the nest while mom was out foraging for breakfast:

Elsewhere, in the vegetable garden, the tomatoes are starting to get bigger and the basil is HUGE. I really have to pull those today and get going on making pesto. I’ll also chop up the leaves and freeze them in ice cube trays for pre-measured cubes of fresh basil to use all winter long in soups and stews.

In the backyard, between the house and garage, the Elderberry bush has flopped a little and hides the variegated dogwood bushes, but it also does a good job of hiding the expanse of vinyl siding on the garage.

On the trellises in front of the AC units, the vine on the right is definitely a much slower grower than the other. The one on the left is Virgin’s Bower (Clematis virginiana) and the one on the right is Leather Flower (Clematis pitcheri). Both nice, but since I want to hide the AC unit more, we may have to add something else on the right.

In the side yard, between the patio and vegetable garden/alley, we planted a bunch more native plants and most of them have done a decent job of catching up with the established plants, which we either transplanted from the old house or planted our first year here.

I planted some quick-growing but usually short-lived black-eyed Susans (on the left) while the other plants get more established. There’s one plant that I bought by mistake. I may get rid of that one, whatever it is, but some of the others are Stiff Goldenrod, Wild Quinine, Purple Love Grass, and Rough Blazing Star. The ones surrounded by fencing are Pale Blue Aster—the bunnies obviously love the taste of those.

Another view looking toward the back yard from the neighbor’s side.

The birdhouse my grandfather built is housing more sparrows. We really need to decrease the diameter of the opening to try and attract smaller, more desirable birds to nest there, like the Black-capped Chickadee, which can fit into a 1-1/8″ hole, or the Downy Woodpecker with a 1-1/4″ hole.

Of the established plants, we have Rattlesnake Master (Eryngium yuccifolium), Wild Bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), the ubiquitous Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), and several grasses such as Indian Grass (Sorghastrum nutans) and Little Bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium).

Here we see the same bunch of flowers but looking toward the alley.

The Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium purpureum) is about 9 feet tall. It’s in full bloom right now, which makes it very top heavy and makes a great backdrop even though it can get out of hand. I had to cut a bunch of it back and tie the branches together because it was really splaying out. It’s definitely keeping the bumblebees busy though, and we’re getting frequent visitors like Monarchs and the Swallowtail shown in the photo below.

If this weather would just get a little bit cooler, I’d spend more time tending the garden. If the heat and humidity keep going like this, the garden is going to get even more out of hand, but I’ll be too hot to care.

Tags: garden, native plants, wildlife

I think it was the weekend before the holiday weekend, or about 12 days ago, when Pete and I noticed that a robin was busily building a nest in our sumac next to the patio. She was picking up dried grass from the neighbor’s freshly mowed lawn and also bringing some “muck” from the gutter. In no time at all she had settled into her nest.

Luckily the nest is on the opposite side of the tree away from the patio and over our neighbor’s lawn so she doesn’t seem to mind when we’re on the patio peering at her through the branches.

Pete has checked the nest a couple times when she has flown away, partly because we wanted to make sure there were no unwanted eggs in the nest from a parasitic bird such as the cowbird who surreptitiously lays its eggs in others’ nests, leaving the host bird to incubate the cowbird eggs.

There’s no mistaking whose eggs these belong to:

Robin’s eggs take about 12-14 days to hatch. I’m not sure when all the eggs were laid, but I think we should have three baby robins any day now—definitely before the weekend.

Tags: birds, garden, wildlife

I’ve never been very interested in growing vegetables beyond tomatoes, and with our community-supported agriculture (CSA) share, I get a much greater variety of vegetables than I would by growing my own. It has also introduced me to a few vegetables I probably wouldn’t have tried on my own, like fennel (not a big licorice fan) and kohlrabi.

This is our third season with our CSA, Angelic Organics, and I’m determined to stay on top of it this year. Last year, with our remodel and subsequent lack of kitchen for a while, it was difficult to keep up with a menu plan using all the vegetables each week.

We’ll be getting our third share this week, and so far so good. I’ve already made pesto using the basil and spinach, the abundance of lettuce each week hasn’t daunted me, and I’m finding new recipes to try, either on Epicurious, Kalyn’s Kitchen (great blog!) or two excellent cookbooks, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone and our CSA-authored cookbook, Farmer John’s Cookbook: The Real Dirt on Vegetables.

Even though we’ll get a variety of tomatoes in our share, including heirlooms, one can never have too many homegrown tomatoes, wouldn’t you say?

That’s why we finally built a small raised garden bed conveniently located next to the compost (easy to add fresh compost to the garden, easy to toss rotted tomatoes into the compost).

This was the project we were working on when we had our Yard Crashers encounter.
Prior to this, this area was the dumping ground for additional dirt, particularly when we were building our patio. We’ve kept a tarp over the dirt to kill off as many weeds as possible until we finally were able to use it. We’ll see how successful that was in the coming months.

Not very attractive, I know, but it has been hidden between the “waste corral” and the prairie garden.

With tomato-growing time a-wasting, we stacked landscape timbers three-high, drilled through the stack and drove 24″ lengths of rebar into the ground. It was a fairly easy project once we had the right drill bit and used the old electric drill (our battery-driven one didn’t have enough power).

We had plenty of dirt piled up to fill the bed. We have four heirloom varieties planted and plenty of basil. If I could grow buffalo mozzerella to complete my caprese garden, that would be planted here too.

We capped it off with 1×6 cedar planks. The cedar plank scraps will be used for grilling salmon. Yum.

Pete added the pavers for now just to keep the mud at bay, but I’ll be moving those and shoveling the excess dirt away to make the ground more level.

The tomato cages have been added along with a soaker hose connected to the garage rain barrel. Now it’s your turn, tomatoes: grow!

Tags: CSA, garden, vegetables

Three years ago today we became the proud owners of this fine bungalow and haven’t regretted it for one minute.

The blog began about a month earlier, and it has been great to “chronicle” all that we’ve done and see how much the house has changed. Since I recently compiled the renovation highlights in the 2nd Annual Bungalow Blog Tour post, today I thought I’d take a look at the exterior changes.

When we first bought the house, it was looking a little tired. Seeing it here now, I wonder what I saw in it. Maybe it was just the change in residences I really needed so I looked past its faults and only saw its possibilities.

June 2007

After our first anniversary, we began to landscape a little, we had scraped and painted the basement windows, and some of the lawn had regrown (the PO had a storage pod sitting in that spot for literally six months). I also tried some annuals in window boxes, but wasn’t thrilled with the outcome.

June 2008

On our second anniversary, we were in the throes of the attic renovation and it was here where we really made a big leap in improving the bungalow’s look, first by clipping the gables in the front and back which made the bungalow more ground-hugging. The red/gray/white shingles (which made the roof look pink) were replaced with a more earthy color to match the face brick, and the vinyl windows were replaced with aluminum-clad wood windows that matched the size and look of the original windows left in the attic (damaged beyond repair).

June 2009

And now on our third anniversary, how it looks today:

June 2010

The landscaping still has a long way to go. We haven’t even started on one section of the side yard, but at least we smothered all the weeds there. It has been covered in mulch and will probably remain that way for a while longer. We dug up the sidewalk that led from the front sidewalk because it just seemed to chop up the yard and made it appear like the side yard didn’t belong with the house (actually, we paid some guys who were pouring a new sidewalk for the neighbor to dig it up). Right now that is covered in mulch too while we figure out a better landscaping plan (or get some professional help).

Eventually I’d also love to build a brick surround for the fireplace chimney, but that will probably be further down the road. As I’ve already mentioned, the next exterior project will be a custom storm window for the arched basement windows and then new wood storm windows for the seven bay windows, hopefully before the next anniversary!

Tags: Chicago-style bungalow, curb appeal, exterior projects, landscaping

Luckily we avoided the worst part of last night’s storm. I hope those of you reading this in Chicagoland weathered the storm as well.

There were some really cool cloud formations as the storm passed through, and there was a golden glow everywhere:

Although all the rain we’ve been having has been great for our newly-planted additions to the garden, I’m a little tired of the heat, humidity and rain. Today’s weather has been much more pleasant. Let’s hope it stays that way for a while.

Tags: bad weather, clouds

There’s a house across the street, built in the early 1960s, that has been unoccupied for at least five years now. An elderly couple owned the house, they didn’t have any children, and they were the first and only owners of the house. I never met them.

The husband passed away probably 15 years ago. Pete and I were living in the other house at the time (our previous home was two doors away from this one for those who don’t know our back-story). The wife was in poor health for a long time — I don’t know what her health issues were but it looked like she had 24-hour in-home health care.

She passed away about five years ago. Her next-door neighbor told us that in addition to not having children, they also did not have a will.

I don’t know everything that goes on with estates under those circumstances, but from what I gather, a lawyer has been the executor of the estate. The house has been maintained, lawn mowed, etc. Occasionally I’ll notice someone going in or out of the house but as far as I know the estate has been in probate while they search for heirs.

A couple of days ago, a dumpster appeared in front of the house so I thought maybe the house had been sold to new owners. Who knows, but here’s where the title of this post will start to make sense:

Earlier today I started hearing loud noises outside, so I looked to see several people carrying out furniture from the house. First I saw sofa cushions tossed into the dumpster. Now not every sofa is in good condition and many may need to be thrown out, but these were the sofa cushions your grandparents might have had — if you had the type of grandparents who encased their furniture in plastic.

Yes, from my vantage point across the street, they looked to be in pristine condition thanks to their heavy plastic covering. Next came the mid-century 3-piece sectional sofa — also encased in plastic and all unceremoniously thrown into the dumpster.

Dining room chairs, mid-century Scandinavian design. Into the dumpster.

Now before you start hounding me for the address, thinking your dumpster-diver dreams came true, what happened next was despicable.

One of the guys would walk into the dumpster and proceed to whack away at the furniture with a sledgehammer. A SLEDGEHAMMER! No hope for reuse or resale. Just more garbage for the world, all in one fell swoop.

I watched with horror, anger and disbelief until I had to turn away. I couldn’t watch the carnage any longer.

I still hear them banging away outside and it makes me sick to my stomach. I just can’t understand why it had to be that way.

Tags: disappointment, furniture, mid-century modern

We were out for dinner last night with some friends who recently put their Evanston condo on the market. Their realtor wanted to know what their property taxes were for last year and also wanted to make sure they had their Homeowners Exemption, which is a reduction in the assessed valuation of your home and decreases the property taxes for owner-occupied residences here in Cook County.

We’ve known about this for years, as we used to have to send in a postcard to the Assessor’s office each year certifying we owned and occupied our home (nowadays you only have to fill out a form once). But as first-time homeowners, our friends had no idea this existed, another friend who owns a condo in Chicago didn’t know, and our previous owner, who lived here most of his life, had never applied for it!

I’m not sure why some people know and others don’t, so I want to spread the word to all Cook County homeowners: don’t pay more property taxes than absolutely necessary!

It’s very easy to file. First, search for your property via your PIN, or Property Identification Number right from the Cook County Assessor home page, or if you don’t know it or can’t find it (it would be on your property tax bill), you can also search by address.

Once you find your address, click on the Exemptions tab to see if the Homeowner Exemption has been applied. If not, there should be a link to apply online.

Now, if you’ve been living in your home for several years or more but didn’t have the Homeowner Exemption (click on Exemption History at the bottom of the screen), the good news is you can file a Homeowner Exemption Certificate of Error Application for the past three years (fill out one form for each year) and you’ll (eventually) receive a check from the Cook County Treasurer. The bad news is if you’ve lived there a long time, you lose out on retrieving that money past the three-year mark.

If you can’t find the link to apply online, you can also download the Homeowner/Senior Citizen Exemption form here (yes, if you’re over 65, you can receive an additional discount on your taxes).

The dollar amount will vary, based on the assessed valuation of your home, so I can’t tell you how much you’ll receive, but if I help just one person reading this save some money I’ll be very happy!

Tags: Cook County, homeowner, property taxes

Yesterday, Pete and I went to the local Menards to purchase supplies for our raised garden bed. After two years we were finally going to remove the blue tarp that covered the dirt near the compost (which hopefully killed off all the weeds). More on that later.

While we were in the garden section, we noticed the guy from DIY Network’s Yard Crashers, Ahmed Hassan, talking to someone along with a small camera crew. We watch the show fairly regularly and I knew they have been doing some yards in the Chicago area.

Pete kind of wanted to lurk and see if he talked to us, but I for one did not want to be on camera, let alone a TV show, and I also wasn’t sure I could just give free reign to someone to makeover our yard. However the thought of possibly getting our yard finished was kind of appealing.

In the end though, we left without seeing him again.

We worked on our little project that afternoon, and Pete had to run back to the store for a couple more things.

As Pete pondered drill bits, Ahmed and his camera crew came out of nowhere to talk to him. I get a phone call from Pete and it’s Ahmed on the line! He said that Pete told him I was a little bit of a control freak (true) and I told him, well yes, I couldn’t just give someone carte blanche with my yard.

Maybe I was a fool for not getting our yard crashed, because if I could have gotten a pergola out of the deal, that would have been sweet! It seems they prefer a blank slate though, so I really don’t know if they would have worked around the stuff we’ve already done in the yard.

In any case, they may include Pete’s little encounter with Ahmed on the show, and we’ll just have to go back to working on the yard bit by bit.

Tags: DIY, garden, TV, yard work

Ugh, where does the time go? I haven’t been super busy, yet I haven’t managed to find time to post. Time to remedy that!

Lots of little things, and one somewhat big thing, are happening around the house.

In no particular order, here’s the latest:

I’ve been getting quotes to replace the gutters, soffit and fascia, but I think we’re going to have to hold off on that for a while. We have some leaky gutters in the front of the house, so the water drips onto the limestone porch railings, which isn’t good long-term. In a heavy storm, it also pours over the gutter on the side of the house. One of the problems appears to be an insufficient number of downspouts: we only have two at the back of the house and one at each corner was recommended. It’s an awfully long run for all that rainwater to flow from the front to the back.

It’s just a lot of money right now, and while I think it would also boost our curb appeal (I really, really, REALLY want to get rid of all that white!), it probably won’t happen this year.

I’ve also been getting quotes on storm windows for the front of the house. While we do have triple-track aluminum storms that the PO installed, they don’t do a good job of keeping cold air out in winter (plus there’s all that damn WHITE again! It just does not look good with the brick and limestone!).

There is also no storm at all for the arched basement window, and I think that is the first priority.

I think we’ll be going local for that window, but like many owners of old homes who are looking for the more traditional wood storm look (but without the traditional swapping-of-storms-and-screens-from-the-outside-on-a-ladder chore), I’m looking at Adams Architectural for the other storm windows on the bay.

Indoors, we finally received a shade I ordered for the kitchen back in March from Rejuvenation. I was a little disappointed in their updates on the order as well as the long wait time, however the shades are handpainted and they were probably backed up due to the sale they had on at the time. Photos to come.

I finally hung my collection of old family photos in the stairway. It was my initial preferred spot for those, but later I debated about hanging them elsewhere. After thinking about it more I decided it was the best spot after all. I think they fit nicely here.

The big thing that’s been consuming my time is moving my design/illustration studio to the extra upstairs space. While I enjoyed having a separate studio/office space outside the home for over five years now, I don’t have any employees and rarely have to meet face-to-face with clients, so I’ll save a lot of money by moving my studio home, especially now that we have the additional space. I have mixed feelings about it, but I’ve been working at home a lot lately anyway, so it just makes more sense.

Right now the room at the back of the house is the dumping ground for everything, but I’ve managed to purge the bookcase in the dining room, donating over 100 books to the local library and recycling ancient computer manuals (”How to Do Everything with your Visor”, anyone?), and rearranged all the books and knick-knacks into a pleasing, organized “composition”. It feels great to have that chore done!

Bookcase, after initial book donation and before organizing and adding in more books from the studio:

Bookcase, after

Tags: book, bookcase, photos, storm windows, windows

I’m pleased to join the Bungalow Blog Tour that StuccoHouse organized this year — be sure to check out all the bungalows on the tour by following the links at the bottom of each post.

Welcome to our near-north suburban Chicago home! Here in the Windy City we do many things Chicago-style, from politics to pizza and hot dogs and yes, even bungalows.

Between 80,000 to 100,000 Chicago-style bungalows were built from 1910-1940 as the working class family gained prosperity. Most of these bungalows are located in the “Bungalow Belt”, a crescent-shaped section sweeping the outskirts of Chicago and stretching into the suburbs, like our working-class suburb of Morton Grove.

Our bungalow was built in 1929, shortly before the stock market crashed. With a smattering of bungalows in the vicinity mixed with post-war ranches, it’s evident that home building came to a screeching halt at this point in our neighborhood until the early or mid-1950s.

While there are many variations in the Chicago-style bungalow, the defining elements are:

• One-and-one-half story single family home with the roofline perpendicular to the street
• Solid brick construction with face brick and stone trim, topped with a low-pitched roof with wide overhangs
• Generous number of windows and full basement

Some characteristics that we share with many, but not all Chicago-style bungalows:

• An arched doorway and covered porch
• Brick walls capped with limestone on either side of the porch stairs
• Limestone insets and window box brackets

My favorite feature of our bungalow? The original living room art glass windows—seven in all forming a bay. From what I understand, only about 30% of all bungalows were built with art glass windows, and of those there was a wide variety of patterns and styles.

For more information about the Chicago bungalow, visit the Historic Chicago Bungalow Association.

We’ve undertaken a number of projects in the (almost) three years we’ve lived here, some of which were to restore original features of the house to their former glory, like having all the windows and then the baseboard, door frames and picture rail stripped and refinished and repairing most of the plaster walls. You can see a quick then-and-now overview here.

The biggest project occurred last summer when we added a master suite, laundry room and “flex” room to the unfinished attic. The remodel also affected our kitchen in order to accommodate a wider staircase to the second floor, so it gave us the opportunity to improve the kitchen layout.

Once all the plaster cracks were repaired we covered the plain, poorly-painted vanilla walls and ceilings with mostly warm, earthy colors like Firenze orange in the dining room and Azures teal in the living room, a greenish-yellow in the former TV room (now office) and the most recent project, Wasabi green in the kitchen.

Outdoors, we added a patio and are gradually replacing the “lawn” (all weeds) with native grasses and perennials.

We’ve completed a number of little projects in addition to the big ones and there’s still lots to do — like tearing out the previous owner’s (PO’s) blue-and-yellow bathroom remodel and remodeling the PO’s super-sized fireplace project into a simplified, more bungalow-appropriate hearth. We haven’t run out of steam yet, so I hope you’ll keep coming back for more updates.

Thanks for visiting our bungalow!

Next House on the Blog Tour: Black Dog’s Bungalow
Previous House on the Blog Tour: Tiny Oak Park Bungalow

Tags: before-and-after, Chicago-style bungalow, completed projects, history

Get your shopping list together Chicagoland: it’s time for the annual Native Plant Sale this weekend, May 8-9 at Lake County Forest Preserve’s Independence Grove in Libertyville!

About a 30- to 40-minute drive from Chicago, Independence Grove is located about 2-1/2 miles west of I-94 on Buckley Road (Route 137). Sale hours are 9 am to 3 pm Saturday, and 10 am to 3 pm Sunday. Go early and head to Wildberry Cafe for breakfast (a little farther west of the forest preserve on the southwest corner of Milwaukee Avenue and Buckley Road) — YUM!

Tags: garden, native plants

So far, so good.

I brought Günter home from the vet a week ago last Friday, and he has been much, much better. He has been playing, eating and acting normal.

I decided against surgery, so the only course of treatment is prednisone, which hopefully will keep his appetite strong for a while. How long it will last is anybody’s guess, but that’s how life goes, isn’t it?

If there’s anything good about this, it’s that it keeps me focused on enjoying whatever time left we have with our little pet.

Tags: cats

This week not only marked the one-year anniversary of my dear cat Axel’s death, but it also brought his littermate Günter to the vet, ultimately for more bad news.

Earlier in the week I noticed he wasn’t feeling well, and I thought I felt a lump in his abdomen. Along with his other symptoms I was convinced that he had lymphoma just like his brother did.

The vet couldn’t palpate the lump and thought I might have felt his kidney. His blood work came back with an extremely low white blood cell count, but otherwise normal. An X-Ray was inconclusive, but an ultrasound showed a slightly enlarged lymph node along with an abnormality in the lining of the small intestine. They were able to aspirate the lymph node, and the results showed the presence of mast cells.

Mast cell tumors are fairly common in both cats and dogs, and unfortunately when the mast cells are more systemic like Günter’s, the prognosis isn’t great.

The vet is recommending surgery to remove the spleen, which could increase his chance of survival, however it won’t cure the disease.

I have the weekend to decide, but I’m leaning strongly against surgery of any kind — since he will die from this sooner or later, why put him through the stress, pain and discomfort of a surgery that will not guarantee he’ll live longer? As much as it pains me, I think it’ll be best to enjoy whatever time we have left with him and prepare to let him go at the first sign of discomfort.

As much as I love animals, this is the part of pet ownership that tears me apart. Although Pete thinks I won’t be able to live without having a cat in the house, once Günter’s gone I just don’t think I can go through this anymore.

Tags: cat, family

UPDATE: As of around 12:30 p.m. half the rebate funds are gone. Do NOT wait until tonight to buy!

Illinois residents: if you’ve been thinking about taking advantage of the 15% Energy Star appliance tax rebate that starts today and ends on the 25th (or until funds run out) RUN, don’t walk to a participating retailer. I’m dead serious. The money isn’t expected to last through the weekend, however I have a feeling it will be gone today.

I have been waiting for this date for quite some time to buy a new refrigerator that will complete our kitchen update. I did all my research ahead of time and also checked out the appliances at several stores over the past week so this morning I was raring to go.

The refrigerator we decided on is the Samsung 26 cu. ft. French Door model in Stainless Steel. My preferred retailer Abt surprisingly does not carry the Samsung even though they sell other Samsung products. According to my research on energystar.gov and Consumer Reports among others, the Samsungs not only have one of the highest Energy Star rating (i.e. lowest energy consumption) for an icemaker/water-dispensing model, but they are also rated highest in customer satisfaction according to J.D. Powers.

Since my mother has been complaining about her refrigerator for years now, I picked her up bright and early, Starbucks in hand, and we went to Sears to purchase ours. A similar model is sold only at Lowe’s, however it would have cost over $300 more. As far as I could tell, the only difference was that the Lowe’s model had Twin Cooling Plus vs. Twin Cooling — supposedly a more advanced version of their cooling technology which uses separate cooling elements for the freezer and refrigerator sections — however I figured Twin Cooling alone was far better than what we already had, so it wasn’t worth the extra $300 for an already-expensive refrigerator.

Lowe’s offered free delivery vs. $65 (+$10 to haul away the old fridge) for Sears, but I’m still way ahead in savings. There’s also a $75 rebate through the state once you send in documentation that you purchased an Energy Star appliance and had the old one hauled away. Instead of paying Sears $10 to haul the old one away, I scheduled a pick-up of our old refrigerator through Commonwealth Edison, our utility provider. They’re going to pay me $25 to take it away, so the delivery really is only costing me $40.

The newspapers were likening this sale to Black Friday, the big sale day after Thanksgiving. Sears opened at 6, Abt at 7, but they weren’t allowed to ring up sales until 8 a.m. When we arrived at Sears, there were already quite a few people ahead of us (who were probably the seasoned Black Friday shoppers — I’m not one of them). We were done by 9 though so I still had the rest of the day to get some work done. Now I just have to wait a week or so for delivery!

Tags: energy efficiency, Energy Star, kitchen, planning, purchases, refrigerator

The garden is starting to wake up and I’m looking forward to planting season next month. The plants I added to the parkway in front of the house are starting to peek through, but I think it will still be a while before they fill in.

We made an early purchase last week and added an Eastern White Pine (Pinus strobus) — native to most of the eastern half of the U.S. — to the front yard where the dumpster was parked last year.

We’re debating about having a lawn service come in and dig up the rest of the lawn and level the yard. It’s still so uneven and full of weeds. If we tried to do it ourselves we’d have to figure out a way to get rid of all the landscape waste.

In the backyard, the trellises we made when we still lived at the previous house had to be reinforced to prevent them from blowing over in their new spot in front of the A/C units. This time Pete used some old treated lumber and drove rebar into the ground to support them on either side and secured it to the brick with a bracket. We have some climbing vines planted here, so the A/C units will be camouflaged in no time.

The Elderberry in front of the garage is vigorously sprouting its leaves…

…while the Prairie Smoke is already getting ready to bloom.

After last summer’s uninvited guests arrived, I ordered a bat house which we’re mounting on a pole over the compost bin (bat guano is an excellent addition to the compost!). I still need to paint and assemble the thing, but Pete and Rod already started on the cedar posts to support it. It’s also strengthening the compost bin itself, which was bowing a little at the sides.

The house will be mounted to another cedar post sandwiched between the two here and will tilt down for cleaning after the bats have migrated for the winter. The house needs to be mounted 13- to 15-feet high and should be south-facing.

I’m not sure how some of our neighbors will react, so I’m hoping it won’t cause problems. It’s right at the alley and near the telephone pole, so it’s not like it’s ruining some great view. Plus, we already know that there are bats in the neighborhood — and that’s a good thing considering the vast amount of moths, beetles and especially mosquitoes they consume daily — so providing bats with adequate housing means they won’t go looking for it in our own dwellings (which is one of my main objectives!).

Since we’re on the subject, let’s dispel some myths about bats:

• Bats do not carry rabies. They can catch the disease like any other mammals however. Truth is, less than one-half of one percent of the bat population contracts rabies. Historically humans have died from rabies from contact with household pets far more than with bats (however, one should never try to catch a bat).
• Bats are not blind and do not get tangled in your hair. They can see quite well, but rely more on their keen echolocation to navigate.
• Bats are not dirty or unclean. They spend an enormous amount of time grooming, like cats.
• Finally, the vast majority of bats eat only insects, which helps protect our crops, while others (mainly in tropical areas) eat fruit, nectar and pollen. According to Bat Conservation International, one little brown bat, like our visitor, can eat up to 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in only one hour!

In that respect, I’d say we’re helping to protect the neighborhood from West Nile Virus.

You’re welcome, neighbors!

Tags: garden, native plants, spring, weeds, wildlife

Before we moved into the bungalow almost three years ago, the kitchen looked like this:

Shortly after we moved in, one of the first projects was to get rid of the half-assed screaming yellow paint job (yes, the PO painted only parts of the walls before running out of steam).

Since we weren’t going to tear out the blue-and-yellow tile backsplash right away (which matched the bathroom tile, naturally, because you want to match your kitchen “ambiance” with your bathroom, right?), I needed to come up with a color palette that would work with it. I chose a green for the walls and a pale yellow for the ceiling, both of which matched some of our plates (Benjamin Moore Kittery Point Green HC-19) and Weston Flax HC-5, respectively).

It was a definite improvement.

Shortly thereafter I wanted to neutralize the backsplash and painted it beige to match the counter.

That worked well for a while, as we were plenty busy with other projects.

Next came the big Attic Renovation of last summer, which involved tearing out a kitchen wall to make room for the wider stairway behind it and allowing us to reconfigure the kitchen layout. You can read about the progress here and here.

Finally in February, with the Kitchen Cure as incentive, it was time to decide on a new paint color. At first I was pondering a very neutral gray, allowing it to be the background for the colorful plates and other items on open shelving.

I’m not sure why I changed my mind, but I’m glad I did. I used the neutral gray on the ceiling instead (Benjamin Moore Thunder AF-685) and the walls received a very rich olive-y, yellowish green appropriately named Wasabi (AF-430). I love, love, LOVE this color. Photos seriously do not do it justice — it’s more rich than bright, more bright than earthy, yet still earthy and deep — if that makes any sense at all.

Sometimes I just stand in the room and gaze at the color.

We have a few more finishing touches to add, so I’ll have more details to share over the next week or two. Later on, in the next few months, I plan to paint the cabinets. In the meantime, though, I’ll work on capturing its true color!

Tags: Aura paint, before-and-after, Benjamin Moore, kitchen, paint

As part of Apartment Therapy’s Spring Kitchen Cure, we were to choose a special project to work on, something that would improve the kitchen aesthetically. This prompted me to put the kitchen wall repair on the fast track, something I’d been wanting to start on anyway.

To refresh your memory, this is how the wall looked:

(You can read why it looked the way it did here.)

After several weeks, the recessed cabinet was built and the wall properly sheetrocked.

Before painting, the recessed cabinet and a section of the wall next to it were hit with a couple coats of magnetic primer. I used Active Wall Magnetic Primer but there are several other brands that probably work the same.

Yes, the primer is dark gray, and this stuff is heavy — a quart of this stuff seemed as heavy as a gallon of paint!

The Benjamin Moore Aura paint covered the primer easily with two coats (the photos don’t do the paint color justice!), and the cabinet door was covered inside and out with chalkboard paint.

Writing the grocery list on the inside of the cabinet makes it handy but still out of the way (I just have to remember to look at it before going to the store!), and I have plenty of room for various canned goods. The larger 28-oz. cans don’t fit in this space, but overall it has cleared up a lot of space in my pantry and its proximity to the stove makes it convenient for cooking.

I was a little disappointed in the “magnetic-ness” of the wall — novelty magnets, like our Wallace and Gromit figures are too heavy to hold up, but sheet magnets work pretty well. They also recommend using rare earth neodymium magnets, which I bought here. For such strong magnets they still don’t hold as well as I’d like, but they’re strong enough to hold a recipe to the wall which I can easily read while cooking. Just don’t expect it to hold several sheets of paper.

All in all, I’d say a major improvement to the hole in the wall! Photos of the rest of the kitchen to come.

Tags: Apartment Therapy, Aura paint, chalkboard paint, improvement, kitchen, Kitchen Cure, magnetic primer, paint