Today, I was a nervous wreak. Our fixer upper’s countertops got delivered and installed. I don’t know why I was such a nervous nelly but I am. I’ve been up since 4:30 am running every possible thing that can go wrong through my head. What if the wrong countertops showed up, the wrong size was cut, the wrong holes would be drilled for the faucets or cooktop – the list went on and on. God forbid if one got cracked on the 45 minute drive down on 355 to get here. Thank god Frank decided to get up with me. I could’ve either gone to Spenga at 5 am or cuddle with Frank. Frank won. 😂🐶

The installers finally arrived and the countertops were just as beautiful as the slabs I picked out months ago. I decided to stay for 4 hours while they were being installed in case any questions were needed but I tried to stay out of their way. I’m sure they did not like it when I was watching them (and taking pictures) while they lifted one of our island’s slab. I kept saying in my head, “please gently placed it on top of the supports that were built. Don’t break any of it.” They didn’t!

As I sit in my car writing this, staying warm, and trying to stay out of their way – I’m sure they were f-bombing me while the installation took place. Especially with me watching all of their moves. I’m excited to see my kitchen is really starting to look like an actual kitchen!!! Now, I just need to pick out the backsplash.

We also had some of our bathrooms’ countertops installed. Clean and simple I love it!

I would say today was a successful day. I love everything that got installed and I didn’t end up with a migraine. Success!!

Love ya, Lisa

Sorry guys – It’s been awhile since I have written. Here are some updates with what’s been going on at our fixer upper.

Painters: Our painters didn’t start when I thought they were going to start. They actually missed their start date by a week. A small set back but what are you going to do. Since the painters started a week late, I had to push my countertops and our appliances installation back a week too. That sucked! As of today, there are no colors on the walls but lots of other things happening. There was 3-4 days worth of prep work completed, a day worth of priming, a day of drying, then a couple of days of painting trim and now they are painting the ceilings. So far so good. I’ll be excited when some walls start changing colors and the trim work starts to be noticed.

Mudroom/Pantry: Our mudroom and pantry started getting some details added this week too. We took the old sunroom which was located right off the kitchen and converted it to our mudroom and pantry. Our last house had a smaller sized mudroom (which was taken from our garage) and zero walk-in pantry. It was probably the only things I disliked about our last house. I knew I had to incorporate these two rooms into our fixer upper. The original sunroom was a 12 x 12 room that needed attention (as did everything in the house) so it was a no brainer to change it to the mudroom. At first, I thought how awesome is a 12 x 12 mudroom, then I realized that it would be way too big and a waste of space. So, I decided to cut the room in half and add a closet to the back end of it. Boom – there was our walk-in pantry. I do have a cabinet pantry located in my kitchen for day to day necessities but the pantry in the mudroom will be for spill over (all that extra Cost Co crap we buy and don’t need).

I did have another panic this past week with my mudroom…the tile. If you remember, I purchased the mudroom tile probably 6 months ago. The workers just got around to laying it this past week. Look in the bottom right hand corner of the photo above. Now, here was my panic. I got a text from one of the workers asking for me to grab 2 more boxes of tile since he ran out. I straight up panic!!! This tile was on clearance and the store wasn’t going to carry this line anymore. At the time of purchase, I was getting a steal on all of the tile (not a steal anymore). After some online searching, I found the tile – THANK GOD. The crappy part is that the shipping cost me 3 times more than the actual cost of the tile for 2 boxes. WTF! Always buy 15% extra – lesson learned.

Laundry Room: Our laundry room started getting pretty this week too. Our 1950’s farmhouse didn’t have a legit laundry room. The washer and dryer were located in the basement in a utility room off the single car garage. My general contractor and I came up with a couple of different areas of where we could stick this necessary room for a family of five. Our last house had the laundry room upstairs by all the bedrooms. This was AMAZING! My first thought was making a laundry closet on the main floor located next to our master bedroom. I was never really sold on this because of space. Yes, it would be nice to have it by the bedrooms but I was going to have to take space from our master closet and bathroom to do this. Plus, have it be in a closet????? No where to fold, dry or hide stuff. I didn’t wanted that either. Looks like the basement it was. We took a room right off the bottom of the stairs that was located off a single car garage and converted half of it to a laundry room/downstairs mudroom while leaving the other half unfinished holding some mechanicals, our water filtration system and some other crap that I really don’t know what it is. Now onto adding the fun stuff – cabinets, countertops, lighting, etc.

Outdoor Projects: We have years worth of outdoor projects that we want to tackle at our fixer upper. For some people that might seem daunting but for Jason and I – we love it. We also had no problem putting our family to work this past weekend. My brother loves cutting down stuff. Give him a call and tell him to bring his chain saw over and he will go to work. Lets just say there is no shortage of trees to cut down on our property. There is a grouping of trees that has been bugging us for sometime. These were 70 year old evergreen bushes that tuned into giant bonsai trees located off our master bedroom that we hated looking at from inside. These trees were blocking the view from our master bedroom to the backyard and the barn. We decided to take advantage of our 60 degree Chicago March day, call over some much needed help and started chopping and burning away. Viola – now the trees are gone and we love our view again. Thank you and love you Welsh’s!!

Love ya, Lisa 😘

As our carpenters finish up the last bit of carpentry work that is left, the painters and I met to go over the next part of our fixer upper project – painting.

Picking out paint colors is not my specialty. Let’s just say Jason has had to repaint multiple rooms multiple times because of my mess ups. For this house, I have decided to keep it consistent, neutral and warmer tones.

Sherwin Williams Accessible Beige: This is the best warm neutral color and it goes with everything! If you are looking for a cooler neutral color, than go with Sherwin Williams Agreeable Grey. We are using that color in our basement. Both colors are amazing!

Sherwin Williams Pure White: This white color is being used for all trim work, interior doors and inside windows. There are a handful of white colors that most painters use and Pure White is in that category. I decided on this white since it has a hint of dullness to it. If you are looking for a crisp bright white choose Sherwin Williams Extra White. If you are leaning towards a warmer white then Sherwin Williams Alabaster is a safe choice too. I would say Pure White is in the middle of both of those.

My curve ball color choice… for me

Sherwin Williams Black Magic: I am painting all of my exterior door (inside and out) black. I have always had a black front door on the outside of my house. I love how strong it looks but I have never used it on the inside too. I’ve always played the safe card and paint the interior doors white but this time around I’m having both sides painted black.

Our kids choices…

Sherwin Williams White Truffle: Leah and Liana have decided on the same paint color for their bedrooms. They do have their own rooms but they both chose this color. Maybe it’s a twin thing but they still couldn’t choose something different. I like the color too so I didn’t fight it.

Sherwin Williams Cadet: Jadon stuck with his go to grayish blue color. I did sway him a little deeper then normal but I love how this color looks in his room. Jadon has a ton of natural light so I wanted something deeper then I would normally choose.

Well those are my choices and I’m sticking to it – for now.

Jason and I also took this field trip today.

Do you remember these? These are our kitchen counter dolomite slabs that I choose. Jason and I went to the fabrication warehouse today and placed all the template on our countertops. For some odd reason this took us two hours to complete. I’m sure we were over thinking it but this would be an expensive thing to fix. My vision is starting to come alive!

Love ya, Lisa

I haven’t wrote yet about one very important piece that we had to add to our fixer upper… air conditioning!

If you live in a home that was built within the last 30 years, forced air is a given but not in 1950. I still can’t believe that the gentleman we bought this property from didn’t have air conditioning put into this house when he moved in during the 80’s. Guess what, it’s 2020 and we are having forced air. Bring on the HVAC quotes!

We had three different companies give us quotes along with placement design of where all the ductwork would go. Once again, the quotes and designs were all over the board – just like Goldilocks and the Three Bears nursery rhyme. One company wanted to charge us the cost of a modest condo to put tacky air conditioning units in the house. Another company mentioned that this job was too big to handle and the third company’s quote was just about right (actually the cost still sucked but whatcha gonna do).

A couple of weeks later our basement ceiling looked different. Lots of shiny ductwork was added throughout the basement ceilings, multiple runs were laid throughout the house, two air conditioning systems were placed outside and now our 1950’s fixer upper is up to date with HVAC.

What about heat? A plus to this home is that it uses a boiler system that had a newer furnace attached to it. A boiler system is awesome! We will no longer have dry house during the winters months and our clothes and hair won’t be a static mess. Although we will still have the capability of using our forced air system for heat, we plan on using the boiler system instead. No more winter bloody noses for the kids.

And now we have air conditioning!! Thank god because our summers would have sucked.

Love ya, Lisa

I have been looking forward to this day for months now. All my cabinets were delivered this morning and now I can’t wait to see them up!!!

I started our cabinet design months ago (actually this past summer before we even closed on the property). The master bath and the kids bath were super easy to design. Now the kitchen on the other hand, that was a bitch!!! You would think a kitchen with the dimensions of 18′ x 31′ would be simple but no. Throw in some uneven 1950’s walls, on odd positioned window, a 12 foot wide fireplace, along with multiple entrances – it was a lot to take in for my design brain. I had to call in some professionals.

I took the kitchen layout to 3 different designers and I gave them my list of must haves but none of my ideas. I wanted to see if they came up with anything different then I already thought of. These were my 4 must haves…

1. A large farmhouse sink which needed to stay in the middle of the window facing the backyard. We wanted to see the view while either I was washing my hands or while Jason was doing the dishes 😉.

2. Try to incorporate a baking area and a double oven for sure! I’d rather bake then cook. I have the best chocolate chip cookie recipe – ask any of my nieces and nephews.

3. I love dimensional cabinetry. Please, no cabinets straight across.

4. Btw, don’t make my fireplace smaller!

My list isn’t terrible but for some reason it brought challenges to all. The first designer kept making the design VERY contemporary. That millennium designer from the city just didn’t understand this 1950’s house tucked back in the woods. The second designer didn’t want to put the time into it. I guess he didn’t want our business. Finally, the last cabinet designer was extremely helpful and let me change and manipulate his design multiple times. I’m sure after the 10th or 20th change he wanted to kill me but here is what we came up with.

These sketches might not mean much to some but a lot of thought and a handful of migraines (sorry family) went into these. Now, I can’t wait till they go up!

Our newest find this weekend: Jason and I took a ride up to All American Reclaim in Lake Barrington to look for a rustic beam to use for the mantel in the kitchen. Jason and I could spend hours in places like this and we did. Tons of old doors, windows, hardware, trinkets, wood planks and so many beams. After a couple of hours of searching through lots and lots of old wood beams, we found a hidden gem covered in the snow. A 9 1/2 foot beam from an old barn. Super cool! Now we just need this beam to dry, add a clear seal coat to it and hand it off to get hung! Super cool – I hope.

Love ya, Lisa

As the door and window trim go up, I continue to fall more in love with our fixer upper. 😍

Our contractors who are doing the wood and trim work are great! After a couple of examples, they nailed my vision. As I mentioned in my last post, the bigger the trim the better it will look – in my opinion 😉. I can’t wait to see the full picture when the trim baseboards are in place and color is on the walls. It will all look amazing!

Anyone wondering how Frank is doing?

Frank is loving to exploring at our fixer upper. A couple of days ago, Frank and I were out walking the property and ran into a deer. Frank didn’t know what to do. Before Frank could make up his mind, the deer was gone in flash.

Love ya, Lisa

Another week as gone by with our fixer upper and another project has been completed while a new project has been started.

Wood Floors: For those of you who didn’t read my last post, you might not have seen the color we chose for our floors. A dark walnut shade is now throughout our house. Jason and I love dark wood floors and staining these dark did not disappoint! They are going to look so sharp off the white trim and doors. Take a look…

Did you notice that the floors in our kitchen (top right photo) are different then the floors through the rest of the house? The original flooring in the kitchen was half tile, half wood and all different levels. It was a lot to look at! We ripped everything up, got the floors down to the same level and decided to start new rather than patching old to new planks. Since the parquet floors are a combo of red and white oak, we went with 5″ red oak planks to keep the kitchen consistent with the rest house. The kitchen has a beautiful contrast from the rest of the house while using the same type of wood.

On to window and door trimmings. My style for our fixer upper is Farmhouse/Transitional. Some of the farmhouse feel will come in from our window and floor trim choices. I really like the look of using a Casing Sill style with a little bit of crown on the top and 7” trim on the floor. I’ve always liked big trim. On past projects I have done, I’ve always told the carpenter to go big on the trim work. Normally, they think I’m crazy but in the end it always looks amazing. When in doubt go bigger, you won’t be disappointed. Take a look at my inspiration photos from Pinterest.

I have been using Pinterest for years for inspiration photos and ideas. I hope our contractor doesn’t hate me for my never-ending photos I show and text him – Sorry Tim! Not only do I use Pinterest for most of home projects and inspirations but I also use it for fashion styles and recipes. Anyone need a new fashion blogger to follow on Insta or Pinterest? Look up BurbNChic – she covers everything from clothes to shoes to accessories to house decor to gift giving ideas. You name it she talks about it. Even her weekly target runs – lol. Love you Kylie 😘

Meet Jason’s newest ranch-hand… Frank the Tank! Frank is our 9 week old English Bulldog.

Thank god he is cute and funny because he loves to pee every 15 minutes.

Love ya, Lisa

Happy Birthday to me! As my 42nd birthday quickly came and went with a crappy ice/snow storm in tow, I thought I would give you a complete update of where we are with our fixer upper four months into our project.

Back to the house, all of the inner guts of our house been fully updated to 2020. When I say the inner guts I’m referring to the electric, the plumbing, adding HVAC (hello air conditioning 🙌), reworking floor plans, fixing the current boiler system, three fireplaces inspected and cleaned, popcorn ceilings removed and other ceilings became vaulted, skylights added, all new windows in-place, three bathrooms tiled, the wood floors are looking beautiful and demo started in the basement. That was some list and I’m sure I am missing a few things. My head is exhausted from making decisions but I wouldn’t change any of it! I love doing this stuff!!!

Here are a few photos during the process.

Over the next month and a half, our fixer upper will start to look like an actual home very quickly. I started going down my list to organize and set up multiple dates of various things to be installed. The thought of moving into our fixer upper is starting to get close. So fun!

Wood Floor Update:

We decided to go with a dark walnut stain throughout the entire first floor. Two reasons why: 1) we love dark floors and 2) the parquet floors are 70 years old and there are some slight imperfections in them. We were told that the darker the stain the better the imperfection will be disguised. I hate using the word imperfections. I’d rather say character!

As I mentioned in my very first post, this old house needed A LOT of love and that is exactly what we have done but more love is still to come.

Love ya, Lisa

Happy New Years to everyone who is reading and following along. I hope your New Years was fun filled. Ours was very low key and relaxing. I loved it! Now, we are back to the daily grind with school, work, activities and our fixer upper.

Two changes have happened in our Master Bedroom. One, our bathroom is getting tiled – yeh! Two, the big hole in the corner which used to be the spiral staircase is now filled and ready for wood floors.

Here is our Master Bathroom as of tonight.

75% of our tile is up. Some of you, including Jason, is probably thinking… that is a lot of white tile. It is😂! I’ve always liked clean, white tile that can last through the design trends. Don’t worry my cabinets are a darker brown. It will be a nice contrast off the tile. My biggest curve ball (for me) is the back wall in our shower. I love the texture and pattern of tile plus the hexagon shape of the tile. Hexagon is a timeless pattern that has been around since this house was built in 1950. I just brought it up to 2020 design trends with different sizes spread throughout.

Are you wondering what the red is behind the tile??? It is a waterproof and crack resistant membrane that is painted on the walls behind the tile in wet areas. Learn something new everyday.

Remember the spiral staircase in the master bedroom leading to the basement?

Now it’s time to make an actual floor we won’t fall through.

Rebar steel rods were put into place and the cement was poured. Once the cement was fully dried, new parquet flooring was placed and now our master bedroom floors are ready for sanding and staining.

Next up will be staining our wood floors. If you follow me on Instagram, I shared some choices we were looking at for everyone to see and share their input on. Decisions – decisions. What will we be going with…

Love ya, Lisa

Happy Holidays! Christmas is my favorite holiday to decorate for and it just wasn’t the same this year. Especially, since none of our Christmas trees made it off the truck to our temporary housing. Well, you didn’t have to twist my arm to buy a new tree. I’ve always wanted a slim 9 ft tree and we must have a tree. So, I did what every good mom would do… I bought a new tree 😂! Don’t worry Jason, I’ll find a new place for it in our fixer upper next Christmas.

It’s been some time since I have made a post and I thought I would fill you all in with what has been happening at our fixer upper during the holiday season.

Bathroom Tile: Two of the bathrooms are tiled and they look amazing!!! Grout still needs to be put in but both, but so far I’m loving the progress.

Wood Floor Repairs: The flooring sub-contractor has just started repairing, sanding and refinishing (1st coat) to our parquet floors. Repairing, sanding and staining parquet floors is a different technique than normal plank wood floors (from what I read on Pinterest 😂). This was a concern of mine from the beginning. I didn’t want some idiot to just come in with a normal straight sander and destroy the floors. When we met with the flooring sub-contractor for the first time, I started asking questions on his technique. He either read the same article on Pinterest that I did or he knew exactly what to do. He reassured us by letting us know that he started his craft in Europe where everyone has either parquet or herringbone wood floors. So far, it seems that they know what they are doing. Besides sanding the floors, they’ve had to add squares of parquet flooring in areas where they were messed up or missing. Plus, add a wood filler to spaces throughout. Once everything is sanded you will never know the difference.

We also picked out new wood floors, 5 inch white oak planks, for the kitchen area. Prior to demolition, the kitchen was half tiled and the other half was a different wood floor other than the parquet flooring that is currently throughout the other parts of the house. We took out all of the old flooring in this area and wanted to start new. As for the staining color, we will be staining all the floors with the same color. Most likely a darker brown shade that will hide any leftover imperfections from the 70 year old parquet floors.

Mudroom/Pantry: Good bye old rotted out sun-room and hello to the start of our future mudroom and spill over pantry. A mudroom is just as much of a necessity to our family as our bedrooms are. The current sun-room placement was the easiest and best option to convert for this. The current 12 x 12 room that is directly off from the kitchen, will be getting divided into two sections. 1) a closet and 2) a place for my kids to hang their numerous bags, coats, shoes and miscellaneous crap. This room will also be next to our garage and will have an outdoor entrance.

Progress is moving along!

Love ya! Lisa