professional help

Staircase Installation!

October 20, 2012
Thumbnail image for Staircase Installation!

It’s Saturday morning and our dining room has quickly transformed into a workshop. The wood for our staircase was delivered yesterday and the carpenter was able to squeeze us in today. He seems confident that he’ll get the staircase done, and might be able to start installing the baseboards as well. I was able to [...]

Read the full article →

What a Difference a Door Makes!

September 10, 2012
Thumbnail image for What a Difference a Door Makes!

All the doors in our attic remodel are installed and trimmed out. It makes such a difference in the look and feel of the attic reno. It finally feels like it’s really a part of the rest of the house. The carpenter still needs to install the doorknobs. I’m sure we could do it ourselves, [...]

Read the full article →

Behind Closed Doors

September 6, 2012
Thumbnail image for Behind Closed Doors

That’s right, folks. We not only have doors, we can close them. It’s not quite finished yet, but if all goes well tomorrow, the doors should be done, done, DONE! Bathroom privacy, what a concept! More about this little laundry room door project later. And this is what we’re sleeping with tonight: He usually does [...]

Read the full article →

Taking One Last Look

September 5, 2012
Thumbnail image for Taking One Last Look

I can scarcely believe it, and I don’t want to jinx it, but it appears that we are about to reach a pretty big milestone in the attic renovation, after three years: DOORS. The carpenter is coming bright and early in the morning. He has 5 doors to install including the closets along with 3 [...]

Read the full article →

So much to do…

March 3, 2009
Thumbnail image for So much to do…

…so little time. Where to begin? Pete and I spent much of the weekend scraping walls. Pete had already started on the TV room last week, but we dug into it again. The walls in this room looked bad before, but now they really look like crap. Nice, huh? We knew this room needed work, [...]

Read the full article →

Moving Up

September 5, 2008

I’ve alluded to some progress we’ve made recently, and here it is: we hired an architect for our upstairs space and first floor mudroom! The architect we chose has experience working with Morton Grove’s building department, and that’s one of the reasons we went with him. We didn’t want anything cutting-edge, nor did we need [...]

Read the full article →

Professional Window Treatments

February 28, 2008
Thumbnail image for Professional Window Treatments

To continue with our story from yesterday, we decided to steer away from the Renter’s School of Window Treatments (cheap blinds) and enlist the help of the professional window treatment designers at Roberts Drapery Center in Mt. Prospect for our living room and dining room windows. Let me point out that, although I was introduced [...]

Read the full article →

Help for Naked Windows

February 27, 2008
Thumbnail image for Help for Naked Windows

I will freely admit that I’m challenged when it comes to covering my windows. In our previous house, we had plain metal blinds in our bedrooms. I usually would just go with something that wasn’t too expensive, because I never knew what to do to make it look good. Oh, I tried to dress it [...]

Read the full article →

TGIF

February 1, 2008
Thumbnail image for TGIF

It’s Friday, we’ve had almost a foot of snow overnight, and we’re getting plastered. Sorry, I couldn’t resist the pun. Yes, we are total wusses. We hired the plasterers to fix all the cracks in the living room, dining room and foyer, and to smooth out the texture in those rooms. They started on it [...]

Read the full article →

Happy Plumbing

May 18, 2007

The plumber rodded out the sewer, fixed the ejector pump, installed the basement toilet in the main bathroom and put the green-eyed monster toilet in D’’s storage pod. It was nothing major, thank the “Reno” gods. Pete pulled up the vinyl sheet flooring, which was a little hard to do but he managed. There was [...]

Read the full article →