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The Bripa Project

Chicago two-flat renovation

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Walkthrough: existing second floor (pre-demo)

January 31, 2019 By Kripa Krishnan Leave a Comment

Time to walk through the second floor. When last we left off, from the entry vestibule, door #2 (right door) leads up stairs to the entry of the second floor apartment. This floor is laid out almost identically to the first floor, so we’ll do our best to keep this post interesting…

  1. Living Room – When walking into the apartment, the living room sits to your left, and hits you with great light out of those triple windows. It’s bigger than the downstairs version because it also gains the square footage of the foyer. This area (labeled ‘office’ in the floor plan) is probably what sold me on the house. (For Brian, the safe, for me, this “room”). It has the most beautiful original french doors that we are definitely keeping. They open out to a fairly large balcony that looks out onto the street.
  2. Bedroom 1 – Same as on the first floor, the front bedroom has two doors (one to the foyer, one to the rear hallway). The original wood flooring exposed on this second floor bedroom, but it’s definitely patchy – different types of woods in different rooms.
  3. Dining room – The formal dining has another original built-in cabinet, though it’s been painted white and there is some minor damage. We’ll have to see how much we can keep and/or repair. Perhaps we’ll Frankenstein the two of them together into one piece.
  4. Bathroom – There is some cool old hexagonal tile in here which might be original, and a cast iron claw foot tub that I have visions of re-finishing and re-using. It’s in ok shape and I hate the current exterior color. We’ll see how we go!
  5. Bedroom 2 – Same as first floor, la dee da!
  6. Kitchen – The second floor kitchen had already been ripped out, to which we thought – great! One less thing. Turns out, not so much. As part of the buying process we had to install the bare minimum to qualify as a kitchen: drywall, a working sink and some babinets. We don’t want a second kitchen on the second floor, but the lender required this for closing. C’est la vie; we’ll re-use the cabinets in the garage or something.
  • Stairs up to the second floor
  • Stairs up to the second floor
  • Stairs up to the second floor
  • Door into second floor apartment
  • View upon entering apartment
  • Back bedroom
  • Living room, looking out front of house
  • Living room, looking back
  • Balcony doors off living room
  • Second floor dining room
  • Original built-in
  • Claw foot tub!!
  • Original bathroom tile
  • Close up of original tile
  • “Kitchen”
  • View out to back yard
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