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The Bripa Project

Chicago two-flat renovation

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Floors and doors and more(s)

July 13, 2019 By Brian Cody 3 Comments

Per the post title, this update has 3 parts: hardwood floors are in (!), interior doors are picked and being delivered, and some other fun updates.

Floors

Flooring started ~2 weeks ago! Here’s what we saw when we visited back in June:

We knew we wanted to do hardwood floors, but it turns out there are LOTS of sizes and species of wood floor. After doing some research (that is, going to Home Depot and looking at floors), we decided to go with white oak, ~3-4 inch wide. I was originally thinking we do the classic 2-1/4″ red oak you see throughout Chicago, but we wanted to avoid reddish undertones since (we think) we’re going to keep the wood pretty light/natural in color.

  • View from front door
  • Front door, with original tile!
  • Kitchen
  • Second floor landing
  • View down the 2nd floor hallway
  • Master bedroom

We also decided to do the front formal living room floor in a herringbone pattern. I like how it turned out, though after seeing it I would have preferred a slightly longer board.

Formal living, herringbone

Doors

We picked two interior door styles: a 5-panel door for the entryways into rooms, and a 3-panel door for the closets. They’re all solid wood core doors (not hollow), so they’re pretty beefy. The plan is to paint the 5-panel doors black, and leave the closet doors white. I’ll note that we looked at TONS of door styles, including spending hours trying to find someone who sells the door featured in this blog post, but after getting quotes, we found we were very happy with the price point of these doors – it turns out individual doors can get SUPER expensive.

  • Main room doors
  • Closet doors

More(s)

The skylights are in and with the drywall finished, they look Tony-the-Tiger-greeeeeeat! The middle of both the first and second floors have great natural light pouring in. Two of the skylights are operable via a solar-powered motor – how cool is that?!?

The back of the house is looking good – the black cladding has been added, and it’s looking much better. We had to nudge the French doors in the kitchen over to make room for the cabinets, so it’s more asymmetric than we planned for, but c’est la vie. 🙂

What’s next?

All the fun stuff seems to be happening at once: tiling is starting, kitchen cabinets started going in this week, and trim is about to start next week.

Previous Post - Drywall has begun!
Next Post - Kitchen cabinets and tile

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Julia says

    July 14, 2019 at 3:52 am

    Skylights look so good!! Also, I’ve been to 2 restaurants this week with pass through fireplaces (or whatever the are called… Probably you don’t use them to pass things through…) anyway they are amazing. Baller idea, Kripa.

    Reply
  2. Ronnie says

    December 7, 2019 at 12:23 am

    Hello! We (wife, toddler, myself) are considering undergoing a semi-similar two-flat conversion in Chicago and love seeing all the work and progress! If you have the time I’d love to ask you guys a few questions offline. Feel free to reach out directly, thank you.

    Reply
    • Brian Cody says

      December 30, 2019 at 4:12 pm

      Sure, happy to chat! I’ll send you an email. And FYI, we just posted a new blog post (took us a while, sorry about that): https://bripaproject.com/2019/12/29/post-move-in-preview/

      Reply

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  • Post-move-in preview
  • 2 weeks until move in!
  • Kitchen counters, big sink
  • Kitchen cabinets and tile
  • Floors and doors and more(s)

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