Kripa Krishnan

Time to talk about the second floor! Unsurprisingly, this is where a majority of the bedrooms will be.

Washer/Dryer Closet – Not the most exciting start, but once you come up the stairs, you will see doors to our enclosed washer/dryer as well as to the mechanical closet.

Master bedroom – The former living room and sitting room and bonus room will become the new master bedroom. We had a lot of debate about where to put the master. Most homes put the master in the back of the house for privacy, but with the train and the existing balcony/front porch, we could have gone either direction. Ultimately, I opted to be selfish and keep the bonus room/porch for ourselves. The key for me was trying to figure out how to make the most of a long, rectangular room. I can’t remember how exactly it happened, so let’s just say I woke up with a start one night with a brain wave. We could put a double-sided fireplace in the middle of the room, with openings/clearance on either side to split the “bedroom” area from the “sitting room” area. Luxurious and probably unnecessary but I could see it being a very special “moment” in the house. I got excited about it and there was no going back. There’s a part 2 about this fireplace, that I’ll let Brian talk about at another time.

[Brian: I’m excited that Kripa’s had this idea about the two-side fireplace, and I’m glad that we’re sticking with it even as we’ve questioned it over and over. For context: we’ve been trying to balance design decisions between 1. our own preferences, 2. trying out our home design muscles, and 3. thinking about resale. Based on our personalities, I fear that we’ll lean in the direction of prioritizing resale too frequently, and I like that the two-sided fireplace 1 and 2 more than resale.]

Sitting room – As mentioned, the sitting room will be on the other side of the fireplace. Depending on how big it will actually end up being, I can image two chairs and an ottoman for reading by the fire, and maybe a little writing desk for when I write the next great American novel. What? It could happen. You don’t know me.

Closet – This is an enormous closet, but one side is more enormous than the other. It’s a shame we so align with stereotypical gender norms, but my closet needs outweigh Brian’s, hence the “hers” and “his” sides. Ideally we trick this out so it’s like a little jewel box of a closet – think built-in drawers and wallpapered closet backs. (Is “closet backs” a thing? You know what I mean, right?) That may take some time but I can imagine it being really fun. Incidentally, in our last house we gutted and rebuilt our master closet ourselves so I feel like I have a decent idea of what I want and need. I’m ok with this not being “finished” right away but coming together over time.

[Brian: Wait, I thought the closet was going to be split lengthwise so we’d each have one side of equal size… (jk)]

Master bath – This is the point where you realize the master suite is taking up about half of this entire floor. Every time I realize this I look up inspirational quotes like, “I’M WORTH IT” and “I DESERVE THE BEST” and then I feel ok again. Anyway, there’s some standard master bath stuff here, like a double vanity and large walk-in shower. We plan to re-use the clawfoot tub in here *fingers crossed*. Key to this design is the designated toilet room which incidentally is also the key to a successful marriage. True story, every place we’ve lived that has more than one bathroom, Brian and I have used separate bathrooms. In case you didn’t know, boys are GROSS and every bathroom they use belongs in a dirty frat house. I’ve been on the struggle bus a bit on the design here, but I found a tile that I LOVE and it’s all coming together again, I think/hope.

[Brian: … … … … yeah, ok, fair point.]

Overlook – FRIENDS. We have not yet spoken about the skylights. We are excited about this, and all credit goes to our architect David who pushed us to incorporate this into the design. We both love natural light, but Brian needs it like a, I don’t know, reverse vampire? Anyway, We’re going to have skylights in the roof, which will shine light down this open area on the second floor down into the first floor in the dining room area. I’m sure Brian will want to talk about the skylights in another post, for which we will all await with breath that is bated.

[Brian: We also haven’t discussed how we’re going to have an opening from the second floor down to the first floor, which will be perfect for throwing things and various pranks.]

Hall bathroom – This bathroom will serve the other bedrooms on this floor. Standard fare – double sink, tub/shower combo, etc. Hoping to do something fun here with the tile/paint choices, but we’ll see.

Bedrooms – We’ll have two bedrooms on this floor, again, pretty standard here. The bedroom on the north side (left in the floor plan) will have some big windows because this will be where the addition was. The other bedroom makes up the last part of the floor. We ended up having to cut into the window here to make the floor plan work, so it’s going to be tall and skinny. I’m a little worried it will be a bit small and dark in there even though it will have another window. Maybe this can be the napping room? Why do I need a napping room you ask? Because I’M WORTH IT and DESERVE THE BEST. (Or so I’m told).

[Brian: +1 to napping room.]

Next, down to the basement!

Welcome to the new layout! Let’s take a virtual walk-through:

Front porch – This stays the same. (Ok, not the most exciting start). BUT, I’m excited to add some kind of outdoor furniture (or swing?) here to sip tea and yell at the neighborhood kids to get off our teeny, tiny lawn. J/K, there’s a fence, no one is getting in.

[Brian: We are fixing the cracked cement and putting a new roof to the front porch, so it should look much nicer than in the before photos.]

Entry – The little vestibule before becomes our new entryway. We’re adding a coat closet here because #chicagoweather. We’re excited for the original tile to be the star of the show, and maybe a fun entryway light. The original doors have taken a bit of a beating, so we’ll likely replace some of it, likely a door that’s not mostly glass for privacy reasons. Speaking of which, this area just barely passes the “underwear test.” I suppose there are a lot of potential meanings to that, but in this case it relates to how far away the bottom of the staircase ends to where your front door begins – it should be a good enough distance that people from the street can’t see you in your underwear coming down the stairs. Brian was less worried about this – in his words, “You’re welcome, neighborhood.”

[Brian: You’re welcome, neighborhood.]

Living room – this also stays pretty much the same, although we’re widening the cased opening and pushing the far wall back a bit. In my mind this could be a really cool room eventually, including a window seat that spans along the window wall and built-in bookshelves along the long continuous wall. And probably moulding. Lots of moulding. I’m mad for moulding! We’d like for this to be a non TV-centric room for hanging out and family time. That little nook is where we may sneak the original built-ins back in.

[Brian: Kripa’s Canadian origins are coming out here – she obviously means “molding” without the Crown adding an unnecessary “u”.]

Dining area – OK, here’s where things really start to take a hard left from the original floor plan. We like things generally open so this seemed like a good place to keep things more open (note to self: look up synonyms for “open” and “open concept”). A lot of single family homes here have a formal dining room/area and an eat-in kitchen or additional eat-in nook. There was really no need for us to have two separate areas so having one designated “eating spot” that was central to the house seemed to be the right fit. We call this area the “bump out” on all the floors (because the wall comes out a bit with two angled windows).

Bathroom – A plus about needing to replace all the plumbing anyway meant we could put the bathrooms anywhere. Most homes have only a powder bath on the first floor, but we opted to add a shower to make it more accessible. I have some fun ideas for the design in here – feels like a good place to be a little creative!

[Brian: we have family members that don’t jive well with lots of stairs, so having a full bath on the first floor makes it easier for them to come and stay with us.]

Family room – This little corner becomes the new family room or informal living room. We thought this might be a good place for a TV. I’m a little worried with the couch placement it will end up being too close to the TV. This ends up being an argument with Brian who basically feels like you should be close enough to touch the screen. True story, he started inching up our couch closer to the TV to make his point after we had this argument discussion, as if I wouldn’t notice.

[Brian: she didn’t notice until I pointed it out. — That said, I do share Kripa’s concern about the couch placement – I want to keep a sense of openness, and I’m worried the TV couch make some areas feel cramped. I’m still open on which room the TV goes in – maybe we revisit it being in the front formal living room?]

Rear terrace/porch – This is another big change. The addition (breakfast nook) in the original structure had to be either removed or re-built due to code. Our architect made a good point: imagine once that was the addition was taken out, you essentially you have a big hole to work with – specifically, to work in a lot of windows. And windows are our love language. We’ll put in french doors to the outside and a transom window above. I don’t think we’ll miss the square footage (I mean, this house will be way bigger than anything we’ve lived in anyway). Instead we’ll have an outdoor porch where we can sit around and watch the train go by. Silently, because you can’t talk over the train noise.

Kitchen – The kitchen will be open to the rest of the space, with cabinets and a range along the back wall and a large island. A lot of people put a mudroom of some kind at the back of the houses here because the garages here are detached so most of the time people come in from the back door as opposed to the front. I think this might have been a missed opportunity, but we’ll see. Instead we’re doing a big cabinet right next to the french doors that will be like a mudroom closet. I’ve been thinking a lot about the kitchen design and finishes, perhaps too much time? The range and hood will be the star of the show and I’m going to have a POT FILLER because they are FANCY and I’m a FANCY LADY.

[Brian: spoiler: we’ll have a proper mudroom you can enter from the back yard in the basement, so I think we’ll be fine. And I think I’m OK taking lead carrying groceries from the basement mudroom up to the kitchen when it’s snowy/rainy, even though that will mean traversing the house length twice – but if any more experienced folks have insight about how that plays out in reality, I’d love to hear more in the comments section.]

Pantry – This is one of those things I never thought I would love as much as I do, but #adulting. This pantry is going to be massive – sort of unintentionally so, but I am here for it! We’ll have some room along the wall to put some base cabinets and shelving for all our small appliances that I am also weirdly very excited about. I’d like to put a beverage fridge in here so the fridge doesn’t get clogged up with all of Brian’s beer. We’ll see; built-in beverage fridges can be more expensive than actual fridges. We should talk about appliances at some point, because everything beautiful costs $1,203,227,432,874 (estimate).

[Brian: I want to take umbrage with the implication that I drink so much beer that we don’t have room for other food in our fridge, but sounds like I’m getting a beer fridge in the pantry, so I’m good.]

Ok, ok, ok. Are you excited? I’m excited. Let’s talk about the 2nd floor in the next post!

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.

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To get to the basement from the first floor, you say a little prayer and make your way down the most unstable, old wooden stairs you’ve ever seen. Fun story: the first time we walked through the house, Brian was carrying the baby throughout the entire house, then handed me the baby to carry down the death stairs. They were literally being supported at the base by a single brick. Anyways, the current basement is one of those scary, unfinished Chicago basements so not too much to show. The thing we lucked out on were that the existing ceilings were pretty high (for a basement). Chicago code requires basement ceilings to be 7′ and this was at least that in some places and taller in others. We didn’t quite get what the big deal was at the time, but basically this saved us having to dig out the basement and possibly more foundation-related work as part of the renovation (read: $$$).

There are columns down the center of the basement, except the front-most column which is closer to the stairs. It’s positioned to take the load-bearing weight for the foyer wall on the first floor and the dividing wall in the second story living room.

There was a laundry here and old workbench. The windows were boarded up as we didn’t even notice until the second time we came through how much light it could get. (I mean, it’s still a basement so it’s not going to be sun drenched or anything). When we were in the process of buying the house the basement was full of stuff – once it was cleared out there only remained one friend hanging from the ceiling (see image below). A warning? You decide.

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To give you a sense of the current building, here’s a more detailed walkthrough of the first floor:

Current first floor apartment

1. Entryway – You enter the building from the main entrance door into a vestibule that serves as the current entryway to the two separate apartments (one on the first floor, one on the second floor). The entryway doors to the apartments are pretty sweet – we’ll look for some way to incorporate them back into the house. Otherwise there’s not much of note here. There’s some cheap vinyl on the floor – after about my third visit to the house I noticed something peeking out from a chipped corner in the vinyl… stay tuned! #foreshadowing
2. Foyer – Choosing doorway number 1 (left side) brings you to the foyer of the first floor apartment. It’s pretty dark and closed off right now, with a mirror that I can’t tell is awesome or meh. We’ll save it in case. The wallpaper is decidedly not awesome (and peeling).
3. Living Room – At the end of the foyer is a crossroads to three rooms of the house. On the left is the large living room that looks out onto the front porch and street beyond. We kept thinking these were bay windows but turns out they are just a good imitation. The light that comes through is really great, although at present covered with very heavy curtains. The room itself is a good size and they are original hardwoods hiding underneath the dingy carpet.
4. Bedroom 1 – The front bedroom has two doors – one from the foyer, one going to the rear hallway – so it serves as an odd sort of pass through since there is no hallway on this side of the house. This room also houses the the real reason we bought this house – there is an original wall safe from the 1800s . Luckily the owners still had the combination so it is still operable. It’s definitely a keeper, though we may relocate it. You know, in order to house all our JEWELS.
5. Dining room – The formal dining also serves as a pass-through room from the front to the back. It’s pretty standard except that it has an original built-in cabinet. Perhaps it’s not technically “built-in” in that it’s in the wall. It looks more like a hutch that is attached to the wall. Either way, we’ll try and reuse it currently has some damage/trim missing.
6. Bathroom – From the back hallway there is the full bathroom that serves the whole apartment. Nothing special here; looks like it might have been renovated in the 80s/90s. Buh bye bathroom!
7. Bedroom 2 – The second bedroom is the only room on this floor with the original wood floors exposed, as well as thick, unpainted wood trim. This style of trim is very typical to old Chicago homes – it’s always nice to see it in its original form as opposed to covered in layers of paint. In a perfect world I would keep the trim that way for the next 100 years but alas ’tis a cruel world. We’ll chat about floors and trim another time when I have some wine on hand.
8. Kitchen – The current kitchen is gorgeous – drop ceilings, wood paneling, linoleum paneling, dated cabinets, faux brick backsplash, and old white appliances. We’re not changing a thing! (Psych. Just making sure you didn’t zone out). Ain’t nothing here that’s staying peeps. There’s an original pantry that’s pretty large and has an old wooden door which we were told was originally for ice delivery. There’s also a single bulb hanging down from the ceiling which gives it a real “this is where I hide the bodies” vibe.
9. Addition / breakfast nook – This small addition to the original building extends the kitchen. This is the area that’s wrapped in vinyl siding when you’re looking at the back of the house. This was added at some point and won’t meet code if we do any renovations on the house, so we’ll have to decide what to do with it. (Options: get rid of it or rebuild it.)
10. Outside/Backyard – Leaving the kitchen you step onto the currently very unstable and pretty rotted back stairs. Luckily those are just coming down and do not need to be rebuilt since it will be a single family. The backyard is great and large, if not a bit overgrown by vegetation. Beyond the yard is the attached garage, which you would access by car from the alleyway behind. Again, typical set up in Chicago. Most people like to do a roof deck on top of their garage, but ours is the closest part of the property to the train so no one would want to be up there anyway.

And here are the pictures!

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