I am so excited that my family is starting a serious house hunt in Chicago! We have moved from Minneapolis to New York City to Chicago (downtown + northern neighborhood) in the last four years and are exhausted! Oh yeah, did I also mention I had two children during all that craziness!? We look forward to settling down and creating a more permanentesque home. Since my husband and I first moved in together around nine years ago, we have lived in high-rises, low-rises, condos, apartments, single family, multi-family, student housing, outdated and brand spanking new homes. There have been great things and not so great things with each living environment. For our current situation, a single family home is the best solution. We also want it to be outdated. This might be surprising to some, but I really want a home I can design into a vision of perfection for our family. I am estimating the whole process will take two-three years. It sounds like a long time, but the end result will be a home that visually appeals to us and functions seamlessly for our lifestyle.

We are hoping to hire skilled tradespeople to do most of the renovations. I am a strong supporter of hiring experience. Working in the interior design industry has demonstrated what a remarkable difference having a skilled and experienced person working on your project can make. I am sure we will have many situations where the cost will be too much and we will need to construct temporary spaces/solutions. I am crossing my fingers it will all work out!

The first stage of renovating a home (besides buying said home) is programming. What do we need? What do we want? I dug out old floorplans I sketched for a previous home we lived in to see what I was craving five years ago. What we wanted then is pretty similar to what we want now. Our interests dictate a lot of our home wants:

• gourmet cooking + baking
• outdoor living
• relaxation
• working from home whenever possible (husband)
• gaming (husband)
• executing artistic endeavors (me)
• wild free-range playing (toddlers)

See my working list of home requirements for our lifestyle below. I can guarantee this list will be continually changing until the very end!

Besides gaining space and the freedom to renovate, a new house will also give me the opportunity to challenge my interior design skills. I love a good construction project! There is so much researching and gathering that must be done to construct a fantastic, efficient design… then, once construction starts, everything blows up as you encounter issue after issue! It is a continual problem solving extravaganza until that very last piece of furniture is placed. I love it! I can’t wait to get started! Now… let’s hope we can find a home that can house this heavy list of requirements!