House in Progress

First Sign of Spring at HouseinProgress

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:43:52 PDT

It's SPRING here at HouseinProgress (FINALLY! Gee whiz!) and you know what that means, right?

(Behold! The labor of a long, desperately crafty, how-is-Mama-gonna-keep-you-busy winter...)

Update

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 17:11:39 PDT

Wowza, thanks to everyone for the emails. We are, indeed, still here in the HouseinProgress, though life has been in fast forward for the past few months.

Everything is fine. Well, there were a few bumps in health and logistics, but everything turned out fine.

Finding that having a three year old who gave up her nap for good in January, increasing the hours of our respective work commitments outside of the house, and trying to stay on top of our volunteer activities put a bit of a crimp in our blogging. That and the fact that our WYSIWYG is broken and I am tired of HTML.

Ooooh! Big Sale at The Sweden Shop!

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 10:02:19 PST

I love, love, love design and products from Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland for three reasons:

Their products are beautiful.
Their products are useful.
Their products are durable.**

The Sweden Shop sells the kinds of items that you will use everyday and pass down to the next generation. And, rumor has it, they are having a big SALE starting TODAY! (January 24th through February 1st)

ALL BLANKETS AND DALE OF NORWAY SWEATERS ARE 30% OFF!!

ALL CHRISTMAS MERCHANDISE IS 25% OFF!!

Yippeeeeee!

**I can't include IKEA in the durable category. Sorry, IKEA!

I Used to Hate This Closet

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 10:45:34 PST

I am not a fan of closets only because I am not a fan of hangers. Not just wire hangers, any hangers. They make your clothes and coats hard to find, they get tangled, they get stuck, things get crowded. I hate hangers.

Hooks? Hooks, I love. Give me a wall full of hooks and I don't care that all my duds are out there in the open for everyone to gawk at. Because I CAN SEE THEM, TOO! Everything. Easy to find. Right there. It's beautiful.

So, it's understandable why I've hated our front hall closet since we've moved in.

Start with Substance Oatmeal Inauguration Blitz Recap

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 07:38:07 PST

Obama Inauguration + Bloggers + Tasty Sexy Oatmeal + Mimosas + Spruced Up House = SUPER FUN!

I get very few chances to hang our with groups of bloggers. I have blogger pals that I hang with one-on-one, not in the context of blogging. So, to be able to join up with these cool women for such a great cause on a great day was a load of fun.

Besides, isn't it TIME that we finally get to enjoy the fruits of our labors thus far and get to entertain? We did so much of it in our old condo. Before we got married, or even knew Aaron, I was an entertaining machine at 421 West Belden Ave. So, yeah, five years has been too long to go without having parties in the house.

(Sharing a laugh with M.J. Tam from Sugar My Bowl and Chicagonista)

Bringing Sexy Back...to Oatmeal. I'm serious.

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 05:42:05 PST

I'll write up the Obama = Oatmeal / Start with Substance / Inauguration Gala later today, but first I want to pay tribute to Melissa Velez-Luce from My Very Own Chef who served up an oatmeal that was so decadent that I felt like I had to go to confession after eating it.

Yeah, but what did it look like BEFORE?

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:48:32 PST

Sorry! I was so excited about how spiffy the place was looking that I forgot to post the "before" pics. So, if you really want to see how far we've come, click for the rest of the post and PREPARE TO BE AMAZED.**

**Amazed that I didn't run down the street screaming, never to return.

Real Estate in North Park pretty solid?

Mon, 19 Jan 2009 06:38:34 PST

We're big fans of our neighborhood and that is no secret. However, with real estate depressed pretty much everywhere, we wondered how long it would take our neighbor (who is getting married and moved to another state) to sell her house.

We were especially intrigued because her house was built by the same builder as ours wayyyy back in 1914. They look almost identical, save for some tweaks to the layout.

As a homeowner, you can't help but draw up a checklist of comparisons inside your head when you hear that a neighbor's house is for sale. It's similar to the checklists you used to draw up inside of your head in high school when you contemplated your chances of that cute new boy asking you to the prom and not asking Suzy "Lucky" Buckman. Instead of

"Okay, so her hair is cute and she is captain of the cheerleading squad, but she has a terrible laugh. Plus, Lucky? Who wants to go out with a high school junior who still calls herself LUCKY? More like Yucky, amirite?",

...your internal dialogue sounds like

"Her kitchen is new and her basement is clean and finished. She has a new deck and a landscaped yard. She has an open stairway and ours is more closed. But we have central A/C and our bathrooms are brand new. We have four bedrooms (well, three of them are heated) and she has three bedrooms. So, if she really does get her purchase price, would we be worth more? Or less? Oh no! What if Lucky Buckman moves in there?"

We hoped for the best for her, but had visions of any house in this market sitting empty for months.

A week. The house sold in a week. It closed immediately and new neighbors have already moved in. And it has sold for the highest price of any house on our little block in paradise.

Wow.

Not that we're going to be selling anytime soon, but it's nice to know that real estate isn't depressed everywhere.

A Nice Reveal of the Living Room and Dining Room

Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:39:31 PST

We've been tidying up the house and moving furniture around to accommodate the twenty or so people coming to eat oatmeal and watch the inauguration of the new president on Tuesday.

I snapped a few photos. It's so often we look at this house and fret about the things still left undone that I have to stop and reflect on how far we've actually come.

Here we have the new dining room table and chairs. Our first set ever. I am in my forties and this is the first set of dining room furniture I have owned that hasn't come from Goodwill and the alley. I feel so...so...grown-up! (Note to self: Need to reinstall radiator, replace missing french doors, reinstall window stops, get real curtains instead of these temporary dime store ones. And, for Pete's sake, hang something on the walls.)

Feed The People...no, really. Do it.

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:14:01 PST

Okay, so I just checked out the Quaker Facebook group and we need MORE MORE MORE Quaker hot cereal UPC codes entered in there. Or we need more of you to join Facebook. Or both!

We need to feed the people, people.

Here's the cool part about the Start with Substance campaign. I don't get anything when you enter the UPC codes. When you enter the UPC codes, Quaker has to pony up free food to needy families. You type, they feed. I get to watch the little numbers tick upwards and that makes me happy.

This kind of thing jazzes me to no end. It's why I've happily volunteered over the years for organizations like Habitat for Humanity, Inspiration Cafe, Rebuilding Together, the Greater Chicago Food Depository, Cabrini Alive, La Rabida Children's Hospital, The Night Ministry. Helping others is cool. It's energizing. It makes you appreciate what you have so much more.

Honestly? That is why I agreed to do this thing. Why make myself crazy and fret about a herd of people descending upon my tiny, still broken, weird house? Clean the bathrooms? Run to stash this stack of unfinished trim somewhere and figure out a way to heat the back room and gnash my teeth over the paper shades still hanging in my windows?

Because it is worth it. Feeding hungry kids, that's worth it. Especially when it is as easy as just going to my pantry and pulling out boxes of oatmeal and scanning the back of the box.

Oh My! Are You Looking in My Drawers???

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:47:08 PST

A friend from another city IM'Med** me yesterday about the pink drawers full of treasure that I referred to in my last blog post.

**Instant messaged

"You don't really have stuff left over from when you moved in, do you?"

Oh. Don't we? Yes, we do. To Aaron's dismay. We've managed to unload quite a bit of it, but you don't get rid of 70+ years of debris overnight. Not when you are married to a research wonk.

Behold, the wall of pink drawers.

To Do List Before Next Tuesday (Oatmeal Day!)

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 13:57:31 PST

Not necessarily in this order:

Clean.

Clean more.

Yes, even under the beds.

Set up the old dining room table in the sunroom to be used as additional seating. Something that T.K. had suggested we do for poker games but which will come in handy for this as well.

Clear a path to the pink wall of junk drawers in the basement so my bloggies home-girls can peek at some of the treasure still left behind. Things like this:

Meow of the Day...

Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:22:07 PST

...goes to Stuart Elliot of the New York Times for this little bit:

And Quaker Oatmeal will host house parties on Tuesday morning in 11 cities -- Washington included -- where women who write so-called mommy blogs will serve breakfast to friends and other guests before they watch coverage of the ceremonies.

Be careful with the thinly-veiled disdain, dude, before I bludgeon you with my Master's degree from Northwestern and my prybar.

The last time I felt that kind of chill from the mainstream media, I was attending a dinner with an editor from This Old House who sniffed, "Nice work if you can get it" upon hearing that I was a houseblogger. (She sat there in her carefully tailored NYC designer jacket and her high heels while I wondered if she talked to Norm Abram with that mouth. I believe I had just given birth two weeks prior and parts of my house were still boarded up.)

For Pete's sake, Stuart! We're women who have brains and opinions and street cred and experience and careers...who also write blogs. Well, the other so-called mommy bloggers have those. I just have an awful house story that unfolded in the early days like a slow moving car wreck.

What I guess I'm trying to say, Stuart, is that you can just call us "bloggers".

Con=Overcommitment, Pro=BREAKFAST!

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 09:29:21 PST

Since we embarked on this crazy adventure at the HouseInProgress, we have only thrown three shindigs in over five years.

In 2003, we invited some folks from our church group to hang out for the evening in one of the newly cleaned out rooms pre-demo, because they were looking for a space and they didn't care that the space included falling plaster. We all sat on the floor. It was very high school.

In 2006, our house became the unofficial home base for Aaron's homecoming friends since there was so much rain that weekend. Again, these were folks we already knew so the fact that we were living in less-than-ideal conditions ("Hey, look! A hole in the ceiling! I bet that comes in handy.") was not too stressful.

A few days ago, we hosted Grace's third birthday party because we have a LIVING ROOM with a REAL WORKING FIREPLACE and NEWLY PAINTED WALLS! So, why not have a herd of toddlers with icing on their hands roam free?

Giddy on the heels of how successful the birthday party was, I was not quite thinking clearly when a representative for the kind folks at Quaker Oats contacted me and asked if I would host a blogger brunch on Inauguration Day. They would supply the food and the guests and all I would need to do was shower (well, they didn't say that last part specifically, but I know they would appreciate it). And it was for a good cause! Their Start with Substance campaign which aims to serve up 1 million bowls of oatmeal this year to families in need.

Did I say, "I'm sorry. We still have paper shades hanging in our windows, and a dishwasher that is only 14" wide, and a non-working oven, and radiators that are still in the garage? And we never have hosted strangers before because they'll realize that we are insane for attempting to renovate this monstrosity? But thank you for considering us, and by the way, I love your oatmeal. And I really love Wilford Brimley."

No, I did not. I said yes. And now, OHMYGOD I HAVE A BOATLOAD OF BLOGGERS COMING TO MY HOUSE AND THEY WILL KNOW THAT I STILL HAVE NOT FINISHED INSTALLING THE TRIM ON THE SECOND FLOOR AND MY DAUGHTER'S ROOM HAS NO DOOR AND MY BASEMENT IS A HOLE. I'm a little stressed.

But, bonus!!! I love oatmeal. And no, they are not paying me. THEY ARE FEEDING ME. And I guess I'm just that easy.

So, the official unveiling of the HouseInProgress for a herd of people we don't know will be in SIX DAYS. And, oh yeah. We get a new President, too. And breakfast!

I'll write more tomorrow. Right now, I'm going to hide in my closet that has no door (it's a theme!) and weep quietly.

Time Lapse December/January

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:19:59 PST

January 2003 (Even though we weren't in the house yet, she hadn't taken down her Christmas decorations when we looked at the house in March 2003. So, I'm including it.)