Today’s Halloween, which means that it’s been a whole year since our home purchase went through and we moved to our condo in Logan Square.
Like I said, we bought a brand new construction so that we wouldn’t have to do a lot of work, but it took a long time, a really long time, to finish up all the little projects on our final punch list. I think this is why for a long time it felt like we’d just moved in, that it wasn’t really ours. Also, it’s the nicest place I’ve ever lived and big! Could it really be ours? And, with the economy, I remember that month where we were figuring everything out to be one of the most stressful of my life. In the months following our move in, I was so worried someone was just going to come and take it all away or we’d lose our jobs and have to forfeit it.
Of course, it has all worked out. Things have gotten comfortable. It feels like our place. Now that the punch list is done and we’ve been here a while we can look around and add some personal touches. Over the summer my dad helped with some things. He hung some trellis on our patio for growing ivy, installed shelving in closets, hung storage racks in the garage, and put a lock on our patio gate. That’s all a seperate post that I really need to get to. Here are a few things we did recently:
I don’t like to say the word “valence” because it reminds me of old ladies, but we hung some valences on our kitchen and dining room windows. I think it softens the windows up and draws in colors from the living room couch, pillows, and artwork.
Since our wood floors are brand new, we want to protect them. On the day we moved in we threw some mismatched rugs down by the front and back doors and they’ve been there for almost a year. I wanted to get something more permanent, that looked better, and protected the floors more. We decided to go with FLOR, which was super easy to install.
You can see in that photo, we also hung coat hooks, since we don’t have an entryway coat closet, and a mirror to check your look before heading out the door. The chairs are our extras from our dining room set. I really would like to get a matching storage bench, but for now, the chairs work.
To match the front entryway, we also installed a few FLOR tiles by the back door. The width of the FLOR tiles in the small space looked weird, so we cut each one in half to make the pattern. Cutting the squares was tough, but in the grand scheme of things, this was still a pretty simple project.
I realize now that just about all of the photos I’ve ever posted of our condo have been of the upstairs. Our downstairs floor actually has way more rooms and space than the upstairs so I’m gonna have to get on posting some photos from down there. I think the explanation is that we do all of our entertaining on the first floor and that’s were we’ve spent the most time decorating and everything. A lot of rooms in our downstairs are sparse and have old, junky furniture. Not really exciting to post online!
