All the Kings Horses and All the Kings Men…

…Started to put Clifford, The Big Red House, back together again!

The demo phase is finally over people! Now, slowly but surely, our truly wonderful contractor will start putting Clifford back together, starting first with the floor!

It occurred to me that many of you may be unfamiliar with the saga of Clifford, The Big Red House and would therefor be like umm wtf when I post pics of this blown out pile o’  bricks.

SO! Here we go:
Pete and I bought Clifford in July, and were more than overjoyed to have found our first home even though it needed a lot of work. As you may have gathered by now I am very passionate about interior design and historic preservation, so we were looking for a home that would challenge us to explore those interests.

Clifford is located in a really beautiful neighborhood in Lincoln Park on the North Side of Chicago, but had undergone a kind of shittay renovation a few years ago that had stripped it of its original historic character.

The renovation would require us to gut the house we now affectionately refer to as Clifford, The Big Red House down to the studs, rip off the back wall, and tear off the roof so that we could add a third story addition and address some structural issues that had come up as a result of the previous work on the house. Which is where we are now.

Five months into the process I am happy to report that despite some shenanigans with the City of Chicago, we are moving along quite nicely with only minor delays. We are only slightly jaded which is completely overshadowed by our sheer excitement over the process! We feel so blessed that we have the opportunity to build our dream home together so early in our relationship, and relish the lessons in both architecture and life this process is going to teach us.

We will hopefully, fingers crossed, be able to move in by May, but in the meantime I will be sharing our adventure with you through this here bloggyblog that I love so.

So far I have posted on the initial phases of our demo with some before and afters, our plan for the master bedroom, master bathroom with floorplans, some ideas for the living spaces, and the kitchen. If you would like to catch up with the process, click through those links, or in the drop down menu to the right labeled “archives” all posts on the project can be found under “Clifford, The Big Red House”.

When I return from a brief Christmas sojourn I should have some big changes on the house to show y’all, so stay tuned!