Blood, Sweat and Beers

When you plan to have people over, whether it is 4 people or 40, it makes you look around your home and assess it through the eyes of the visitor.

I have lived in my condo for almost 3 years and I love to entertain. Now, don't go getting any grand ideas about fancy dinner parties for 12 where the table looks like Martha Stewart laid it out and is now hiding in the closet. I don't have a table that big, or a closet that roomy for that matter.

More often, it is just a handful of friends, stopping in to have a drink, toast the season, play a board game or watch sports on TV, or simply to swap stories and laugh about life in general. All in all, low-key entertaining is my bag. I love the notion of having people into my space, and expect that they will want the "tour" and kindly "judge" my choices. All of which is expected, and just fine with me.

Tomorrow, Brett will be bringing his parents by after the Cubs game, due to my ridiculously convenient location near Wrigley Field (I know, it is as awesome as you think) and I genuinely want the place to look "just so." And, I'm having an impromptu gathering at my place (either inside if it rains, or on the roof-deck if it is nice) tomorrow night, so it is a double whammy. Most of my friends have seen my place, but not all of them.

And, it is truly MY place. I found a realtor on my own, used my friend the mortgage broker, hired a lawyer on my own, bought it on my own and love it all so much more for that accomplishment. BUT, I must say, that the love I have for this place is magnified, exemplified and multiplied by the fact that the place was in total and terrible disarray when I first wrote the offer.

It was owned by a woman who was 104 when she died, and she was wheelchair bound and hadn't updated the unit in about, oh, 40 years. The rotary telephone on the kitchen wall was dated 1965 on the back. She had brown vinyl flooring, a pink stovetop, a brown fridge, metal cabinets with wood veneer stickers, furry vinyl dining room flooring and western-movie-style-wooden-swinging-doors in/out of the kitchen. The light fixtures were brass and from 1973, and the furniture was old enough to be ugly, but not old enough to be valluable. It was really hard to see past all of it.

But, I, for one, can see the potential in a place. It was huge for a one-bedroom, and had knee-to-ceiling windows on the entire north side that featured spectacular views of the Western sky and the Eastern view over the lake.

I also happen to have super handy parents who were kind and generous enough to help guide, steer and help me through the renovation. To put it mildly, we painted every surface that wasn't carpet, ripped out every cabinet there was, detached every light fixture from its place (minus one, story to come) and refinished the floors in 3 out of 4 rooms. All 1,000 square feet are just the way I had hoped they'd be, at least in design. After much blood, sweat and beers, mind you.

Just feeling that way makes you more protective of your space, and how people will view it. And, quite frankly, the love affair with the place is starting to move past the honeymoon phase and into the reality of the relationship, where you notice the flaws, cracks and otherwise dings in the overall loveliness of the facade you once treasured.

However, I mustn't point those out to visitors, right?

They shouldn't know that the bathtub leaks and the incessant drip is wearing off the epoxy tub and tile paint job that my mother and I so painstakingly mixed (a true science experiment, that one) and painted until we were almost choking on fumes, right?

They couldn't possibly notice how the tiny bathroom isn't vented properly, and therefore, every shower that is taken in its presence causes the walls to sweat, right?

They won't ever be keen to the fact that the hot water in the kitchen runs at a pressure about 1/10th of what it should, making washing dishes very challenging, right?

They won't see that the carpet is flattened out in certain places from the previous owner's wheelchair, and that I haven't yet felt like up-ending my life to replace it, right?

Yeah. They will never be the wiser. However, I am, and it makes me judge and view my place with a harsher lens than others do.

Most days, though, the crystal chandelier in the dining room—the one fixture we left in tact—catches the sun coming in from the west as it sets over Wrigley Field and I'm just happy as a clam. The blue of the water of Lake Michigan over the green of the grass of Waveland Park reflect so perfectly against the khaki hues in which I've chosen to wash my walls, leaving the viewer in awe of nature's color palette.

And, given the fact that the renovation was completed in a mere 5 days (due to delayed closings and all other sorts of stressfu, horrible, terrible, frustrating situations that were far beyond my control) with all of my belongings in the center under a tarp and new and old cabinets serving as dining tables as we (once again) ate pizza out of boxes while paint dried in our hair and the beer was not even cold because the fridge was in the living room and the sink had no faucet and the counter had no granite yet and the bathroom only worked when the epoxy paint had dried...I'd say we did ok.

Yeah. No one needs to know all of that. But, I can show you a few before and afters, in an homage to my fearless renovating parents, and my sister's loving touches, and my own strength of character (and volume of voice in a stressful tirade, as it turned out).

The bathroom in all of its before and after glory.


Pretty big improvement in the kitchen, I'd say.


Another view of the kitchen, where the old phone had once hung.


In the dining room, the crystal chandelier in question.

As Brett's kind parents and a handful of close Chicago friends come over tomorrow, I will serve as a gracious host, and will absolutely NOT point out the flaws of the place. As with any good relationship, I respect my place too much to air our grievances in public.

In Home Depot, though? That's another story.