Hello! I’m Kim and I created this blog to join the conversation about old homes and affordable and sustainable renovation. Interior decorating has always been a hobby of mine, but it was kicked to a new level when my husband and I bought an 1895 Chicago greystone in 2017, where we now live with our two small kids. I’ve worked as a high school teacher for the past eight years, but recently decided to go down to part time, giving me more time for house projects and for documenting them here.
So, what’s a greystone? If you don’t know, Chicago is known for a couple of distinctive residential styles, one of them being the greystone. With facades composed of Indiana limestone, they are sometimes described as Chicago’s “answer” to New York’s brownstone, and they were generally built around the turn of the 20th century. There are some really ornate and palatial greystones around the city, and there are some more modest ones like mine. I think I can confidently say our greystone was the econo or at least mid-grade version in its day. The facade is relatively plain, lacking some of the ornamentation of the fancier greystones, the woodwork inside is fairly simple, and it’s a two-flat. That said, by today’s modern building standards, it’s still pretty impressive, with nine-and-a-half-foot ceilings, baseboards that are almost eight inches tall, super thick walls, a built-in cabinet in the dining room, and well, you get the idea: high-quality materials and attention to detail that would cost a small fortune to recreate and, thus, are worth preserving.
This brings me to my values for my home projects, which are preservation, sustainability, beauty, and affordability. I try to choose the most preservation- and sustainably-minded options, within the parameters of what looks nice and doesn’t cost a million dollars. For me, sustainably-minded generally doesn’t mean buying fancy “green” things, but it means not buying a bunch of brand new stuff that I’m going to need to replace in the near future. I know that I don’t come close to perfect, but these goals are always guiding my decisions.
With this in mind, I also have an Etsy shop, where I sell some of the vintage finds that I can’t find a use for in my own space, but that I hauled home anyway because I simply couldn’t bear that they might otherwise end up in a landfill. I hope you’ll check it out.