World's Most Famous Kitchen

I'm kidding of course, but our kitchen was featured again in a publication. This time Better Homes & Gardens Do It Yourself magazine.

After the Chicago Tribune, The Reader, and now we've gone national, our humble little 2-flat kitchen just feels so proud.

Nothing like professional photography to make your house look it's best too.

This interview and photo shoot was about a year ago and I had thought it was dropped, but then voila, 4 issues came in the mail this week.

Want to hear the funniest part about this? We actually are not "done done" with our kitchen. It's just hilarious I know.

The pantry is 97% done, just needs some trim work. We decided to add more cabinetry over the stove because believe it or not, we need more storage. And we have just purchased a table base for the kitchen so that we can finally have an eat-in kitchen! Steve will be fabricating the table top soon. And he still needs to make a plate rack too. Then, we'll be "done done," unless we decide to get new counter tops or something.

Who says a little hard work doesn't pay off?

Today, we were featured in a special issue of the Chicago Reader, the leading arts & culture weekly publication in Chicago. The feature is called "The Nest" (Written by Laura Molzahn/Photography by Leslie Schwartz).

I must say we are in some pretty good company. Our section of the feature was called (not surprisingly) "The Bloggers". All the profiles were great. Of course I was super impressed with the one called "The Restorer".

Working on your house is by nature somewhat solitary work, so it's kind of neat to get recognition from "the world at large". Unless of course, you have a bunch of friends as crazy as you are who don't own their own home and really want practice. I don't know anyone like that.

Or then, you could have one of those renovation "parties..." Somehow I think the quality of the work might suffer while drinking alot of beer.

If you are coming to our site from the Reader article, welcome. Feel free to stay while and come back. We still have plenty of work to do!

If you are new to the phenomenon of houseblogging, I have to tell you, you've just hit the motherload. There are houseblogs of all kinds : Victorian, Craftman, Bungalows and then some. There are purists and there are the the tried and true. From the quirky to the romantic.

Perhaps you'll find kindred spirits as I have. Or maybe you'll just enjoy the stories. I myself find keeping up with people's lives over the years fascinating. And I know I'm not alone.

Press Coverage for Houseblogs

Looks like Chicago 2-flat and some other houseblog friends have gotten some coverage on the Dallas NBC station online. The article is called "Don't Do It Alone: Home Renovation Blogs" and Kristin from 1902 Victorian and Mindy from Fixer Upper were quoted as well as myself.

I found it when I was looking at my site stats and "came from" links. The article has links to Houseblogs, House in Progress and the above mentioned blogs.

It's always kind of jarring to find your name and self quoted when you're not exactly expecting it. I was interviewed for it, but I didn't know exactly what it was for or when it would be published. Now I know.

I mentioned the fact that we as a group tend to make jokes about "stripping".

This is something that seems to be universally funny when I bring it up. Especially when I tell people about the fact that google searches for "woman stripping" bring up my post about stripping wood work. There have been times when my site is the number one return for this keyword search. To think a renovation blog beating out a porn site. Now that's something.