We’re a husband and wife design duo from Chicago, living, working, and playing amidst the hustle and bustle. In 2006, we packed a one-way moving van from Cincinnati to the Windy City, for no other reason than why not?

In 2007, we purchased our first home together – a teeny, tiny condo on the second floor of a yellow brick corner building (all 675 square feet of it!), hence the name of this blog.

Over the course of 6 years, we DIY-ed our way through each and every room – sometimes twice! After convincing ourselves we wouldn’t stay in Chicago forever, we spent each wedding anniversary traveling from city to city, in search of our next big adventure. The verdict? Our first choice was a charm; we hit the jackpot when we landed in Chicago. This city is our home.

Fast forward to the summer of 2013. We said goodbye to the small, well-loved second floor walk-up, and we purchased a fixer upper of a house – right down the street. It had been a dream of ours to nurse an old home back to life, and it turned out to be every bit as rewarding and exhausting and exhilarating as we imagined it to be, if not more so.

We’ve enjoyed the process so much, that in 2016, we scooped up a small lake house in southwest Michigan! (We’re hooked on renovating, you see.) You’ll notice us refer to this home as our ‘Tree House,’ a nickname lovingly dubbed due to the field of trees surrounding it. It’s our small retreat by the big lake where we’ve been creating some of our favorite memories, simmering chili on rainy afternoons and ringing in the new year with paper party hats and kazoos. It’s been a dream come true.

Two years after we fell in love with our Tree House, we went searching for a new challenge back home in Chicago. Enter: The Two Flat! Upon first entering the Two Flat (a Chicago term for a building with two apartments), we squeezed each others’ hands. This is it, we whispered to each other. This is The One. We looked past the decades’ old carpet, drop ceilings and linoleum floors. Instead, we pointed out the 19th century baseboards. The dining room built-in. The arched doorways and the porcelain door knobs and the pitched ceiling! We poured our hearts into the home and after a grueling year of setbacks, we celebrated the completed renovation in the fall of 2020!

Here, you’ll find us nurturing old homes back to health. We feel that every home deserves to be filled with love and be loved, too. You inspire us more than you’ll ever know, and from the bottom of hearts, we thank you for reading!