A Designer's Chic 1926 Chicago Home with Incredible Lake Views l House Tour

Hi, Homeworthy. I'm Kim Skodro. Welcome to my home in Chicago. Come on in. I can't wait to show you around. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Hi, I'm Kim Skodro. Thank you so much for coming and visiting me here in my Chicago home. I've met some of you before, probably at my St. Simon's Island home, which was really fun, but I'm really excited to have you here today in my Chicago home. I've lived in this house for 18 years, so we raised our kids in Lincoln Park, which is just a couple miles away, and then we decided to move here as life got a little busier, and we decided to travel a little bit more, and living in a high-rise building became something that seemed to make a little bit more sense. And it was a really, really fun project that we took on when we bought this apartment. So this space was actually two apartments that we put together, and when we bought them, someone had owned the two of them, but they literally just put a door between the two apartments, so there were two kitchens, there were multiple bathrooms and bedrooms. It was literally two apartments with just a door in between. So we did a complete gut renovation 18 years ago, top to bottom, ripped all the walls out, everything. What we did do is maintain as much of the trim work that we possibly could, the crown moldings, the plaster walls we had redone, just because the history is what's so important about this building. So this is the living room, and this is the room that you see right when you come in the front door. And it was important for me to have this space be function well, but also look really nice. And as you can see, it's an odd layout, it's very long and narrow. So I decided to zone it into three separate spaces, which seems to work really well. You have an area here where you can have conversation, which is nice, it's very comfortable, you can sit and relax, but you can also have an intimate conversation here. And then as we move over, we have this perfect chaise here that allows you to sit and just enjoy what's outside, and just sit and relax and look outside. It's a favorite spot of my grandkids for them to come and sit. And over here in the corner, we have a little game table. So if you want to play mahjong, if you want to play backgammon, chess, whatever you would like to do, or if you want to have a small easy dinner here, it's really nice to get out of the kitchen or the big dining room, and you're able to have it here. So the space works well, in that it's three different zoned areas, because to try and make this space into one area, I think would be really difficult, really, really difficult. And I think as a designer, we're always trying to get as much use out of a space as we possibly can for our clients. And that way, hopefully they'll use it, because if you have the space, use it. Just make sure that you use it. That's the most important thing. Some of my favorite things in this space, though, really are finds that I have found in different areas. So these intaglios, for example, I found at a Paris flea market in these cloches, and I actually carried them home on the plane. That was a little nerve wracking. But they made it, they're okay. And then over here, this is my most recent find that I literally just found not that long ago. I was so excited about it. It was almost like, it was almost like I was on candid camera. I looked at it, I looked at the price of it. And I was like, oh, this has to be a joke. I must, I must not be seeing the number. This is an Italian metal lamp that this is all hand done and hand painted. And it was so reasonably priced compared to what they normally are. But I absolutely just love it. I love how vibrant the colors are. And I just love all of the detail about it. And so I think finding things is what excites me the most finding things that are interesting. And I will always maintain, if you love something, buy it, you will find somewhere to put it. It doesn't have to be perfect, as long as it means something to you. Again, in here, I found this actually is something that you set up on a long dining room table, and you put flowers in there. And it makes this, this beautiful French garden scape, which is lovely. So it was interesting because I really wanted to add a high gloss paint to the walls in here. But it's tricky, because when you add high gloss or a lacquer finish, every imperfection shows. And so this is the original plaster molding, plaster walls, there's a lot of imperfections, but they worked really, really hard to get it as smooth as possible. And I think it looks, they did a great job. Even with the crown molding, you'll see up there, I mean, this has been painted, this building is this year, it's 100 years old, it was built in 1926. And so that's a lot of built up paint over the years. And they did a great job cleaning that up, and restoring it so that they could do the high gloss finish. And then we decided to add this wallpaper inset into all of the panels, just to add a little bit of dimension to the space. This is actually a wallpaper that we have a wallpaper collection with Milton and King. And so this is one of our wallpapers and one of our favorites. And we love that the blues with this Benjamin Moore paint matched up so nicely, because that was tricky, it was tricky to find the perfect blue. I've made plenty of mistakes with pink before. Note to self, always put it up and look at it in different lights to make sure that it works. But we were, it's funny, these corbels here with the vases on top of them, those vases I found at a flea market, those corbels I found at a flea market. But I had someone come to hang them. And I, we were hanging a bunch of other things. And I went into the other room, and I came out, and they were hung. And we didn't really discuss where they were going to go. I wasn't sure he was actually going to hang them. And I'm like, Oh, those are those are quite, quite high. And he was like, Oh, but I think they look good there. And I said, Okay, but if we took them down, it had already had a bunch of holes, because these were difficult to hang a bunch of holes in the wallpaper. So I sort of just lived with it for a while. I think he was right. I think they're fine. I think they look great. They're fine. Maybe I would have hung them a little lower, but it all worked out. It all worked out. So again, note to self either when the installer is actually hanging things, or at least mention where you'd like them to be. But you know, what was interesting was trying to get all of the colors in this room in a way that made sense that didn't just look like, you know, a mismatch. And I started with this, this set to here, and I found this fabric and I absolutely fell in love with it. And if you look here, this is actually a silk flange that is in a little candy stripe. And they have the little corners here, they did such a nice job doing this, this hickory chair made this, and they did a really nice job finishing all the details of it. And if you notice, look at this right here shows absolute perfection in upholstery, how everything lines up. But then, okay, this is wonderful. This is great, beautiful colors sort of picks up that little pink reddish color in the wallpaper. How am I going to bring blue in here without making it so sweet and sugary? Because I didn't really want powder blue. So I decided to bring something that was a little bit more vibrant inside into into this brighter blue. I think it works. It works for me. It's okay. And then if we go over here, even this, I fell in love with this tear fit, tear free fabric for the shade. This was a very tailored chaise before, but when I had it redone, I put the little kick cleat on there, which I think is a nice little detail and adds a little fun to it. We had these chairs, again, a great little antique find I found this chair or this table and these chairs. And then I had these cushions made with this great tie on the details on the legs. It's just a I mean, normally they would just tie right here, but we said let's wrap it and see how that looks. And it just adds a little bit of a detail that I think is really nice. I will say one of the tricks that we like to always use is, if you're looking at a fabric or you're looking at a wall covering, we like to always bring out the least prominent color and play with that a little bit in the space. And if you see in here, there's a very, it's hard to see, but there's a very, very, very faint, almost yellow color in there. And so that's where we got a little bit of this. That's why I thought this was the perfect fabric for it. So one thing that's funny about artwork, we've had this artwork for the 18 years that we've lived here. Oddly enough, the artist interpretation is, this is what to them, what the streets of Rome look like. That's the good thing about art. Everybody sees something different. But the one thing I think that's important is that the art does not have to match the room. And I think that we all get hung up in the idea that the art needs to match the space exactly. This does not match the space, but there are elements of it that work with the space, but it certainly doesn't match the space. And then if you look overhead, we have something that this is a, you know, contemporary art. Over here, again, contemporary art done in a very French style. That's an artist named Francine Turk, and her work is so dependent on her mood. But that is, I think that could be a piece of paper, like antique paper that she just does different drawings on. We have one in the dining room as well. But for her, it's all about the framing too. That's a gorgeous antique frame. So you have this antique frame with this French feel to the painting, and then this contemporary piece of art. It does not match in the room, but it all sort of works together. So don't worry about matching your art so much. So right off the living room is the dining room. The dining room, we kept the layout exactly the same as it was always from the living room into the dining room. And I think that I love the significance of the two spaces being together, but they're definitely separated, and I love that. We decided to add antique mirror to the wall. We added antique mirror panels to help reflect the light from outside in the blue of the lake and open up the space a little bit. I also think a gorgeous grassy wallpaper, the gorny wallpaper would be beautiful there. But we decided to go with the antique mirror, and I've stuck with it. It's in panels, and interesting enough, when they hung the panels, we had these little rosettes here that I was pretty insistent on and had them all hand-painted to separate where it was. It seems so insignificant now, but at the time, it was so important to me finding those exact rosettes. But I do think it helps to open the space. And then we have so many fun finds in here. This actually, these plaster molds, you can see they were done with like a horse hair. I found these at a flea market in Paris, and now they're carry-on. But they're plaster molds that they did, I think they date back to the 1700s. And I have two of them, which I love. Antique chairs, always fun. I'm always on the hunt for antique chairs. I don't know where I'm putting them all, but I do love them. We have a chandelier here that seems a little bit formal. But in the space, I think it works. I think it actually works. And believe it or not, most recently, we had our, one of our grandson's birthday parties here. And we had little things hanging from here. I think we had Spider-Man and Superman and Batman all hanging off the chandelier. This table gets used quite a bit when my family is here. And there are no rules. There are no plastic going on the chairs. There's just enjoy. Enjoy what you have. If it gets dirty, if it gets stained, it's okay. It can get cleaned. If it doesn't come clean, that's okay. That's part of life, right? I think it's more important that you enjoy what you have and enjoy the space. And nobody wants to go into someone's home and feel like they have to be really careful all of the time. And certainly, my grandkids don't feel that way here, which is lovely. But these, again, are some of the same. We had actually bought these for a show house we did at Kips Bay in Dallas. And these are those Italian, that Italian medal that has been done by hand, hand-painted, and two lamps that I absolutely love. And Francine Turk, again, just a different, a different mood she was in when she painted this piece of art, which is interesting. So last summer, I was at an estate sale here in the Chicago suburbs. And I walked into this estate sale, and this lovely bust was at the back of the room. And I walked by, walked by, walked by. I must have walked by so many times. And finally, I was like, I just have to have it. And so I think it's great because I think it looks like they're looking outside at the lake, which is really fun, enjoying the scenery. And it's very sturdy. And the pedestal is marble, and it actually comes in three pieces. And it was quite heavy for them to deliver that. But that was a new addition, and I actually love it. So this hallway was really important when we did the renovation of the space. You come in off the elevator here, and you have your entry space here. And then you have this long hallway that goes down into the, I like to call them the public and private spaces, but the private part of the house where the bedrooms are. What was interesting is that we moved the walls six inches to make the hallway six inches wider. And at the time, I thought it was the most ridiculous thing, the most ridiculous expense. But it did make a difference in it. And it's funny, because one of the first things that we did was we had to put in a guest bathroom because we were taking one of the bathrooms, adding it to a bedroom. So we need to put in a powder room. And the very first thing that we did that the architect had laid out was it was going to be here. This is the hall closet, the coat closet. And so this was going to be where the powder room was. Makes sense, right? The guests are here. They're in the living room. They're in the dining room. They come into the powder room. And then we realized, oh my goodness, someone's coming out of the bathroom. Right here is the dining room. That was just not going to work. That was just not going to work. So we had to improvise. And I'll show you what we needed to do when we go to the back of the house. But if you want to come with me, side note, this is a great hallway to play catch in, to have races down, to ride little cars down. It's actually gets quite a bit of use. That's why we have the runners here, is not to disturb the neighbors. But to be fair, because this building was built in 1926, the walls are pyro brick. I believe they're like a foot thick. And so you will never hear anything, which is really, really nice. If you come in here, this is the room that we hang out in the most. This would be our family room. And we decided to make this room as cozy as can be. And so we added this walnut to the walls, and we added a grass cloth to the ceiling. And it's just, this is the hub of the house. And so there were so many discussions, because originally, right behind here, which is the kitchen, we were going to open that all up. So that means that when you walk down the hall, you would see into the kitchen, it would be a big open. Because remember, it was 18 years ago, it was all that open floor plan concept. And I'm really, really glad that we did. And I'm glad that we kept the spaces, their own and individual. And so that there is privacy in each space, because I look at it now, and we almost did it. And it would have made a big difference. Definitely one of the favorite chairs for the grandkids. They love to sit in this and be fun around. Not sure that's what its intention is. But this room, this room, we had a leak several years ago, and all of this walnut had to come down and be redone. Because if anything happens behind the wall, obviously can go down to the other units down below you. That was a big project. So that was for about six months, this room was closed off. Well, they had to restore that. I don't want that to happen again. But living in a building that just one of the things that sometimes happens. Again, we have this great view of the lake, which is always nice. It's always nice to have that. So when we first did this space, this is a redesign, because obviously, we've lived here for 18 years. And we when we first did it, it was super important to me to stay true to what the aesthetic of the building was, and what the architect's intention was. And everything was very calm and serene. And it was very new, you know, the colors were neutral. And then when it came time to redo it, my husband said, maybe we could add a little color. Like, all right, well, let's go. And so we did. So this time, as we walk through the house, you'll see there's a there's a lot of color going on. So the kitchen, we wanted to add a little life to when we did this refresh. And so we added this fun wallpaper, everything again happens in this kitchen here, we have it, it was laid out so well, that in all these years, we've never really had to change anything because the layout works so well. We have drink drawers here, the ranges over here, we have this amazing bankette seating area over here that literally fits everyone and everything can happen. That guy has been with us, that sheep has been with us. Is that a sheep? I believe it is. I get confused if he's a sheep or goat. But he's been with us for 18 years now, we needed to keep him. I would have baked something for today for your visit. But I have a little broken arm that sort of kept me from having that happen. But I do love to bake and this kitchen gets used quite a bit. Baking is something that's always been something that I loved in the way everything lays out. All of my baking supplies are over in one area. And it's just it's become very comfortable. It's very hard to change your kitchen once you have that layout in place. And so when we did this refresh, we touched up the cabinets, kept them still the same. And kept we did do a new island here to add a different wood to it, which was really nice. But other than that, it stayed the same. We've added some life to it with wallpaper and a new fabric on the bankette. And it looks perfect. So the chandelier in this space, believe it or not has some meaning to us. The home that we raised our kids in before we moved here, which was in Lincoln Park, this chandelier was hanging in our kitchen there. And that was the one thing that it was coming with us. It was I was not leaving it there when I bought it. However many years ago, a gazillion years ago, I just absolutely fell in love with it. So making it work in here was key. And I, to me, it's something that I hope stays in our family for the rest of our lives. I hope my grandkids hang it in their kitchen one day, but I love it. I also love any sort of transferware. And it's interesting because in this building, this is a stack that runs the entire length of the building. So no matter what we can do, we can never get rid of this. So some people have this just drywall, different things, but it has to be there. So I hung these antique transferware plates from England there. And I think they work. I also hung one behind the range there. And it's nice to have that incorporated into this space because I do love transferware. So if you come down here, I'll take you to the private spaces. Inside we have our powder room and our guest bathroom. And on the other side, we have our guest bedroom. So remember we talked about that powder room and how challenging it was. We ended up putting it here, which actually works quite well. But because of it, we had to build up a riser here to get plumbing into this area so we could make a bathroom here. But it's a step up and it's not that big of a deal. And it all works out. And then you have a step back down again, but they needed it for the plumbing. And then we have a nice guest bathroom here, which is lovely. That piece of art up here is actually interesting. This is one of the designers at our firm. And she actually paints. She does a great job. This I believe she calls her Lowe's series. It's actually painted on a piece of wood. But I think art in any form that's done by an individual is so important and so easy to find if you look. And so I love having that. In here in the powder room, this is a mechanical room, linen closet. And in here we took these handsome gentlemen and we placed them in the powder room just to add something a little interesting. Because we needed to, not that we need to talk about toilets here, but we needed to add a wall-mounted toilet because it was so narrow that all of the mechanisms in it, rather than having a regular tank, are inside the wall there just because it was a small space. In this guest bedroom, it's rather small, the guest bedroom. And it was my older son's room and there are no closets in there. So we had to build our own. And if you see, if you just build it around and put the, it's plenty of storage. And there's a dresser. If someone lives here full time, I would probably have a bigger dresser. But this was plenty of storage. You have your, for not a big bedroom, it actually accommodates quite a bit. You have a reading chair. You have a desk. You have storage. You have reading lights so that you're able to sit in bed. You have a queen-size bed, which is a good size. And I think what I like about this room is the mix, the mix of the wallpaper and the toile on the chair and the ceiling we did in a great plaid wallpaper. And then the florals, it just makes it bright and happy. And because the view is not so great, you're looking at the buildings across the way. But I think that it makes up for it because everything feels very fresh. So I've been doing interior design for about 19 years now. Back in the day, I was a home economics teacher and I taught child development, clothing construction, and interior design. Stayed away from the foods arena. But then I stayed at home to raise my kids for a while and then went back and decided I was going to give this a try. And I went back to ASID, did what I needed to do to have that ASID allied member title next to my name to give me that security that I needed. And I thought I'd start out, I thought it was going to be small. I thought I'd do a living room here, you know, maybe a family room there. And I just fell in love with it. And it grew and it continued to grow. And every day I'm more passionate about it than I was when I first started. If we move down here, I call this the rotunda only because that's what they called it on the architect's plan. I'm not sure really what a rotunda, what the purpose of this is, other than this was our transition into the second apartment. So we were just in the B apartment, this is the C. And so transitioning into here, and it was very important to have symmetry. So you have that door over here, this goes into a full size laundry room, which is really nice. And then this goes into the primary bedroom. And then that's the fake door, a faux door, just for the sake of symmetry. And then if we go into here, this is, I call it a nursery, even though my grandkids are 10, 6, 6, and 3. But this is, it's a trundle bed. This is when they sleep over, they sleep over here. And in the guest bedroom, this is where they come and play. And there's boys and there's girls. So we have everything from dolls to earth movers over there. But they have a great, they have a great time in here. It's really fun. And this is a nice area to just, it's a nice area to stop and breathe. It's an open space, but if you think about it, you have three different entrances here, you're going into the into the nursery, you're going into the primary bedroom, you're going into the laundry room. So it's nice to have this area to sort of have as a pass through. And it also just makes sense, and it helps architecturally make it because actually, that laundry room was a kitchen, so you had to, we had to work with what we had here in the confined spaces. This is the primary bedroom. And I can't believe that I actually toyed with the idea of putting the bed on this wall, which seems so silly, because when you wake up in the morning with the bed on this wall, all you do is you look right out at the lake. And that would have been sad to miss it. I don't know what I was thinking. So I'm glad that it, it did end up being here, because when you wake up in the morning to see the Blue Lake, or in the winter, all of the ice that covers the lake, the gray. Today, it happens to be a beautiful day. And in this space is probably some of my most prized possessions. These are all photographs of my family. And to most people, it probably just looks like this crazy photos from a family, but every single one of them have some sort of a meaning. And this was a COVID, I had lunch with my son during COVID. Or this was the one, the first time we took our grandson to Georgia. It's just everyone has very, the day we dropped our one son off to college. My gorgeous daughter in law is a bride, like every one of them has, we all have tons of family photos. But these have very specific meanings. And I can look at each one of them and see a very specific event, which I absolutely love. And I think that your private spaces is a great place to have those, because they have some meaning to you. I think the thing that I love most about this home is we really toyed with the idea of having open spaces. Because think about it, 18 years ago, everybody was talking about open spaces. I mean, you would have one big giant open room if people could have their way. But everything it was where the kitchen flowed into the dining room flowed into the family room. And now I feel like people are embracing those each individualized spaces. And we stuck with that we did, I really didn't want to mess with the integrity of how they originally intended the spaces to be lived in. So as we walk through, I'll be able to show you where we were going to open it up and where we decided to keep it as it was and keep it more individual rooms. And I'm really happy that we did that, because when everyone is here, it makes a difference to have those separate spaces. Here, so this is all a primary suite. And if you come back in here, this is actually an office that my husband uses. And so when we did the refresh, I was like, how do you feel about pink? And he was like, Oh, okay. Well, he's a great guy. He, he totally embraced having this area in the pink, which is actually very nice. He, he doesn't necessarily work from here. But he works here when he comes home. This is almost his dressing area. In here is his bathroom. All of his closets are all behind there. And here, he like this is where he spreads out and has all of his stuff. And it's a very nice big space, even though his bathroom seems a little small. He doesn't care because he has all of this area in here. And then if we go a little bit further into this area, this is my dressing area and bathroom. And it has just enough space. I have a tub. I have the shower. This here is all for handbags and clothing. And I still don't have enough space. Does anyone ever have enough space? We put this here to put shoes in it. But this becomes a nice area that we're able to, I'm able to lay things out on here. I'm a huge proponent of laying out my clothes the night before, because it makes my life so much easier in the morning. So this has become very valuable to have this flat area here. You know, when you live in an apartment, this is a co-op building. And so, yes, we have a lot of space, completely. I understand that. But it's not sprawling. So all of your areas need to be efficient and work. And this one works really well for me. What home means to me, it means the same thing that it always has from day one. It's family. Family is everything. And every part of this home is designed to accommodate my family and my growing family. Thank you so much, Homeworthy, for coming to visit me in my home today in Chicago. I really loved having you. It was fun. A beautiful day outside. But I'm going to get going now and head off to work. Great seeing you. Thanks for watching. Be sure to go to homeworthy.com for exclusive content, shopping guides, and so much more.