A Colorful 1915 Chicago Home Full of Vintage Charm l House Tour

Hi, Homeworthy. I'm Carly Moeller and welcome to my home in Chicago. You're watching Homeworthy, where we believe every home has a story. Hi, my name is Carly Moeller. I am founder and principal designer of Unpatterned Interior Design. Welcome to my home in Chicago. We have lived here since 2022, so about four years. I actually used to live just a few blocks away, and we had been looking for a little bit more space and another project. We went to an open house on our old street just on the other side of the river here and engaged with a realtor, had her come to our house, and she ended up knowing an interior design client of mine. And she asked me if I'd done their drawings, and I said yes. Asked if I had time to do some drawings for a listing, thought she was about to list because it needed some renovation work. I said no. I was too busy with my current clients, but my husband is an architect as well, and so he was like, oh, I'll do it for fun on the side. And that was this house. He didn't realize right away that it should be our house until right about, it was about to hit the market. He did some kitchen and bathroom drawings and then was like, wait, I think we need to go see this house before it hits the market. I think we should buy it. And we ended up doing that like two days before it went to market, doing the whole writing a letter, making an offer, scrambling with our realtor, and we ended up getting this home. We did do an extensive renovation about a year and a half ago. The house had great bones and a lot of arts and craft character, which is what really drew us into the home, and it was just waiting for a color palette. But the kitchen was tiny, and the second floor, there were two bathrooms in the hallway, but not a true primary suite. There was a very long hallway, so we knew we were going to take down a wall between the kitchen and what was kind of a sunroom, as well as renovate and create a primary suite upstairs, and that we did recently. Welcome to my living room. When we moved in, this space was basically a white box with the woodwork. I knew personally that I wanted to wallpaper right away and that these stained glass windows were going to be the inspiration. What I didn't realize was that it would take about 100 wallpapers for my husband and I to agree on one, but once we found this one, we knew it was the one, and that kind of inspired painting the ceiling, the lavender, and the whole color palette for the room. When it came to furnishing this room, I actually found a lot of our finds on Marketplace, or in antique stores. So this coffee table is a vintage Marketplace find. I found these chairs and had them reupholstered in terms of recreating them and putting new life into old pieces. That was something that was really important to me. I found the rug vintage. I found the stools vintage and had them reupholstered as well, so that was kind of a starting point in this room. I feel like collections and art and the details of a home are what really make it. So on our fireplace mantle, I chose to display my ever-growing collection of Hager pottery. It's kind of one of those things where I accidentally started collecting it. I tend to go to antique malls and thrift shops a lot and would just pick up pieces I liked, and then before I knew it, I was creating this color palette that happened to go with my wallpaper, and now it's at the point where if my daughter, who's 11, is antiquing with me, she can spot Hager. But I try to limit myself on what I still collect. Another piece that is special to me in this room is the Alice Masters disco ball art. It just so happened that I had been following her on Instagram, and she does these limited-edition print releases. She paints these disco balls and then releases the prints. And my husband and I were actually on vacation and saw that it was coming, and so he was, you know, virtually trying to buy the print, and we ended up getting it, and it seemed like the perfect piece to sort of balance and give a little whimsy to some of the more arts and crafts or heavier details in the room. Stained-glass windows are all original. That was one of the selling points on the home. When I walked in seeing the stained glass, I just knew that it would be the perfect jumping-off point to decorate the room, as well as it was kind of unique with the floral pattern. A lot of the Chicago, these sort of early 1900s, 20s-era stained glass tends to be more geometric, and the floral pattern was really unique, and I happen to love floral patterns, so that was a big, big selling point for me. The built-in benches and the bookshelves were all here when we purchased the home as well, kind of all tied into the existing stained woodwork, which I did choose not to change in these front living rooms. It was preserved really well. It's really well taken care of. I felt like the woodwork was such an inherent character of the home of the time that we could design around it and make it work for us. Not dissimilar to the vases, I do have a tendency to collect things when I'm antiquing or thrifting, and just over time in terms of art, so love filling shelves with books and sentimental objects, such as this ginger jar that was my husband's grandmother's combined with things that we've collected over the years, as well as our vast array of books. Really being a fan of not collecting things just to collect them. I mean, obviously I have an obsession with Hager pottery that just happened, but also finding meaningful ways to commemorate trips. So bought this piece of pottery when I was in Key West on a family vacation and able to combine that along with my previous mount glass obsession that pops really well against the dark woodwork. The sofa was also a marketplace find. It seemed to be perfect for the size of the room, and I loved the sort of worn-in gold velvet. Our console table was an antique find that was from my previous home and just worked really well to kind of back up to this row of windows, add some plants with my antique pot. I actually bought the piece of art knowing it would go here before we moved in and then had to store it at my design studio because we were selling our other home. But there was a gallery across the street from my interior design studio that was closing, and the artist was kind of offloading some of her own paintings, and I got this huge, beautiful canvas for kind of a steal and just hoped that we would be able to build the room around it, which worked really well. When we moved in, the previous owners had very simple, modern lighting throughout, and that was something I knew I wanted to change to not necessarily always be within the original character of the home, but to have a bit more detail. So we did replace the chandelier, the fireplace was wired for sconces, and we added the sconces there to kind of complete the room in terms of details. My personal style, design-wise, is pretty eclectic. I have grown to truly love color and pattern, which is what unpatterned interior design is known for. So I took some cues from the home in terms of the stained glass in our living room, inspired the wallpaper, and there's a lot of original woodwork and some other details that inspired, but definitely wanted to mix in old and new and a vibrant color palette based on art and just other objects that we love. Now we're in the dining room. This space is definitely the most enveloped in the original woodwork, including this built-in buffet, which we decided to preserve. The lighting was very simple and modern throughout the first floor. We did swap it out with this more ornate chandelier to kind of match the scale and the sort of regalness of the room. I do have an antique table that I found through a local vintage dealer. I knew I really wanted to be able to seat a whole bunch of people in this room. It has two leaves. One of my favorite details in this room are these captain's chairs. A friend of mine, Relativity Textiles, is a local textile designer, and this is one of her prints, Chameleon. I had been wanting to use the print forever as a designer, but it is very specific, so what better place to use it than in my own home? So these were chairs that I found vintage and had them reupholstered with the new fabric and the contrast welt. A few things about the art in this space. We had commissioned by a local artist over Byte Studio. This painting over the buffet was something that we commissioned from a local artist over Byte Studio, and the view was based on a photo from an Airbnb that we stayed in in Atrani on the Amalfi Coast. It was a family vacation, the first sort of big international trip that we took our daughter on, and we just really wanted to commemorate that in her unique color palette that also kind of set the vibe for some of the room by tying in this painting with the chameleon fabric as well as we have this print that... The print was a bit of fate in terms of finding my design studio. The artist that did the print collaboration was moving, and I ended up moving unpatterned into her design studio, so every time I see it, I kind of think of that weird, fateful connection. I'm a big fan of... You know, I know people are... Our dining rooms get a bad rap, like, oh, we don't use them enough, and they take up space, but, you know, we walk through this room, and we do use this room, and I love the idea of having your table kind of set up or tablescaped or whatever you want to call it. It's just another vehicle for me to display some of my collections, so love vintage candlesticks. I'm obsessed with these super heavy cut glass candlesticks that I bought at a local vintage store and love kind of keeping this... I keep this out, you know, year-round and switch it out based on, you know, the season or my mood or when I get a new influx of fun stuff. This room was really naturally pretty dark. You know, we're in the middle of the home. We are surrounded by the original, what I believe to be mahogany woodwork, and so I just kind of leaned into that and said, let's color drench, you know, the only paintable areas, the walls, the ceiling, in this rich blue. I felt like it provided a good base and a good transition between our living room and the back half of the house. These are kind of our flex chairs. If we're hosting people, I will move these into the living room. They kind of block the entry, but they fit perfectly. We also use them for additional dining or extra hangout space, but these were also vintage. I don't know if you're sensing a theme that I had reupholstered from my old home, and they moved over here, but I breathed new life into them with the new leather. Another great, large vintage rug in here. It was really important for me to find a huge rug that fit perfectly under a big dining table. I found this rug. I actually had a friend that was a big vintage collector, and she was moving across country. She's a rug dealer that I ended up buying a handful of pieces from, including this rug. Just thinking about sort of the order of things, you know, I bought the rug before I had anything else in this room. I didn't know what the paint color was going to be. I didn't have these chairs or the sconces, and, you know, we sort of layered it in. There's the light green, and then I felt like we needed a bit more pizzazz on the ends here. I actually got the shades for these new sconces before we did this fabric, so my textile designer friend was able to customize the color based on, you know, our palette that we were working with, and then I chose the paint color kind of at the end when we did the renovation. Taking you around the room to the other art on this handy picture ledge, these are places in Chicago. I actually saw this print. They're by Jazz on Vinyl, and they're just kind of iconic locations throughout Chicago, so we picked three that were meaningful to us in terms of, like, a place where my husband and I had our first hangout and our first date and then just places that we used to go a lot many years ago. We thought they were really fun and kind of fit with the color palette of the room and some, again, like, that sentimentality that might not be obvious, but it's there for us. My background is in architecture, so I studied architecture. I actually worked in architecture for a while, went so far as to get my license. During the 09 recession, I got out of architecture and worked some other semi-related jobs, and then we renovated, we purchased and we're about to renovate our old home, and as I went through that process, I was like, wait a minute, what am I doing? Why is this not my job? And that's essentially when Unpatterned was born, which was a little bit more than 10 years ago. And so I slowly started to help friends with paint colors or advise on some renovations, and then a co-worker of my husband's ended up hiring me to help them renovate their condo, and that was kind of the jumping point and kind of never looked back. Welcome to the home office. This space, I think this space was originally intended as an office when the home was built. There actually used to be a door here that led to the front door, so there were two doors. I think that the intent was to be able to take, like, patients or clients in this room, so we loved that, but we decided to take the space behind that door for a coat closet and created this built-in that kind of matches the existing woodwork. We started this room kind of based on, my husband used to work from home a lot, and we really wanted, like, a nice space that we both could share that felt complete. So we started with the wallpaper. Again, local textile designer friend, Relativity Textiles, created this custom colorway of one of her prints for us, and then that became sort of the building block. With that said, I did, early on getting this house, I found this chair through a local vintage dealer. It was already upholstered in this Pierre Frey fabric, and I was obsessed with the wildness of the fabric combined with the sort of mid-century lines of the chair, so I bought it and didn't really know where we were going to put it, and then it kind of worked out to fit into this office and paired well with the wallpaper. I ended up finding this vintage desk from the same vintage dealer just, like, months later, so that was sort of an important part of getting something sizable enough and that had, like, a presence for the room. This photograph is actually taken by my husband, and it is the old Thompson Center in Chicago, which is currently being completely renovated, so this lobby doesn't really exist anymore, so that's, like, a fun piece that felt like it really went with the vibe of the wallpaper in here. The shelves behind the desk or something, we have a big collection of books, be it business books, design books, novels, and there's never enough surfaces to put those, as well as, you know, my ever-growing ceramic animal collection finds its way into every room. So this built-in was what replaced our, the door that was originally here, and the function was intended to be able to see the TV from the desk, as well as just some added storage and, again, more booked and fun object display. We did our best with our custom millworker to match the original wood tone as well to kind of keep in character with that in this room. There are a few things, I think, that really give a home a soul. Thoughtful details, layers, as well as I'm a big fan of objects that you love, be it books, art, pottery, kind of layering in all of those things that show the homeowner's personality is what really gives that home a soul. Now we're in the kitchen. This is the heart of our big renovation that we went through about a year and a half ago. So this used to be the kitchen. There were two walls here, and then the adjacent space was a sunroom. It was sort of like an extra dining room. We removed this wall and added a beam, as well as removed most of this wall. In the process, we also had to move this window over to be able to get our refrigerator on this wall. As part of the kitchen reno, we did incidentally close up two more windows to really get this whole wall of cabinetry in here. As we were designing this kitchen, I knew I wanted some sort of light blue, and I had a Benjamin Moore paint swatch when I went to look at stone for the countertops. At the time, I really thought I wanted black and white, so I asked them to pull me a bunch of black and white slabs. They showed me them, and I was like, oh, I like this one, maybe this one. They were like, wait, we have one more set of slabs to show you that are a little bit different. We walk around the corner, and I see this. I was like, that's the one. If you look, there's little bits of blue in here, and it kind of just coordinated perfectly with the paint swatch I had with me, so that really solidified the base of the kitchen design. And I knew when I saw it that I had to run it up the backsplash and show the world that vein, and every time I look at it, I'm like, ah, that came out of the earth. It's just a fun, fun piece, and it's always a conversation starter too. On the island, I knew I wanted some contrast and some warmth. I wanted to bring in a natural wood, as well as I knew I wanted to have a little fun on the island legs, so rather than being square, we did this turned leg to kind of nod to the traditional vibes of the home, but then balance it out with our more modern counterstools. You know, throughout the process, as I mentioned, my husband and I are both architects by training, and we collaborated on the design a ton, and, you know, when it comes to the interior's details, he often will default to me, but there will be, much like our clients, there's always, like, a few details that one person gets hung up on, and these light fixtures were one of them. I proposed, you know, multiple light fixtures, much like the wallpaper in the living room, and he was like, ah, it's not right, it's not right, and then we finally came to these, which were much more glam than I had originally pictured or thought that he would be into, and we just felt like they worked. They were that extra piece of icing that the kitchen needed. I knew I wanted to do an induction range, but I knew by doing that, I had to make, I wanted to make the range wall feel special because they can be a little cold, so we worked with our cabinetry vendor to create this arch, as well as these built-in shelves with a brass rail on the side, which have become very functional in terms of storage and access to things I actually use while cooking, as well as just another place for some of my fun objects to make their way into the kitchen, so I think by adding some of your collections or unique objects to your kitchen, it makes it feel a bit homier, cozier, and more, again, like a reflection of you. This other half of the kitchen has become a family room space. It was originally a sunroom, kind of another dining space, with having the dining room just down the hall and creating the big kitchen island with seating. We knew we didn't need another dining space and really wanted to have a cozy living space, so we kind of planned for this L-shaped sectional, as well as our built-in, which we created with our custom mill worker. This was a bit of a Tetris situation. We were able to steal from this adjacent coat closet to fit our beverage fridge in and get the perfect nook for our TV, and then we wanted this to be, you know, coffee bar by day and then cocktail bar by night, so a mix of storage in terms of, you know, wine and liquor and glassware, but we do also have our coffee pot that just rolls away when not in use to give us a little extra counter space and to kind of change over from day to night. In terms of this bar, this tile was one that I found years ago. You know, I had pitched it to a few interior design clients, and it was one of those that kind of sat in the library, like, maybe you will be mine one day. So I knew I wanted to try to incorporate this here, and when we went blue with the kitchen and selected a wallpaper to go in this room, we felt like this, I felt like this would really balance, you know, the floral and bringing in the geometric and creating a fun backsplash. We designed this built in knowing we wanted to put a piece of art above here but did not have the art at the time, and this is another local artist, Kathleen Eaton. She actually has a huge mural in Midway Airport that Brad, my husband, and I had seen probably like 15 years ago, and we were like, oh, we love that. You know, one day we'd love to have a piece like that, and so when we were looking for this piece, we kind of were like, hey, what was that artist's name and looked her up and found her, and she has a home studio in the western suburbs. We went there, and she had this piece, and I was like, this looks like looking across the street from us, like our block is lined with various Chicago-style bungalows, and we felt like it was the piece, and it was perfectly sized, so that kind of all just worked out. You know, one thing I knew as I developed the kitchen design was that I wanted to incorporate wallpaper in this back area, somehow floral, but wanted to kind of play into the light blues and bring in some other moodier colors, so I found this paper pretty quickly and decided to wrap, like, any part of the room that wasn't cabinetry or trim became wallpaper, and then we based our bar color on the wallpaper. The original footprint of the home, this led to the staircase as it does, and there was a doorway here, and this is actually, on the other side, is pantry, but it was actually the closet for the adjacent bedroom, so we stole that closet, made it pantry, and we were able to add another closet in that room, so it was just an example of how finding unique storage solutions in, you know, these city homes where we need every inch of space, we were able to create that, and that has been a lifesaver. This room that I'm sitting in is probably my favorite. I just love thinking about, you know, the home is 1915, so over 100 years old, and I just love thinking about the history and, like, little details that were here and the people that came before and how they used it differently than we may use it now, and sort of the history among the walls of the home is one of my favorite things. Welcome to the primary suite. When we did the kitchen renovation, we also renovated the second floor where we created a primary suite from an existing bedroom and bathroom, and this is it right here. When I thought about designing this room, I knew I wanted some kind of wallpaper again, something botanical, but something calm and inviting and that would kind of envelop the room. You probably can't see it right now, but in the spring and summer, there's big leafy trees outside of our window here, and so this paper kind of reminded me of being up in the trees, and we ended up deciding to run the paper up the wall and over the ceiling and then down through the hallway leading to the bathroom to kind of create that among-the-trees feeling. In terms of, you know, other design elements in here, I had this custom coverlet made that I had used for a design vignette, and this is another local textile designer, Maresca Textiles, also a friend of mine, so I knew I wanted to incorporate this fabric into this room, and I felt like it played well with the wallpaper. When we moved from our previous home, we did take these draperies that we had had made for our original dining room, thinking that I would potentially reuse them in here or somewhere in the house because the new buyers didn't want them. This, incidentally, is also the same textile designer, Maresca Textiles, and I had them lengthened with this gold band of fabric to work for the height in here, and then we kind of tied it together with the rug and this pair of chairs that were vintage. These were actually... My mother-in-law was going to pay somebody to remove them from her home because she was replacing them, and I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. Give me these swivel chairs. I'm going to have them, you know, repaired and reupholstered, so I picked this striped mohair-like fabric to sort of offset all the botanical vibes in here and give it a little bit more of a structured feel. When we planned the renovation up here, I knew that we knew we wanted to add a built-in in this wall. Right now, we're, you know, among the eaves of the roof line, and we knew there's about 2 feet of space, you know, on either side that gets low for head height, but we knew we could kind of fit some additional storage, big coffee drinker, so I love the idea of having a little spot to have an espresso for those mornings when I don't have to go all the way downstairs, as well as getting the TV in, and my husband was really gung-ho on an electric fireplace, which I originally poo-pooed, but now I love it. Like, I turn it on every night when I come upstairs and sometimes in the morning when I make my coffee and to kind of just, you know, it helps to create that vibe. You know, going back to the sort of tree and leaf theme, this piece of art is actually collage art, which I saw on a local vintage dealer's Instagram, and I was like, I have to have this piece. It reminds me of the view outside my window. I feel like it'll look great in this spot. We had been looking for a piece of art, and so I was able to go get it from him. This leads into the bathroom area. We do have a closet here that was originally unfinished storage space, just kind of among the eaves, has perfect head height for a closet, so we were able to add a second closet, so we have his and hers closets, as well as there was an existing bathroom right here that we were able to expand into, again, some of that unfinished under-the-eaves space to be able to create a primary bath. The doorway to the bedroom used to be right here. We moved it out to create that suite. There is another bathroom off the hall as well as we have second-floor laundry closet that we added on the hallway here as part of this whole renovation. So it was really about, you know, taking over some of these unused spaces on this floor that were kind of missed opportunity from the original renovation and getting every inch and every, you know, really working with the carpenters that our contractor had to be able to fine-tune, like, can we fit this here? Is the head height clear? Can this be storage? And it really made a difference. ♪♪ Okay, welcome to the primary bath. This room was originally a bathroom. It was much smaller. We were able to expand on both sides. There was actually about a 5x8 space of unfinished space between this bathroom and the adjacent bathroom that we discovered during our home inspection. There was a ladder to the space pack, the attic mechanicals, and then there was just a big open space. So that became the space that we were able to move these walls out to create this sort of bathing room. This used to be a pedestal sink and a weird stall shower and toilet. Because we knew we wanted to work within the existing roof lines, this sort of wet room, bathing room, was our best solution. And I am obsessed with how it turned out in terms of usage and just the light that we get from these windows. So, you know, we were able to expand to get this soaking tub. I do take baths, so I'm a big proponent of if you like to take baths, put a bathtub. If you don't, don't. So I knew I wanted a big soaking tub as well as a roomy shower. And it was a long search for the tile. I knew I wanted green and just finding the right green, again, to sort of wrap this whole space and take advantage of those sloped ceilings and to just cover it in this intense green tile, sort of tying back into the tree vibes in the bedroom and then balancing it out with a bit more black and white and the violet marble to kind of have a little bit more of a contemporary or modern vibe in here than the rest of the house. We did create these intentional nooks knowing that we had space. So on this side of the wall, it's actually the trash can for the toilet room. And then in here, we have deep shelf storage. It's where you maybe place your iPad when you're watching a show from the tub. And then we created this ledge to have plants and a place to put things when you're bathing. So on this side, knew that we had to fit in a double vanity adjacent to the toilet room. We went with a custom walnut, natural walnut to kind of take advantage of that grain. And again, I knew I wanted some black and white that really would contrast with the green tile, which we were able to use on the countertop as well as our shower bench and frame the shower opening with the door jams. These are actually medicine cabinets. I love storage and being able to put things away and not having countertops covered. So being able to kind of fit this in on the space we were working with was again, a real inch by inch of like, can we fit the sconces? Can we fit the medicine cabinets and the doorway and really collaborating with the carpenters and the workers that helped us with the renovation were a key part of making this space really work for us. Home to me is where you feel most comfortable. It's where you gather with family and friends and it really is a true reflection of your personality or at least that's, you know, my goal in my home. Homeworthy, it's been so great showing you around my home, but I need to get back to work. Bye. Thanks for watching. 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