Hi friends!
I am so embarrassed to admit that it has been over a year since my last post. Fortunately, I’ve recently had an uptick in interest in this humble side hustle of mine and the thought of pointing a potential new customer to this old, outdated site makes me cringe. So here we are to start the process of updating you (and all my potential new customers) with some of my more recent work.
It’s been a year, and what a year it was. Most significantly my partner and I purchased a condo in Chicago in May 2023 and I figured what better way to catch you up than to start with my most favorite project of the year, my own 🙂
I had so many friends (real and internet) that were shocked to see how we went from the chaos of moving boxes to entertaining and hosting a Mother’s Day brunch in under 7 days. How?! I became my own client!
The process started early for me. Our listing came with an image of our unit’s floor plan (which we actually found to be pretty common during our home search and was super helpful to me). I wasted no time once our offer was accepted, even though we had an extended closing period, to start my planning. When we toured the place, I had a very solid idea of where our things would go but the first real step in this project was utilizing the floor plan and placing our furniture and items in the plan, to scale, to help us decide on each room layout. This step was vital!! I also used this approach when the holidays came and we had to rearrange to make room for our tree as you can see in the photo.
Once we knew where everything was going, we could figure out what we would need to purchase. While the list wasn’t long, there were still a few important pieces (mostly area rugs) we were lacking due to going from a smaller space to a larger one. To help us make smart purchases, I put together concept boards for each room again pulling in images of the pieces we already had and then sourcing what we still needed. These visuals helped with the design cohesion. For example, the fabric of our counter bar stools in the Family Room are the same fabric as the accent chair in the Living Room and my dream dining chairs (yet to be purchased) in the Dining Room. The neutral color palette with accent art pieces quickly became our theme for the main living spaces, with the Den getting most of the personality.
When it came time to shop, I knew exactly what we needed to purchase and I even was equipped with a full product shopping list! This kind of list is standard for all of my client projects.
So then when it came time for the move, everything was so smooth. With these plans and visuals, it was very easy to tell the movers exactly where things went and to unpack knowing where things belonged. Every box was unpacked and out of sight in a matter of days.
You can see a full video tour of our place HERE.
Kalli Bravos 