In 2002, shortly after my company went bankrupt and I was unemployed for the first time, I found a new job at TMI. It had been a stressful time and the outlook was good, so I decided I needed a change. We moved onto Valewood Drive in April of 2003. The house was semi-custom, which meant that we had the ability to make some minor modifications to an otherwise designed floor plan. The house was roughly 2400 square feet with an 1800 square foot basement. When we first moved in, we picked a complimentary palette of green, purple, blue, and beige paint samples. We took all of those selections with us whenever we purchased furniture, bedding, artwork, and other things. Our walls all started out as white, but over time we painted them one or more of those basic colors in one or more shade of the color. We left in September of 2015.

Our dining room and my kitchen,

Our family room

Our Previous Home in Chicago

(Left) 08/10/02—Clearing the lot

(Below) 08/18/02—Lot 17

(Right) 10/05/02—Utility pipes

The building of 1195 Valewood

 

(Left) 11/09/02—Footings

(Below) 11/16/02—Foundations

(Right) 12/08/02—Basement walls

(Left) 12/10/02—First floor walls

(Below & right) 12/18/02—Christmas pictures

(Left & below) 12/21/02—Front and rear of house

(Right) 01/14/03—Front of house

(Left) 01/14/03—Kitchen sink wall

(Below) 01/15/03—Side of house

(Right) 01/30/03—Kitchen cabinets

(Left) 02/12/03—Brick on front

(Below) 03/31/03—Closing day

(Right clockwise) 04/04/03—Moving day family room, dining room, master bedroom, den

(Right) 05/06/03—Landscaping

(Left) 05/16/03—Sod

(Below) 11/23/03—Beginning of the basement

The den project in July of 2014

The basement

It was a lot of fun to plant a garden in front of the house and along the side and back.

The house was beautiful on the outside, although I liked it better in the summer than the winter.