Still here! Just Swamped. Reason: We Bought a House

Just a quick note to my valued readers, I haven’t gone anywhere.  Just been crazy busy!  Cheryl and I purchased a nice brick 2-flat over in the North Center neighborhood of Chicago, about 10 blocks west of where we currently live, and have been crazily prepping it for the big move this coming Saturday.  For you non-Chicagoans a 2-flat is a multi-unit building with…2 units in it.  I bet you can guess how many units a 3-flat has.  Well legal ones at least.  As a Chicago realtor I see all kinds of “off-the-radar” units tucked into basements and attics where Dr. Richard Kimball would feel right at home.  Thankfully, ours does not have any of these.  It is a true, legal 2-flat with no fugitives.

What do you do with it?  Well, you can either change the whole building to a single family home, use it as an investment property, or do what we’re doing which is live in one unit and rent out the other.  We’re getting about the same amount of space, maybe a little less since our new home isn’t as wide as where we’ve been living, but we’ve got a back yard, 2-car garage, and a full basement we could finish off and duplex down in the future.  More importantly, we can do whatever we want to it and make it our own.  For example, I am already trying to figure out where to put a smoker.  I hope Cheryl got me one for my birthday this week.

So have no fear, I’ll be back in the kitchen soon enough, making stuff on our new appliances which were delivered and installed last Friday.  As Cheryl said when they were delivered “I now have a big fridge like my parents.”  If there’s anything that says you’ve grown up and made it to adulthood, it’s having a big fridge.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some boxes to pick up and walls to sand and paint.