It’s always sad to see a family-owned company shut its doors, but after 15 years of selling handcrafted traditional furniture, Robert Bergelin Company is going out of business. All remaining merchandise will be liquidated over the course of the next few Fridays and Saturdays, or until supplies last. See the Web site for details.

—GINA BAZER

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It’s always sad to see a family-owned company shut its doors, but after 15 years of selling handcrafted traditional furniture, Robert Bergelin Company is going out of business. All remaining merchandise will be liquidated over the course of the next few Fridays and Saturdays, or until supplies last. See the Web site for details.

—GINA BAZER

" />  

It’s always sad to see a family-owned company shut its doors, but after 15 years of selling handcrafted traditional furniture, Robert Bergelin Company is going out of business. All remaining merchandise will be liquidated over the course of the next few Fridays and Saturdays, or until supplies last. See the Web site for details.

—GINA BAZER

" />
 

It’s always sad to see a family-owned company shut its doors, but after 15 years of selling handcrafted traditional furniture, Robert Bergelin Company is going out of business. All remaining merchandise will be liquidated over the course of the next few Fridays and Saturdays, or until supplies last. See the Web site for details.

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Tate Gunnerson, who also contributes to Chicago Home + Garden, has blogged about our Oak Park home on StrangeClosets. His photos are really lovely, and it makes me want to put the house on a tour all over again. Having the talented Lauren and Courtney of Kelly + Olive stage our house was a complete happy trip. They staged it for the tour, but ended up staging it for our life. We haven’t changed a thing since they spruced up the place (using all of our own stuff) for the South Oak Park Style tour. The hammock we strung between our two giant pines because we thought it would look good has become a favorite spot for reading. The living room arrangement is far more comfortable. I actually now want to hang out on the front porch, with its defined dining area, and the newly fab front study. I buy flowers just for us. The lessons: 1. Bring in a pro! Another set of eyes really helps, no matter who you are. (It really helps to like your pros. We had a blast with Courtney and Lauren, who really seemed to get our style and had an appreciation for both old and new, and a talent for both furniture placement and vignette styling). 2. Set a deadline! A big party is ideal. 3. Enjoy it! It’s not about staging your home for other people; it’s about loving it every day.

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Heading to Andersonville on a beer mission is nothing new, but steering past Hopleaf is—and yet, last night I managed to close my ears to its sudsy call and continue on to a new microbrew destination: Mary’s Rec Room.... Read more
List Price: $2,199,900
The Property: The exterior of this ten-room home on a Bucktown corner lot is a strict geometrical composition of glass, block, and aluminum, but you only have to get one step inside to feel it loosen up. There, on a coat closet in the foyer, builder Darek Nisi hung a pair of rough-hewn antique doors from India that counteract the cold or sterile feeling of some exactingly contemporary interiors. Read more
 

Need a new custom look for your kitchen but can’t afford to shell out the money for a design consult? Not interested in spending hours going from showroom to showroom trying to figure out what tile goes with the countertops you like? A local kitchen design firm, KitchenLab, has come up with a solution they call Design in a Bag. Rebekah Zaveloff, the designer behind KitchenLab, created designinabag.com with her husband, John Nichols, to give homeowners a simple and inexpensive way to get professionally coordinated finishes for their kitchens. Chose your style (modern, classic, vintage), and then select from several different looks (shown here: the Highgate). Bags are priced between $99 and $199 and include samples of cabinetry, countertop, tile, glass, and four 8” x 10” paint samples. You also get four color 3D renderings showing your finishes with the different wall colors, plus info on how to buy and care for your finishes. Coming soon: Design in a Bag for the bath.

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Moral and Hearty
Steve McDonagh and Dan Smith, a.k.a. the Hearty Boys, are quietly moving forward with plans to turn their catering facility/TV studio (3819 N. Broadway; 773-244-9866) into a full-service restaurant, Hearty. “We’re calling it that, because that’s what the food will be,” says McDonagh. “It’s all twists on American comfort-food classics, like a deconstructed tuna casserole, which is... Read more
Put the “free” back in “free time” with these don’t-miss picks for the week of 07.22.09 through 07.28.09: harrowing derring-do in the heart of downtown … family road trips, now with more lasers … a small-town fest with a taste for kitsch—and pierogis Read more
If our kitchen and bath issue flushed you with excitement, come on out tomorrow, July 23, 6:00 - 9:00, for a night of tips, talks, and 'teezers at Community Home Supply, 3924 N. Lincoln Avenue. (For such a deceptively proletarian moniker, this showroom has an inspiring selection of the latest domestic and European home fixtures... Read more
For people selling their homes in this withering sales climate, every little bit might help. One place sellers might not have thought to look for an edge is Google, where there’s also now a new tool for buyers.
On July 8, Google introduced a Google Maps addition that calls up listings for real estate at or near a mapped... Read more

HOK, a global architectural and design firm, just sent us some images of its new Chicago office space in the CNA Building. Besides being cool, it has received LEED Platinum certification, the highest level of green-ness offered by the U.S. Green Building Council. I’m green with envy.

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