Lake Shore Drive Remodel – Final Finishes

• October 3, 2022

Take a tour of the “final finishes” stage of an incredible Lake Shore Drive condominium. Architect Amy Scruggs shares the step-by-step thinking behind a total redesign of a 1920s Chicago co-op and some of the challenges of remodeling in a city high-rise on Lake Michigan.

Hi, everybody, this is Amy Scruggs from Scott Simpson Design Build and I’m so excited and happy to see you again at North Lake Shore Drive, a beautiful vintage co-op.

What we’re going to see today is our final push before the owner moves in in three days.

It’s been all hands on deck. I think it’s going to be probably the most fun video for me to shoot and see because you’ll see the fruits of all of our labor. So, all the finishes are in, wall coverings is in, window treatments are in, it’s really three days away from being move-in ready.

Sort of a hurdle that we had in the project was trying to figure out a way to get electrical onto this wall. And this wall was a solid concrete block wall. So, we ended up, during design, pushing part of the wall forward – which you can see here in the break of the crown moulding – to sort of give us a place to run electrical get the recessed mount for the TV. And I actually feel like it’s a nice, sort of, complement to have this piece moving forward which it centers on this opening that’s behind, uh, in front of me, here.

So, the connection between what was a former dining room and a formal living room space was only about six feet wide. And it was very, very important to us to make sure that when someone was in the kitchen cooking, if someone was here and someone was out in the living room space that we would have a larger, larger visual connection and have the opportunity to bring all of this light that we’re getting from the east side, which is our lake side, that that would spill into what is the new dining room behind me.

One of the sort of most fun things that we’ve been able to do is to recreate this fireplace. We pulled off all the old stone. We pulled off all the overmantel and mirror and all the gilt and everything that was there and we’ve constructed a simple, classic wood mantel – there’s a beautiful stone surround and the best, best news of all is that when we started this project the fireplace was not operational. And we did some backflips and we twisted some arms and we were able to get the gas line, which was here, uh, reconnected. So now the owner will be able to put a gas log set in and actually have an operational fireplace which was a huge win for the team.

Part of another, sort of, transformation to this room which you might recall is that we added this coffered ceiling, which did not exist before. We sort of felt like we wanted to bring the scale of the room down, cause it’s an enormous room, and also give our eye something interesting to look at. This is one of the few rooms that doesn’t have wallpaper. In many of the rooms we’ve used a very graphic wallpaper to get some punch. This is a room where we’re using the ceiling to achieve that.

The butler’s pantry that existed was only about this wide. And we took this wall down, which separated this part of the butler’s pantry from a very large, formal foyer. It was space we felt could be better utilized as part of a great big kitchen. And the biggest challenge from this job, and what the owner wanted, their number one priority, was to get the kitchen from out of the back, which was dark, overlooking the fire escape and bring it to the front of the house so that we would have this great relationship between kitchen and lakefront and then great relationship between kitchen and family room – which we’ve been able to achieve through this very, very large, cased opening.

This foyer space that we’re standing in was probably another seven feet wider than what we have right now. And we really felt like the best use of this space would be, as I said before, making that kitchen wider. So, we’ve constructed a new wall here. We have panel moulding, we have chair rail and we come over to this side, and we have another arch. And the semi-circle and the radius of this arch above me matches exactly with the radius of the arch that’s behind you.

We have almost all of the decorative light fixtures hung. We have these two pendants over the island. All of our glass has gone into our upper cabinets. We have our perforated metal mesh that’s gone in the bar cabinet. As soon as we take away everything on the island it’s going to be a, you know, true working kitchen.

And I’m happy to say that this is our final video, but it’s also a little bit bittersweet for us because the project is coming to a close.