Kim & Kyle’s Graceful Home

Name: Kim Knoll and Kyle Eertmoed, graphic designers at Knoed Creative
Location: Ravenswood Manor; Chicago, Illinois
Size: 800 square feet
Years lived in: 7 years; Owned

Kim and Kyle know a thing or two about space. As graphic designers who started their own company, Knoed Creative, they spend endless hours thinking about how forms and language communicate across visual dimension. They’ve put just as much effort into their crisp and cozy home, creating a unified aesthetic that offers them a place to relax, unwind, and connect as a couple after a day at the office.

I love a home with a romantic backstory. This apartment is the first place Kim and Kyle have lived in together, and they purchased it after having dated only six months! The past several years have seen them evolve their space as well as their relationship, as they have moved from boyfriend and girlfriend to an engaged couple to a married couple, and then beyond to business partners. The room in which the dining table now so snugly fits was up until recently their home office. After renting out a space locally, they decided to turn the room into a dining/entertaining spot, and have absolutely loved the results.

The throughline of functionality entwined with aesthetics permeates the apartment, and encourages what Kim noted as a desire for “clarity and creative thinking.” While editing and creating the space over time, the couple utilized their natural collaborative skills to put together inspiration boards on Pinterest and discuss options to help shape their plans into reality. I love how personal items and art punctuate the comfort and cleanness of the space, and can personally attest to how incredibly cozy this home is: the day of our tour coincided with one of Chicago’s first snows, and with the flurries falling and a cup of tea brewed, I couldn’t have imagined being anywhere else except enjoying the company of Kim and Kyle in their lovely home. Well done, you two!

Our Style: A mix of industrial, vintage and mid-century modern.

Inspiration: Mixing the present with the past.

Favorite Element: Our record player. There’s nothing better than lounging on a day off with the original sounds of Otis Redding or Billie Holiday.

Biggest Challenge: Our living room and dining room have a triangular floor plan, since our building is set on the corner of a diagonal street. It’s actually what drew us to the condo when we bought it. But we quickly learned that getting furniture to work well with the angles is challenging.

What Friends Say: They notice the triangular layout immediately and say we did a good job working with such an odd layout.

Biggest Embarrassment: The furnace is in the middle of our condo, which means we have a weird, vented door (to meet code) in our living room and it can get pretty loud when it turns on.

Proudest DIY: Our closets! When we first moved in, they just had a clothes pole in them. Since we don’t have much storage space, we designed and built floor-to-ceiling shelving in each to maximize the space. We spent 8 hours straight in Home Depot figuring it all out and about 3 days of sanding, staining and putting it all together, but the result has been so worth it.

Biggest Indulgence: Our big piece of art by Michael McGuire. We’ve admired his work for a while and were beyond excited to finally own a piece of it. Most of the expense was spent on the framing, of course!

Best Advice: We are by no means interior designers or experts on the topic, so we don’t feel comfortable shelling out advice. But we do have two tips. For all the dog owners out there who deal with their little hairs your sofa, the best (and fastest) way to get it off is with a rubber glove. About 5 wipes later, it’s gone! The other tip is with painting. We learned the hard way: always go with the paint and primer in one. It is such a time saver and really makes a difference with coverage.

Dream Sources: We have Pinterest boards for our dream home as well as what we’ve bought for our current home. If you want to see what we like and where we shop, go to pinterest.com/kim_knoll or pinterest.com/keertmoed.

Thanks, Kim and Kyle!

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