Sharon Stangenes

`Why can't we find a ranch house?" asked a couple in an e-mail to this column several months ago. I was puzzled by the query because I have seen and...

Sometimes it is nice to dream--especially on a gray Friday after a hard workweek. That thought slipped into my head as the door swung open to the 4,700-square-foot Wabash model...

The 2006 Parade of Homes, sponsored by the Home Builders Association of Greater Chicago, is planned for Oct. 11-29 at the Settlers Ridge development in Sugar Grove. The beginning and...

Joe Swiderski was semi-retired from home building, but found he missed it so much he decided to get back into the game. "I enjoy doing it. ... It is a...

The porch was what attracted me to the Parker XL model at Tanna, the new neighborhood at Mill Creek in Geneva, but after touring the model home I was even...

Riding the elevator to the fifth-floor sales office at The Tailor at Jackson, a commercial building undergoing conversion in part to residential lofts, I experienced deja vu. How many times...

Builder John Hall is a realist. He knows that in this era of HGTV and "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" that "99 percent of the people coming through show homes are...

`This is what closes the deal," said Andy Zajac, director of sales, opening the door to the indoor pool at the Optima Old Orchard Woods Condominiums in Skokie. Indeed. I...

The old Jacob Riis Elementary School is boarded up, a relic of Chicago's past, but the neighborhood around the old structure appears to be reviving. Riis, the Danish-American for whom...

The old river city of Joliet is one of the metro area cities that has grown by expansion. Founded in 1852, the one-time steel town is the county seat of...