How It Started vs. How It’s Going

Figured the best place to start is at the very beginning. 

It was April of 2019 and I was 6 months pregnant with spontaneous twin girls. Let’s really underscore the word spontaneous and emphasize how unprepared we were to bring not one but two babies into the world. At the time I was working in a job that involved four months of travel a year, and my husband, Jeff, was using the second bedroom of our two bedroom apartment as his home music studio.

We had actually been in the market for a home on and off since 2015, but we were admittedly extremely picky, we were playing in a very competitive housing market in Portland, Oregon, and we were in no real rush.  We dreamed of finding a mid-century modern ranch with all of the touchstones of 1960’s architecture; tongue and groove vaulted ceilings, beam and post lines, a cool floorplan, a fireplace, etc, and we were holding out for the right one. We had made multiple offers over the years and had a few tough losses, but we never felt truly in love with any one house. 

When we became pregnant we started getting serious about the hunt. At that point, although we loved the idea of remodeling a house and putting our own mark on it, we felt like our circumstances meant we needed to find something relatively turnkey. In our price range we saw so many homes that needed new kitchens, new bathrooms, etc, and it felt so overwhelming. We also saw tons of recent remodels that looked like flips and it pained us to think we were paying for renovations that were not to our taste. Six months later we were desperate, stressed and felt like we were going to be making a big compromise. 

But finally, it happened. I will never forget the moment the listing popped up. I was laying on the couch like a beached whale, taking part in my nightly routine of obsessively refreshing my Redfin feed, when I saw the promising exterior photo. I took a deep breath as I began scrolling through the images, and immediately my heart started racing. This house had so much going for it and was a goldmine of potential. Vaulted T&G ceilings? Three fireplaces?! The dining nook! A crazy split level situation?! So many period details that we love. And it met all of our functional criteria, as well; Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a garage and driveway, a great yard and a basement for Jeff’s studio. 

It was not the turnkey house we originally set out to find, it was better. The house was cool to begin with, but the vision for where we could take it started to come together before I had even texted the listing to Jeff (don’t judge, he was in the other room and I was the aforementioned whale) and by the end of the weekend it was ours! Although I have always had a passion for interior design and we are both pretty handy, we did not have any actual experience with home renovations. This home lit a fire in us, that has now become a passion/obsession and has led to endless scope creep as one project inspires the next.

Here’s how it started and I’m looking forward to sharing how it’s going.