Where we’ve been and where we’re going
Last summer, after nearly nine years in our home, we decided we were ready for a change. Which felt a little wild because we were just finishing up a multiple-year renovation project, and our home was finally finished. We had added two bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms, creating enough space for our growing family, and had built our dream kitchen with calacatta marble countertops, a wall of zellige tile, and a breakfast nook.
But something had shifted during the pandemic when we were cooped up in a home under construction, and we realized it wasn’t our forever place. So, last fall, we decided to put our family home on the market. We staged it with some of our favorite pieces from the shop and hosted open houses and a pop up shop — which was so fun! It sold in less than two weeks and a few weeks later we closed escrow and were ready to embark on a new adventure.
We ended up buying another home in our neighborhood, just a few blocks from our old house. The house was very different from what we had before — all on one level with potential for a more open-concept floorplan and a big backyard. It was dated inside and we knew we would want to remodel the interior. After working with our architect, we decided to fill in the pool in the backyard and do an addition for a primary bedroom suite. Another big project.
This all happened right around the holidays, and we realized we would need to find a place to rent for six months to a year while we worked on the new house. We looked online, we reach out to friends and our networks — but there was nothing available to rent in our neighborhood. We expanded our rental search to include the surrounding towns, but nothing felt quite right.
On a whim, we ended up looking at a house in a town I’ve always loved, that’s about 10 minutes from our old house. It was the most charming of the rental houses we had looked at and reminded us so much of our first home — a little log cabin built in the 1920s. But I quickly wrote it off because the primary bedroom was downstairs and there were only two bedrooms upstairs. After living in a split level with small children, I really wanted everyone to be on the same level.
After another week or two of looking at rentals that were either dated and musty or completely redone with faux finishes, we saw that the charming place was still available. We went back and looked at it again with fresh eyes — and decided that we could make it work.
Fast forward a few months to the spring — we were waiting for permits on the house we had bought and were discovering the magic of the new neighborhood we had moved into.
We started going for family walks, and I realized I wasn’t nearly as stressed about the kids riding their scooters because there was so much less traffic. My drive home now included my favorite view of the fog rolling in over the Western hills — a view I used to drive out of my way to see on my morning commute. It was so quiet at night we realized that everyone was sleeping better. Cliff and I started waking up early in the morning to work and loved seeing trees out every window and hearing the birds chirping as the sun rose.
The kids started to meet a few friends in the neighborhood. And then one Saturday morning, I kid you not, twelve kids showed up at our back gate and asked if our kids could come and play.
I feel like that week was a turning point — we realized this was the childhood we always envisioned for our kids. And that we couldn’t see ourselves moving back to our old town. We wanted to stay in this new neighborhood that we had stumbled upon.
Over the next few weeks, we decided to transfer our kids to the local elementary school in the fall. And we also decided that we would finish the project on the new house, sell it, and start looking for a place in our new town.
Long story short, that decision really opened up a new pathway for us that we have been talking about but has been on the backburner for years — investing in real estate, doing more projects, and thoughtfully renovating homes. With that in mind, we invested in a second project home!
Both projects are fully underway and under construction and we want to start sharing all the decisions and design details, but also wanted to pause to share what’s been happening behind the scenes for some context.
So that’s our past year in a nutshell! It’s been a lot of big changes both for our family and our business, but we’re excited about the direction everything is headed and can’t wait to see what’s in store.
October 30, 2024
A New Home & A New Adventure
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