CONSTRUCTION CHIC

REAL TALK

I’m going to show you some of the mess.

Home renovation: disruptive, chaotic, overlong, logistically pretty grim. So why do it? Answer: the simple no risk/no reward equation. Decide you are worth the risk. Change is expensive, but holding out on yourself costs more in all the existential ways. Once we set our intention to GO FOR IT, a few guiding principles got us through to the other side.

In the meantime, we were painfully soaking in Construction Chic, a style I never want to revisit. Want to know how to achieve the look? Scroll through the photos at the bottom for tips. (For full captions, view on a device other than your phone)

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TEMPORARY BEDROOM

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DINING ROOM OFFICE

1. NO PLACE HOLDERS

No more temporary, cheap, or MacGuyvered fixes.

No more particle board shelves I bought at Fred Meyer when I was 20. No more paper lanterns standing in for decent chandeliers. No more ‘ok for now’. NOW IS ALL WE MIGHT GET, PEOPLE! It’s time to DOUBLE DOWN. Permanent, quality choices only. This is our forever home. With no children, no pets, and no plans to sell, we designed for ourselves.

2. CURATE AND PRIORITIZE

Just because you like it, doesn’t mean it belongs in your house.

80% of our possessions were in storage for over 3 years. Periodically we swapped out seasonal clothes, reclaimed musical equipment, whathaveyou, but we basically didn’t know where anything was and didn’t miss any of it (except the vinyl records). Upon vacating that storage space, it was blessedly easy to eliminate things that had lost their appeal, purpose, or yes, their SPARK OF JOY. Living in our dusty busted construction zone for so long helped to clarify what matters. What do we want to see every day? What resonates? Don’t get me wrong, I’m sick of minimalism, but I also don’t need to keep notebooks from projects I did 10 years ago or all the stuffies I ever owned.

3. TRUST THE VISION

Choose your jam. Stick to it. Adapt, but press on.

However shallow it may sound, my aesthetic sensibility is finely tuned. It’s difficult to turn off; I am habitually analyzing and rearranging room decor. Luckily, my husband trusts my taste; he likes the compliments he gets on clothes I pick out for him. Smart man.

I chose the phrase Dark Glam Bananas to encapsulate the overall vibe we wanted (as opposed to say, French Country, or Mid Century Mod). The goal was to honor the structure itself and let that phrase guide every decision. Moody, mature, dramatic, blingy, bonkers, solid. Many times, contractors said they had never seen/done/heard of the thing I was paying them to make. We built time-consuming custom features without knowing if they would ‘work’ until this final cosmetic phase we’re in now. It all made sense to me, but as time dragged on, I did wonder if we would ever get there.

FIRST ZIPPER WALL

Sealing us off from the upstairs construction mess, this plastic ‘wall’ was adjacent our temporary bedroom. Notice the awkward brick surround from the old stove/fireplace combo.

SURPRISE HOLES

Random holes, equipment, beams to trip over etc. would appear. We intended to remove this wall. It was basically sawed/scored: if you gave it a good shove, it would’ve collapsed. This kind of thing sucked in the winter.

PACK UP THE VINYL

Goodbye for now, 2500 records! Play ya later! (Yes, I am a nerd and stood in line so that Henry Rollins would sign these for me.)

ROOMY '96 HONDA CIVIC HATCHBACK

Our transport to and from the storage space we rented for over 3 years. As the housing market in PDX grew more desperate, it’s possible that some of the humans roaming the aisles of the storage building were living there.

STORAGE SPACE CREEP SCENE

Another one of those unexpected costs…

DUMP TRAILER

The exterior of our house was a dusty busted mess. We filled maybe 3 of these trailers during the whole project. We donated and sold what we could, eliminating about half of our things in the end.

BACK PORCH BLUES

Saws, tile cutters, routers, etc. were always set up on our new back porch so that dust rained down on us in all areas of our lives.

SORRY, NO GUESTS

Eventually, our guest room was the only place to put any piles.

CLEAR A WORKSPACE

With multiple complex projects happening at once, it was tough to find enough room for yourself.

MOBILE MESS

Shifting priorities/work zones meant that some items were continually shuffled. For instance, that toilet was meant for the upstairs 1/2 bath, but it wasn’t the right size..so it migrated around until we had the $ to do the full bath.

MORE ZIPPER WALLS

No, they don’t really contain the dust or chaos.

…PATIENCE FOR DAYS

Sure, home improvement costs money. But when you are changing your house into a home, trying to grow and stretch, tidying up your business…it’s about YOU. Turns out we had the stamina. We survived some lows: that time we thought there was an animal trapped in the fresh drywall eating the new electrical, that time the new + improperly installed AC unit that was supposedly fixed leaked onto a just-completed custom woodwork installation (this happened at midnight on a hot night while Mike was on tour… I climbed into the attic and baled out all the water alone), the several times we lost our faith in humanity because people take your money and lie to your face.

I don’t want to relive the ugly parts, but those parts exponentially increase the satisfaction of having pulled it off in the end. We did it to ourselves. It paid off.

Yep, this post was kind of a reality check. The rest of this blog will continue with the classic before/after dynamism that hooks us all on HGTV, I swear!!

Next up, the ENTRYWAY.