How did I get here?

I had a list: chandelier, fireplace, hardwood floors, tall ceilings. Preferably 50+ years old. My first house was going to be all those things. I had to go 45 minutes outside Nashville to find the 1921 Tudor in my budget (a foreclosure), but I got those things.

The love for dressing up old houses probably started about 20 years earlier, but only 2 blocks East, at the house my grandmother accidentally flipped while waiting for my dad to build her custom home (a story for another day). She painted the soaring foyer cranberry red, and I met my first claw-foot tub. By the time I was terrified ready to buy my first house, I knew I needed an old home with some character.

Dear reader, it turns out characters have things like “drunk stairs” (built so steep and irregular they belong in a carnival fun house) aggressively 1980s kitchens (hiding amazing antique wallpaper but little else of design value), and the annual nesting site of a pair of starlings in the upstairs bathroom (accessed via a dryer vent).

My dad and I fixed the house up over the couple of years I lived there. Or mostly he fixed. I watched, learned, and cleaned up the mess we made. We completed gut renovations on the downstairs bathroom and kitchen, painted, made a slew of small repairs, and sold the house in much better shape than I bought it. Certainly prettier.

And that was it for me. I could love houses back to some truer version of themselves, and then someone would want to keep loving them while I went on to my next project. I started building with my dad, and eventually designing the houses our clients were building. I grew and learned with every project (over 50 homes now). My forever home turns out to be a family farm that includes a house with good bones and a desperate need for someone to love it back to beautiful. I’m so excited to see what designs come to life!